Cosmology and meditation: from the Agganna-Sutta to the Mahayana.
(Buddhism)
Rupert Gethin
History of Religions
Vol.36 No.3 (Feb 1997)
pp.183-217
COPYRIGHT 1997 University of Chicago
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF BUDDHIST COSMOLOGY
Now there comes a time, Vasettha, when after a long period of time
this world contracts. When the world contracts beings are for the
most part born in the realm of Radiance There they exist made of
mind, feeding on joy, self-luminous, moving through the air,
constantly beautiful; thus they remain for a long, long time. Now
there
comes a time, Vasettha, when after a long period of time this world
expands. When the world expands beings for the most part fall from
the realm of Radiance and come here [to this realm]; and they exist
made of mind, feeding on joy, self-luminous, moving through the
air, constantly beautiful; thus they remain for a long, long
time.(1)
This striking and evocative passage introduces the well-known
account of the evolution of the world and human society found in the
Agganna-sutta of the Pali Digha Nikaya.(2) It marks the beginning of
a particular line of thought within Buddhist tradition concerning
the world and its cycles of expansion and contraction. It is this
line of thought that I wish to investigate in the present article.
It can sometimes seem that, as "literate, demythologized and
Aristotelianized academics"--to borrow a characterization from G. S.
Kirk(3)--we become peculiarly insensitive to the kind of poetic and
imaginative world which, for perhaps most human beings for most of
human history, has constituted "reality." It is perhaps not an
accident then that, despite the fact that certain studies of
contemporary Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Burma, and Thailand have drawn
attention to the importance of the traditional cosmology to the
worldview of present-day Theravada Buddhists,(4) the subject of
Buddhist cosmology has received relatively little attention from
textual scholars.(5) Significantly, one of the few works devoted to
Buddhist cosmology to be published in more recent years is not a
study of ancient Pali or Sanskrit sources but a translation of a
fourteenth-century Thai classic, Phya Lithai's Traibhumikatha or
Thrai Phum Phra Ruang ("Three Worlds according to King Ruang").(6)
The overall paucity of scholarly materials dealing with Buddhist
cosmology would seem to reflect a reluctance on the part of modern
scholarship to treat this dimension of Buddhist thought as having
any serious bearing on those fundamental Buddhist teachings with
which we are so familiar: the four noble truths, the eightfold path,
no-self, dependent arising, and so on. The effect of this is to
divorce the bare doctrinal formulations of Buddhist thought from a
traditional mythic context. This can result in serious distortions:
the picture that has sometimes been painted of especially early
Buddhism and Theravada Buddhism is somewhat one-dimensional and
flat. However, the principle that the study of the imagery employed
in early Buddhist texts is a useful way of deepening our
understanding of the more overtly conceptual teachings of the
Nikayas has already been used to good purpose by Steven Collins in
his discussion of house imagery, vegetation imagery, and water
imagery in the context of the Nikayas' presentation of the teaching
of "no-self."(7) Advocating an approach not dissimilar to Collins's,
Stanley Tambiah has commented that the traditional Buddhist
cosmological scheme "says figuratively and in terms of metaphorical
images the same kind of thing which is stated in abstract terms in
the doctrine. The basic doctrinal concepts of Buddhism . . . which
are alleged to explain man's predicament and to direct his religious
action, are also embedded in the cosmology (and its associated
pantheon)."(8) It seems to me that in this he can only be right, and
one of the things I will do in this article is to explore further
the relationship in Buddhist thought between the realms of abstract
theory, on the one hand, and cosmological myth, on the other. To
ignore the mythic portions of ancient Buddhist texts is to fail in a
significant way to enter into their thought-world. My particular
focus will be certain cosmological ideas concerning the expansion
and contraction of the universe and their implications for our
understanding of the nature and significance of the fourth
"meditation" (jhana/dhyana) in the account of the stages of the
Buddhist path as presented in the Nikayas and Abhidharma. What also
emerges, I will argue, is a clearer perspective on the development
of certain ideas usually considered characteristic of certain
strands of Mahayana Buddhist thought: the tathagatagarbha and an
idealist ontology.
COSMOLOGY IN THE NIKAYAS AND ABHIDHARMA
The Nikayas and Agamas contain very many cosmological details, but
it is not until the period of the Abhidharma that we get attempts to
organize these details into a systematic whole. Yet what Masson's
and Marasinghe's studies of "gods" in the Nikayas reveal is that,
notwithstanding the fact that the Nikayas nowhere give a systematic
exposition of their cosmology,(9) all the basic principles and not a
few of the details of the developed cosmology of the Abhidharma are
to be found scattered throughout the Nikayas.(10) I reckon the basic
principles to be three. First, there are a number of different
realms of existence that constitute a hierarchy; there are lower
realms--the realms of animals (tiracchanayoni) and of hungry ghosts
(pettivisaya) and various hells (niraya); there is the realm of men
(mantissa) and, above, the various heaven realms of the devas and
brahmas.(11) Second, beings are continually reborn in these various
realms in accordance with their actions-the ten unskillful (akusala)
courses of action (kammapatha) lead to rebirth in one of the lower
realms, and the ten skillful (kusala) courses of action lead to
rebirth as a human being or in the lower heavens, while meditation
attainments (jhana) lead to rebirth in the higher heavens as a
brahma.(12) The third principle is that which is inherent in the
formula from the Agganna-sutta that I quoted above. The various
levels of existence arrange themselves in "world-systems"
(loka-dhatu); there are innumerable world-systems which all expand
and contract across vast expanses of time.(13) This basic
cosmological scheme is not confined to one isolated Nikaya context;
it is something alluded to and assumed by very many of the Nikaya
formulas. It is perhaps most conveniently summed up in the
well-known formula which states that the Buddha, "having himself
fully understood and directly experienced this world with its devas,
its Mara and Brahma, this generation with its samanas and brahmanas,
with its princes and peoples, makes it known."(14)
What I want to argue below does not hinge on establishing that the
Buddha himself or the earliest phase of Buddhist thought subscribed
to this specific cosmological view; I am concerned with how the
tradition read the texts as a coherent whole rather than with their
relative chronology and evolution. But I would add that I can see no
particular reason for thinking that this basic conception of the
universe does not belong to the earlier strata of the Nikayas. There
are no a priori historical grounds for regarding the principles of
this cosmology as improbable in the mouth of the Buddha; as
Marasinghe has commented, "From a study of the Jain, Ajivika, and
the Buddhist ideas of cosmological thinking, it may be surmised
that, by the time of the Buddha, there was a rich floating mass of
cosmological ideas in the Gangetic regions from which most religious
teachers drew quite freely."(15)
On the evidence of the Rg-Veda, Upanisads, and Jain sources such
cosmological ideas might easily have been borrowed and adapted from
the cultural milieu in which we understand the Buddha to have
formulated his teachings. But this is perhaps to put it too
negatively. In many respects the kind of cosmology that I have
indicated above seems actually fundamental to Buddhist thought. On
the evidence of the Nikayas (and apparently the Chinese Agamas) we
know of no Buddhism or Buddha that did not teach a belief in
rebirth, or conceive of rebirth as fluid among different realms,
whether animal, hellish, human, or heavenly.(16) While certain of
the details of the Agganna-sutta's account of the evolution of human
society may be, as Gombrich has persuasively argued, satirical in
intent, there is nothing in the Nikayas to suggest that these basic
cosmological principles that I have identified should be so
understood; there is nothing to suggest that the Agganna-sutta's
introductory formula describing the expansion and contraction of the
world is merely a joke.(17) We should surely expect early Buddhism
and indeed the Buddha to have some specific ideas about the nature
of the round of rebirth, and essentially this is what the
cosmological details presented in the Agganna-sutta and elsewhere in
Nikayas constitute. They represent a concretized and mythic
counterpart to the more abstract formulation of, say, dependent
arising (paticcasamuppada).
What functions do the various levels of existence and the gods play
in the Nikayas? There is no one simple answer to this question, but
I shall answer initially by stating more fully what I identified
above as the second principle of Buddhist cosmology, namely, that
particular kinds of action of body, speech, and mind lead to certain
kinds of rebirth. The passages I referred to in this connection
effectively draw up a hierarchy of kamma that corresponds very
closely to the hierarchy of levels of existence. At the bottom of
this hierarchy we have unskillful kammas leading to rebirth in the
realms of hell, hungry ghosts, and animals; next we have the
skillful kammas of generosity (dana) and the precepts (sila)
practiced to various degrees and leading to rebirth as a human being
or as a deva in one of six realms of heaven; finally the practice of
meditation (bhavana) and the development of the various jhanas leads
to rebirth among "the gods of Brahma's retinue" (brahmakayika deva)
and beyond. At this point we should remind ourselves that kamma is
for the Nikayas--as for Buddhist thought generally--at root a mental
act or intention; acts of body and speech are performed in response
to and conditioned by the quality of the underlying intention or
will (cetana); they are unskillful or skillful because they are
motivated by unskillful or skillful intentions.(18) Acts of body and
speech are, as it were, the epiphenomena of particular kinds of
mentality; they are driven by specific psychological states. In a
very real sense acts of body and speech are acts of will. Thus the
hierarchy is essentially one of certain kinds of mentality
(understood as kamma) being related to certain levels of existence;
this is most explicit in the case of the various jhanas and Brahma
realms. This way of thinking demonstrates the general principle of
an equivalence or parallel in Buddhist thought between psychology on
the one hand and cosmology on the other.
Many of the stories about devas from different heavens in the
Nikayas lend themselves very readily to a kind of "psychological"
interpretation, that is, to interpretation in terms of certain
mental states; in certain contexts this interpretation is explicit
in the texts themselves. In the vana-samyutta of the Samyutta Nikaya
there is a whole series of accounts of devas visiting bhikkhus
dwelling in the forest in order to admonish the bhikkhus for their
laziness.(19) Here the devas serve to arouse skillful states of mind
in the bhikkhu that spur him on in his practice. Similarly in the
Mara- and Bhikkhuni-samyuttas Mara is represented as appearing on
the scene and tempting bhikkhus, bhikkhunis, and the Buddha, with
the world of the five senses.(20) Here then Mara appears to act as
the five hindrances (nivarana) which are precisely the mental states
that one must overcome in order to attain jhana, and it is precisely
jhana that--at least according to a later understanding--takes one
temporarily beyond the world of the five senses and out of Mara's
reach.(21) To read these texts in loosely psychological terms is
not, I think, to engage in acts of gratuitous "demythologizing"; the
Buddhist tradition itself at an early date was quite capable of
demythologizing--so much so that one hesitates to use such a term in
this context. It is rather, I think, that this kind of psychological
interpretation was for the Nikayas inherent in the material itself.
When questioned as to the nature of Mara, the Buddha responds in
abstract terms that have to do with general psychological
experience: "One says, `Mara! Mara!' lord. Now to what extent, lord,
might Mara or the manifestation of Mara exist?' `Where the eye
exists, Samiddhi, where visible forms, eye consciousness and dhammas
cognizable by the eye exist, there Mara or the manifestation of Mara
exist.'"(22)
Again the Suttanipata defines the armies of Mara that assault the
Bodhisatta in what are essentially psychological terms:
435. Dwelling thus having attained the highest experience, my mind
has no regard for sensual desires. See the purity of a being.
436. Sensual desire is called your [Mara's] first army, discontent
your second; your third is called hunger and thirst, your fourth
craving.
437. Your fifth is called tiredness and sleepiness, your sixth fear.
Your seventh is doubt, deceit and obstinacy your eighth . . .
439. Namuci, this is your army-the attacking (force) of the Dark One
[Mara]. Not being a hero one does not conquer it, but having
conquered it one gains happiness.(23)
In the Samyutta Nikaya, the daughters of Mara too are presented as
having a similar psychological reality: "Then Craving, Discontent,
and Lust, the daughters of Mara, approached the Blessed One [the
Buddha]. Having approached they spoke thus to the Blessed One:
'Ascetic, we would serve at your fees.' Now the Blessed One paid no
attention, since he was freed in the unsurpassable, complete
destruction of attachments."(24) It is surely to read nothing into
these texts to say that the descriptions of the
Bodhisatta's/Buddha's encounter with Mara's armies and daughters
represent vivid descriptions of the psychology of the Buddha before
and after his awakening. The Bodhisatta/Buddha has wrestled with
certain mental states--Mara, his armies, his daughters--and defeated
them. That is to say, particular psychological states are described
in terms of an encounter with beings with cosmological
significance--or vice versa.(25)
I do not wish, however, to suggest that a psychological
interpretation of such figures as Mara is the whole story. I am not
claiming that all ancient readers or hearers of these "texts" would
have conceived of Mara's daughters and armies simply as mystic
symbols of particular mental states. No doubt for many, Mara, his
daughters, and his armies would have had a reality as autonomous
beings apart from their own mental states. I do want to claim,
however, that a psychological interpretation would have made sense
to the authors and readers of these texts. Yet in making such a
claim I do not wish to imply that a psychological reading somehow
reveals the "true" and "real" significance of the various
cosmological beings--the significance intended by the Buddha but
which the Buddhist tradition had to compromise in the face of
popular belief, and which we in the late twentieth century are at
last privileged to access. The Buddhism of the Nikayas embraces the
notion of rebirth, and the account of different realms of existence
occupied by a variety of beings is integral to that. The categories
of "mythic symbol" and "literally true" are modern and are bound up
with a complex ontology that has been shaped by a particular
intellectual and cultural tradition. Thus to approach what, for the
want of a better term, we call the mythic portions of the Nikayas
with the attitude that such categories as "mythic symbol" and
"literally true" are absolutely opposed is to adopt an attitude that
is out of time and place. It seems to me that in some measure we
must allow both a literal and a psychological interpretation. Both
are there in the texts.
The equivocation between cosmology and psychology is particularly
clear in a passage of the Kevaddha-sutta.(26) The Buddha tells of a
certain bhikkhu who wished to discover where the four great elements
(mahabhuta) ceased without remainder (aparisesa nirujjhanti). It
seems that we must understand this as wishing to know the full
extent of the conditioned world-both physical and mental. The
bhikkhu appears to have been a master of meditation, for we are told
that he attained a state of concentration in which the path leading
to the gods appeared to his concentrated mind ("tatharupam samadhim
samapajji yatha samahite citte deva-yaniyo maggo paturahosi"). He
then proceeds to approach the gods of ever higher levels to pose his
question until eventually he finds himself in the presence of
Mahabrahma himself, who confesses that he cannot answer the question
and suggests that he return to the Buddha to put this question to
him. The Buddha answers that the four elements cease, not "out
there" in some remote outpost of the universe, but in
"consciousness" (vinnana).(27) This account states very clearly how
specific psychological states--in this instance, the mind
concentrated in the various levels of meditation--give access to
particular cosmological realms. Thus the bhikkhu is explicitly
described as at once making a journey through various levels of the
cosmos and making an inner, spiritual journey--a journey of the
mind.
In the light of an extremely suggestive article by Peter Masefield,
it seems that instead of being misled into searching for meaning in
terms of the categories of literal truth and mythic symbol, we
should understand the Nikayas' reference both to a cosmic hierarchy
of beings (humans, devas and brahmas) and to a psychological
hierarchy of mental states (levels of jhana) as paralleling the
Upanisadic categories of "with reference to the gods" (adhidaivatam)
and "with reference to the self" (adhyatmam): that is, "reality" may
be viewed either from the perspective of an exterior world (brahman)
or from the perspective of an interior world (atman) that are in
some sense--though, in the case of Buddhist thought, not an
absolutist metaphysical one--the same.(28) Thus Masefield suggests
that to talk or conceive of Mara as a cosmic entity on the one hand
and as psychological forces on the other is essentially to shift
from the adhidaivatam to the adhyatmam perspective.(29) I am
persuaded that Masefield has indeed identified here a way of
thinking that runs very deep in the Indian philosophical tradition,
and while the importance of this way of thinking may be acknowledged
in the context of the Vedas and Hindu and Buddhist tantra, it is
insufficiently understood in the context of early Buddhism.
Turning from the Nikayas to the Abhidharma, two full systematic
accounts of Buddhist cosmology survive: that of the Theravadin
Abhidhamma and that of the Sarvastivada-Vaibhasika Abhidharma. These
two accounts are remarkably similar in broad outline and in fact
also agree on many points of detail. This again suggests that the
basic cosmology should be regarded as having been formulated
relatively early since it forms part of the common heritage of
ancient Buddhism. In what follows, I shall be drawing on both the
Pali Theravadin traditions and also, at points, Vasubandhu's
Abhidharmakosa for the traditions of the Sarvastivadins.
One of the general concerns of the Abhidharma is to provide a
detailed and complex hierarchy of consciousness. The classic
Theravada scheme of eighty-nine or 121 "consciousnesses" (citta)
begins with unskillful consciousnesses at the bottom, followed by
consciousnesses that concern the mechanics of bare awareness of the
objects of the five senses, and then by skillful sense-sphere
consciousnesses; next come the various formsphere and
formless-sphere consciousnesses that constitute the jhanas, or
meditation attainments; finally, we have the world-transcending
(lokuttara) consciousnesses that constitute the mind at the moment
of awakening itself.(30) The basic structure of this hierarchy of
consciousness parallels quite explicitly the basic structure of the
cosmos: consciousness belongs to the sense sphere (kamavacara), the
form sphere (rupavacara), or the formless sphere (arupavacara);
beings exist in the sense world (kama-dhatu, kama-loka), the form
world (rupa-dhatu, rupa-loka), or the formless world (arupa-dhatu,
arupa-loka). As well as laying down a more precise hierarchy of
consciousness, the Abhidhamma also finalized the structure of the
cosmos: both Theravadin and northern sources detail thirty-one basic
realms.(31) The basic structure of this cosmos, along with its
psychological parallel, is set out in figure 1.
[Figure 1 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
In detailing the types of consciousness that beings reborn in
particular realms are able to experience, the Abhidhamma provides a
further indication of the parallel between the psychological order
and the cosmological order.(32) Beings in the lowest realms (hell
beings, animals, hungry ghosts, Asuras) can only experience
sense-sphere consciousness; beings in the human realm and the
heavens of the sense sphere characteristically experience
sense-sphere consciousness but can in special circumstances (i.e.,
when attaining jhana) experience form-sphere and formless-sphere
consciousness. Beings in the form and formless worlds
characteristically experience form and sense-sphere consciousness
respectively; both may experience certain forms of both skillful and
unskillful sense-sphere consciousness, but not those associated with
hatred and unpleasant feeling.(33) The logic governing this
arrangement is as follows: A being in one of the lower realms must
experience at least a modicum of skillful consciousness or else,
never being able to generate the skillful kamma necessary to
condition rebirth in a higher realm, he or she is stuck there
forever. Similarly, beings in the Brahma worlds must experience some
unskillful consciousness, otherwise their kamma would be exclusively
skillful, and they would be able to remain forever in these blissful
realms where no unpleasant bodily or mental feeling ever occurs,
escaping dukkha permanently rather than only temporarily (albeit for
an aeon or two). Finally, beings such as humans who are in the
middle of the hierarchy are evenly poised; they may experience the
most unskillful kinds of consciousness or they may experience the
most skillful--they may go right to the bottom or right to the top.
A point of particular significance that emerges from this is that,
from the perspective of Abhidharma, to shift from talk about levels
of existence to talk about levels of the mind is to continue to talk
about the same thing but on a different scale. What is involved in
moving from the psychological order (the hierarchy of consciousness)
to the cosmological order (the hierarchy of beings) is essentially a
shift in time scales. The mind (of certain beings) might range
through the possible levels of consciousness in a relatively short
period--possibly in moments. A being, in contrast, exists at a
particular level in the cosmos for rather longer--84,000 aeons in
the case of a being in the realm of "neither consciousness nor
unconsciousness"--and to range through all the possible levels of
being is going to take a very long time indeed.(34) The fact that
what we are talking about here is a change of scale is exactly
brought out by the Abhidharma treatment of "dependent arising"
(pratityasamutpada). This law that governs the process of things,
whether the workings of the mind or the process of rebirth, is
always the same. Thus the Abhidharma illustrates the operation of
the twelve links of dependent arising either by reference to the way
in which beings progress from life to life or by reference to the
progress of consciousness from moment to moment: from one
perspective we are born, live, and die over a period of, say, eighty
years; from another we are born, live, and die in every moment.(35)
In chapter 3 of the Abhidharmakosa, Vasubandhu in fact discusses
these different scales for the interpretation of pratityasamutpada
precisely in the context of his exposition of cosmology (vv. 20-38).
In general, traditional Buddhist cosmology as expounded in the
Nikayas and Abhidhamma must be understood as at once a map of all
realms of existence and an account of all possible experiences.
THE EXPANSION AND CONTRACTION OF WORLD-SYSTEMS
According to Buddhist cosmological systems the universe is
constituted by innumerable "world-systems" or "world-spheres"
(loka-dhatu, cakkavala) comprising just thirty-one levels of
existence.(36) Much as the mind is not static or stable, neither, on
a grander scale, are world-systems; they themselves go through vast
cycles of expansion and contraction. According to the exegetical
traditions of both the Theravadins and Sarvastivadins, the formula I
quoted from the Agganna-sutta, referring as it does to the rebirth
of beings in the realm of Radiance (abhassara/abhasvara)(37) at the
time of world contraction, describes this contraction as the result
of destruction by fire. Both Buddhaghosa and Vasubandhu provide some
further details about how the destruction proceeds.(38) According to
Buddhaghosa, world-systems contract in great clusters--he speaks of
a billion (koti-sata-sahassa) world-systems contracting at a
time.(39) Both writers describe how, when they contract,
world-systems contract from the bottom upward. Thus in the case of
destruction by fire, the fire starts in the lower realms of the
sense sphere and having burned up these, it invades the form realms;
but having burned up the realms corresponding to the first
jhana/dhyana, it stops. The realms corresponding to the second,
third, and fourth jhanas, and the four formless realms, are thus
spared the destruction. But destruction by fire is not the only kind
of destruction, merely the most frequent--water and wind also wreak
their havoc. When the destruction is by water, the three realms
corresponding to the second jhana are also included in the general
destruction, while the destruction by wind invades and destroys even
the realms corresponding to the third jhana. Overall, only the seven
realms corresponding to the fourth jhana and the four formless
realms are never subject to this universal destruction.(40)
So what becomes of the beings that occupy the lower realms when
fire, water, and wind wreak their destruction? They cannot just
disappear from samsara; they must go somewhere. Here we touch upon a
question which posed something of a problem in the Buddhist
tradition and to which its answers are not entirely consistent. The
simple answer that Buddhaghosa gives in the Visuddhimagga is that at
the time of the destruction of a world-system by fire, all the
beings that occupy the lower realms--including hell beings
(nerayika)--are reborn in the Abhassara Brahma realm (corresponding
to the second jhana) or above it. But since rebirth in a Brahma
realm can only occur as a result of the practice of the jhanas,
Buddhaghosa has a problem. The chaos and hardships that are a
prelude to the destruction of the world are hardly conducive to the
practice of jhana. Moreover, certain beings simply do not have the
capacity to attain jhana even if they try.
There is no rebirth in the Brahma world without jhana, and some
beings are oppressed by the scarcity of food, and some are incapable
of attaining jhana. How are they reborn there? By virtue of jhana
acquired in the Deva world. For at that time, knowing that in a
hundred thousand years the aeon will come to an end, the
sense-sphere gods, called "Marshals of the World," loosen their
headdresses and, with disheveled hair and pitiful faces, wiping
their tears with their hands, clothed in red and wearing their
garments in great disarray, come and frequent the haunts of men
saying, "Good sirs, a hundred thousand years from now the aeon will
come to an end: this world will be destroyed, the great ocean will
dry up, and Sineru, king of mountains, will be burnt up and
destroyed. The destruction of the world will reach the Brahma world.
Develop loving kindness, good sirs. Develop compassion, sympathetic
joy, and equanimity. Take care of your mothers and fathers; honor
the elders of the family." Hearing their words, both men and the
deities of the earth are for the most part moved; they become kind
to one another, and making merit by loving kindness and so on, they
are reborn in the Deva world. There they enjoy the food of the gods
and having completed the initial work on the air kasina, they attain
jhana
However there are others who are reborn in the Deva world by virtue
of their kamma "that is to be experienced at an unspecified time,"
for there is certainly no being wandering in samsara devoid of kamma
that is to be experienced at an unspecified time. They also
similarly acquire jhana there [in the Deva world]. So all beings are
reborn in the Brahma world by virtue of the attainment of jhana.(41)
For Buddhaghosa, at the time of the contraction of a world-system,
all the beings occupying the lower realms should be understood as
being reborn in those higher Brahma worlds that escape the
destruction--this is true even of the beings in the lower realms of
hell. When all else fails, this comes about by virtue of the fact
that there is no being in samsara that has not at some time or other
performed the kamma necessary for rebirth in the happy realms of the
sense sphere. Thus even beings born in hell realms as the result of
unwholesome kamma will always have a latent good kamma that can come
to fruition at the time of the pending contraction of the
world-system; this is their "kamma to be experienced at an
unspecified time" (aparapariya-vedaniya-kamma).(42) Such beings are
first reborn in a sense-sphere heaven, where they subsequently
cultivate jhana leading to rebirth in the Brahma worlds. What
follows from this view of the matter is that all beings in samsara
are regarded as having dwelt at some time in the Brahma realms
corresponding to the second, third, and fourth jhanas; moreover,
periodically--though the periods may be of inconceivable
duration--all beings are regarded as returning to these realms.
It seems, however, that some in the Buddhist tradition were not
entirely happy with the understanding of the matter presented by
Buddhaghosa. Commenting on the phrase, "when the world contracts
beings are for the most part born in the realm of Radiance," as it
occurs in the Brahmajala Sutta, Buddhaghosa states that "`for the
most part' [yebhuyyena] is said because there are other beings who
are born either in higher Brahma realms or in the formless
realms."(43) Dhammapala, however, in his subcommentary on the text
by Buddhaghosa, adds: "or in world-systems other than those in the
process of contracting" is the alternative to be understood by the
word or. For it is not possible to consider that all beings in the
descents at that time are born in form or formless existence, since
it is impossible for those beings in the descents with the longest
life spans to be reborn in the human realm.(44)
Dhammapala's problem with Buddhaghosa's account seems to be that it
fails to take account of the case of beings who, for example, commit
one of the five great anantariya-kammas (killing one's mother,
father, an arhat, wounding a Buddha, splitting the Samgha) toward
the end of an aeon. Such beings must as a result surely be born in
the hell realms, and yet the aeon might end before they had lived
out the result of that kamma. Dhammapala therefore concludes that
such beings must be reborn in the hells of other world systems.(45)
Looking further afield in Buddhist sources we find other instances
of both Buddhaghosa's position and Dhammapala's position on what
happens to beings in the lower realms when a world-system contracts.
For example, in chapter 3 of the Kosa, Vasubandhu writes:
When not a single being remains in the hells, the world has
contracted to this extent: namely by the contraction of the hells.
At that time any being who still has karma that must be experienced
in a hell is thrown into the hells of another world-system [that is
not contracting].(46)
In chapter 8, however, Vasubandhu comments that at the time of the
contraction of a world-system, "all beings of the lower realms
produce dhyana of the form-realm because of the special occurrence
of skillful dharmas."(47) Yasomitra comments that in these
circumstances dhyana arises without any instruction because of the
existence of the trace (vasana) of previous dhyana attainment.(48)
Another cosmological treatise current in Southeast Asia is the
eleventh- or twelfth-century Lokapannatti. Like the Visuddhimagga of
Buddhaghosa, the Lokapannatti states that at the time of the
contraction of a world-system, beings in the lower realms are reborn
first in the kamadhatu and then in the Abhassara realm after
practicing the second jhana; there is no mention of being reborn in
the hells of other world systems.(49) The much later Theravadin
source, "Three Worlds according to King Ruang," on the other hand,
takes the line of Dhammapala and chapter 3 of the Kosa, stating that
hell beings may be reborn in the hells of world-systems that are not
contracting.(50)
What are relative merits of these two perspectives regarding what
happens to beings in lower realms at the time of world contraction?
The position represented by Dhammapala, Kosa chapter 3 and the
Triphum of Phya Lithai--namely, that they are reborn in the lower
realms of world-systems that are not in the process of
contracting--appears to be more in keeping with the laws of karma
and, for this reason, the more carefully considered: beings who
murder their mothers, fathers, arhats, wound a Buddha, or split the
Samgha must surely experience the results of their actions whether
or not a world-system contracts.(51) Yet this makes the alternative
tradition--that all beings are reborn in the Brahma realms--all the
more interesting and, I think, significant. It is, as it were, the
lectio difficilior. Why should Buddhaghosa, Vasubandhu, and the
Lokapannatti preserve and hand down a tradition that is so obviously
problematic? In order to answer this question I would like to turn
first to consider the theoretical account of the stages of the
Buddhist path, since it seems to me that, viewed in the light of
each other, the accounts of the stages of the path and the process
of the expansion and contraction of the universe reveal clues about
the unspoken assumptions that lie at the heart of Indian Buddhist
thought.
COSMOLOGY AND THE BUDDHIST PATH
What should perhaps be regarded as the classic Nikaya account of the
stages of the Buddhist path is found repeated in various suttas of
the silakkhandha-vagga of the Digha Nikaya, and also, with slight
variations, in several suttas of the Majjhima Nikaya.(52) This
account can be summarized in simple terms as follows: on the basis
of the practice of good conduct (sila), the bhikkhu practices
meditation; by this means, he abandons the five hindrances and
attains the first jhana. Attaining, successively, the second and
third jhanas, the bhikkhu is described as further refining his
concentrated mind until he eventually attains and abides in the
fourth jhana. This is described as a state of "purity of equanimity
and mindfulness" (upekkha-sati-parisuddhi); "he suffuses his body
with his mind that has been thoroughly purified and cleansed."(53)
We then have a description of a series of eight (in the Digha) or
three (in the Majjhima)(54) different attainments, each one of which
is introduced by precisely the same formula: "When his mind has
become concentrated thus, when it is thoroughly purified and
cleansed, stainless, the defilements absent, when it has become
sensitive, workable, steady, having attained imperturbability, he
inclines and applies his mind to. . ."(55) In other words, having
stilled the mind to the level of the fourth jhana, the bhikkhu has
brought his mind to an extremely refined state that is suitable and
fit for various tasks: the development of knowledge of the
interdependence of consciousness and the body; the creation of a
mind-made body; the acquiring of certain extraordinary powers (the
iddhis and other abilities, elsewhere termed higher knowledges or
abhinnas). Lastly he may apply this mind to the gaining of the
knowledge of the destruction of the asavas, the knowledge of
suffering, the arising of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and
the way leading to the cessation of suffering; he then knows that
for him birth is destroyed and that there is no future rebirth after
the present one.(56)
The story of the bhikkhu in the Kevaddha-sutta to which I referred
earlier is in fact a rather precise parable of this understanding of
the progress of the Buddhist path. The bhikkhu of the Kevaddha-sutta
resorts to increasingly subtler states of consciousness and/or
levels of the cosmos in order to seek an answer to the question of
the ultimate nature of the universe; and yet, having come to the
furthest reaches of the universe, he does not find his question
satisfactorily answered but must return to the Buddha and be
instructed to reorient his quest. Similarly, the bhikkhu who attains
jhana does not come to the end of the path but must turn his
attention elsewhere in order finally to understand the nature of
suffering, its cause, it cessation, and the path leading to its
cessation.
It is in the light of this close correspondence that exists in
Buddhist literature between journeys through the realms of the
cosmos and inner journeys of the mind that the significance of the
accounts of the expansion and contraction of the universe begins to
be revealed. Stanley Tambiah has already drawn attention to this in
some comments made in his study of the Thai forest monastic
tradition--comments which are, however, brief and do not articulate
the nature of the parallels entirely accurately.(57) Buddhist
cosmology--in general, but especially in the account of the
contraction and expansion of world-systems-provides us with a
poetic, imaginative, and mythic counterpart to accounts of the
stages of jhana attainment. Reading accounts of the Buddhist path
alongside tales of the universe's end and beginning is the way to
enter more fully into the thought-world of ancient Indian Buddhism.
In particular, what is revealed in the cosmological accounts is the
understanding of the nature of the fourth jhana: both the
theoretical accounts of the stages of the path and the mythic
descriptions of the contraction of the world-system converge on the
fourth jhana.
That the mythic account of the contraction of a world-system can be
read as paralleling a meditator's progress through the successive
dhyanas is brought out explicitly in the following passage from the
Abhidharmakos'a which comments on how, at the time of contraction,
fire, water, and wind destroy the successively higher levels of the
world-system:
In the first dhyana thinking and reflection are imperfections; these
are similar to fire since they burn through the mind. In the second
dhyana joy is the imperfection; this is like water since, by
association with tranquility, it makes the senses soft.... In the
third dhyana out-breaths and in-breaths [are imperfections]; these
are actually winds. In this way the subjective [adhyatmika]
imperfection in a dhyana attainment is of the same nature as the
objective [bahya] imperfection in the corresponding dhyana
rebirth.(58)
A mediator's entering the fourth jhana thus marks the temporary
attainment of a state of consciousness that is secure in its freedom
from disturbances and defilements. For just as the realms of
existence corresponding to the fourth jhana can never be reached by
the ravages of fire, water, or wind, so the mind in the fourth jhana
is undisturbed either by the gross objects of the five senses'or the
subtler movements of the mind still remaining in the first, second,
and third jhanas. What is more, viewed from the cosmological
perspective of the expansion and contraction of the world-system and
the periodic return of beings to the Brahma realms, in stilling the
mind to the level of the fourth jhana, the bhikkhu is returning to a
state experienced long ago. The cultivation of the jhanas becomes
almost a kind of Platonic recollection of something long forgotten,
of something one does not remember one knows. The recovery of the
fourth jhana is a return to a basic or fundamental state--a stable
and imperturbable state of the universe and also of the mind.(59)
In saying, however, that the realms of existence corresponding to
the fourth jhana are always there, it is, of course, necessary to
keep firmly in mind Buddhist principles of impermanence. The realms
of the fourth jhana do not have some kind of mysterious existence of
their own; these realms always exist in the sense that there are
always beings "in" these realms, although the particular beings
occupying these realms continually change and no individual being
can permanently exist in such a realm. The fourth jhana realms thus
do not constitute some kind of permanent substrate of the universe;
it is simply that there are always beings "there," or rather beings
that exist in the manner of the fourth jhana. For the Abhassara or
Vehapphala, realms are not so much places as modes or ways of
being.(60) So, to say that periodically the world contracts back as
far as the Vehapphala realm is exactly to say that periodically
beings return to this manner of being. It is in this sense that the
levels associated with the fourth jhana are basic, fundamental,
almost, one might say, primordial. This, it seems, is precisely why
they can serve as the stepping-off point for gaining the four
formless attainments,(61) for developing various extraordinary
meditational powers,(62) for realizing the liberating knowledge of
the path. This, it seems, is precisely why, at the time of his
parinibbana, the fourth jhana is the final active state of mind to
be experienced by a living Buddha.(63)
I am now in a position to return to the question I posed above
concerning Buddhaghosa's (and others') account of the process of the
contraction of world-systems: Why does he preserve an apparently
problematic account? The view handed down by Buddhaghosa, which he
has no doubt received from the Sinhala atthakatha sources he had
before him, seems concerned to emphasize that no being in samsara is
without the necessary kamma to enable a skillful rebirth in the
kamadhatu as a basis for subsequent rebirth in the realms
corresponding to the fourth jhana; and that there is no being in
samsara without experience of the realms of the fourth jhana--of the
states which give close access to the liberating insight of bodhi.
In other words, all beings have the capacity to become awakened and
indeed all have somewhere in them an experience of a state of mind
that is in certain important respects "close" to the awakening state
of mind.
THE MAHAYANA
To anyone familiar with the Mahayana, the suggestion that beings
always have within them a capacity to become awakened sounds
strangely familiar, and at this point I would like to consider
certain parallels that can, I think, be found between the
cosmological ideas I have been discussing and certain ideas that
find expression in Mahayana sutras. Buddhaghosa's account of what
happens to beings when a world-system contracts bears a certain
resemblance to aspects of an idea we are accustomed to associate
with the Mahayana, namely, the tradition of tathagatagarbha--"that
within each being which enables enlightenment to take place."(64)
Although formulated rather differently, something of the
tathagatagarbha way of thinking is, I suggest, present in the
cosmological traditions of the Abhidharma. In the context of the
Nikaya and Abhidharma understanding of the development of the stages
of the Buddhist path, the function of a "trace" left by previous
dhyana practice experienced long ago, or of a skillful karma "to be
experienced at an unspecified time" which makes for the attainment
of the fourth dhyana state, is in significant respects similar to
that of the tathagatagarbha in Mahayana thought: both may facilitate
and effect enlightenment for deluded beings. This is not to suggest
that Buddhaghosa here espouses a doctrine of tathagatagarbha or that
tathagatagarbha views have influenced him or that he has influenced
the development of tathagatagarbha theory. Rather there appears to
be a common Buddhist theme here that finds expression in one way in
Buddhaghosa's account of the contraction of a world-system and in
another way in the theory of tathagatagarbha.(65) While we cannot
say that Buddhaghosa's account of the expansion and contraction of a
world-system is in all respects equivalent to the theory of
tathagatagarbha, we can say that in certain respects it is; there is
a certain overlap here.
A second area of interest centers on the understanding of the "pure
abodes" (suddhavasa/suddhavasa) in the Nikayas, Abhidharma, and
Mahayana. The Buddhist yogin who has mastered the fourth jhana has
withdrawn the mind from the world of the senses, from the world of
ordinary ideas and thoughts, and returned it, as it were, to a
refined and fundamental state. From this state of mind he now has
the possibility of seeing the world more clearly, seeing it as it
truly is, and even, to a limited extent, by the practice of the
various meditational powers (such as creating mind-made bodies,
etc.), of constructing a different world. This way of thinking is
continued and taken further in Mahayana Buddhist thought. For it is
in the realm of the fourth dhyana that Bodhisattvas become Buddhas
and create their "Buddha fields" and "pure lands."
In non-Mahayana texts the five "pure abodes" are regarded as the
abodes of "never-returners" (anagamin), beings who are all but
awakened, beings who are in their last life and who will certainly
attain arhatship before they pass away.(66) Rather interestingly,
then, according to certain traditions of the developed Mahayana, the
Akanistha realm--the highest of the "pure abodes" and of the realms
of the fourth dhyana---is occupied not by never-returners about to
become arhats but by tenth-stage Bodhisattvas about to become
samyaksambuddhas. Having attained Buddhahood in the Akanistha realm,
they send out their "creation bodies" (nirmana-kaya) to the lower
realms for the benefit of sentient beings. Santaraksita in the
Tattvasamgraha explains as follows:
3549. Since their existence is outside samsara, which consists of
the five destinies, the death of Buddhas is not admitted by us;
therefore it is their creations that are perceived.
3550. In the lovely city of Akanistha, free from all impure
abodes--there Buddhas awaken; but here [in this world] creations
awaken.(67)
Kamalasila goes on to comment:
Samsara consists of the five destinies comprising hells,
hungry-ghosts, animals, gods and men; and since Buddhas exist
outside this their mortality is not accepted. How then does one
learn of their birth in the family of Suddhodana and others?
Accordingly he says that it is their creations that are perceived.
Supporting this from scripture he utters the words beginning, "In
the Akanistha...." There are gods called the Akanisthas; in a
certain place among them the gods are called "those belonging to the
pure abodes," for here only the pure noble ones dwell. Among them
the highest place is called the Palace of the Great Lord, and there
only Bodhisattvas in their last existence who are established in the
tenth bhumi are born, while here [in this world] by reason of their
sovereignty in that place their creations gain knowledge. Such is
the tradition.(68)
Significantly, a level associated with the fourth dhyana is once
more conceived of as in some sense fundamental and primordial--the
level upon which the creative activity of Buddhas is based.
The extent and precise interpretation of the tradition that Buddhas
become enlightened in Akanistha is not, however, entirely clear; the
ancient accounts of the career of the Bodhisattva are varied and not
always consistent. The exact source of Santaraksita's quotation from
"scripture" (agama) is not traced, although the Lankavatara Sutra
(Sagathaka vv. 38-40, 772-74) similarly states that beings become
Buddhas in the Pure Abodes "among the Akanisthas of the form-realm"
while their creations awaken in this world:
772. I am of Katyayana's family; issuing from the Pure Abode I teach
beings dharma that leads to the city of nirvana.
773. This is the ancient path; the Tathagatas and I have taught
nirvana in three thousand sutras.
774. Thus not in the realm of the senses nor in the formless does a
Buddha awaken, but among the Akanisthas of the form realm who are
free of passion he awakens.(69)
Taking this tradition at face value, what seems to be being said is
that full Buddhahood is attained by a tenth-stage Bodhisattva in the
Akanistha realm; after this the "created" or "emanated" body
(nirmanakaya) performs the acts of a Buddha beginning with the
descent to this world from Tusita, the Heaven of Delight. In other
words, Siddhartha Gautama from the time of his conception and birth
is a nirmana-kaya of an already fully awakened Buddha. However, such
an understanding is not entirely consistent with what is said in the
Prajnaparamita literature or in the Dasabhumika about the final
stages of the career of the Bodhisattva.
The Pancavimsatasahasrika-Prajnaparamita appears to make no mention
of the Pure Abodes or Akanistha in this connection, and it is the
ninth-stage Bodhisattva that descends into the womb, takes birth,
and sits beneath the tree of awakening, reaching the tenth stage
when he becomes a Tathagata.(70)
Although the Dasabhumika once again does not mention the Pure Abodes
or Akanistha in Connection with the bhumis, it does talk of
Bodhisattvas established in the tenth Stage as being "mostly the
Great Lord [mahesvara], king of the gods [deva-raja]."(71) Various
passages (which must be the source of the Tattvasamgraha tradition
quoted above) consistently identify these terms as epithets of the
chief of the gods of the Pure Abodes.(72) But for the Dasabhumika it
is the Bodhisattva of the tenth stage (and not the ninth Stage as in
the Prajnaparamita) who manifests in a single world-system all the
acts of Tathagatas from abiding in the Tusita realm to Parinirvana
(the final attainment of nirvana at death), but he appears to do
this as Bodhisattva, remaining such and not becoming a full Buddha
in the process.(73) Moreover,
At will he displays the array of the realms of all the Buddhas at
the end of a single hair; at will he displays untold arrays of the
realms of the Buddhas of all kinds; at will in the twinkling of an
eye he creates as many individuals as there are particles in untold
world-systems.... In the arising of a thought he embraces the ten
directions; in a moment of thought he controls the manifestation of
innumerable processes of complete awakening and final nirvana.... In
his own body he controls countless manifestations of the qualities
of the Buddha fields of innumerable Blessed Buddhas.(74)
If this is what tenth-stage Bodhisattvas do, then what do Buddhas
do? Ignoring the poetic imagination of the Dasabhumika, the short
answer seems to be much, much more of the same--so much so that one
cannot properly begin to conceive of what Buddhas truly do.
Nevertheless, it appears that we are to understand that at some
point in the process--the repeated process of manifesting the acts
of Buddhas and carrying out their work--these tenth-stage
Bodhisattvas do actually become Buddhas.
At this point it is useful, I think, to consider the witness of the
later Indo-Tibetan tradition. mKhas grub rje's "Fundamentals of the
Buddhist Tantras" (rGuyd safe spyi'i rnam par gzhag pa rgyas par
brjod) is an early fifteenth-century dGe lugs work which devotes its
first chapter to the question of how the Sravakas and then the
Mahayana (considered by way of the "Paramita" and "Mantra" schools)
understand the final stages of the process of the Blessed teacher's
becoming a fully awakened one (abhisambuddha).(75) Let me go
straight to mKhas grub rje's account of the understanding of this
process according to the Mantra school. mKhas grub rje takes it as
axiomatic for the Mahayana that full awakening is gained in
Akanistha. But how precisely does it come about there? mKhas grub
rje details the position of the Yoga and Anuttarayoga Tantras
according to a number of Indian commentators (eighth to tenth
century). For present concerns some indication of his account of
Sakyamitra's and Buddhaguhya's understanding of the Yoga Tantras
will suffice. According to them, Siddhartha Gautama, a tenth-stage
Bodhisattva from the time of his birth, having practiced austerities
for six years, then established himself in the imperturbable
concentration (aninjyo-nama-samadhi) of the fourth dhyana.
At that time, the Buddhas of all the ten directions assembled,
aroused him from that samadhi by snapping their fingers, and said to
him, "You cannot become a Manifest Complete Buddha by this samadhi
alone." "Then how shall I proceed?" he implored them. They guided
him to the Akanistha heaven. Moreover, while his maturation body
(vipaka-kaya) stayed on the bank of the same Nairahjana River, the
mental body (manomaya-kaya) of the Bodhisattva Sarvarthasiddha
proceeded to the Akanistha heaven.
After the Buddhas of the ten directions had given garment initiation
(vastraabhiseka) and diadem initiation (makuta-abhiseka), they bade
him enter the intense contemplation in sequence of the five
Abhisambodhi. After completing the five Abhisambodhi, he became a
Manifest Complete Buddha as Mahavairocana, the Sambhoga-kaya.(76)
Insofar as this account sees Gautama as a Bodhisattva who has taken
a human birth in his last existence and the enlightenment as
straightforwardly founded on the actual attainment of the fourth
dhyana, it is closer (than, say, the Pancavimsatika or Dasabhumika
accounts) to the Nikaya description; the Bhayabherava-sutta of the
Majjhima Nikaya describes the Bodhisatta as gaining the fourth jhana
and then, on the basis of that attainment, the three knowledges
which culminate in the knowledge of the destruction of the
asavas.(77)
If we now consider the above range of material on the process of the
Bodhisattva's final attainment of Buddhahood, it seems that it
embraces two basic views. According to one view the Bodhisattva in
his "final existence" (i.e., before finally transcending existence)
is reborn in the Akanistha heaven where he finally becomes a Buddha;
he subsequently manifests various creations which appear to be born,
go forth, practice, meditation, and become Buddhas. According to the
other the Bodhisattva in his last existence is actually born as a
human being; seated beneath the tree of awakening he ascends in
meditation with a mind-made body to the Akanistha heaven where he
finally becomes a Buddha, while his "real" human body remains seated
beneath the tree. Yet to state the positions thus baldly actually
infringes a deeply rooted ambiguity and equivocation that runs
through the cosmological material I have been considering in the
course of this article. For where is the true Buddha? In Akanistha?
Or seated beneath the tree of awakening? How does one come to
Akanistha? By traveling through space? Or by journeying in the mind?
Let me emphasize here that I am asking these questions of the
ancient texts and not raising the problem of how the modern Buddhist
tradition should set about finding an understanding of its ancient
cosmology that is compatible with the "findings" or modern science,
whatever precisely those are. And my point is that to ask such
questions in such terms betrays a particular metaphysics and
ontology which is precisely not the metaphysics and ontology of the
Indian Buddhist tradition.
In the course of this article I have been trying to explore the way
in which psychology and cosmology parallel each other in Buddhist
thought--something that Peter Masefield has already tried to
elucidate in the Nikayas by reference to the Upanisadic terms
adhyatmam and adhidaivatam. I have suggested that in the Abhidharma
the shift from psychology (levels of citta) to cosmology (levels of
the lokadhatu) can be viewed as a shift of time scale. The effect of
my discussion is not to reveal something new but to bring into
sharper focus something that lies at the heart of Indian Buddhist
thought, namely, a basic ambiguity about matters of cosmology and
psychology, about the objective outer world and the subjective inner
world. This is true to the extent that the key to understanding both
is to recognize that there is a fundamental and profound equivalence
between cosmology and psychology.
In conclusion I should like to risk a few general comments about the
metaphysics and ontology of Indian Buddhism. I do not want to imply
here that all Indian Buddhism shares an explicit and definite
metaphysics and ontology, but I am suggesting that there is a
general, underlying orientation, which tends to locate reality in
the mind and its processes rather than in something "out there"
which is other than the mind. We may want to persist in asking
questions in the latter terms, yet it is significant that the
tradition itself never quite does. On the contrary, it seems to take
for granted and as natural an ambiguity between cosmology and
psychology, for what is the difference between really being in
Akanistha and experiencing one is really in Akanistha?
To put it another way, there is a loosely "idealist" tendency to all
Indian Buddhist thought. It is no accident that one of the most
important and influential philosophical schools of Indian Buddhism,
the Yogacara, expounded an idealist ontology. For the Yogacara the
only reality anything ultimately has is psychological. Yogacara
thought is essentially a product of and a continuation of an
Abhidharmic way of thinking; it gives explicit expression in
systematic and philosophical form to a tendency that runs through
the whole of Buddhist thought. The Theravadin Abhidhamma tends to
sidestep the issue of the ultimate ontological status of the
external world and the world of matter; the question is never
explicitly raised. Yet for the Theravadin Abhidhamma--and as I
understand it this would also be true of the Vaibhasika
Abhidharma--the physical world each being lives in and experiences
is one that is the result of his or her past kamma performed by
deed, word, and thought; regardless of the ultimate ontological
status of the external world and the world of matter, the particular
physical sensations that beings experience are constructed mentally
insofar as each one is the result of past kamma. In technical
Abhidhamma terms our basic experience of the physical world is
encompassed by just ten classes of sense-sphere consciousness that
are the results (vipaka) of twelve unskillful and eight skillful
classes of sense-sphere consciousnesses: what we thought in the past
has created the world we live in and experience in the present; what
we think in the present will create the world we shall live in in
the future.(78) Or, as Dhammapada (vv. 1-2) famously put it,
"dhammas have mind as their forerunner, mind as preeminent, mind as
their maker" ("manopubbamgama dhamma manosettha manomaya"). That is,
Indian Buddhist thought is in unanimous agreement that ultimately
the particular world each of us experiences is something that we
individually and collectively have created by our thoughts. The
parallel that exists in Buddhist thought between cosmology and
psychology is simply a reflection of this basic fact of the
Abhidharma understanding of the nature of existence.
Indologists are familiar with the Upanisadic interiorization of the
Vedic sacrificial ritual; students of Hindu and Buddhist Tantra take
for granted the correspondences that are made between the body of
the yogin and the universe as microcosm and macrocosm
respectively.(79) Yet the similarities between this and certain ways
and patterns of thinking found in early and Abhidharmic Buddhist
thought are rarely recognized in the existing scholarly literature.
These similarities consist in the general tendency to assimilate
some kind of internal world to an external world, and in the
principle that places mind and psychology--the way the world is
experienced--first. The assimilation of cosmology and psychology
found in early Buddhist thought and developed in the Abhidharma must
be seen in this context to be fully understood and appreciated. I
can do no better than to finish with the words of the Buddha:
That the end of the world . . . is to be known, seen or reached by
travelling--that I do not say. . . . And yet I do not say that one
makes an end of suffering without reaching the end of the world.
Rather, in this fathom-long body, with its consciousness and mind, I
declare the world, the arising of the world, the ceasing of the
world and the way leading to the ceasing of the world.(80)
APPENDIX A
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ABBREVIATIONS
A Anguttara-Nikaya
Abhidh-av Abhidhammavatara
Abhidh-di Adhidharmadipa
Abhidh-k-(bh) Abhidharmakosa-(bhasya)
Abhid-s-(t) Abhidhammatthasangaha-(tika)
As Atthasalini
D Digha-Nikaya
DAT Dighanikayatthakathatika
Dhp-a Dhammapadatthakatha
Kv Kathavatthu
M Majjhima-Nikaya
Mp Manorathapurani
Pp Papancasudani
S Samyutta-Nikaya
Sn Suttanipata
Sv Sumangalavilasini
Vibh Vibhanga
Vibh-a Vibhangatthakatha (= Sammohavinodani)
Vism Visuddhimagga
vism-t Visuddhimagga-tika (= Paramatthamanjusatika)
PALI AND SANSKRIT TEXTS
Abhidhammatthasangaha of Bhadantacariya Anuruddha and the
Abhidhammat-thavibhavani-tika of Bhadantacariya Sumangalasami.
Edited by H. Saddhatissa. Oxford: Pali Text Society, 1989.
Abhidhammavatara: Buddhadatta's Manuals. Edited by A. P.
Buddhadatta. 2 vols. London: Pali Text Society, 1915-28. Vol. 1.
Abhidharmadipa with Vibhasaprabhavrtti. Edited by P. S. Jaini.
Patna: Kashi Prasad Jayaswal Research Institute, 1959.
Abhidharmakos'a and Bhasya of Acarya Vasubandhu with Sphutartha
Commentary of Acarya Yasomitra. Edited by D. Shastri. 3 vols.
Varanasi: Bauddha Bharati, 1970-72.
Atthasalini: Buddhaghosa's Commentary on the Dhammasangani. Edited
by E. Muller. London: Pali Text Society, 1979.
Anguttara-nikaya Edited by R. Morris and E. Hardy. 5 vols. London:
Pali Text Society, 1885-1900.
Dasabhumikasutra. Edited by J. Rahder. Leuven, 1926.
Dasabhumisvaro nama mahayanasutram. Edited by Ryuko Kondo. Tokyo:
Daijyo Bukkyo Kenyo-Kai, 1936.
Dhammapadatthakatha: The Commentary on the Dhammapada. Edited by H.
C. Norman. 4 vols. London: Pali Text Society, 1906.
Digha-nikaya. Edited by T. W. Rhys Davids et al. 3 vols. London:
Pali Text Society, 1890-1911.
Kathavatthu. Edited by A. C. Taylor. 2 vols. London: Pali Text
Society, 1894-97.
Lalitavistara. Edited by P. L. Vaidya. Darbhanga: Mithila Institute
of Postgraduate Studies and Research in Sanskrit Learning, 1958.
Majjhima-nikaya. Edited by V. Trenckner and R. Chalmers. 3 vols.
London: Pali Text Society, 1888-1902.
Sammohavinodani Abhidhamma-Pitake Vibhangatthakatha. Edited by A. P.
Buddhadatta. London: Pali Text Society, 1923.
Samyutta-nikaya. Edited by L. Feer. 5 vols. London: Pali Text
Society, 1884-98. Sutta-Nipata. Edited by D. Anderson and H. Smith.
London: Pali Text Society, 1913.
Tattvasangraha of Acarya Santaraksita with the Commentary `Panjika'
of Sri Kamalasila. Edited by D. Shastri. 2 vols. Varanasi: Bauddha
Bharati, 1968.
Vibhanga. Edited by C. A. F. Rhys Davids London: Pali Text Society,
1904.
Visuddhimagga of Buddhaghosacariya. Edited by H. C. Warren and D.
Kosambi. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950.
Visuddhimagga-tika. Buddhaghosacariya's Visuddhimaggo with
Paramatthamanjusatika of Bhadantacariya Dhammapala. Edited by
Rewatadhamma. 3 vols. Varanasi: Varanaseya Sanskrit Visvavidyalaya,
1969-72.
APPENDIX B
HOW OLD IS BUDDHIST COSMOLOGY? A NOTE ON THE
AGGANNA-SUTTA
The writings of a number of scholars seem to imply that the Nikaya
cosmology should not be attributed to the Buddha himself. Konrad
Meisig, continuing the work of Ulrich Schneider, argues that the
account of the evolution of the world and human society introduced
by the formula I quoted at the start of this article should not be
regarded as forming part of the "original" Agganna-sutta.(81)
Schneider's and Meisig's arguments are complex and involved but
appear to me to be neither individually nor collectively conclusive.
The fact remains that the cosmogonic myth forms a significant part
of all four versions of the text that Meisig examines; in other
words, we have no hard evidence of an Agganna-sutta--or whatever its
"original" title--without the cosmogonic myth. On the other hand, we
do have some hard evidence for the cosmogonic myth apart from the
Agganna-sutta.(82) Even when it is not accepted as forming part of
an "original" Agganna-sutta, it must be acknowledged that the
tradition it represents is well attested.
The whole notion of an original version of a sutta raises
interesting questions. The kind of model with which Meisig would
seem to be working regards the original Agganna-sutta as a discourse
delivered by the Buddha himself on one particular occasion (at
Savatthi since all versions are agreed in locating it there?), which
was remembered by his followers and for a while handed down
faithfully by them, until someone or some group still in the
pre-Asokan period appended to it a cosmogonic myth.(83) But this
kind of model is perhaps inappropriate to the composition and
transmission of oral literature and may also be historically naive.
A more appropriate general model for an original sutta might be of a
"text" representing the substance of a discourse or teaching that
the Buddha himself may have given on a number of different occasions
and which in part at least draws on a stock of images and formulas
which the Buddha himself employed in a variety of contexts as he
considered appropriate. Whether or not the Buddha himself composed
his teachings in this way, it is clear that someone started doing so
at some point, since many of the discourses of the Pali Nikayas and
Chinese Agamas are manifestly put together in this way. This,
however, is a matter that needs more systematic research. It may
well be that Schneider's and Meisig's analysis goes some way to
revealing the blocks of tradition which have been put together to
form the Agganna-sutta; but to expose these blocks of tradition does
not of itself tell us anything about who put them together and when.
In the end, Schneider's and Meisig's understanding of the original
Agganna-sutta amounts to a judgment about how well the blocks of
tradition have been put together; their view is that they have been
put together badly and that the two basic parts of the discourse are
ill-fitting. Yet even if we agree with this judgment, the bare fact
that a sutta is badly put together does not of itself preclude the
possibility that it is the original work of the Buddha; a claim that
the Buddha cannot possibly have made such a mess of it is an appeal
to the transcendent notion of Buddhahood rather than a conclusive
historical argument.
To say that the Agganna-sutta is composed of two parts must surely
be largely uncontroversial. Clearly paragraphs 1-9 and 27-32 do form
something of a unity and could intelligibly stand on their own;
again, the cosmogonic myth of paragraphs 10-26 is an intelligible
unit such that the Buddhist tradition itself abstracted portions of
it to be used outside this context. But it seems to me purely
arbitrary to pick on the first as original and relegate the second
to the status of later interpolation. One might just as well argue
the Buddha originally gave a discourse consisting of a cosmogonic
myth that was later wrapped up in an ethical disquisition on the
four classes (vanna) by certain of his followers who did not
appreciate myth. This reveals what one suspects might be the true
basis for the conclusion that it is the section of the Agganna-sutta
concerned with the four classes that constitute the original sutta:
the "ethical" portion of the discourse is to be preferred to the
"mythic" precisely because it is ethical, and, as we all know, the
earliest Buddhist teachings were simple, ethical teachings,
unadulterated by myth and superstition; we know that early Buddhist
teaching was like this because of the evidence of the rest of the
canon. Here the argument becomes one of classic circularity: we
arrive at a particular view about the nature of early Buddhism by
ignoring portions of the canon and then use that view to argue for
the lateness of the portions of the canon we have ignored.
Richard Gombrich has countered the Schneider/Meisig view of the
Agganna-sutta by arguing that the two parts of the discourse have
been skillfully put together and that the cosmogonic myth works as
an integral part of the discourse taken as a whole.(84) According to
Gombrich the first half of the discourse introduces the problem of
the relative status of brahmanas and suddas; this question is then
dealt with in a tongue-in-cheek satirical manner by the Aganna myth.
Gombrich regards the overall form of the Agganna-sutta as we have it
as attributable to the Buddha himself and thus original. But for
Gombrich the text is "primarily satirical and parodistic in intent,"
although in time the jokes were lost on its readers and the myth
came to be misunderstood by Buddhist tradition "as being a more or
less straight-faced account of how the universe, and in particular
society, originated."(85) Following Gombrich, Steven Collins has
discussed the Agganna Sutta in some detail as a "humorous parable,"
finding in certain of its phrases echoes of Vinaya formulas.(86)
Gombrich's arguments for the essential unity of the Agganna text as
we have it are extremely persuasive, yet I would disagree with the
implication that we should regard the mythic portions of the
Agganna-sutta as solely satirical.
Certainly it seems to me that Gombrich must be right in arguing that
there is a good deal of intended humor in the Agganna-sutta, and
certainly I would not want to argue that the cosmogonic myth was
never intended to be understood as literal history in the modern
sense. How could it have been? Yet it still seems to me unlikely
that, for the original compiler(s) of and listeners to the
discourse, the mythic portion of the sutta could have been intended
to be understood or actually understood in its entirety as a joke at
the expense of the poor old brahanas. As Gombrich so rightly says,
if we want to discover the original meaning of the Buddha's
discourses we need to understand the intellectual and cultural
presuppositions shared by the Buddha and his audience. While in
absolute terms this is an impossible task, since we can never
entirely escape our own intellectual and cultural presuppositions
and be reborn in the world of the Buddha--at least in the short
term--we can still surely make some progress in trying to rediscover
that world.
The question I would therefore ask is, Do we have any particular
historical reasons for supposing that it is unlikely that the Buddha
should have recounted a more or less straight-faced cosmogonic myth?
My answer is that we do not. Indeed, I want to argue the opposite:
what we can know of the cultural milieu in which the Buddha operated
and in which the first Buddhist texts were composed suggests that
someone such as the Buddha might very well have presented the kind
of myth contained in the Agganna-sutta as something more than merely
a piece of satire. Far from being out of key with what we can
understand of early Buddhist thought from the rest of the Nikayas,
the cosmogonic views offered by the Agganna-sutta in fact harmonize
extremely well with it. I would go further and say that something
along the lines of what is contained in the Agganna myth is actually
required by the logic of what is generally accepted as Nikaya
Buddhism.
It might be countered that the Buddha's refusal to answer
categorically certain questions--including questions about whether
or not the world was eternal and infinite--indicates that the Buddha
was not interested in metaphysical questions and instructed his
monks not to waste their energy on them. The account of the world on
a cosmic scale found in the Agganna-sutta is then to be seen as not
in keeping with the spirit of the Buddha's instructions and
therefore as the creation of curious bhikkhus who, unable to
restrain their imaginations, ignored the express instructions of
their teacher. Such an outlook both misunderstands the nature of
the, usually, ten "undetermined questions" and misrepresents the
Agganna-sutta. This sutta does not expressly answer the question of
whether or not the world is eternal and infinite, and as Steven
Collins has argued, the real reason for the refusal to give a
categorical answer to the questions is that they are, from the
standpoint of Buddhist thought, linguistically ill-formed.(87) Thus
it is not because the Buddha does not know the answer to these
questions that he refuses to answer them but because the terms
employed in the questions have in the Buddhist view of things no
ultimate referent: it simply does not make sense to ask whether the
world is eternal or not because there is no one "thing" to which the
word world refers. The notion "world" is just like the notion
"self": it is not of itself an ultimately real thing but merely a
concept, a mental construct. The ten undetermined questions thus, it
seems to me, have no direct bearing on the cosmological ideas
expounded in the Agganna-sutta.