Bhava doesn't mean 'becoming'

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Hello! :slightly_smiling_face: But of course. How did you get it from my post that it can’t be experienced? Bhava is existence. We know that we exist, right? So it can be discerned in one’s experience quite easily. :slightly_smiling_face:

But the second noble truth goes deeper. If you see it, you’ll also see that as long as there will be craving, you’ll keep existing in a next life. That’s seeing “the craving that leads to rebirth” or literally “again-existence” (tanha ponobhavika).

It’s an interesting passage. Sariputta is reflecting on the cessation of existence, which is the extinguishment that happens at death, aka parinibbana. See Iti44 I quoted which makes this clear. He’s not experiencing the cessation of existence right now, because it only happens at death. But being enlightened, Sariputta knows it’s going to happen. (In fact, stream winners already do so, and can reflect on the cessation of existence similarly.)

Lying beyond the state of neither perception nor non-perception is the cessation of perception and feeling. Yet Sariputta says he perceives things. How does that work? What’s happening is, he’s being a bit playful. He’s implying that reflecting on the cessation of existence is in a way a perception that is beyond neither perception nor non-perception. Because the cessation of existence is also the cessation of perception and consciousness. But if you’re simply reflecting on this, you are still percipient, because it not actual cessation of existence (bhava) yet, just a perception of it.

So in a way his perception went beyond neither perception nor non-perception. In another way it didn’t.

I’m not sure how exactly this relates to my points, though, or exactly what you’re trying to (dis)prove with it.

I never said that, though. I said bhava is existence in a certain place. By which I meant to clarify it is not some kind of existence in the mind, not a mental state.

Hey, sorry to confuse you, but I think the blame is not on me. :joy: :smiling_face:

Your quoted source says:

a survey of how he uses the term in different contexts suggests that it means a sense of identity in a particular world of experience: your sense of what you are, focused on a particular desire, in your personal sense of the world as related to that desire. In other words, it is both a psychological and a cosmological concept. For more on this topic, see The Paradox of Becoming, Introduction and Chapter One.

Well, I gave a survey of the term in this topic, and it seems like these ideas are wrong. In the Paradox of Becoming I don’t really see such a survey of the term. Instead I see mainly implications made by the author, not straightforward quotes from the suttas. For example:

Bhava is included in a variety of lists describing mental states that an arahant—a fully awakened person—has overcome. Thus it is one of the three asavas, or effluents; one of the four oghas, or floods; one of the four yogas, or burdens; and one of the seven anusayas, or obsessions. Although it does not occur in the standard list of ten sanyojanas, or fetters, a standard formula describing the arahant states that he/she has “destroyed the fetter of becoming.”

But saying that “bhava is included in a list” is very oversimplified at best, because in those lists it occurs in compound words, not in isolation. For example, to say “bhava […] is one of the seven anusayas” is not correct and potentially misleading for the ill-informed. Because the anusaya is not bhava but bhava-ragānusaya, ‘the tendency of desire for existence’. How is this a proof that it means “becoming” or a sense of identity? It’s the same with the other examples. And “the fetter of becoming” is better understood as the fetter to existence. In other words, they are no longer bound to existence in the sense that they won’t be reborn.

Also, as I’ve shown before, bhava is not yet abandoned by the arahant. The Buddha himself explicitly said that being an arahant is still a type of bhava. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

There’s much more to critique there, but the simple fact remains that there is no clear sutta quote given where bhava clearly means a kind of mental becoming. At least it’s not anything remotely as obvious as the suttas I’ve referenced. For example, the stream winner not taking an eight bhava is pretty clear as to what it means, once we recall that a stream winner has at most seven more lives. It doesn’t mean becoming in the way it’s explained here. It means a life, basically. :slightly_smiling_face:

Hope that removes some confusion!

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Thanks for the survey :slight_smile:

I thought I’d contribute to this topic with the Vedic perspective that I’ve been digging into.

In the Vedic cosmogonies which paṭiccasamuppāda parallels in several ways, Reality is forced to undergo constant birth and death / death and resurrection. It is like a fire: fire needs fuel in order to continue existing. The Absolute that manifests itself as existing reality, in order to manifest its existence, must subject itself to this repeated process of jāti and jarāmaraṇa. Also, the processes which Reality undertakes to maintain existence, and therefore repeated birth and death, is essentially taṇhā: it must realize sexual acts or eat itself like food (very sensual images), consuming itself to experience itself.

Because all reality is monistic, the eater is also the eaten. It divides itself into these pieces and then feasts on itself. Or the fire is the fuel, the husband is the wife, etc. Basically, craving for union with pleasure drives reality to manifest itself and keep itself within existence → birth and death. In the later parts of the Brāhmaṇas and early Upaniṣads, we start seeing how the cessation of this repeated birth and death is the relinquishment of the desire/drive (craving) to cognize and experience things, realized by the fulfillment of monistic self-cognition with reality. Reality itself would recede into the pre-creative, non-manifest state (no bhava) if it stopped all upādāna as well. For the Buddha, the metaphysics are different, but ponobhavika ends when craving ends as well.

The other connection relates to this point. As Joanna Jurewicz briefly discusses in ‘Playing with Fire,’ in the Aitareya Upaniṣad (AU)—which has one of the most clear references to cognitive powers being nestled within 6 āyatanas—the self (ātman) is said to first be born and nourished within the womb of the mother before being born. The passage she references is this one:

It becomes one with the woman’s body (atman), as if it were a part of her own body. As a result, it does not harm her. And she nourishes this self (atman) of his that has entered her. As she nourishes him, so he should nourish her. The woman carries him as the embryo. At the beginning, he nourishes the child even before its birth. When he nourishes the child even before its birth, he thereby nourishes himself (atman) for the continuance of these worlds, for it is in this way that these worlds continue. That is his second birth.
AU 2.2-3

The larger context of this passage is all about the continuation and rebirth of the cognitive/subjective aspect of reality which is ultimately cognizing itself (all ātman). It talks about how one is reborn to continue cognizing things (in worlds—loka—which, as the Buddha also often defines the term, refer to spaces of experience and cognition), and then how true knowledge of reality leads to immortality. All of this is fairly close to Buddhist ideas, but it is highly embedded in earlier Vedic thought and imagery.

Also, for those who may doubt if the Buddha would have been familiar with ideas like these, the paragraph right before this one says that the first birth of the ātman is through the father’s semen (and that the father depositing semen is the first birth). This is of course the pre-Buddhist / Vedic notion of rebirth in which people are born via the semen first, and Bhante Sujato recently made a post about this arguing that this is what the Buddha used the word gandhabba in reference to when speaking to Brahmins right here.

This is not necessarily the most directly related, but there are some connections in that cognitive forces (in Buddhism this is dependently arisen consciousness; in the AU it is a reified cognitive ‘atman’) are established within the womb before being born for the ‘continuation of these words (loka).’ Bhava is related to three loka as you already mentioned. I think bhava is more than just the establishment of consciousness in the womb—it seems to be the establishment of consciousness (via upādāna) anywhere at anytime. This obviously includes the womb though, which is just a renewed-bhava.

Mettā

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Thanks for the references!

You haven’t mentioned the common phrase bhavataṇhā (and the related bhavarāga). Using “becoming”, this would have to be rendered as “craving for becoming”, which is essentially craving for change. Change, of course, is a problem, not something we crave for.

The one thing in your write-up I do not quite agree with is that bhava does not have a kammically active side. Bhava is properly defined in only two suttas in the Canon, that is, AN3.76 and AN3.77. Both of these suttas show the link between kamma and its result. The sense I get from this is that bhava bridges the gap between lives, showing how the existence in one life leads to a particular result in the next, often via an intermediate existence.

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Bhante. I recall viewing a post from 2016 where you posted Bhikkhu Bodhi mistranslated “kamabhava” as “sense-sphere existence”. Assuming you have not changed your view about this, Dependent Origination refers to sensual bhava, form bhava & formless bhava. If bhava means “a life”, this seems it would imply: (i) a type of bhava, such as “sensual”, is fixed; and (ii) no change from say “sensual existence” is possible during a lifetime. This seems it would then imply a Non-Sensual Noble Eightfold Path is not possible to practice & complete. Have I misunderstood something here? Thank you :saluting_face:

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I have no recollection of saying this, nor do I agree with it!

I would say that within a single life you are both trapped and capable of change. You are trapped in the sense that you cannot fully escape that life until you get reborn elsewhere, or ideally attain final extinguishment. On the other hand, you can change the inclination of your mind from leaning towards sensuality to leaning towards meditation, including the jhānas. It is the inclination of your mind that will determine your next rebirth.

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It is here: A mistranslation in the analysis of dependent origination?

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Thanks! My issue here is with the word “sphere”. “Sphere” tends to suggest a world “out there”, whereas the Dhamma focuses on personal experience. Saṃsāra is the personal experience of repeated birth and death, not an objective reality in itself. I base this view on such suttas as the Rohitassa Sutta, AN4.45.

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Hey all,

That’s an interesting point, Ajahn. I would also say “becoming” misses the whole context of the dhamma, of what leads to suffering and what we need to end to end suffering, namely rebirth.

Continued existence (bhava) is a vital condition for rebirth. Rebirth (jati) is a vital condition for suffering. (SN12.23)

So how then do you reconcile the suttas that say bhava ends at parinibbana only, and that the arahant still has bhava? They don’t have karma anymore.

I do not think those suttas (AN3.76-77) include karma in bhava. To me they say karma results in bhava, not that they are the same. So I like Ven. Sujato’s translation:

“If, Ānanda, there were no deeds (kamma) to result in the sensual realm, would continued existence (bhava) in the sensual realm still come about?”

As long as you have a human body, you are bound to the sensual realm. The mind may temporarily achieve the “formless” states, for example, but you can’t stay there forever. It only is “formless bhava” for beings that are reborn in those places, that live in those realms permanently. Although some translations obscurify it, AN3.67 clearly talks about rebirth.

That’s how there is rebirth into a new state of existence in the future. (AN3.76)

Here “rebirth into a new state of existence” renders “punabbhavābhinibbatti”. Both the terms punabbhava and abhinibbati imply rebirth. Abhinibbatti for example is found in the definition of birth. (SN12.2)

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So the Buddha did not have a human body? :saluting_face:

  1. (He has) well-placed feet,
  2. under the soles of his feet there is the mark of a wheel,
  3. the heels of his feet are long and deep,
  4. his fingers are long,
  5. his hands and feet are webbed,
  6. his hands and feet are soft and tender,
  7. his body has seven prominent marks,
  8. his calves are like an antelope’s,
  9. what is covered by a cloth is ensheathed,
  10. his torso is like a lion’s,
  11. between his shoulders it is firm,
  12. his upper back is even all round,
  13. the arms hang low without bending,
  14. the limbs are bright,
  15. his neck (has lines) like a conch,
  16. his jaw is like a lion’s,
  17. his forty teeth are even,
  18. his teeth are without gaps,
  19. his teeth are very white,
  20. his tongue is large,
  21. his taste buds are supremely sensitive,
  22. his voice is like Brahmā’s or like the sound of the cuckoo,
  23. his eyes are very dark,
  24. his eyes have eyelashes like a cow’s,
  25. he has fine skin,
  26. he has golden skin,
  27. his body-hairs arise singly,
  28. his body-hairs bristle and turn to the right,
  29. the hair of his head is very dark,
  30. the tuft of hair between the eyebrows on his forehead is very white,
  31. he has a protuberance on the head,
  32. his (body) is well-proportioned like a banyan tree.

So bhava is “rebirth” and jati is “rebirth”. Are you saying “rebirth” is the condition for “rebirth”? While the 3-life-model is well-accepted in Buddhism, my impression is you are proposing a 4-life-model. Is this the case? Thank you :saluting_face:

Venerable. How would you differentiate/distinguish the use of the English word “existence = lifetime” above with the term “atthita = existence” in SN 12.15? Thank you :saluting_face:

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Absolutely.

I haven’t looked up the references you supply. On general grounds, however, the way bhava is defined in these suttas, it includes the life that is a result of past kamma. The arahant still has this existence, and so it would be wrong to say they do not have bhava.

But these suttas are definitions of bhava. Why does the Buddha include the kammic process if it is irrelevant? If bhava meant mere life in a particular realm, then there are simpler and more precise ways of saying this.

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Is not “bhava” one of the three asava? How does the term “asava” reconcile with the view “bhava” refers to a lifetime? :saluting_face:

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Perhaps Bhava = Experience of Existence ? :thinking:

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Some good points by @CurlyCarl

If you say that bhava doesn’t cease in this life, then dukkha doesn’t cease in this life either. Either Dependent Origination is a one life model where bhava ceases along with everything else in a single life, or a multi life model where anything after bhava (like dukkha) ceases in another life/death. I don’t think you can hold on to both interpretations at the same time as they’re not compatible.

Another thing is that I don’t believe bhavatanha is easily discerned, as a common pattern in the suttas show that to discern something you have to “turn it off” or “calm” it, and this leads to knowledge, hence the importance of jhanas. You need seclusion from sensual desire to discern the patterns of the mind for example. If bhavatanha was easily discerned then there would be no need for jhanas, which is also a visuddhimagga interpretation. So once again, you can’t hold on to both interpretations at the same time as they are incompatible.

Depends on the interpretation you subscribe to. If you subscribe to a phenomological existential dhamma one life dependent origination model, then yes bhava, bhavatanha, vibhavatanha, etc… have to do with 3 poisons resulting in certain cravings and classes of experience.

If you believe dependent origination is not entirely visible here and now, bhava and dukkha cease only at death, a multi life dependent origination model, etc… then bhava is not anything more then where you’re born, and bhavatanha means where you want to be reborn.

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Hi Sunyo,

Yes, but the event of physical birth is cognized. That is to say, it is only through cognition that a certain experience is understood/ known as physical birth, i.e. child-birth. And it is exactly this process of cognition that the buddha explained with DO, i.e. birth of the self, and birth of suffering.

This doesn’t align with sabbe dhamma anatta.

But DO doesn’t start with craving.

All the best to you.

Warm regards,
Peter

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But where exactly did the Buddha literally explain in DO there is the birth of the self? In the definition of “jati” in SN 12.2 or MN 9, the word 'self" is not even mentioned. :saluting_face:

MN 9 explains DO starts with an asava (impulse) of sensuality, becoming &/or ignorance. ‘Becoming’ here seems to logically refer to a past becoming re-emerging. Any becoming must include craving. Therefore, DO, according to MN 9, seems to start with some type of craving-like impulse.

For example, if we take a Secular Western approach, a new born baby has a few primary needs or impulses, such as the desire to eat food and the desire to be physically comforted. While these impulses obviously arise from ignorance, surely they are a starting point of DO, similar to as described in MN 9.

In other words, contrary to your book, it seems a young child is not generating names of forms which then somehow is creating craving without any inherent underlying instinctual sensual impulse. In reality, it seems the baby has forms of sensual impulses & craving prior to its ability to name any forms. Thus, as previously suggested, your books view of ‘nama-rupa’ seems based on Theistic ideologies where a God (per the Bible) or Devata (per the Upanishads) starts to name the forms it creates via its random will.

But the Buddha did not teach like this. The Buddha taught there are “asava” co-joined with “ignorance”. For example, fish do not have sexual desires towards human females. But human males have sexual desires towards human females, not because they name the form of a female, but because there is a biological programming causing these desires to arise towards human females but not towards female fish. :slightly_smiling_face:

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This is an important point and I think it’s related to what has been discussed and debated on D&D several times.

One view appears to be that while still living and while the khandhas are still present, an arahant is utterly free of all dukkha. Clearly, the “second arrow” as in SN36.6 is extinguished and “mental stress” is not present. However, physical pain is still experienced due to the presence of the khandhas. But some view this as not being dukkha.

However, others, including several Venerables, offer a view that until the khandhas have completely ceased, as in parinibbāna, some dukkha remains, i.e. like physical pain, (even without clinging, identification, or aversion). So only parinibbāna, after the death of an arahant, is the utter and complete cessation of dukkha, with no possibility of any form of suffering. Not even an itch. :slightly_smiling_face: Such as in Iti44.
Same with bhava. It does not fully cease during a life, but can only fully cease with parinibbāna. In this way, there’s no contradiction.

With respect and heartfelt best wishes :pray:

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This whole ‘debate’ seems like two camps talking past each other.

In brief:

  1. Physical pain doesn’t make the arahant suffer.
  2. The arahant experiences physical pain, which is suffering.

These are not two compatible positions to put against one another. Physical pain itself is dukkha—what else would it be? But that doesn’t mean it causes any form of suffering for the arahant. In order for it to do so, there must be clinging / identification with that which is dukkha. This is clear all throughout the khandha samyutta: the cessation of clinging and identification frees one from reckoning in terms of that which was clung to. This includes dukkha, in fact, it’s precisely the point of the teaching. That of course does not mean physical pain magically disappears. It still occurs, it just no longer pertains to the arahant.

So these are not contradictory, and I fail to see how any debate about it is anything other than people not listening to one another.

On a related note, this is like the “is the arahant in samsāra?” debate. Any reading of MN 1 should make it clear that to say “X is in/on/with/etc. Y” is just self-view and/or an instance of conceit. The arahant cannot be reckoned in terms of or identified with anything in samsara anymore—unlike the non-arahant—and so to assign them such an identification is not true to their experience. And yet obviously nobody reasonable who is authentically sticking to the suttas is claiming that the aggregates magically fall out of samsara into another dimension or that the arahant exists in some mystical nibbana-land at the same time. People do claim this of course, but it’s clearly wrong to many people on each “camp.” The arahant being within samsāra is true as a designation of the aggregates. But as the Buddha said: the arahant is deep and profound like the ocean, hard to fathom, for not being found within any of the aggregates.

Mettā

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With respect, you appear to be taking a strong stand on what is “hard to fathom” and whether dukkha, in some form, applies or not.

It’s true that much here depends on understanding of the suttas, what they’re pointing to, and the “definitions” people are using for dukkha and arahant. Neither of which can be precisely defined. So imo that’s what’s contributing to the controversy.

While endless speculations about this and arguments over who “is right” are not productive, reasonable engagement to clarify points of controversy can be helpful – we see how each viewpoint affects the practices and the degree of Right View for ourselves and other practitioners. So exchanges like this imo can help to clarify aspects of the teachings.
I mean, this whole topic has been about the “meaning” of bhava, with a number of different viewpoints exchanged, even amongst the Venerables. To good purpose!

These positions are not the only way of looking into this issue.
Drop the “arahant” and we can have just: “physical pain is suffering.” That’s all. Just that. And until the khandhas fully cease, pain is pain, pain is dukkha, and it all utterly ceases only with parinibbāna.

Same with bhava, as discussed in prior posts here. Before death, bhava is still present even after arahanthood, (as per several of the earlier posts).
And since existence is suffering SN 36.11, SN 12.1 and other suttas, and extinguishment (parinibbana) is bliss, AN9.34, how we view these aspects of the teachings can affect one’s practice.

But, yes, at some point these discussions can go around and around…so, hopefully, a middle way is found. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Hi kaccayanagotta,

The different positions come from a different understanding of DO. The people who take DO to be speaking of the process of the physical birth of a child, forget that it is through cognition that the event of child-birth is known as such, and one can never contradict this. So DO is not replacing the biological evolution of humans through metabolism and cell division, for a magical tale of ignorance as something floating around creating physical bodies out of thin air. Instead, DO explains how the process of cognition leads to the appropriation of that what is cognized as child-birth to be that of the self, and how this leads to suffering.

So the one camp is believing this magical tale through which they experience live as inherently suffering, and believe this to be the teaching of the Buddha. They try to convince the other camp that experiencing life as suffering is actually what the buddha meant with ‘liberation from suffering’, in order to support their belief.

The other camp is trying to explain the first camp that life doesn’t need to be experienced as suffering, when one understands DO as a process of cognition, and sabbe dhamma anatta, because it leads to liberation from suffering in the here-and-now.

So this is not really a serious debate, and you are right that people are just not listening to each other. For the second camp, there is no need to listen to the first camp, because they have already understood anatta, and they see that the arguments of the first camp are not supported by the suttas, besides that those in the first camp are, instead of liberated from suffering, experiencing life in its entirety as suffering.

For the first camp, there is no need to listen to the second camp, because they want to stick to their beliefs no matter what? They take the commentaries as an authority instead of their own experience? They have invested too much in their role playing act? They are too conceited? Ashamed to admit that they are wrong? Don’t want to give up their power position? Don’t want to give up their reputation? I don’t know the answer to this, as I am not in the first camp.

Warm regards,
Peter

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@Jasudho @Vaddha

To me dukkha in the first noble truth is psychological. For example, how can death be stressful if death isn’t experienced? As Epicurus says “Death is nothing to us. When we exist, death is not; and when death exists, we are not”, in short death can’t be experienced. Even in Buddhism, the aggregates die and experience ends, so one can experience dying but not death itself. “Death” only exists as a concept, and cannot actually be directly known for oneself, because the faculty of “knowing” is not functional at that point.

So the issue of death, aging, illness, etc… is psychological not physical. This is especially emphasized at the end of the first noble truth.

The first noble truth:

Now this, monks, is the noble truth of stress:[1] Birth is stressful, aging is stressful, death is stressful; sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair are stressful; association with the unbeloved is stressful, separation from the loved is stressful, not getting what is wanted is stressful. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are stressful.

So in my opinion, physical pain and parinibbana is irrelevant. The issue is craving for a self and the psychological outcomes of it.

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