I will be posting weekly newsletters generally on Sundays. Every other week will be an update about any new translations or other content that’s been added to the website (https://canon.dharmapearls.net). The other two weeks will be a newsletter called Dharma Notes in which I write an essay about some Buddhist topic or previous translation that seems interesting to me.
This week’s Dharma Notes issue looked at the expression “all sentient beings rely on food to survive” as it occurs in the Ekottarika Agama. And how it somehow pertains to a squirrel named Maryetta who lives in Los Angeles.
“From this day forward, I will be broadly generous with ascetics, brahmins, and the four divisions of the saṅgha . Whoever comes from those other religions and trainings with requests, I won’t be able to give it to them.”
The Buddha chides the King against this type of discrimination:
“Great King, don’t think that. And why? All sentient beings survive because of food. Without food, they will die.”
A lot of great wisdom in the suttas seem to get buried under discussions about jhānā, nibbāna, etc.; completely overlooking the great ethics and genuine goodness found in the sutras.
So it’s always a nice change to listen to this side of the sutras.
(Although, it’s interesting to note Buddha both saying this and then afterwards in SĀ 6.28-31 Ten Things that “All sentient being rely on food.” is to be abandoned? What would be the meaning of this?)
Hope to hear more interesting stories from Agamas - and from Maryetta!
I started a new series of essays on early Buddhism and history at Substack, specifically of different types of conflict. This first part focuses on the history of organized war and empire building reflected in Buddhist myth and storytelling.
The second part will move on to ideological conflicts driven by the co-opting of new religion by empires to create supernational identities. I’m not sure where the tangent will lead after that, but I’ll follow it. I’m thinking, for instance, of the fact that early Buddhists lived during the era of the first empires, while we are living through an era of dying empires.
Part 2 of the series on the history of Early Buddhism takes a look at King Asoka through the historical lens. I really recommend Patrick Olivelle’s new book on King Ashoka. He does a great job of painting a picture of King Ashoka relying on historical sources.
My latest Dharma Notes essay takes a detour to introduce animism and outline some of the animistic influences that are apparently in early Buddhism.
Of course, animism wasn’t just an influence on early Buddhism - many animist beliefs are prevalent in traditional Asian cultures. The influence is continuing right up to the present day. But here I specifically address the possibility the early Buddhism (and the early Indian ascetic tradition in general) may have been directly influenced by indigenous culture given how prevalent the animist themes are in early Buddhist texts.
Thank you for the interesting essay Charles. As you indicate, it is extremely useful to have some knowledge of all of the the belief systems of the Buddha’s time, not just Brahmanism, Jainism, etc.
Animism literally and originally referred to the belief that all things are alive, or that all things have spirits that animate them. Animist belief systems do not operate within the same conceptual boundaries about what is a living thing or what is a person as the modern Western worldview does. Spirits can inhabit natural processes like rivers, trees, stones, forests, lands, and heavenly lights. …
“We can trace our genealogy to the origins of the universe,” said [lead negotiator for the Māori tribe] Albert. “And therefore rather than us being masters of the natural world, we are part of it. We want to live like that as our starting point. And that is not an anti-development, or anti-economic use of the river but to begin with the view that it is a living being, and then consider its future from that central belief.”
Personally, I found that my journey into the Buddha’s world view was helpful in understanding other world views, such as that of our Māori people. By pointing out how the Buddha referenced such views, you have made it clearer to me why I had that reaction. Thank you.
Thanks for the great article. I found it fascinating and helpful for understanding the background to the Buddhas age. Does it deserves a dedicated thread?
In Thailand the endemic belief in spirits still extends to tree spirits. I like the way it protects old trees:
I wish this had continued more widely in India. The deforestation and environmental impacts in the lands of the Buddha is sad. This is up river from Bodh Gaya:
Which is largely an intentional result of Thailand’s land tax which heavily penalizes people for failing to “develop” their “vacant” land as well as a result of endemic corruption in the departments responsible for protecting Thailand’s forests (here’s one such case just from this month)
It was fun writing it. It quickly became obvious that I could write a book on the subject and had to stop writing and wrap it up.
Wonderful!
I became aware of the parallels while reading about native American cultures. I ended up going down the rabbit hole of animism in search of influences that would been closer to India. Turns out, they are/were everywhere, including India and Southeast Asian.
Maybe I could continue exploring the topic here on the forum. There’s more to write about regarding the animism that’s apparent in Buddhism, for sure.
Sacred trees are still to be found in India but they are rare. In the vinaya case you referenced the tree was sanctified by a resident tree spirit. Im not sure that’s still the belief in India. The trees seems to sanctified as a manifestation or representation of deities like Shiva. Perhaps this change is worth exploring for your book on animism in the culture of the Buddha
The other thing Im not sure of is if the tree deva in the vinaya case, was undestood by the locals as living on the tree, like a bird that made its nest on a tree, or whether the spirit was imbued within the actual substance of the tree, (the trunk, branches and leaves) in a seamless integration?
pp. lived (in); inhabited; stayed (in); lit. lived through [adhi + √vas + ta]
The translation and context of the story allows both views.
The projection from western conditioning may be biased against the ancient animism view of inanimate objects being suffused with the animate. If so translations that make out the spirit lived on but separate to the tree can be expected. Readers with the same bias may take that view as a given and miss a richer animism perspective.
I’ve been re-shuffling the Footprints in the Dust, where Venerable explains animism during the time. It seems I’ve paid little attention to it my first time around.
Thanks for pointing this out. Yes, the acceptance of animistic beliefs seems to one of the defining differences between Asian religions and European ones. Christianity rejected the animism of the Celtic and Slavic people during the Medieval era. Converting to Christianity meant completely rejecting one’s traditional belief system. And since traditional animism emphasized a strong connection to the natural world, it also meant that the Christian world became estranged from it. Today, Westerners come to Buddhism looking for something rational and scientific thanks to the Christian success in wiping out “heathen” beliefs. The post-Christian West replaced “heathen” with “superstition” and carried on the same program. And here we are now with a world completely out of balance because we ignore the natural world.
That’s a question I’ve thought about too, but there aren’t many ancient Buddhist sources that give us more information. There is the backstory to the Squirrel Park that the Buddha frequented in the sutras. The story goes that a king was saved by a squirrel barking in a tree. He had taken a nap while out hunting when a venomous snake approached him. The squirrel (perhaps a palm squirrel?) barked at the sight of a predator as squirrels do, waking the king up from his nap. The king took the squirrel to be the manifestation of a tree spirit and decided to dedicate the place to the squirrels.
Thanks for your superb essay, cdpatton . After I read Ven. Brahmali’s essay on Deity Worship in Buddhism, it seemed like a good time to read yours.
Put more simply, animism describes the belief systems of human beings who live as a part of their natural environment, rather than apart from it. That is to say, they considered themselves members of a larger community composed of living beings as well as the natural environment itself. For an animist, “the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and … life is always lived in relationship with others,” as Graham Harvey puts it.
In modern culture, I believe some people also call this Neo-Materialism. Interestingly, it is very appealing to post-evangelical Christians who, in a state of whiplash, aren’t certain about heavenly realms anymore but readily embrace animist concepts.
This decentralized, local way of life means that animism is not a single belief system. It’s rather a way to describe them as a group of different belief systems that share common themes and concerns. The cultures, languages, customs, and beliefs of indigenous people evolved in unique ways in each region, and each region has distinct local traditions. We can infer idealized principles when we learn about their various cultures, but each one has its particular way of thinking.
In other words these animist paths root themselves in specific localities, within groups of people with common ancestry stretching back millennia. The shared values, ethics, rituals, and specialized wisdom persist and thrive in a complex relationship with common histories. Because of this, I feel animist concepts and practices are impenetrable to outsiders. (Not that you were even addressing this; just wanted to share that observation of mine.)
So, my own speculation is that the Buddha came from a tribal society that still had strong animist roots, and this is why we see so many parallels with other animist belief systems in early Buddhist sources.
Very enticing tidbit here! While the historical evidence for these animist roots is spare, we’d have to conclude what you write is spot-on.
Thus, we can find many varieties of afterlife beliefs among animist traditions owing to the fact that their mythologies and beliefs developed independently in each locality.
Here’s where I begin to diverge a bit from some of your conclusions – as you proceed down this path in your essay.
Afterlife beliefs were common in non-animist traditions, too. In the Axial Age religions, no one would have thought there wasn’t some kind of afterlife. There was universal acceptance of some level of intercession or collaboration between heavenly and earthly planes of existence.
One of the conundrums of early Buddhism for many modern people is its belief in rebirth when the Buddha appears to deny the existence of an animistic soul, which was literally called “self” or “I.”
I question whether this is an animistic soul rather than the individual soul as presented in the early Vedas and evolving into atman. Maybe it makes sense to say the impenetrability of the early Vedas derives from animist roots. But it’s a big jump to say this is the Buddha talking to an animistic soul?
What is of interest, though, is that early Buddhists did seem to be uncomfortable with naming the spirit that is reborn because it could be treated as an eternal soul, which the Buddha denied.
They seem uncomfortable with naming “what” is reborn – that is, the rather grey area of someone’s essence, consciousness, etc. – but is it because they thought of it as an animist spirit who would have had a name?
Aside from this ideological problem, Buddhist rebirth served as a moral teaching tool rather than a description of the natural reproduction of species. Buddhist rebirth occurs because of a person’s past actions, good or bad, and that continued existence is undesirable in the long run because of the suffering that is involved.
Upon awakening, did the Buddha not see a long line of past births, without discernible beginning? Isn’t his innovation that he saw the path to ending the cycle of rebirth? It’s never been clear to me that the Buddha would have taught the four noble truths without having seen all these past lives.
There is little said about one’s relationships with others in Buddhist discussions of rebirth. This renders Buddhist rebirth (perhaps ironically) self-involved compared to the role of rebirth in animist belief systems. Instead of being a way to maintain the balance of giving and taking between humans and animals, Buddhists use descriptions of rebirth as an argument that one should live a moral life and cease the cycle of birth and death.
However we’re not born into a system; we’re born with a single body and we leave the world similarly.
I think it’s very likely that the ascetic tradition in India inherited a belief in rebirth from a local animist tradition and formed a negative reaction to it. At some point prior to the Buddha’s life, this tradition produced a theory of rebirth as a cycle of reward and punishment that had to be ended to escape the suffering it involved. As an idea, this theory of a morally-driven afterlife would become popular among the religions of India and the Near East, whether they believed in rebirth or not.
If they inherited a belief in rebirth, it begs the question what would they have believed in before inheriting it. Like I said above, I can’t imagine anyone claiming there were no heavenly realms (and other various realms), whether in an animist or Axial Age religious context.
This ethic of maintaining good relations with humans and non-humans alike is central to the animist way of life. Many local Buddhist traditions in fact have a ritual way of warning a tree spirit before felling a tree. It’s a good example of the animist way of inculcating respect for living things and ensuring a sustainable relationship with them.
Which makes me think about this
That is, if this is animist influence – the belief in protecting spirits – or just human nature to seek protection from things we don’t control, it doesn’t make me think the Buddha’s teaching on rebirth was inherited, rather than discerned.
. After I read Ven. Brahmali’s essay on Deity Worship in Buddhism, it seemed like a good time to read yours.