From what I can gather, the Aryans arrived in India around 1500 BC, so that permits maybe 1000 years of Brahminical society in the Kosalan region before Gotama Buddha.
This is such a harsh way of expressing your feelings about the EBTs. You must know this is likely to be very unpleasant to read for many here on D&D?
I don’t wish to offend anybody, but who said seeking the truth was supposed to be pleasant? We have to be willing to challenge and let go of all our preconceived notions and views if there is to be any chance of finding freedom. In my experience, using mental gymnastics to justify objective falsehoods in ancient texts is a form of suffering.
But the Aryans could have adopted a system that was already in place, which seems to be a pretty common tactic used by invaders.
Also, a 1000 years is a lot, maybe it’s enough for a rise and fall, who knows…
Agree 100%
For general history, I highly recommend The Dawn of Everything by Graber and Wengrow. It’s not about Indian history, but it gives a sense of the vast diversity of past societies.
I would also recommend learning more about the scientific process in general in my experience, people tend to overestimate modern science’s ability to produce objective facts about the world.
I appreciate the recommendation, but I am hesitant to spend my time on a book written by an anarchist activist (or a proponent of any other extremist political ideology). I just read the summary on Wikipedia and it seems interesting, but I get the sense that the author wanted to see a version of human prehistory which confirmed his anarchist views, so he found it.
Regarding the value of science, when I look at the world around me, I see the fruits of the scientific method everywhere. You and I are having this conversation right now due to those fruits. Perhaps I am simplistic, but when it comes to the objective world, I am relatively content with accepting the broader scientific consensus (rather than the niche views of political extremists, or questionable claims in ancient texts).
He covers this in suttas such as SN 22.95. The Buddha’s contemplation around ‘delusion’ is on the nature of reality rather than the contents of reality.
I also have this feeling about the suttas, but more specifically directed towards references of human beings living for thousands of years. Tbh, there is still a certain cognitive dissonance arising from time to time, like “this sounds so incorrect” or “isn’t this type of mistake exactly what we would expect from a wrong religion?” But I still think there are better reasons to follow than to abandon Buddhism.
Because he taught according to his insight, he couldn’t teach wrong facts. If he did teach wrong things, then this brings into question the whole Dhamma since all teachings derive from the same thing: insight into reality.
As @stu said, delusion refers to not understanding the nature of reality, but I think it’s still possible for him to believe in wrong things. In fact, there are examples in the suttas that show mistakes made by the Buddha. However, these are not derived from his insight per se. I think these are simply worldly errors, like thinking a monk understood a lesson correctly when he actually didn’t.
When the suttas refer to the Buddha’s knowledge of past lives, they usually show as if he could remember past lives as many times as he wanted, but not as if it was constant knowledge in the back of his mind.
whenever I want, I recollect my many kinds of past lives. That is: one, two, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand rebirths; many eons of the world contracting, many eons of the world expanding, many eons of the world contracting and expanding. I remember: ‘There, I was named this, my clan was that, I looked like this, and that was my food. This was how I felt pleasure and pain, and that was how my life ended. When I passed away from that place I was reborn somewhere else. There, too, I was named this, my clan was that, I looked like this, and that was my food. This was how I felt pleasure and pain, and that was how my life ended. When I passed away from that place I was reborn here.’ And so I recollect my many kinds of past lives, with features and details.
MN 71
To me, it sounds like he didn’t remember ALL his past lives, but a significantly large number of them, even because recollecting literally all past lives would take infinitely long.
I think these two are almost enough to explain weird claims made in the suttas. However, I don’t think that the Buddha could make use of parables unless he also expected his audience to see them as parables. That is, telling a parable as if it were true only reinforces people’s misunderstanding, and, even worse, it’s essentially a lie. What may have happened, though, is that most of these parables ended up being interpreted literally with time. This actually makes sense since people in the past didn’t have scientific evidence to cause any cognitive dissonance, so interpreting suttas literally was always the best strategy: if the sutta was indeed intended to be taken literally, then you would get the correct interpretation, but if it wasn’t, you wouldn’t have science to tell you that you were wrong anyways.
The second possibility also seems to be the case. Comparative studies show that many suttas were added after different oral lineages were created. Since changes happened after the division, we should expect that some occured before as well. However, what we do have great certainty is that late tradition didn’t change doctrinal suttas, so things like the noble eightfold path, dependent origination, rebirth, and kamma are the earliest things in Buddhism. Suttas giving precise descriptions of past lives, though, may or may not be early. Most of the Jatakas, for example, are not.
Also, I think it’s important to point out that many of these changes were probably not done out of bad faith. If they were, why should we even trust modern monks if even the earliest ones weren’t trustworthy? Mistakes do happen from time to time, and many of the suttas are actually not intended to be taken literally to begin with. For example, I remember reading that the late commentary admits that sometimes Mara in the suttas refer to a mind state instead of a real god. Buddhagosa also admits that many additions had been made to the mahaparinibanna sutta, which also shows that people were already aware that the suttas weren’t 100% accurate. Moreover, it’s actually not possible to be a fundamentalist Buddhist these days since the Buddha said in AN 8.51 that the true Dhamma would last 500 years at most. The primary purpose of the texts is to provide understanding of the Buddhist path, but the stories told don’t need to be always true. Sometimes, in order to provide understanding, the sutta needs to be both useful and correct, like in doctrinal passages. In these cases, I agree that it would be worrisome for Buddhism as a whole if they were disproved. Fortunately, most Buddhist doctrine is either scientifically correct or unfalsifiable.
Another thing that I’ve noticed recently is that there are just too many suttas for all of them to come from the Buddha. The whole Sutta Pitaka contains more than 17,000 suttas. The Buddha taught for 45 years (from 35 to 80). If we calculate it, there would be at least a sutta for every single day of the Buddha’s career! Of course, a few come from later disciples and many others are quite short, but the size of the sutta Pitaka is still impressive, so I honestly doubt that most of the suttas actually refer to real interactions or that the phrases are exactly what the Buddha said in the real life. They’re likely to be either reconstructions from hearsay or doctrinal teachings expressed in fictional cenarios, instead of accurate historical records. This means that we should expect some mistakes here and there, but we can still expect that the core teachings wouldn’t be changed since they would be present all throughout the canon. Therefore, it doesn’t seem reasonable to reject the whole Dhamma because of a few suttas.
When we make a judgment, we base the judgment against our current understanding and standard. However, our understanding could be wrong or limited, and our standard is simply what we currently accept. Moreover, the current standard could also be wrong too.
I have found most of the accusations sound pretty good to the accusers and they really believe in them because the ideas fit their current standard and understanding. However, with different understanding and different standards, these accusations seem to be totally wrong. Therefore, I think it is always better to hold our judgments especially to the noble ones since our understanding obviously is far lower than theirs. This is for our own future benefit, and to avoid making terrible mistakes for ourselves.
I am very surprised to see monastics involved in these actions since I think monastics should be the last in the world to do so because of their faith with the Buddha and the Dhamma. I hope that they have different intentions.
It is not very easy to explain everything that people question, and it is not very easy to please everybody. However, I have tried to show a different understanding of some problems. If we can accept it, then we will think differently.
Here are the 2 most complaints that I found:
Teaching body contemplation to monks who subsequently committed suicide.
Here was my different understanding that I explained long time ago
Obviously, there could be different meaningful understandings that we currently do not think of. So, how can we know for sure that our current understanding is correct? Moreover, our understanding and vision obviously are far lower than the Buddha, and we really never directly see or hear anything from him. How can we judge him correctly?
I do not say that my understanding is correct, but I just try to show that there could be different explanations and understanding that we do not know or think of. Therefore, it is always better to hold our judgments to the noble ones, especially the Buddha. This is for our future benefits.
I have noticed that I do this quite often when reading the suttas. I will interpret a sutta in one way, when in fact it was meant in another way. A few years later I discover that what I was interpreting as literal was in fact an idiom in Pali or there was a subtle joke going on (maybe a play on words) that I wasn’t aware of. This non-understanding of what is going on with words plagues many, if not all, translators too. Ajahn Brahm talks about the English idiom “It’s raining cats and dogs”, if a non-native speaker were to take that literally, they are going to want a more substantial umbrella!
I’m not sure that science helps us that much in this case due to things such as the half-life of facts and that the suttas were constructed so very long ago that it’s easy for us to misinterpret them. A better way to gain an understanding of this is to get our meditation to the level of (for example) seeing past lives for ourselves. Then we would be in a position to understand how these memories are interpreted by our 21st century minds and how we might communicate them to a modern audience.
The instructions and tools to do this are certainly still available to us all and they are the easier parts of the EBTs to understand because they are progressively verified by our own practice. It’s that investigation utilising the eightfold path that brings an end to doubt.
This might well be another case where we misinterpret what is being said in the suttas. When the Buddha says something like manussattaṁ labhati - it could mean something like “each time a being is reborn as a human”, but some translators might suggest that it means “the first rebirth (in a chain of) human existence”. I think that rebirth seems to be based on ethics in the suttas, and the ethics of each realm is distinct from the others, so it would not be surprising to find continuation in one mode of being over many lifetimes. This is something that we can verify for ourselves of course, if we do the practice.
There are products in the supermarket which I don’t purchase as they’re not relevant to me, don’t interest me and/or are boycotted due to excessive nagvertising. From time to time, it makes me doubt whether the store manager is truly free of all delusion, but they do offer a bunch of other items that I need/want so I return.
I’ve heard Ajahn Brahmali say a number of times in dhamma talks words to the effect of “it’s not a question of if the teachings have been corrupted, rather where and how much”. Seems like a realistic, pragmatic and honest position to take.
I agree, I can’t accept the notion that the Buddha knowingly taught tall tales to his audience.
To me, it seems more practical to just accept the existence of karma & rebirth in some form, rather than spending excess time and effort trying to experimentally verify the stereotyped formulae & mythology of the suttas.
Do you view the owner of your local supermarket as near-omniscient and perfected in wisdom? In that case, I’m not sure the analogy holds.
I think it’s true that we can’t ever be sure that our understanding is right, but there’s definitely more evidence that humans haven’t ever lived thousands of years than evidence that we have, so I can’t take the suttas literally.
I agree that we can’t ever be sure in this case, but I don’t think it’s actually possible to hold our judgment all the time we encounter something odd in the suttas. There are quite a few cases of unscientific beliefs in the canon that require some explanation. Holding judgment, instead of trying to understand whether the sutta is right or not, causes quite a lot of cognitive dissonance, which isn’t good for practice either. At least that’s been my experience so far.
I do same thing too. Sometimes even monks defend views based on very odd suttas that could have been explaind by noticing a certain nuance in Pali or subtle joke.
I think it depends on what scientific facts we’re talking about. Things like the lifespan of early humans is quite unlikely to be changed by future evidence, and, if it changes, I’m quite sure it won’t go all the way up to a hundred thousand years.
I know this wasn’t directed to me, but I’d like to point out that the early suttas are actually aware that Brahminical society wasn’t present at the beginning of mankind. For example, the Agganna sutta (independently of whether or not it’s a fictional myth) says that humans didn’t always live like the Iron-Age Indian society. However, I’ve never read suttas showing memories of humans of that era. Also, I’ve never seen suttas talking about memories of past lives as mosquitos, ants, or any other insects, so these accounts seem far from being representative descriptions of world history and biology, even for Ancient India’s standards. Maybe the ones we have access to were taught exactly because they were meaningful to Indians whereas talking about memories as hunter-gatherers would be useless.
@stu already mentioned AN3.100, and I’d like to refer to another sutta that may be useful here. In MN 136, the Buddha explains why bad people sometimes are reborn in heaven after death. Therefore, when the Buddha says that a certain type of livelihood leads to a specific state, he doesn’t mean that the result is certain. In fact, there are only five things that inevitably lead to rebirth in hell: killing one’s father, killing one’s mother, killing an arahat, making an arahat bleed, or causing a schism in the sangha. This implies that most people, even those who practiced wrong livelihood, can still be reborn in heaven or the human realm. The bad side of this, though, is that good people, even those who have taken the five precepts, can still be reborn in hell in the next lifetime. Only stream-entering rules that possibility out.
Also, the fact people only remember past lifetimes as humans doesn’t mean there are only human rebirths. It may be that we have the tendency to remember lifetimes that are closer to ours more easily. If this is so, it also explains why most people can’t remember their previous lives since the majority probably comes from realms very different from the human one. Remember, there are 8 billion people (!), but only a few can naturally remember their past lives, supporting the idea that it’s indeed very tough to get here.
The problem is that those two suttas seem to contradict each other.
Take the hypothetical example of a young thief. He finds Dhamma at the age of 30, reforms himself, and practices earnestly for the remainder of his life (dana, sila, metta, etc). According to AN3.100, the bad kamma from earlier in his life will be mitigated by his presently purified state of mind. However, MN 136 suggests that the thief could very well go to hell anyways, because the earlier bad kamma can (apparently) overcome all of his later mental development.
The last two thirds of MN 136 are convoluted and contradict the simple teachings on kamma found throughout much of the suttas. The Buddha also appears with a vainglorious and dogmatic personality:
“Besides, Ananda, who are the foolish thoughtless wanderers of other sects that they will understand the Tathagata’s Great Exposition of Kamma?”
This is likely the remark of an arrogant scholar, not a sage.
In contrast to all of that, AN3.100 is simple and compassionate in its delivery, with several homely metaphors (such as the salt crystal).
If according to Buddhism based on Samyutta/Samyukta (SN/SA), it does not really have the notion of cosmology, which is about the origin and development of the universe.
However, instead, it has the notion of Conditioned Arising (Paṭiccasamuppāda), which is mainly about seeing and knowing how life works, in the sense of the arising and ceasing of dukkha.
Also, it has early Buddhist adaptations of some Vedic religious myths. The texts of these folklores/myths are mainly collected in the Sagātha Vagga of SN/SA, such as davatā, deva, Māra, Brahma, vana, yakkha, Sakka.
In addition, Nāga Saṃyutta, Supaṇṇa Saṃyutta, Gandhabba Saṃyutta, and Valāhaka Saṃyutta are a group of sequential collections about early Buddhist adaptations of Vedic mythical beliefs regarding nāgas “mythical dragons/snakes”, supaṇṇas “mythical birds”, gandhabbas “fragrant plant devas”, and valāhakas “cloud devas”.
It will be good to compare and contrast the differences and similarities on these myths between SN/SA and other Nkāyas/Āgamas, or other EBTs.
Regarding these collections, Choong Mun-keat has published the following articles (not including the vana, yakkha collections):
"A comparison of the Pali and Chinese versions of the Devata Samyutta and Devaputta Samyutta, collections of early Buddhist discourses on devatas “gods” and devaputras “sons of gods” ", Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, vol.1, October 2011, pp. 60-88.
“A comparison of the Pali and Chinese versions of the Mara Samyutta, a collection of early Buddhist discourses on Mara, the Evil One”, The Indian International Journal of Buddhist Studies’, vol.10, 2009, pp. 35-53.
“A Comparison of the Pāli and Chinese Versions of the Brahma Saṃyutta, a Collection of Early Buddhist Discourses on Brahmās, the Exalted Gods”, Buddhist Studies Review (Journal of the UK Association for Buddhist Studies), vol. 31.2, pp. 179-194 (2014).
"A comparison of the Pali and Chinese versions of the Sakka Samyutta, a collection of early Buddhist discourses on ‘Sakra, ruler of the gods’ ", in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 22, issue 3-4, October 2012 (Cambridge University Press), pp. 561–574.
On these collections, see:
Choong Mun-keat, “A comparison of the Pāli and Chinese versions of Nāga Saṃyutta, Supaṇṇa Saṃyutta, and Valāhaka Saṃyutta, early Buddhist discourse collections on mythical dragons, birds, and cloud devas”, Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, 2020 (18), pp. 42-65.
Some tormented ghosts (P. peta, Skt. preta), relevant to various karmic causes of the suffering, are also found in SA 508–534 = SN 19.1–21.
See pp. 78-81 in Choong Mun-keat, “A comparison of the Chinese and Pāli Saṃyukta/Saṃyuttas on the Venerable Mahā-Maudgalyāyana (Mahā-Moggallāna)”, Buddhist Studies Review, v. 34.1 (2017), pp. 67-84.
I don’t see it that way, for me the incredibly pleasant and wholesome eightfold path is the same for both, if we attain parinibbana before we experientially verify kamma & rebirth then no worries (literally )
Unless of course the definition of what it means to be ‘human’ changed in the past, which is possible I guess? It will almost certainly change in the future (possibly the very near future ).
AN 3.100 doesn’t say that the bad kamma will be totally mitigated by greater wisdom. It just says that the effects decrease with the increase of wisdom and ethical development. What these suttas show is that there’s a relationship between present results, present wisdom, and past kamma. Having greater wisdom mitigates results of past bad kamma, so it’s possible that what would lead to a rebirth in hell will just cause a heart attack, for instance. However, it’s still possible that this person goes to Hell anyways if their development was not powerful enough or if their past bad kamma was too much. The comparison of water and salt exemplifies this quite well. I think the contradiction you found comes from thinking there can be only either total or no mitigation, instead of a proportional relationship between wisdom and result. There are indeed extreme situations of wisdom and extreme cases of kamma, but they aren’t all possible cases. For example, committing one of the five Anantarika-kamma described in AN 5.129 inevitably lead to rebirth in hell in the next lifetime. On the other hand, developing one’s wisdom to the point of stream-entering makes it impossible to experience rebirth in hell. Now, you may ask yourself… what if somebody achieves stream-entering after committing one of those five actions? Well, it turns out it’s impossible. This is exemplified in the texts by the case of a man who had all conditions to achieve stream-entering, but couldn’t because he had killed his parents. You may also ask, what if a person already awakened commits one of those five actions? That’s also said to be impossible in AN 6.94. From what I know, these are the only situations that we can say for sure how kamma will affect us, but any other is unpredictable, and the best we can say is that the more we develop wisdom the weaker the effects. It’s not correct to say that somebody who practiced Buddhism and got reborn in hell wasted their time. We should ask what would have happened if they hadn’t practiced at all! There are many types of hell, and some actions can lead to multiple rebirths in lower realms. Instead of going to an even worse type of hell for many eons, they may experience all of that in a single rebirth as a spirit, for example. Also, the actions they performed while practicing the path won’t be forgotten. They will show results some day.
Btw, I gotta mention that I identify a lot with the way you’re approaching these problems and people’s answers. It’s rational and critical, and you’re taking neither the materialist worldview nor the Buddhist one for granted.
These remarks about people’s stupidity are something that we find over and over again in the suttas, not only to other sects’ wanderers but also to Buddhist monks. The formula “Silly man, who on earth have you ever known me to teach in that way?” is quite common at any time a monk insists in something incorrect. The Buddha says that in front of the person or in front of others (sometimes both). If you take that as evidence that the sutta should be dismissed, then you will need to throw a big chunck of suttas away. I in particular don’t think that’s good evidence they aren’t early.
I can’t debate you on textual grounds, those are solid arguments.
To me, rebirth only makes sense based on the overall state of a person’s mind. If our hypothetical thief had developed a heavenly state of mind by the time of his death, then I can’t accept that he would go to hell based solely on past bad kamma. That doesn’t accord with my sense of reason & intuition.
And anyways, did the Buddha actually teach concepts like sotapanna, anantarika-kamma, or eons of suffering in hell? Or were these later dogmatic developments? No one can say for certain, but I have my suspicions.
If you take that as evidence that the sutta should be dismissed, then you will need to throw a big chunck of suttas away. I in particular don’t think that’s good evidence they aren’t early.
I wasn’t trying to disregard the entire sutta based on that single comment. I was only trying to point out how the arrogant remark attributed to the Buddha acts as a threshold within the sutta: the dialogue which comes before it seems like a recording of an authentic human interaction, while the text that follows feels more like a scholastic treatise.
Btw, I gotta mention that I identify a lot with the way you’re approaching these problems and people’s answers. It’s rational and critical, and you’re taking neither the materialist worldview nor the Buddhist one for granted.
I find the critical approach to be mentally freeing and helpful for combatting cognitive dissonance, but after posting on this forum I’m beginning to realize how it can be viewed as upsetting to the more faith-oriented types. I’ll try to keep that in mind in the future.
It’s interesting that I, on the other hand, can’t understand how a person would go to heaven based solely on a heavenly state of mind that has been developed. I find it weird that achieving some mind state actually changes where we’d get reborn. For example, the suttas say that developing the jhanas lead to rebirth in equivalent realms, but I don’t get why that’s the case since the state isn’t a volitional action per se, so it can’t be exactly kamma. However, the suttas clearly talk about that, so this is something that I still gotta study much more for sure. The solution is likely to be that cultivating a state of mind doesn’t influence rebirth by itself. Maybe the intention to cultivate that state is the kamma that takes one to that realm, or maybe it’s the kamma produced by the mind while it’s immersed in that state. The latter is my bet, btw.
Also, why do you find it counterintuitive? States of mind can change rapidly from one moment to another in this lifetime even for those who practice a lot. For instance, a person who has been practicing diligently for decades can still lose their heavenly state if they get sick, intoxicated, or drunk. So why couldn’t the most drastic event of one’s existence change one’s mind? I can easily imagine that death would change the whole picture. What the new “picture” will be would depend on past kamma.
Well, did the Buddha actually teach concepts like the noble eightfold path, dependent origination, or rebirth? Or were these later dogmatic developments? No one can say for certain, but we have great evidence that they are early. Denying that would be as unreasonable as any other type of historical negationism, imo. The same applies for sotapanna, anantarika-kamma, or eons of suffering in hell. They are present in the early suttas and sit very well with all the rest of the Dhamma, so why to doubt their origin?
Your suspicion sounds like they conflict with some of your presuppositions. Could you elaborate more on why these ideas seem fishy?
It’s quite common for suttas to have an initial story and an exposition on the Dhamma in the end, so that seems natural to me.
Yes, I feel the same as well. To be fair, we’re in a Buddhist forum, so it’s quite impressive that we can question Buddhist ideas at all without being blocked or silenced. I certainly wouldn’t feel equally comfortable in doing that in forums of other religions…
in my experience, people tend to overestimate modern science’s ability to produce objective facts about the world.
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