SuttaCentral
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…
This is based on an assumption that the hypothetical thief can develop the heavenly state of mind. Not all the thieves can do so. However, if a thief can do so, then the probability for him NOT to go to hell is higher than the other thieves that cannot do so. Also, he can do so only because his mind is not immersed into bad states like other thieves, or he can be able to control his mind. Otherwise, it is impossible for him to develop that heavenly state of mind.
The current state can also be affected by other factors. If at the time of his death, for some reason, the old bad state of mind comes back and obsesses him and he loses the heavenly state of mind that he has had and he immerses in anger or guilt or some bad state of mind then the probability for him to go to hell will be higher, and he could go to hell if it is high enough.
The result of past kamma can be pleasant or painful depending on if the action was good or bad. Assume that the thief stole a huge sum of money from someone, and that made the victim miserable, so the victim wants revenge. At the time of the thief’s death, he could remember his old action and feel remorse and want to pay back. He feels sad and sorry, so he loses his heavenly state of mind. Or the victim may try to find a way to harm him or his family by some means. Because of this, he feels sad, worried and angry, so he will die with that state of mind.
That is just a simple example. As I understand the Dhamma, I never recall the Buddha teaching that one will go to hell based solely on past bad kamma. If this is so, then the venerable Angulimala who killed 999 persons must go to hell and cannot be an arahant.
I’m not talking about fleeting states of mind, I’m talking about a substantial shift in the entire mindset. I don’t know if this is supported by the texts, but I believe rebirth is based more on the overall quality of the individual’s mind (as an accumulation of the entire preceding life), not a single fleeting ‘mind-moment’ at the time of death.
Regarding jhanas leading to the ‘Brahma realms’, I suspect that the early Buddhists developed this idea as a means of trivilializing the Brahmins, who often strove to be reborn with their ‘supreme deity’ in Brahmaloka (which was placed at the bottom of the Brahma realm hierarchy, conveniently).
I do believe that jhana (or samadhi) develops the mind, which tends towards higher rebirth, but I don’t believe in a literal segmented ‘Brahma world’ with aligns perfectly with the segmented ‘levels’ of jhana. To me, that appears as crystallized dogma which cannot possibly account for the near-infinite possibilities of transmigration (and personal experience in general).
Your suspicion sounds like they conflict with some of your presuppositions. Could you elaborate more on why these ideas seem fishy?
I can’t deny that these are all ‘presuppositions’, but I have a hard time accepting that a fully enlightened sage would engage in the same sort of intellectual proliferation of which he is attempting to free his audience.
In terms of the ‘levels’ of enlightenment, I have my doubts that the Buddha was openly proclaiming X man to be a sotapanna, or Y woman to be a anagami. This type of thinking leads towards ego-identification with conceptual labels, which is exactly what we’re trying to be free of on the spiritual path.
The suttas, in my eyes, likely contain a core of simple, sagely teachings from Gotama himself, mixed with standardized formulae (and some mythology) which was developed in the 100 years after he passed away. This is an unfalsifiable claim, and I have no way of proving it to you (or anybody else). All I can say is that it’s my intuition.
I definitely believe that the Buddha taught most of the core ideas recorded in the suttas, but I am skeptical on whether he taught the specific constructions we see today in the texts (such as the twelve nidanas, or the five khandas, or any amount of any other concept).
Logically, this idea assumes that a lack of moral conscience is a good thing at death. If the momentary presence of regret or anger at death were the defining factor in rebirth, it would be best to die as an emotionless sociopath who feels no regret or anger on his deathbed.
That is not about lack of moral conscience. That is to show how one can lose the heavenly state of mind.
It is hard to see what happens after death, so to make it easier to see, we can look at the current life.
Assume that in the past, you were a famous gangster. You did many bad things. However, you quit that life and become a good person, and develop a heavenly state of mind, so you are loving and generous to everybody.
However, one day, an old man who was harmed by you came to your house. He wants revenge. He insults you, tries to harm you. This is what we call kamma.
You have two choices: fight back or accept that and keep your heavenly state of mind. If you fight back and kill that man (because you were a famous gangster) then you may go to jail depending on how bad your reaction is. So, the previous heavenly state of mind does not determine that you will never go to jail.
There is something I feel like many people are not taking into consideration when scrutinizing the Buddha’s recollection of past lives: he did not necessarily say that those events took place in this world-system, or in this kappa.
We do not need to try and shoehorn stories of past lives into a rigid timeline based on our own linear understanding of history.
Also, perhaps more importantly: Buddhism isn’t scientific. It just isn’t. That’s okay. As Buddhists, I think we would all do well to shake off this need to rationalize our faith or justify it in light of secular understandings of the world.
The only substantial shift in the entire mindset that I’m aware of being mentioned in the suttas is awakening. All other changes are impermanent. Even the gods, for example, are usually reborn in hell after death.
The suttas do say that the single fleeting mind-moment at the time of death isn’t the only thing that determines rebirth, but the suttas actually contradict this idea that what matters is what the person does frequently or habitually. SN 42.8 can be of great usage here:
“Sir, this is how the Jain Ñātika teaches his disciples: ‘Everyone who kills a living creature, steals, commits sexual misconduct, or lies goes to a place of loss, to hell. You’re led on by what you usually live by.’ This is how the Jain Ñātika teaches his disciples.”
“‘You’re led on by what you usually live by’: if this were true, then, according to what the Jain Ñātika says, no-one would go to a place of loss, to hell.
What do you think, chief? Take a person who kills living creatures. If we compare periods of time during the day and night, which is more frequent: the occasions when they’re killing or when they’re not killing?”
“The occasions when they’re killing are less frequent, while the occasions when they’re not killing are more frequent.”
“‘You’re led on by what you usually live by’: if this were true, then, according to what the Jain ascetic of the Ñātika clan says, no-one would go to a place of loss, to hell.
Basically, if we’re going to interpret rebirth as if it worked according to what people did most of the time, then no body would go to lower realms. What happens is that there are actions that are kammically more powerful than others, so analyzing time or overall quality of the mind is not very appropriate.
What I’m feeling is that you’re applying two different standards. When the suttas disagreed with science, you chose scientific or historical evidence over religious intuition. However, now that the suttas point to a view that seems counterintuitive to you, you’re chosing intuition over scientific or historical evidence. The difference here is only what type of intuition is present in each case.
Now we’re getting at the root of the discussion. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like you got some intuitions concerning what being an arahat is like and what they would do, but when the suttas show the Buddha engaging in actions or teaching things that contradict your intuition, you prefer to take the text as a later development instead of reformulating your previous conception of awakening. Am I right? But if we know anything about the Buddha, it must be informed by the suttas and the tradition since we can’t turn back time to talk to him directly. In this case, our best chance is to trust the earliest sources, and if our understanding of the Dhamma requires giving up too many early suttas and even denying historical evidence, then that’s good sign it’s time to reformulate our views.
What intellectual proliferation? Sotapanna, anantarika-kamma, and eons of suffering in hell were found by the Buddha through insight, so when he taught them he was basing himself on first-hand experience. Therefore, it can be called neither intellectual nor proliferation. Also, learning about them doesn’t necessarily lead to proliferation. Of course, you can philosophically speculate about them, but the goal should be to use these concepts to motivate and practice the path.
It’s kinda disappointing to see how powerless anatta is in changing an arahat’s usage of language, actually. The Buddha would call himself a Buddha. Arahats in general used the words “I,” “me,” and “mine” all the time just like anybody. The Buddha would refer to “his” previous lives and describe them in first person even though there is no soul moving from one life to the next. Conceptual labels seem to be the least of the problems, imho. They can, and will, be used throughout the whole path over and over again, so that’s no good evidence to reject the four levels of awakening. In fact, labels can be used as merely expressions, without implying a sense of self.
I’m not trying to unequivocally ‘reject’ any of the concepts in the suttas, but rather, I’m trying to develop a perspective of detached cognition towards them. That approach seems to improve my practice and overall sense of mental well-being, but that is only my personal experience.
If you want to believe in certain concepts in the suttas, such as the four levels of enlightenment, and you feel it’s helping your practice, then who am I to contradict your experience?
It seems to me there are a lot of people trying to make excuses for the Buddha. That’s completely unnecessary.
First, the Buddha was not a god. He was not a deity. He was not all-knowing.
He was a human being.
He was a human being, living within time and space, inserted in a very specific culture, in a very specific part of the world, at a very specific time - exactly like every single one of us.
What he found was the end of dukkha, and he himself insisted on that: “what I teach is dukkha and the cessation of dukkha.”
Everything not related to dukkha and the cessation of dukkha is completely irrelevant. The idea that a man, by sitting under a tree in deep jhana, somehow acquired all the knowledge in the universe is, to say the least, delusional.
Besides, “delusion” (assuming moha, not avijja), as far as I understand it currently, is not seeing reality in the terms of anicca, dukkha, and anatta. It has nothing to do with the workings of objective reality.
“So, you’re saying the Buddha could be wrong?”
Of course. He could be wrong about anything not related to the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, jhana, dukkha, and so on. On these topics, however, I don’t think there’s a single flaw in the Buddha’s teachings. The man really did find the end of suffering, and he was awesome enough to go through the trouble of teaching it so all of us could benefit.
One last thing: as our dearest Bhikkhu Bodhi points out in his wonderful work ‘In the Buddha’s Words’:
“The Buddha did not write down any of his teachings, nor were his teachings recorded in writing by his disciples. […]The records of his teaching that we have do not come from his own pen or from transcriptions made by those who heard the teaching from him, but from monastic councils held after his parinibbana. It is unlikely that the teaching that derive from these councils reproduce the Buddha’s words verbatim. The Buddha must have spoken spontaneously and elaborated upon his themes in countless ways in response to the varied needs of those who sought his guidane. Preserving by oral transmission such a vast and diverse range of material would have bordered on the impossible.”
The explanation goes on in detail, and it’s very much worth reading it all.
Then there’s the question: do you need to know that Einstein’s Theory of Relativity corrected what we know about Mercury’s orbit to use a GPS? Do you need to know anything related to asymptotic freedom or quantum chromodynamics to use a cellphone?
The answer is no.
The Buddha taught dukkha and the cessation of dukkha. What we have access to are simplified, edited versions of his teachings, of the events surrounding him, and especially of his personality and mode of being. How much was left out? How much was forgotten? How much was exaggerated? How much was changed? And so on.
We don’t know. We might never know.
And yet, as we can see in the examples of the great Ajahns, the Path is very much alive and completely operational. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the path could be simplified even further nowadays. If we find a way to teach the Dhamma in modern terms, without clinging to translations of texts that are over two millennia old, but focusing on the meaning behind the words, we might contribute to a mass awakening.
God knows we need one.
Conditioned Arising is about causal condition (paṭicca). It connects also with the notion of dhātu ‘the realm of nature’ associated with various meditative states/stages in the Dhātu Samyutta of SN/SA. E.g. SN 14.11 = SA 456 mentions the seven dhātus (pp. 143-4):
Pages 143-5 from The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism Choong Mun-keat 2000.pdf (216.8 KB)
The several realms of nature associated with various meditative states are clearly relevant to the development of the universe in Early Buddhism.
Unless one has a time machine, it’s really not that easy to conclude that one knows for certain that no other civilization arose on earth before the current one we are in.
Did archeologists dig up every part of earth down a lot of meters? And there’s erosion and plate tectonics which can erase super old records of civilization’s mark on earth. Did we venture to the bottom of the oceans of the world and systematically, large scale dig the ocean floor for possible remains of ancient civilizations? The ocean floor is even more geologically active to be recycled faster than the land masses.
Have you hang out in r/pastlives subreddit and asked? I had someone told me that they had such memories.
It’s kind of easy to think why it’s not mentioned even when remembered. It’s not as interesting as the past lives where the audiences can get some knowledge and culture of what it’s like.