I had a little realisation yesterday and it might help to clarify things, at least for me to try to write it here. I’m really not interested in the kind of right/wrong debate, with the long form rebuttals that take an hour just to read, that is once again emerging here. It’s just pointless bickering.
I’m not a Theravādin. Never have been. I’m not attracted to Theravāda Buddhism in the slightest. I think monasticism and all that goes with it is simply silly. I don’t recognise the status distinctions that Theravādins insist on. I don’t use ecclesiastical titles or bow to any human being. I have never read Pāli with Theravāda orthodoxy in mind. I read the texts to listen to what they say to me, not to look for confirmation of my beliefs. Perhaps unsurprisingly, my beliefs have had to change, often quite substantially.
One of the main changes, for me, has been a move away from the metaphysically centred discourse that dominates this discussion. I don’t deny that ancient Buddhists had metaphysical commitments (they believed in karma and rebirth after all). But the general gist of the Pāḷi texts is a discussion about sensory experience; how it arises and especially how it ceases; and the soteriological implications of being able to make sensory experience cease. As Bodhi said:
The world with which the Buddha’s teaching is principally concerned is ‘the world of experience,’ and even the objective world is of interest only to the extent that it serves as that necessary external condition for experience. (Bodhi Connected Discourses 2000, 394, n.182).
I take this to be prima facie true. And it is amply confirmed in other Pāli suttas. Like the Sabba Sutta, like the Kaccānagotta Sutta. And I’ve written a great deal about this so I won’t repeat it all. But suffice to say that Pāḷi Buddhism was already pluralistic and this is one thread (still visible in the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā btw).
So when I read rūpa, I’m just not thinking in terms of Theravāda orthodoxy. I’m not even thinking in the same general intellectual framework as the rest of you: you are all oriented towards khandhas as an ontology because you believe that “body” must find a place in the khandhas. I disagree with this premise and that affects the kinds of inferences I make compared to those who agree with it.
Call me a Sabba Sutta Buddhist. I take the Sabba Sutta to be a face value statement of how some early Buddhists thought. And I think like them, too. All that is of interest here is sensory experience arising and especially ceasing. And in this context the most fundamental fact about rūpa is that it is the “object” of the visual sense, but in the same way that sound is the object of the aural sense, i.e. it is the sound the object makes, not the object itself. And once you grant this distinction, then logic takes you in a different direction. As I say: rūpa is to the eye, as sound is to the ear. Anachronistically, we can say, rūpa is just reflected light. But I believe “appearance” is the more accurate to the time and place in this framework.
I don’t believe the body was intended to be part of the khandhas. However, if you want to read rūpa as “body” that’s fine in your worldview. It almost works if you squint, and it keeps you inside the lines of Theravāda. Which is what most of you seem to want after all, especially the bhikkhus.
My contributions seem to stir up a hornet’s nest every time which seems to be a result of my being uninterested in your Theravāda orthodoxy. And there tends to be a pile on as many of you find faults at the same time. After a while I’m inundated with fairly hostile criticism. I’m sure finding fault with my ideas is great fun for yous. But it’s not much fun for me, especially when multiple people go on the attack. It seems like bullying, to be honest. It feels like I’m being hounded.
This is not my community. You make that clear, again and again. This is “bhikkhu country”. Fine. I’ll go.