I’m not sure if you can find many things. I write here about some problems not only inside that paper but about the understanding of the notion of Omniscience in a general way.
In that paper there is the assumption of Omniscience like a faculty to know everything at any moment, which is requested to the Buddha. However, this is not exactly in that way. Or better to say, it cannot be in that way.
Ancients believed their gods were omniscient, “all-seeing”. However, at same time those omniscient gods always had some “tricky” characteristic which can help us to understand a more exact sense for this notion.
Zeus was omniscient although Prometheus tricked him, without being aware of. The Maya gods also failed in several attempts to create good humans. Shiva didn’t know about Daksha intentions. Odin was all-knowing, except the future. Also, the God of the Bible didn’t know some things. Sure everybody knows this episode:
- But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
- “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
- And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
well, maybe all those omniscient gods were experiencing some failure. And they were kept in that failed situation across the times because their keepers were idiots. Or perhaps it happens that we don’t understand the issue.
The ancients were no stupid people, and their myths and omniscient gods were endowed with some apparent failure in their powers and Omni-X perfections, in order to be free of fundamental contradictions about the nature of knowledge, the human freedom, and similar problems
It could deserve a long discussion or perhaps a whole book. A little summary can be remembering the efforts to build a notion of an Omniscience in “total terms”, it belongs to the evolution of the abrahamic religions. That image is quite rooted in our western culture inheritance when we think in that.
The Christian theology on Omniscience was not definitely developed until St.Thomas. It was needed because the many unavoidable heretics who, until year 1.000 ace, they asked too much things in the subject. However, despite the efforts to build an strong dialectic device, the contradictions remained. Many refutations appeared by means Ockham and others. At the end it was leaved in that difficult position for the philosophical side while their faith was another issue. Similar efforts appeared inside Islam with Avicenna and others
Need to say, these discussions about the Omniscience of the gods in the western panorame are older and going until the Greeks. However, the assumption of an unique notion of Omniscience in absolutist terms, it belongs to the later medieval inheritance.
Authors of that paper, V.Analayo and R.Gombrich, they are managing that notion to understand the Omniscience of the Buddha. And they request that to be accomplished. And because they don’t develop a previous analysis of that notion and meanings,one should conclude this notion was present before dealing with the subject in that paper.
The main fundamental contradiction for that wrong notion, is when that absolutist notion of Omniscience will mean the denying of any knowledge. Because no knowledge is possible when no new thing can be known. When all to be knowed is already known, How any knowledge can arise?
If this point is difficult to catch, maybe it can be easier if we use the Space. As Space and Time are implicit in the nature of knowledge, we can use any of both with a fruitful result for the understanding.
Therefore, imagine if somebody could be able to be in all places at all moments (which would be Omnipresence). In such situation, that person couldn’t be able to be in any place at all. Because at any moment no place would be available for that being: all the conceivable space would be already occupied by that being. Where could he go?. Nowhere. Therefore, in the same premise of the notion we find the absurdity of the question. The presupposition is the negation of the possibility to formulate the question.
So a similar scenery inhabits the mind of somebody who ask about the Omniscience of the Buddha in these absolute terms. When that person see how his impossible imaginations are not accomplished, he could imagine the Buddha failed to be Omniscient or he was a failed teacher. However, it only means there is a logical failure in accomplishing his wrong imagination. Which is quite common, btw.
Inside that paper we read how the analysis of V.Analayo jumps like a frog by several key episodes in different Suttas, which are very useful to understand the notion of Omniscience in the Buddhist doctrine. However, as also happen in some video-games, the frog jumps here and there while she forget to catch many important gifts.
At the end of that jumping session, we find a conclusion about the later disciples of the Sangha “had the emotional need” to build a new Buddha like a superman.
Historically, maybe some disciples had such emotional profile (something which should be proved), although it sounds too simplistic, precisely in that type of people as an argument to be taken in a serious way. Also, one should be aware this paper follows a thread in where the author, as we can read in the “Dawn of Abhidhamma”, writes about the Omniscience of the Buddha was a later addition, and it is associated with a probable lack of authority of the Abhidhamma as a later invention. He writes:
“The elevation of the Buddha to the position of an omniscient teacher and the attempt to develop a comprehensive map through the Abhidharma are interdependent. Both are to some degree a response to the emotional need of the disciples at a time when the teacher had passed away. They provide a sense of assurance direly needed in the struggle to ensure the survival of the fledgling community of Buddhist disciples in their competition with outsiders.”
this in fact the same emotional argument attributed to the ancient ariya disciples that we read in that paper.
The real problem is when he and others seems to request the Buddha a wrong notion of Omniscience which previously inhabits their minds. Despite we cannot find inside the Suttas a justification for such notion of Omniscience which belongs to other theological-cultural lands.
In this sense, the paper is anyway interesting because we can detect at least one forgotten big gift, which IMHO is a key to understand the issue in philosophical terms. This is when the Buddha said that “there is no recluse or brahmin able to know all the things at only one moment”. This is very important to clarify the notion of Buddhist Omniscience precisely because it is devoid of logical incoherences regarding the nature of knowledge.
To put more reasons in that direction, also one can read what happens with the great omniscient gods of the Buddhist Suttas. And here we find how the coherence was kept. In example, when we read in the Brahmajala Sutta from the Digha Nikaya, about how the all-seeing Brahma enter to inhabit an empty palace (an atta home) ready for him. And how later, in the Kevuddha Sutta, Brahma was not able to answer some questions from a curious monk, and Brahma himself send him again to the Buddha so He can satisfy their doubts.
In these Suttas we can check that same pattern that we find in all the ancients gods and myths managed by the ancients to avoid the incoherences of Omniscience for the nature of knowledge and other problems. In fact, without the present modern dialectic sophistication, they were more clever than many of our modern scholars. These apparent failures of Omniscience attributed to these beings precisely are what can make real that notion. The disappointment can be only for our own presuppositions and wrong fantasies on the subject. As happens if we request the elephants should fly.
Omniscience can be a real notion while it appears respecting the nature of knowledge. As I wrote before, that paper reveals a philosophical contradiction in the same notion which belongs to other theological domains. In those domains these contradictions are surpassed in the religious side by means their faith. Although in the philosophical side, logically the contradictions persist.
This philosophical side is the only available for other contexts like the Buddhist one. Because obviously we are not Christians. And there is not available exit for that notion of Omniscience requested in that paper when it reveals impossible in its same premise.
If you are interested in this subject there are discussions in the Abhidhamma literature. Also you can follow the V.Analayo book “Dawn of the Abhidhamma” to extract sources and read it with a critique mind. Although if you have an open mind, there is one book from another Buddhist tradition which is very interesting to get many inputs for philosophical questions. The book is titled “Omniscience and the Rethoric of Reason”, Sara L. McClintock. In this book there is a very long discussion between Santarksita and Kamalasila, both famous Tibetan teachers, around the Omniscience of the Buddha.
Despite it belongs to the Tibetan tradition, the problems around the notion of Omniscience and the nature of knowledge are common for any Buddhist tradition. And this book contains a lot of useful questions and hypothesis. Until the exhaustion, may I add.
It seems the Theravada tradition is less labyrinthine in this topic. Perhaps because pragmatic reasons, because we cannot know how works the Omniscience at all. Although at least we can know what it cannot be until a good extent. This book is a little jewel in the topic. It is dense although full of useful contents.
This message is quite long and quite chaotic. The topic would deserve more space, although as I have wrote in the beginning, I fear one cannot be confident to find many things when we are checking the absence of a previous analysis of this notion before declaring the emotional needs or the later inventions as its cause.
