What is the meaning of lokāyata?

Q & A
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Lokāyata, literally, “the extent of the world”, is rendered as “cosmology” by Bhante Sujato. He makes his case in a note to DN 1 as follows:

“Cosmology” (lokāyata) in early Buddhist texts is not, as it later became known, the heterodox school of materialism. Rather, it was a branch of worldly knowledge within regular Vedic studies concerned with the nature and extent of the world and how this may be known (AN 9.38, SN 12.48).

SN 12.48 has the following to say about lokāyata:

“Mister Gotama, does all exist?” “‘All exists’: this is the oldest cosmology, brahmin.”

“Then does all not exist?” “‘All does not exist’: this is the second cosmology.

“Well, is all a unity?” “‘All is a unity’: this is the third cosmology.

“Then is all a plurality?” “‘All is a plurality’: this is the fourth cosmology.

My question is, is this line of questioning best called “cosmology”? Or might it be better to call it “philosophy”?

My question is motivated by my trying to properly render the following passage from the Vinaya Piṭaka:

At that time the monks from the group of six were learning cosmology (lokāyata). People complained and criticized them, “They’re just like householders who indulge in worldly pleasures!” The monks heard the complaints of those lay people and told the Buddha.

“Is there any growth and fulfillment on this spiritual path, monks, for one who sees cosmology as the essence?”

“No, Sir.”

“Would anyone who sees this spiritual path as the essence learn cosmology?”

“No.”

“You shouldn’t learn cosmology. If you do, you commit an offense of wrong conduct.”

The monks from the group of six taught cosmology. People complained and criticized them, “They’re just like householders who indulge in worldly pleasures!” They told the Buddha.

“You shouldn’t teach cosmology. If you do, you commit an offense of wrong conduct.”

The context suggests to me that lokāyata here must be broader than cosmology. First, lay people complain, saying that this is the sort of thing that householders indulge in. It is no doubt commonplace for householders to philosophise, but less clear that they would indulge in cosmology or cosmological speculations. Second, we have the argument used by the Buddha that lokāyata is not compatible with a proper understanding of the Dhamma. Again, it seems to me that philosophical speculation is more to the point than cosmology.

Any thoughts, anyone? Bhante @Sujato, are you able to through a bit more light on your rendering, please?

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I see Ven. Bodhi uses ‘cosmology’ as well, and glosses from Spk: “lokāyata is an inferior, tainted speculative view that appears great and deep”

I wonder if ‘cosmology’ seems a bit grand, and if something more like ‘world view’ captures the flavor better.
Or perhaps, slightly cynically, ‘metaphysical speculation’.

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I believe I read in Jayatilike somewhere that the commentaries gloss this as “casuistry” which is actually a lovely representation of the idea (of taking the “cases” of for e.g annihilation, or e.g plurality, or etc and extending them to an explanation of the whole of the world/cosmos), only brought low by the fact that outside of a seminary or a fairly advanced and specific philosophy class, no English speaker is likely to have any idea what it means!

Philosophy is no good IMV because “love of wisdom” might as well be the definition of the whole of Buddhism, and much of Buddhism is precisely a philosophical refutation of the possibility of a successful Lokāyata

Metaphysics is probably still to broad in that it fails to capture the essential pattern of taking some case within the world (i.e the case of things “being” or the case of things “not-being” or the case of “unity” or the case of “plurarlity”) and claiming and defending the notion that this case within the world is also the case for the world as a whole.

“world-theorizing” is clunky.

It’s a tricky one.

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absolutely agree with this, although I think it runs into issues with “view” already being used for a different root, and again not really capturing what was essential about the practice of the Lokāyata, again seeming to involve not just a “world view” but a “world view” formed around an ideal phenomena or characteristic of the world (being, non-being, unity, plurality, etc) that was then defended in debate against opponents taking up a differing ideal in a contest of wits (again this is all based of Jayatilike).

This would make of the “cosmologists” people who enjoyed debating speculative metaphysics about the essence of the world (and presumably the person) and explains how it is a diversion or hobby amongst some, not in keeping with the spiritual path.

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disagreed, as Weltanschauung is already a technical term in Western philosophy with a rather different meaning. As Bhante often says: the hardest part of translating isn’t the Pāḷi: it’s knowing the English :sweat_smile:

Seems much closer to the mark :blush:

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This book is a good source of information on all things Lokāyata

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According to SN35.85 = SA 232, the Buddha focuses on the sentient being (P. satta, Skt. sattva), not cosmology, when looking at the world (loka). That is, loka refers to the six sense-spheres (saḷāyatana).

Cf. pp. 13-15 (particularly p. 15), Choong Mun-keat, The Notion of Emptiness in Early Buddhism.

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‘Speculative ontology’? ‘Empiricism’? Just throwing it out there

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Metaphysical speculation sounds about right, even though physical speculation is what is often meant (hence cosmology), because it presumably also includes speculation about the nature of the soul, which can be conceived as part of the world but not usually considered part of cosmology.

Philosophy or world view does sound too broad.

This coming from the perspective of a philosophy professor quite bereft of Pali, Bhante, so please take with a grain of salt.

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Thanks everyone for your comments!

Cosmology is “grand”! Yes, in more than one way!

But seriously, the questions at SN 12.48 do not, to my mind, have much to do with cosmology in the modern sense. In the modern era, cosmology has steered away from being largely speculative to becoming a science with telescopes and all that. Clearly there is still a theoretical side to cosmology, but it is constrained by our observations of the universe. I doubt modern cosmology has much to say about the questions posed at SN 12.48.

Perhaps “cosmology” would have been an appropriate rendering a few hundred years ago when it was still largely a theoretical discipline, and not really distinct from philosophy. Yet even this, to my mind, is a stretch. In the modern era “cosmology” is outrightly misleading. Bhante @Sujato, I am trying to bait you! :slight_smile:

It does, but it is still too broad. I agree with @Khemarato.bhikkhu that

I think it would be appropriate to use “world view” or Weltanschauung - in its common rather than philosophical meaning - in connection with right view/wrong view.

Yes, I think this is closer to the mark. The questions at SN 12.48 are clearly ontological in nature. “Metaphysics” is better than “philosophy” because it is more specific. However, I do think we can leave out the “speculation” part. Metaphysics is by definition speculative.

Yes, this is a problem! Even “metaphysics” is not a reader-friendly word.

They are ontological claims about the world, and such fit within metaphysics. I don’t think it really matters how you arrive at your position.

The title puts me off. In the suttas lokāyata does not mean materialism, as the quote from SN 12.48 shows. And so I am not sure how relevant this study is going to be. Anyway, thanks!

Yes. There is no clear distinction between our experience of the world and the world in itself, if there is a such a thing. Rendering lokāyata as metaphysics or ontology would still be acceptable, I think.

Thanks so much for chiming in. It is good to get the views of professionals! You may be pleased to know that I have arrived at much the same conclusion as you have.

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I dunno @Brahmali , the suttas make ontological claims about the world all the time, like that “becoming depends on grasping and grasping depends on craving”.

These are precisely metaphysical claims in the strict sense in that they posit (relative) grounds for facts about the world that transcend or underwrite mere “rupa”.

The how is more or less everything in DN1 for example, with the claim being that the heterodoxies arrive at their speculative views via inference from repeated experience (of that which is eternal, temporal, both, neither, etc)

The Buddha’s central claim in that sutta is that they have understood how inferences are drawn from repeated contact with phenomena and how such inferences are transcended or relativized by understanding how inferences arise, how they are dismissed, their appeal, their limitation and their transcendence or the path from their introduction to their elimination, all of which constitutes the Buddhas “freedom” form such (speculative) inferences.

This can of course be read epistemologically, but it can also be read, and is read, metaphysically, for example in the picture of the world that posits an indeterminate and unfathomable number of past lives.

The Lokāyata, of which I think we can take DN1 as being exemplars, and following Jayatilike as being pre- or proto-materialists, are all doing a very specific thing that the Buddha seems to take issue with, that is they take a particular case (for eg the observation that they have recalled one million past lives, or the observation that physical people die and rot to nothing) and from repeated “contact” with the given phenomena, improperly or unjustifiably draw the inference that this characteristic of phenomena must be universal.

I think “world-theorists” or “universal-theorists” might capture the sense best, but idk, I think that using “metaphysics” ends up taking a pejorative 19th century sense of metaphysics that is not reflective of contemporary metaphysics and is ultimately misleading about both the Pali and the English words.

The Buddha, at least in all the DN and almost all the MN sources, explicitly rejects the legitimacy of drawing an infinite or universal conclusion from a finite (repeated) number of experiences (contacts).

This is a metaphysical argument through and through, predating but very much recalling Hume by 2000 years. SO.

Because the Buddhist position does not draw universal inferences from finite/local instances, rather it applies a process to any given instance that defines it purely in terms of other local instances, presence, absence, type (flavor), limitation (danger) and elimination (escape).

This “localization” of logic and discourse looks a lot not just like Hume, but like some of his heirs in the 19th and 20th century moments in the foundations of logic and mathematics sometimes called “intuitionists” or “constructivists”.

Again you can argue (and people do) till your blue in the face about exactly where “epistemology” ends and “metaphysics” starts, but at least since the fall of the logical positivists and radical empiricists etc it has been widely recognized that the claim that metaphysics is meaningless is itself a metaphysical claim, and I for one do not see the Buddha making any such claim in the early material, rather he puts forward a chastened, controlled, metaphysics/logic/epistemology that is exactly what the Lokāyata aught to endorse if they didn’t make the error of drawing universals from particulars.

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It seems to me that we largely agree. The important distinction is between speculation and valid insight, and I would say metaphysics belongs to the former, at least in the way the term is commonly used. OED gives the following definition of metaphysics:

abstract theory with no basis in reality

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This definition, given by wikipedia, may be helpful:

“ Metaphysics is traditionally understood as a study of mind-independent features of reality”

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OED gives a poor definition then.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy gives:

It is not easy to say what metaphysics is. Ancient and Medieval philosophers might have said that metaphysics was, like chemistry or astrology, to be defined by its subject-matter: metaphysics was the “science” that studied “being as such” or “the first causes of things” or “things that do not change”. It is no longer possible to define metaphysics that way, for two reasons. First, a philosopher who denied the existence of those things that had once been seen as constituting the subject-matter of metaphysics—first causes or unchanging things—would now be considered to be making thereby a metaphysical assertion. Second, there are many philosophical problems that are now considered to be metaphysical problems (or at least partly metaphysical problems) that are in no way related to first causes or unchanging things—the problem of free will, for example, or the problem of the mental and the physical.

The EBT would clearly fall into the metaphysical category of “philosopher who denied the existence of those things that had once been seen as constituting the subject-matter of metaphysics—first causes or unchanging things”.

It does no service to the discipline of contemporary metaphysics to confuse it with the 19th century pariah alluded to by your quote from the OED.

agasin, Wikepedia gives:

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is often characterized as first philosophy , implying that it is more fundamental than other forms of philosophical inquiry. Metaphysics is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some modern theorists understand it as an inquiry into the conceptual schemes that underlie human thought and experience.

Wikipedia also points out that;

" Ontology – a central branch of metaphysics. Ontology is the study of the nature of being, becoming, existence, or reality"

surely statements of the sort;

Choices are a condition for consciousness. …
saṅkhārapaccayā viññāṇaṁ …pe…

That is how this entire mass of suffering originates.
evametassa kevalassa dukkhakkhandhassa samudayo hoti.

‘Origination, origination.’ Such was the vision, knowledge, wisdom, realization, and light that arose in me regarding teachings not learned before from another.
‘Samudayo, samudayo’ti kho me, bhikkhave, pubbe ananussutesu dhammesu cakkhuṁ udapādi, ñāṇaṁ udapādi, paññā udapādi, vijjā udapādi, āloko udapādi.

Then it occurred to me:
Tassa mayhaṁ, bhikkhave, etadahosi:

‘When what doesn’t exist is there no old age and death? When what ceases do old age and death cease?’
‘kimhi nu kho asati jarāmaraṇaṁ na hoti, kissa nirodhā jarāmaraṇanirodho’ti?

Then, through rational application of mind, I comprehended with wisdom:
Tassa mayhaṁ, bhikkhave, yoniso manasikārā ahu paññāya abhisamayo:

‘When rebirth doesn’t exist there’s no old age and death. When rebirth ceases, old age and death cease.’
‘jātiyā kho asati jarāmaraṇaṁ na hoti, jātinirodhā jarāmaraṇanirodho’ti.

Then it occurred to me:
Tassa mayhaṁ, bhikkhave, etadahosi:

‘When what doesn’t exist is there no rebirth? …
‘kimhi nu kho asati jāti na hoti …pe…

continued existence …
bhavo …

grasping …
upādānaṁ …

craving …
SN12.10

are ontological and therefore metaphysical statements?

other parts of Metaphysics clearly addressed in the EBT include;

Mereotopology – deals with the relations among wholes, parts, parts of parts, and the boundaries between parts.

Philosophical theology – branch of theology and metaphysics that uses philosophical methods in developing or analyzing theological concepts.

Philosophy of causation

Realism and anti-realism

All of these are canvased and discussed in the EBT.

“Metaphysics” is too broad.

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These are the philosophical understanding of metaphysics, not the popular understanding. I don’t want my translation to be understood only by people with an appreciation of modern philosophy. I want to use a common language. In this sense, the OED’s definition is perfectly fine. As you would know, the OED is based on actual historical usage.

But I am beginning to think metaphysics will not do as a rendering. It’s just too specialist. Perhaps “cosmological theories” will do.

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Personally I agree that this sutta SN12.48 clearly deals with metaphysics/ontology. I also don’t think that these words are particularly obscure. Please note that people who read suttas (religious texts) in English are most likely educated enough to know what metaphysics is, or to be able to google it. :slight_smile:

I think cosmology nowadays as you said is science with telescopes, based on materialistic view etc.

btw. there is nothing wrong with metaphysics. I know that you don’t like to think of Buddha as a philosopher and say that he was a psychologist etc., but in reality Buddha was the ultimate philosopher and metaphysician, who in DO gave actual correct metaphysical theory of reality - something that other philosophers also tried to do, but never reached such depth and accuracy IMHO.

Good example is Heraclitus, who’s metaphysical theory is very close to the one of the Buddha… he didn’t realise there is possibility of cessation (3rd noble truth), but his theory of anicca is pretty much the same as that of the Buddha (that everything changes in reality except the principle of change).

Sure, if you understand philosophy as modern academics then sure, it is completely different. But if you take philosophers like Socrates, Plato etc., then Buddha was just on a way higher level of the similar thing. Many of the ancient and medieval philosophers were mystics and spiritual practitioners, just not as deeply disciplined and accomplished like the Buddha.

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Yes, I think this is often true. The suttas, however, were usually spoken to ordinary people. The way the Buddha spoke would have reflected this. I believe we should try to replicate the use of ordinary language in translation. Ideally everyone would then be able to understand. We might even attract a new crowd to read these precious ancient texts.

In addition, the Vinaya Piṭaka, which is what I am translating, is meant for monastics, all monastics. Because monastics come from all walks of life, many of whom will have English as a second language, we again need texts that use an ordinary language. We need to understand what we are supposed to do!

I will use “cosmological theories” for now. Although lokāyata are metaphysical theories, they have a cosmological bent, with loka meaning, essentially, the cosmos. As always, however, this is subject to further contemplation and change! :slight_smile:

Thanks for your comment!

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“Cosmological theories” sounds great IMHO. Theoretical-and-eyebrow-raising enough that the lay people back then and now would criticize it :smile:

Yes, please, and thank you! It is the personal preference of my friend and I that modern translations to be just a little bit more readable by limiting the usage of esoteric terms (as much as we appreciate accuracy and sophisticated words!). Having to go back-and-forth between reading a translation and Merriam-Webster, just to get through a couple of paragraphs, then ended up having to reread the sutta to comprehend it in full, require a lot of motivation (but still super grateful for all of the flavorful translations that we have today and the amount of tedious, arduous, laborious effort needed to make them :pray:).

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I believe this is nigh impossible. The problem arises that something you find easily readable is probably so inaccurate to reflect what the Pāli term actually suggests.

Studying a new field, whether art, science, philosophy, etc, you’re going to have to learn new words that reflect the worldview of that particular topic. In almost no case are you going to stumble upon a specific term in Buddhadharma English and know exactly what it means - nor should that be the goal of the translation. Terms, when translated, should help you remember what the term actually represents. That’s my humble 2cents as another budding translator. :slight_smile:

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How about this: “the theory of the cosmos”?

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