SuttaCentral
Venerables & friends,
When i try to study the elements as taught by the lord Buddha, i struggle to understand why the fire element is considered primary. When the body made of the four elements dies, warmth gets dissipated but it does not return to some fire element in nature - unlike whatever is solid, gaseous or liquid.
What is it that i am missing?
The fire element exists in decomposing bodies - compost is almost always warm when tended properly, even in the middle of winter. The sheer increase of numbers of bacteria, micro/macropods and other lifeforms “born by humidity” depending on a bodies death might be this warmth? I work with compost everyday since we compost humanure. Things look inert to us but a tbsp of compost can contain billions of lifeforms.
Warmth / Vitality depend on each other, like the flame / light of a candle. This was recent in my MN reading ( less than MN42 where I’m at)…
There can be the elements without a living factor, but there can’t be life without the fire element already intergrated into form, not as the external fire we know fire as.
I suppose the fire element’s closest equivalent in modern terms is energy, which we perceive as heat and temperature. Energy is transmitted between atoms by photons, which causes the atoms to increase in their vibrations and random motion. Atoms also emit energy as photons at wavelengths determined by the amount of energy released and their element. When they are hot enough, those photons enter the visible spectrum and we see fire.
Ancient people, however, didn’t think of fire in that way. In the Vedic tradition fire was identical to the god Agni, who was the priest who delivered human sacrifices to the other gods after they were consumed in a ritual fire. That ritual fire was Agni himself to Vedic priests. The physical and spiritual worlds overlapped in the minds of ancient, animistic societies. So, yes, they considered it a primary element like the others. Fire was special to them since it was so important to provide warmth, cooking, and performing sacrifices to the gods, etc. Many aspects of fire lend it a magical or spiritual character - it appears out of nowhere and disappear again. It’s heat sustains living things, and it was closely associated with the sun.
The short answer is because it is.
Referring the the essay by Mahathera Ledi Sayadaw, “Niyama-Dipani or Manual of Cosmoc Order” (found in the compendium, “The Manuals of Buddhism by Mahathera Ledi Sayadaw”, edited and published by Mother Ayeyarwaddy Publishing House, Yangon, Myanmar, 2004. Most translations by PTS.).
Sayadaw refers to the ancient Five Laws (Niyama) of Cosmic Order the exposition of which, in various forms, even predates the arrival of the Vedic Aryans into the Indus valley. These Five Laws are: 1. Utu-Niyama:: the caloric order, 2. Bija-niyama: the germinal order, 3. Kamma-Niyama: the moral order, 4. Citta-niyama: the psychical order, and 5. Dhamma-niyama: the sequence of natural phenomena.
The answer to your question lies in the elaboration of Utu-niyama which, briefly, states that in fire all things are created and in fire all things are destroyed.
I wish to not copy the extended discussion of Utu-niyama word for word in order to avoid a TL:DNR. But here goes something: "Utu is that which manifests, brings forth, generates what is ungenerated, develops that which is generated. But what is it? It is the specific quality we know as heat, the bare primary quality of fire. In this connection let us consider the four ‘great essentials’ of matter. [Discussion of the four great elements ensues] Furthermore, all these elements, whilst persisting under the stated conditions, increase in magnitude when there is efficient [sic] cause for increase, and decrease in magnitude when there is an efficient [sic] cause for decrease. …[This is elaborated upon]… Heat in its primal form is the germinator of all material phenomena. And this element or primal form of heat is just utu. Conversely, as we have said above, utu is the primal form of fire. Now let us return to the ‘caloric order’. The caloric order is the fixed process that determines the fourfold sucession of evolution, continuance, revolution (i.e. dissolution), and void of the universe… (The Manuals of Buddhism, op. cit. pp 178-180).
Sorry, where does it say that the fire element is primary?
This is how it is translated in to the suttas. For example, it SN12.2:
The four principal states, and form derived from the four principal states.
Cattāro ca mahābhūtā, catunnañca mahābhūtānaṁ upādāyarūpaṁ.
This is called form.
Idaṁ vuccati rūpaṁ
We also have SN22.79:
"Mendicants, an unlearned ordinary person might become disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed from this body made up of the four principal states.
"assutavā, bhikkhave, puthujjano imasmiṁ cātumahābhūtikasmiṁ kāyasmiṁ nibbindeyyapi virajjeyyapi vimucceyyapi
Why is that?
Taṁ kissa hetu?
This body made up of the four principal states is seen to accumulate and disperse, to be taken up and laid to rest.
Dissati, bhikkhave, imassa cātumahābhūtikassa kāyassa ācayopi apacayopi ādānampi nikkhepanampi.
That’s why an unlearned ordinary person might become disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed from it.
Tasmā tatrāssutavā puthujjano nibbindeyyapi virajjeyyapi vimucceyyapi.
It is worth noting that cātumahābhūtika is translated as composed of four primary states; made of the four great elements. I can understand how the fire element can function as a determinant of form. For example, in SN22.79 we read:
And why do you call it form?
Kiñca, bhikkhave, rūpaṁ vadetha?
It’s deformed; that’s why it’s called ‘form’.
Ruppatīti kho, bhikkhave, tasmā 'rūpan’ti vuccati.
Deformed by what?
Kena ruppati?
Deformed by cold, heat, hunger, and thirst, and deformed by the touch of flies, mosquitoes, wind, sun, and reptiles.
Sītenapi ruppati, uṇhenapi ruppati, jighacchāyapi ruppati, pipāsāyapi ruppati, ḍaṁsamakasavātātapasarīsapasamphassenapi ruppati.
Cold and heat can form water into ice, steam or liquid. As we are accustomed to water in the liquid state, it become a principle of liquidity. Fire in that sense is a determinant rather than a principle.
The implications of above might explain why the fire element is treated differently. In anthropology, discovering fire is considered a turning point in human development. In mythology, it was given to humans by a rebellion god. In religion, taking it as a principle state is associated with pain (niraya) but using it as a tool can generate warmth and light. In behaviorism and psychology, humans are the only known species that smokes, which indicates the human ability to think and behave in symbolic ways.
In MN43, it is used to differeniate a dead person from someone who attains the cessation of perception and feelings:
“What’s the difference between someone who has passed away and a mendicant who has attained the cessation of perception and feeling?”
"Yvāyaṁ, āvuso, mato kālaṅkato, yo cāyaṁ bhikkhu saññāvedayitanirodhaṁ samāpanno—imesaṁ kiṁ nānākaraṇan"ti?
"When someone dies, their physical, verbal, and mental processes have ceased and stilled; their vitality is spent; their warmth is dissipated; and their faculties have disintegrated.
"Yvāyaṁ, āvuso, mato kālaṅkato tassa kāyasaṅkhārā niruddhā paṭippassaddhā, vacīsaṅkhārā niruddhā paṭippassaddhā, cittasaṅkhārā niruddhā paṭippassaddhā, āyu parikkhīṇo, usmā vūpasantā, indriyāni paribhinnāni.
When a mendicant has attained the cessation of perception and feeling, their physical, verbal, and mental processes have ceased and stilled. But their vitality is not spent; their warmth is not dissipated; and their faculties are very clear.
Yo cāyaṁ bhikkhu saññāvedayitanirodhaṁ samāpanno tassapi kāyasaṅkhārā niruddhā paṭippassaddhā, vacīsaṅkhārā niruddhā paṭippassaddhā, cittasaṅkhārā niruddhā paṭippassaddhā, āyu na parikkhīṇo, usmā avūpasantā, indriyāni vippasannāni.
The above made me wonder what makes the fire a primary element or principle as per my explanation in the OP.
OK, your question made it sound like you thought that the fire element was somehow above or more important than the other four elements. It’s not.
Honestly you shouldn’t get caught up on the word “primary”.
These four elements (earth, water, fire, air) are just one way of looking at reality. If you explore the medical sciences from the time of the Buddha you see that these elements, along with space, form the foundation for understanding disease and health. They are part of a package. You can’t describe everything without including fire/heat.
I do find reasons as to why it is treated differently. The intuition that fire does not belong to nature somehow dictates the human relationship with the elements - turning it into one of control. In terms of perception and feeling, the self functions as if the sense of the world must lie outside the world. In MN140, fire is linked to the digestion of food and in MN50, Mara entered Ven. Moggallana’s intestine.
I do not know if Mara is linked to the fire element in the suttas, but similar notions can be found in other religions.
You seem to have a knack for linking completely unrelated things.