Early Buddhism: Some recent misconceptions

·期刊原文

Early Buddhism: Some recent misconceptions

By Henry Cruise

Philosophy East and West

Volume 33, no.2 (April, 1983) P.149-165

(C) by University of Hawaii Press

P.149

One of the most recent major writers on Buddhism,
David Kalupahana, has likened the approach of Early
Buddhists(1) to that of the Logical Positivists:

... the Buddha confined himself to what is
empirically given. Following a method comparable to
that adopted by the Logical Positivists, he
sometimes resorted to linguistic analysis and appeal
to experience to demonstrate the futility of
metaphysics.(2)

Whether the Buddha demonstrated the futility of
metaphysics will not be our concern here. Our main
concern will be to elucidate

I. The "empiricist" approach of Early Buddhism, and
II. What this approach lead to in the areas of

1. Causation
2. "Things" involved in causation (dharmas)
3. Nirvaa.na, Self, and the "unanswered" questions.

I. EARLY BUDDHIST EMPIRICISM

Early Buddhism rejected both authority and reason
(specifically a priori reasoning), either separate
or together, as sufficient bases for knowledge. They
were rejected because, according to Jayatilleke,
"beliefs based on authority or reason may turn out
to be true or false."(3)

Authority and/or reason may give us true
beliefs, but that they are true is not guaranteed by
their being derived from reason and/or authority.
What guarantees the truth of a belief, and what
constitutes knowledge, is that one has "'personal
knowledge'... of it, taking into account the views
of the wise."(4)

"Personal knowledge" of something (say 'P')
would seem to be a necessary but not always
sufficient condition for one to be said to have
knowledge of 'P'. That a view is held by the wise
does not appear to be a sufficient condition for one
to be able to claim a view as knowledge, but it
would seem in some cases that it is a necessary
condition. How should we take this?

It should be noted that there would be a problem
with the above if too much emphasis were placed on
"the wise," for then one would be left with the
question of how one can tell who are the wise, other
than by ascertaining who possesses knowledge, and
consequently be open to a vicious circularity. Given
this and the already mentioned Buddhist rejection of
authority, it seems reasonable to take the reference
to "the wise" as a reminder to check one's personal
knowledge with the personal knowledge of others.

The important question that arises is, what is
to count as "personal knowledge"? Both Kalupahana
and Jayatilleke agree that "personal knowledge" is
acquired through perception, ordinary and
extra-sensory, as well as by inference derived from
such perceptions.

There are said to be six forms of higher
knowledge (abhi~n~naa) one can acquire

P.150

on reaching the fourth jhaana, or stage, of
meditation. These are:

(i) iddhividhaa--psychokinesis
(ii) dibbasotadhaatu--clairaudience
(iii) cetopariya~naa.na--telephathic knowledge of
various kinds
(iv) pubbenivaasaanussatin~naana-knowledge of past
lives
(v) dibbacakkhu--knowledge of the decease and
arising of beings
(vi) aasavakkhaya~naa.na--knowledge of the
destruction of the defiling impulses.(5)

As Jayatilleke points out,(6) (i) is a matter of
"knowing how", rather than "knowing that." We
should also note that the rest, (ii)-(vi), are not
different forms of knowledge per se, but different
forms of perception.

I may have the ability to perceive that I have
destroyed the defiling impulses, but, that I have so
destroyed them, and further, knonw that I have,
would appear to be separate things again. Similarly,
I may have the ability to read minds, hear voices at
a distance, and so forth, but this is distinct from
any particular piece of knowledge I may acquire from
such abilities.(7)

Jayatilleke claims, justifiably I think, that
Buddhism "makes less obvious the gap between the
empirical and the mystical."(8) The powers mentioned
above are not seen in any way as ''supernatural,"
and the conditions for their attainment are listed
by the Buddha. Both Jayatilleke and Kalupahana spend
time discussing these psychic powers, but they
ignore the higher stages (5th-9th) of Buddhist
meditation and their role in Buddhist knowledge;
Although these higher stages do not appear necessary
for the verification of the four noble truths, they
do seem to play a part in Buddhist knowledge,
indeed, they did seem to have a part to play in the
Buddha's own attainment of nibbaana.(9)

The major point that is to be drawn from the
above is that the early Buddhist view of
verification and knowledge is not as naive as
Kalupahana's comparison of it with Logical
Positivism would lead us to believe.(10)

The empiricism of Early Buddhism is like that of
the Logical Positivists in that they both rejected a
priori reasoning and authority as sources of
knowledge, and tried to ground knowledge in
experience. But this is where the similarity ends;
there are major differences that highlight the
superficiality of the similarities so far cited.

Those Logical Positivists that were interested
in knowledge (rather than in demarcation criteria
for linguistic meaningfulness) were interested in it
as a public endeavour, "science." Knowledge was seen
as somehow being public property which a society
built on. On the other hand, knowledge is a private
thing for Early Buddhism. Even belief in the Four
Noble Truths does not count as knowledge unless one
has investigated them personally, verified them for
oneself. For Early Buddhism, "public knowledge"
would be a contradiction in terms.

Secondly, for Early Buddhism, grounding
knowledge in experience was not a straightforward
matter whereby this or that experience verified this
or that proposition in a clearcut manner. Rather, it
was a matter of observing or seeing "with proper
understanding."(11) This not only points one to the
fact that people

P.151

can misperceive; it is suggestive of a more
significant point, that people can and do
misinterpret what they observe consistently.

The abovementioned injunction to check one's
personal knowledge can be seen as a caution stemming
from the above fact. So, too, can the frequently
stated claim in the Nikaayas--that people hold views
because of certain likes and dislikes--be seen as
another facet (in fact the cause) of people
consistently misinterpreting the world.

Thirdly, not only did Early Buddhism consider
the mind not to be a "blank slate" upon which the
world wrote, it insisted that the "contents" of the
mind were legitimate "objects" of observation.
Seeing and knowing the world correctly involved
eliminating the "theoryladenness" of our
observations, and the only way one could eliminate
such colouring of our experiences was to be aware of
our likes and dislikes, the theories or views we
held to. Thoughts, feelings, habitual tendencies,
and so forth were all things we could and should
observe and come to see and know correctly.

The "empiricism" of Early Buddhism is aptly
encapsulated by Edward Conze when he claims that
"like is known by like" in that there is a
"hierarchy of insights dependent on spiritual
maturity."(12) However, Conze does not see this as
empirical at all; indeed, he views this as a
demarcation between the spiritual and the empirical.
I think he is right in that it is at this point that
Early Buddhism diverges from the Logical
Positivists, as it does take into account the above
mentioned phenomena. But I think he is wrong in
asserting that Early Buddhism is unempirical. It
just had a more sophisticated idea of what it is to
be empirical than had the Logical Positivists, the
latter being Conze's yardstick of "empiricism."

There is nothing methodologically wrong with the
fact that special training is needed in order for
people to have certain obsevaations and
understandings. Nor is a training procedure unsound
because not all people are suited to, capable of, or
interested in that training. If this were the case
then modern physics would be in disrepute. To
someone who objected to this line of argument by
saying that modern physics is involved in "public"
(read "objective") observations, while Buddhists
indulge in "private" (read "subjective,"
"unscientific") observations, Early Buddhism would
reply: "All experiences are 'subjective', all
knowledge is 'personal knowledge'."

The above is not meant to be a full blown
defence of Early Buddhist empiricism; it is more a
sketch of how one can defend such a position, and an
indication of where I think the important issues
lie. The main point is that there is a case to be
made that Early Buddhism was empirical, in the way
that modern science might be said to be empirical.
but not in the way in which "the Lord Buddha finds
himself conscripted as a supporter of the British
Philosophical tradition of empiricism'."(13)

With the above as background, I now propose to
examine some other areas central to Early Buddhism.

P.152

II

Causation

It would appear that it is easier to say what the
Early Buddhist theory of causation is not, or what
it rejects, than what it actually proposes. Many of
the scholars working in this area introduce the
topic by detailing those ideas about causation that
Early Buddhism repudiates (that is, cause through/by
self other than self-caused, self and other-caused,
and the thesis that there is no causation). These
authors explain why such ideas were rejected (not
only because they were supposedly factually false,
but because they lead to the heretical views of
either eternalism or annihilationism), and then
state that Buddhism treads a middle path between
these extremes. But what is this theory that treads
a middle path?

Kalupahana believes that the Early Buddhist
theory "transcends the commonsense notion"(14) where
the "commonsense notion" is one that distinguishes
causes and condition.(15)

While recognizing several factors that are
necessary to produce an effect, it does not
select one from a set of jointly sufficient
conditions and present it as the cause of the
effect. In speaking of causation, it recognizes
a system whose parts are mutually dependent.(16)

Jayatilleke holds that the Early Buddhist view
of causation "resembles the [modern day] Regularity
theory except for the fact that it speaks of...
empirical necessity."(17) Kalupahana disagrees with
this latter point, and offers evidence in the form
of a quotation from Buddhaghosa on 'necessity' which
he thinks shows that 'necessity' just points to the
existence of regularity:

"Since there is no failure, even for a moment,
to produce the events that arise when the
conditions come together, there is said to be
'necessity.'"(18)

However, Kalupahana does not believe that this
leaves Early Buddhism with a regularity theory or
something closely akin to one.(19) In support of
this he says:

"It is true that Early Buddhism depended on
experience (i.e., 'contact,' phassa, ch'u or
'sensation, vedanaa, shou) to verify the nature
of reality. But such experience was not
considered momentary.... Therefore, the causal
connection itself becomes an object of
experience."(20)

Furthermore he cites the statement "On the arising
of this, that arises" and the use of "dependent
origination" to describe causation, as evidence of
an attempt to bring the notion of "productivity"
into causation.

Although the use of these terms and aphorisms
might be seen as suggestive of more than regularity,
it is difficult to understand what Kalupahana means
by "productivity." Kalupahana himself points out in
other parts of his book that Early Buddhism did not
want to bring "metaphysical" concepts of "power to
produce, " and so forth into causation.(21)
Jayatilleke also notes the same point:

P.153

"The Buddhist theory is... empirical since it
spoke only of observable causes without any
metaphysical pre-suppositions of any substrata
behind them."(22)

Given this, it would seem that the most
plausible support Kalupahana has for holding that
Early Buddhist views on causation were not ones of
mere constant conjunction, akin to a regularity
theory, is that Early Buddhists felt that they could
perceive causal connections. However, nothing we
have looked at so far would seem to imply that Early
Buddhists could, or claimed they could, see causal
connections. Kalupahana's point is that since Early
Buddhists were able to resort to the sixfold higher
knowledge, they could "perceive the relationship
between two events that are separated in time and
space."(23) But it is not at all obvious that one
can perceive relationships, at least in the way that
it is not obvious that "one is able to perceive the
causal connection between two events that succeed
one another without a pause or temporal gap (e.g.,
the connection between touching a live electric wire
and getting a shock)."(24) Kalupahana claims one can
see this connection, and with "higher knowledge" one
can see in a similar fashion other connections.

Taking Kalupahana's example, one can perceive
the touching of the wire and the shock, but whether
one can perceive anything over and above this, a
"causal connection," is doubtful.(25) But this claim
appears even more dubious when one remembers that
Early Buddhists do not, as Kalupahana himself notes,
"select one from a set of jointly sufficient
conditions and present it as the cause of the
effect."(26)

In the above example, it would not just be the
touching of the wire that caused the shock. The
"cause" would be a set of jointly sufficient
conditions: touching the wire with bare hands, you
being "grounded," the wire connected to a generator
that is functioning, and so on.

It might seem plausible to assert that one can
see the connection between a cause and an effect:

A------causes------B

But, it does not appear possible that one can view
the relationship between mutually dependent
conditions and an effect:

It is this latter view of causation that the Early
Buddhists held.

All the above would seem to argue for our
rejecting Kalupahana's claim that Early Buddhists
could perceive causal connections, and that their
theory of causation was something more than a
regularity theory. However, despite this, I

P.154

think Kalupahana is correct, or at least his two
conclusions are correct; the reasons he gives for
his conclusions seem to me less than adequate in
places.

The first point to be made is that Jayatilleke
is right in claiming that Early Buddhism spoke of
necessity, and it is prejudice that makes Kalupahana
attempt twisting the idea of "necessity"' into the
idea of regularity.(27) This is a crucial point to
make, for if one allows that there are no empirical
or "natural" necessities, one gives the "in
principle argument'' of Hume (mentioned by Siderits
in my note 25) a foothold.

Hume himself acknowledged that we have the
"impression" that we experience causal connections,
but argues that since "empirical necessities" are
impossible in principle, we must be mistaken, and
these "impressions" must somehow have to do with
habit and expectations, and they could only arise
through our projecting them (albeit unconsciously)
onto the world. An Early Buddhist would have
rejected this however, for he would have given
priority to experience and claimed that the "in
principle" argument is sophistry that needs to be
rejected in favour of experience. We have already
noted that Early Buddhism considered the observation
of "internal" objects of experience, thoughts,
feelings, perceptions, and so forth as important as
the observation of "external" objects. Because of
this, Early Buddhists would have had little reason
to doubt that they did experience causal
connections. The arising of pain when one puts one's
hand into a fire is not just constant conjunction,
it is an experience of the causal phenomenon "fire"
in relation to what it is to be the causal
phenomenon "human being." We all experience this
causal connection. We shall say more about this in
discussing dharmas; for the moment, I would like to
say a bit more about the Humean arguments that might
make what we have already said somewhat more
palatable.

It might be thought that the rejection of Hume's
argument on the above grounds is cavalier, if not
foolhardy, even if it is consistent with the Early
Buddhist epistemological position. Some might say
that if this is what the Early Buddhist
epistemological stance condones, so much the worse
for that stance. However, the work of some modern
day philosophers, particularly that of Saul Kripke,
(28) should make the above seem less cavalier,
particularly in relation to the idea that empirical
necessities exist. In summarizing Kripke's views
Stephen P. Schwartz says:

Kripke claims that most recent and contemporary
philosophers have failed to distinguish the
metaphysical notion of necessity from the
epistemological notion of prioricity and the
linguistic notion of analyticity. If "necessarily
true" means true in all possible worlds and a priori
means knowable independently of experience, then we
are talking about two very different notions, and
there is no reason to suppose that their extensions
have to be the same... Of course, the claim that
there can be synthetic necessary propositions is
startling to most contemporary analytic
philosophers, but given the persuasiveness of
Kripke's arguments and examples the claim must be
taken seriously.(29)

P.155

This is not the place to discuss Kripke's
arguments; the main point is that Hume's thesis that
there are no such things as "empirical necessities"
is arguably false, and out experiencing such things
need not be an illusion, a product of habit and
expectations. The other strand of Hume's argument,
that any single experience is insufficient in giving
us experience of "causal powers, " is equally
suspect. Not only is it tainted with the
identification of necessity with a prioricity,(30)
but some authors also have argued that:

... Hume's conclusion is already presupposed by his
atomistic epistemic assumptions. Since he takes
punciform and atomistic sensations as epistemically
basic, it would be impossible for any single
impression to be the original of any relational
concept, let alone the original of 'the action of
causal powers'. This epistemic assumption, however,
seems more dubious to us than the fact of the
ordinary experience of the action of causal
powers....(31)

As we have already noted, Early Buddhists did
not hold such epistemic assumptions, and would
consequently not be swayed by the above Humean
argument, nor be inclined to view their observation
of things in its light.

"Things" Involved in Causation (Dharmas)

All dhammas (Pali) are said to be characterised by:

(a) impermanence (anicca)
(b) unsatisfactoriness (dukkha)
(c) nonsubstantiality (anatta).

Kalupahana sees (a) as the essential
characteristic and (b) and (c) as corollaries. He
also believes that for Early Buddhism the claim "all
things are impermanent'' is not based on the view
that things are momentary, which Kalupahana says
would be seen as a speculative metaphysical opinion
by Early Buddhists, but on an empirical claim about
objects of experience, which can be verified by
seeing that all things are subject to birth, decay,
and destruction, arising and passing away.

The term dhamma, when applied to empirical
things, is always used in the sense of 'causally
conditioned dhammas' (paticcasamupanna-dhamma)."(32)

Putting these ideas about "things" and
"causation" together, we see that for the Early
Buddhists all things are conditioned, and all
conditions are themselves conditioned. It is
essential that we keep this in mind, for in my
opinion it is central to Early Buddhism. "Causation"
is not one thing and "things involved in causation"
another; we can differentiate them for ease of
discussion, but ontologically the are not separate
or separable.

'Things' are not static, 'things' to which
something happens or which "bump into" other things;
to be a thing is to be a causal thing, to be
conditioned and a condition. This is an active,
dynamic understanding of causation and of causal

P.156

things. Thus a fire is not one thing and heat
another, something a fire "has." "Fire" is a name we
give a complex causal phenomenon that has certain
conditions for its arising and certain necessary
effects. To perceive a fire is to perceive a causal
phenomenon, to perceive causal powers. For this
reason it would be impossible for Early Buddhists to
hold a regularity theory of causation along the
lines suggested by Hume, in that "we may define a
cause to be an object followed by another, and where
all objects, similar to the first, are followed by
objects similar to the second."(33) An Early
Buddhist would understand the notion of one object
being similar to another as one causal phenomenon
being similar to another. For us to perceive two
objects as similar is for us to be in similar causal
relationships with two assumedly similar causal
phenomena.

Our earlier criticism of Kalupahana gained its
persuasiveness because "things" were understood as
"static things'' which were somehow mysteriously
"joined" in a causal situation. However, once we
switch to looking at "things" as "causal" things,
as complex causal phenomena for which we have
certain names, the mystery disappears.

This also explains why the Early Buddhists were
reluctant to allow ideas of "power to produce" into
the area of causation, for this brings us back to
the static notion of things, which supposedly
possess these powers. To repeat, a thing is nothing
other than a 'causal thing', a causal phenomenon. As
Harre and Madden point out: "The exercise of causal
power or efficacy is nothing in general; it is
precisely the relationship of production between
specific and potent objects... and revealed in the
experience of daily life...."(34)

These views are, I think, a direct result of the
Early Buddhist theory of knowledge. This empirical
attitude also leads to a concentration on the
practical aspects of attaining nibbaana, the
conditions that need to be met for its attainment,
while excluding all 'speculative' views. The major
drawback of this attitude is that Early Buddhism
does not, and indeed cannot, give causal
explanations about much that we experience.

Causal explanations involve indulging in
speculative views, theorising about causal
mechanisms, suggesting hypothetical, theoretical
entities. Early Buddhism cannot give such
explanations. They often list conditions that need
to be satisfied before certain effects occur, but
they rarely are in a position to discuss what is
significant about such conditions such that they do
give rise to effects. The distinction is between
being told that x, y, z, and so on need to be done
before one's car will start, and being told what it
is about x, y, z, and so on that causes one's car to
start. The former is a listing of conditions, the
latter an attempt at a causal explanation.

This is a problem I see with most Early Buddhist
"explanations." Jayatilleke notes this about one
aspect of Early Buddhism when he says, with regard
to the ability to remember past lives, that "the
pali Nikaaya's are apparently not interested in
accounting for this memory by a theory, but in
merely stating that it is a faculty that can be
evoked.'"(35) In many ways, however, this is not a
disaster

P.157

for Early Buddhism, as it was not interested in
explaining everything; rather it was concerned with
explaining suffering and its cessation, and in this
area it did provide explanations.

Nirvaa.na, Self, and the Unanswered Questions

Our discussion of causation should lead us to expect
Early Buddhism to see the "self" (or at least a
certain understanding of the self) as a causal
phenomenon. Kalupahana succinctly summarises this
view saying:

According to him (the Buddha) this (the concept
'man') was merely a 'bundle of perceptions', or a
group of aggregates, not discrete and discontinuous,
but connected by way of causation.(36)

Somewhat reluctantly he also notes that one
could take the stance that:

What the Buddha denied was that the five aggregates
(khandaa) are the permanent and eternal 'self'
(aatman) and that the Buddha did not actually deny a
'self' over and above, or not identical with, the
aggregates.(37)

According to Kalupahana this leads us to the
problem of the unanswered questions. I do not wish
to discuss these in detail yet, but we can note that
Kalupahana's position is that:

to the Buddha. the 'self', whether it is identical
with the body or different from the body, is a
metaphysical entity. It is a metaphysical entity
solely because it is unverifiable, either through
sense perception or through extrasensory perception.
In short, it is not given in experience (avisaya),
and therefore the Buddha left these questions
undeclared.(38)

Kalupahana disagrees with any suggestion that
Early Buddhism implies the existence of a
"transcendent" self, or a "transcendental" nirvaa.na
state. It is the latter claim I wish to tackle
first. Kalupahana's first step in arguing for this
is to claim that Early Buddhism equates on the one
hand,

(i) Nirvaa.na obtained in this life, WITH,
(ii) Nirvaa.na substrate left (saupaadisesa); while
on the other hand he equace,
(III) Nirvaa.na after death, WITH,
(iv) Nirvaa.na substrate (anupaadisesa).(39)

That is, Kalupahana is taking the meaning of
saupaadisesa (and its negation) , literally.
Saupaadisesa meaning "having substratum of life
remaining"(40) is understood by Kalupahana to refer
to bodily existence, and not to something like
"potential for rebirth'' or "having inclination or
craving for life remaining."

The point of these distinctions is that, given
them, Kalupahana can claim that there is nothing
essentially transcendental about one who has
attained nirvaa.na in this life. Further, the only
reason we can say nothing about a dead arahant
(which for Kalupahana is the same as one who has
attained nirvaa.na without substrate) is that one
should not speculate about unverifiable matters.
That is, no experience

P.158

of such a one can be had through any form of
perception, and the nature of one who has attained
nirvaa.na without substrate is not unverifiable
because he is transcendent, and so forth, but
because such a one is dead and beyond empirical
investigation.

The above argument seems to me to be
questionable on a number of points. First, it is not
obvious that one can make the equations (i) = (ii)
and (iii) = (iv), above (that is, nirvaa.na with
substrate left, meaning "nirvaa.na in this life" and
nirvaa.na without substrate, meaning "nirvaa.na
after death") . If in fact this cannot be
substantiated, then Kalupahana can no longer
maintain that the only reason one cannot say
anything about one who has attained nirvaa.na
without substrate is because such a one is dead, and
as such, beyond empirical investigation.

In the "Discourse on the Relays of Chariots"
(Rathaviniitasutta), in the Majjhima Nikaaya, it is
said that one lives under the Buddha for Utter
Nibbaana without attachment (hereafter U.N.W.A.),
and U.N.W.A. is said to be none of:

(a) purity of moral habit,
(b) purity of mind,
(c) purity of view,
(d) purity through crossing over doubt,
(e) purity of knowledge and insight into the way and
what is not the way,
(f) purity of knowledge and insight into the course,
(g) purity arising from knowledge and insight.(41)

Each of these states is said to be a purpose for
the next state (presumably each is a necessary
condition for progressing to the next); for example,
"purity of moral habit" is a purpose for (necessary
for) "purity of mind." A footnote referring to the
list above explains:

Whatever is purity of mind, this is the goal
(attha), this the peak, this the culmination of
purity of moral habit.(42)

The main thing to note about the above is that
there is no mention of death as a necessary
condition for U.N.W.A. (and (a)--(g) does seem to be
a list of necessary conditions), and the last
"state" in the list, (g), is said to be a purpose
for U.N.W.A. Also we should note that "without
attachment" is a translation of anupaadaa, which the
Pali-English Dictionary says is a gerund of an +
upaadiyati, the latter meaning "to take hold of, to
grasp, cling to, show attachment (to the world)."
This suggests a less literal translation of
anupaadisesa (without substrate), than that given by
Kalupahana, referred to above.

Moreover, the following quotations from Early
Buddhist texts seem to deny Kalupahana's equations,
(i) = (ii), (iii) = (iv); in these texts it is
implied that U.N.W.A. can be attained in this life.
At the end of the "Discourse of Kii.taagiri"
(Kii.taagirisutta) the Buddha says:

For a disciple who has faith in the Teacher's
instructions and lives in unison with it, monks, one
of two fruits is to be expected: profound knowledge
here and now, or, if there is any basis (for rebirth
remaining), the state of no-return.(43)

P.159

The Buddha expands on this at the end of "The
Parable of the Water-Snake" (Alagadduupamasutta).
Here, after rejecting the view that he is a
nihilist, the Buddha lists six possibilities for his
followers. It is worthwhile quoting the significant
parts of the first two at length:

(1) ... those monks who are perfected ones, the
cankers destroyed, who have lived the life, done
what has to be done, laid down the burden,
attained their own goal, the fetter of becoming
utterly destroyed, and who are by perfect
profound knowledge--the track of these cannot be
discerned.

(2) ... those monks in whom the five fetters binding
the lower (shore) are got rid of--all these are
of spontaneous uprising, they are attainers of
utter nibbaana there, not liable to return from
that world.(44)

The Buddha goes on to list four more groups of
attainment for his followers, briefly these are:

(3) once returners, not liable to downfall
(4) bound for awakening
(5) if striving for faith, bound for awakening
(6) bound for heaven. (It is to be noted that monks
are mentioned in all but the last group.)

Keeping in mind that the above is a descending
order of accomplishment (from 1-6), we can note some
of the similarities and differences between the
first two groups. It is stated that the second group
are non-returners, consequently the first must also
be non-returners. The reason for this is that since
the above is a descending order, whatever a lower
group has attained a higher will have attained and
gone beyond. This is one similarity; the differences
are:

1st GROUP 2nd GROUP
Have perfect profound No mention of yet having
knowledge and are freed perfect profound knowledge
and freedom
--------------------------------------------------
Said to be untraceable (tracks Said to attain utter nibbaana
cannot be discerned) there (after death ?)

It seems clear from the above that attaining the
state of non-returner, and having the knowledge that
one is a non-returner, is not the attainment of the
goal of Buddhism (although it is an indication that
one is near the goal, certain to attain it).

In contrast to the "lower" second group, the
first has attained U.N.W.A. here, in this life. This
is a direct contradiction of Kalupahana's claim.
What also is clear is that knowledge is required for
U.N.W.A. (Recall (a)-(g) above, especially (g).)

That knowledge is a requirement for U.N.W.A.
should not come as a surprise, as the Buddhists hold
that ultimately it is ignorance that is responsible
for craving, grasping, old age, death, and so forth.
That in the end ignorance can

P.160

only be eradicated by knowledge seems entirely
consistent and to be expected. We might surmise that
for some, death can aid in acquiring such knowledge
and thus attaining U.N.W.A. But death is not the
only way to such knowledge, and indeed it is the
"perfect profound knowledge" that is important for
U.N.W.A., not death.

If one can attain U.N.W.A. in this life, then
Kalupahana can no longer maintain that the only
reason the Buddha said little about such a one is
that such a one is beyond the scope of
knowledge--because he is dead--and the Buddha did
not want to involve himself in mere speculation.

It is my contention that there is little
essential difference between a living and a dead
Tathaagata (one who has attained U.N.W.A.), and the
reason the Buddha said little about such a being
must be seen not only as because of the scope and
limits of knowledge, but, more importantly, because
of the "nature" of one who has attained U.N.W.A.
Problems about this "nature" will have little to do
with problems of tracing one who has died.

The same conclusion, that there is no essential
difference between a living and a dead Tathaagata,
is held by Rune Johansson.(45) Kalupahana's
judgement on this conclusion is that

this is a very superficial comparison.... A living
arahant cannot be known easily by an ordinary
person, nor even gods (Indra, Brahma or Prajaapati-
M 1.40), because his ways are very different from
their own.... But an arahant can be known by another
arahant. On the other hand, the nature of a dead
arahant cannot be known even by an arahant.(46)

In this instance I think Kalupahana slides over
quite a few problems much too quickly and ends up
with a number of erroneous claims. The full excerpt
from the Majjhima Nikaaya used by Kalupahana in the
above is:

Monks, when a monk's mind is free thus (by getting
rid of the conceit 'I am') the devas--those with
Indra, those with Brahmaa, those with Pajaapati, do
not succeed in their search if they think: 'This is
the discriminative consciousness attached to the
Tathaagata. What is the reason for this?(47)

The reason given is certainly not the one
presented by Kalupahana above ("his ways are very
different from their own"); it is (Horner:)(48) "I
say here and now that a Tathaagata is untraceable."
(Johansson:)(49) "I say that a Tathaagata cannot be
known even in this life."

Given this. together with our previous
discussion, it seems clear that a Tathaagata cannot
be known if looked for by another. Further, a
Tathaagata cannot be known by another, because of
his nature and not for any straight-forward
empirical reason, such as his being dead.

What are we to say about Kalupahana's other
point, that an arahant can be known by another
arahant in this life? It would appear that if this
were true, one could not reasonably keep the
position I have been advocating.

I would like to tackle this by noting that there
are at least three things we could mean by the above
claim:
P.161

(i) That an arahant can be known to be an arahant,
by another arahant. That is, an arahant can know
that another is an arahant, in this life.

(ii) That an arahant can know the nature of another
who is known to be an arahant (i,e, (i)), in
this life.

(iii) That an arahant can have direct perception of
the arahant nature of another arahant, in this
life.

I wish to argue that (i) and (ii) are not
problems for the sort of position I wish to advance.
These are not problematic, for, remembering that
Early Buddhism allowed inference based on experience
as a form of knowledge, (i) and (ii) could be ture,
and it also could be true that a living arahant is
unknowable by another.

I could know (i) through inference, and partly
because an arahant is unknowable by another. For
example:

Premise(1) Normal people have certain identifiable
characteristics, egos--the conceit "I
am"--habits of mind, and so forth,

Premise(2) The only people who do not have such are
arahants--known from my own experience if
I am an arahant.

Premise (3) This person has no such
characteristics-known by psychic powers.

Therefore this person is known by me to be an
arahant.

Similarly, if I am an arahant, and assumedly
know my "own" nature, I can therefore, knowing (i),
inferentially know (ii), given that all arahants
have a similar, or the same, nature.

Which of (i), (ii), or (iii) is claimed by Early
Buddhism? It is difficult to know where Kalupahana's
claim comes from, for he cites no texts at this
point in his work, but the section of Johansson's
book he is commenting on does mention a text. It
says:

The venerable Maha-Moggollana saw with his mind
(ceto) that their minds (citta) were freed without
basis (for rebirth).(50)

This is certainly compatible with holding that
an arahant is unknowable by another. I can know that
someone is freed (for example, by seeing an empty
prison cell) and "know" where he is (that is,
outside the cell) without implying I can trace or
directly perceive where, or what, he is.

Since a living arahant has been claimed to be
unknowable by another, it should follow that a dead
arahant is also. However, Johansson cites texts
which he interprets as indicating that: at least the
Buddha himself claimed the ability to identify and
report about dead arahants.... the Buddha himself
was able to trace an arahant after death.(51)

I think Johansson is drawing the wrong
conclusions from these texts, mainly because he does
not make the sort of distinctions just made (that
is, (i), (ii), (iii) above). for there is a world of
difference between being able to report about, on
the one hand, and identify or trace, on the other.
The texts he cites relate how the Buddha reported
that certain monks who died in a fire had attained
parinibbaana.

P.162

If an arahant is unknowable by another, one
could still know inferentially that someone had
attained nibbaana. That is, the Buddha could report
that someone had attained nibbaana, without it being
the case that he could directly perceive ("know"
directly) the nature of his being. The Buddha could
know, through inference, that someone had attained
nibbaana after death because:

(a) only beings who have attained nibbana are not
reborn (known through experience and inference),

(b) a certain being cannot be seen to arise (known
through psychic power--clairvoyance--the ability
to see the demise and arising of beings),

(c) one can 'know', and report, that this certain
being had attained nibbaana.

We can pause here and note some of the
conclusions we have come to:

(1) Although Early Buddhism rejected a concept of
self composed of the aggregates, there seem to
be suggestions that there is in some sense a
self, but not an "I."

(2) For Early Buddhism, nibbaana is something more
than just escape from the cycle of rebirth, more
than becoming a non-returner. Further, attaining
nibbaana is intimately entwined with knowledge.

(3) U.N.W.A. is attainable in this life, and it
would appear to be an untraceable "state," that
is, (it is) not directly perceivable by another.

What we cannot conclude from the above
discussion is that Early Buddhism has implications
of the existence of a "transcendental" nibbaana
state, if we understand by "transcendental" the
claim that it is a state that is not knowable. We
have seen that this state is not directly
perceivable by another, but it is "knowable'' if we
follow Early Buddhist epistemological criteria. That
is, this state is knowable in the sense that all
things are, in that we can have personal experience
of it, we can experience nibbaana. It is only when
one unconsciously imports foreign epistemological
criteria that the debate about a transcendental
state of nibbaana arises. Nibbaana is a
transcendental state, if by this we mean a state
that surpasses others; it is not if we mean a state
that is beyond knowledge, and hold consistently to
the Early Buddhist criteria for knowledge. It is
neither sufficient(52) nor necessary that something
be able to be talked about, or described, before
that something comes into the province of human
knowledge, as far as the Early Buddhists are
concerned. It is the Buddha's refusal to talk about,
or describe, the nibbaana state and the Tathaagata
that sparks much of the debate about
"transcendentalism" in Early Buddhism.

With this discussion in mind we can now approach
those unanswered questions of the Buddha that have
to do with the Tathaagata. When asked to reply to
the statements:

a) The saint exists after death
b) The saint does not exist after death

P.163

c) The saint does and does not exist after death
d) The saint neither exists nor does not exist after
death

the Buddha responded by saying "I do not say this"
to each in turn.

I think we have said enough to enable us to
dismiss Kalupahana's explanation of the Buddha's
silence on these questions. Kalupahana's explanation
was that "the silence of the Buddha was due to his
awareness of the limitations of empiricism, rather
than concepts."(53) Is then the silence of the
Buddha as a response to the questions about the
Tathaagata due to the limitations of concepts as
Murti and Jayatilleke amongst others believe? I
think it is.

If we look at the context of the text in which
these questions are put to the Buddha by
Vacchalotta, in the "Discourse to the Vacchagotta on
Fire," we find the Buddha saying "does not apply" to
each of the alternatives (a--d) and then saying:
"this dhamma is deep, difficult to see, difficult to
understand, peaceful, excellent, beyond
dialectic."(54) By way of explanation the Buddha
asks Vaccha what Vaccha would say on being asked
which direction (North, South, East, or West) the
fire in front of him went on being quenched. The
answer to be given to this question containing four
alternatives (North, South, East, West) is the same
as the one that is appropriate in response to the
questions about the Tathaagata, which also entertain
four alternatives (a--d), that answer being, the
question does not apply.

The point of the analogy would seem to be that
in both cases, what is assumed by the very framing
of the question ('existence' applying to the
Tathaagata, spatial direction' applying to a spent
fire) is unacceptable. So much so that to deny the
question is not enough; one must deny the assumption
in the question, and one does this by rejecting the
question as not legitimate. These are sometimes
called category mistakes, but all questions of the
sort we have been talking about need not involve
category mistakes; for example, ''Have you stopped
beating your wife?" is a question that might fit
into the category of those which involve assumptions
one wants to reject, but does not involve a category
mistake.

All this clearly suggests that the silence of
the Buddha is likely to be due to the lack of
adequate concepts, due to the uncharacterizable,
non-describable (but not non-knowable) nature of the
Tathaagata. However, in a recent article Mark
Siderits asserts that while we can see the
unanswered questions as pointing to the Buddha being
aware that a category mistake is being made, we
should also note that: "the Buddha is not saying
that the state of the arahat after death is
indescribable or ineffable. This possibility is
represented by the fourth of the four alternatives,
which the Buddha rejected."(55)

It seems to me that Siderits is plainly
mistaken, The fourth alternative does not cover the
possibility that the arahat after death is
indescribable: it covers the possibility that after
death the arahat is describable neither as existing
nor as not existing. That is, accepting the fourth
alternative does not entail that one accept that the
arahat is indescribable after death, it entails that
one accept that the

P.164

arahat is not describable as either existing or not
existing after death. One could still accept that
the arahat was not describable in these terms and at
the same time hold that the arahat was describable
some other way. So rejecting the fourth alternative
is not tantamount to rejecting indescribability per
se. The point of merit in Siderits' paper is the
suggestion that the case for the indescribability of
the arahat after death cannot rest just on the
Buddha's silence in the face of these questions. And
my point is that it does not. Gathering together the
salient features of the above discussion, the
substance of my argument is:

(1) Early Buddhism placed fundamental importance on
knowledge, understood as personal experience,
and so forth. One could accept the Four Noble
Truths as truths, but one did not know them
until one had personal experience of them, and
it was knowledge of them that was essentially
important.

(2) A certain sort of theory of meaning seems to
follow from this, and it would appear to be
something like that suggested by Jayatilleke,
namely, that if one had no personal knowledge of
the things referred to in a statement, then that
statement was meaningless to one.

(3) If one accepts, both that nibbaana is a "state"
that surpasses others, and that one can only
have knowledge of it by experiencing it for
oneself, that it is unlike all other "states,"
then:

(4) All statements about that "state" will be
meaningless to one, if one has not experienced
that "state."

Now someone might point out in reply to this
that what the above argues for is not the
indescribability of the nibbaana state but its
indescribability to all those who have not
experienced it, and there may be true--but to us
meaningless--descriptions of the state, so that it
is therefore describable. It is at this point that
the unanswered questions have importance, for they
supplement point 3 above, and indicate how unlike
all other states the nibbaana state is. They point
to the fact that nibbaana is unlike all other states
to the extent that all words and descriptions that
derive from and refer to experiences that are other
than nibbaana are inappropriate for describing
nibbaana. And, if something as basic as existential
language, exists/does not exist, constitutes a
category mistake, I am mystified as to what further
categories our language and experience leave us as
alternative options of description.(56)

In summary then, my conclusions are that
nibbaana is:

(a) Knowable, but not directly perceivable in
another,
(b) Not meaningfully describable to one who has not
experienced it,
(c) Not describable using language which gains its
reference from experiences that are 'other-than'
nibbaana, that is, it is not describable.

P.165

NOTES

1. Kalupahana takes "Early Buddhism" to be that
which is presented in the Pali Nikaayas and the
Chinese AAgamas. I shall follow this usage.

2. David Kalupahana, Causality: The Central
Philosophy of Buddhism (Honolulu: The University
Press of Hawaii, 1975), p. 185.

3. K. N. Jayatilleke, Early Buddhist Theory of
Knowledge (London: George Alien & Unwin Ltd., 1963),
p. 416.

4. Ibid.

5. See Kalupahana, p. 104, and Jayatilieke, p.
438, where these are noted and discussed.

6. Jayatilleke, p. 439.

7. Having any such ability may be a form of
knowledge itself, but, following Jayatilleke's
distinction, this too is a matter of 'knowing how'
(e.g., to read minds) rather than 'knowing that'.

8. Jayatilleke, p. 439. Jayatilleke goes further
than this and later claims that "causal empirical
explanations were everywhere substituted (e.g.,
theories of perception, knowledge, consciousness,
etc.), for prevalent metaphysical theories." (Ibid.,
p. 452). This further claim is incorrect. in my
opinion, as I argue below.

9. Among other places this is mentioned in 'The
discourse on the Ariyan Quest' in the Majjhima
Nikaaya. I do not wish to go into the status of
these higher levels of meditation here, but one need
keep in mind that they are mentioned in Early
Buddhist texts, and they do have some part to play
in Early Buddhist knowledge, a part that has been
virtually ignored by modern scholars.

10. I do not wish to imply that Kalupahana is
alone; many scholars have held that Early Buddhism
maintained a naive form of empiricism.

11. Kalupahana, p. 11.

12. Edward Conze, Buddhist Thought in India
(London: George Allen & Unwin, 1962), pp. 26 and 17,
respectively.

13. Ibid.,p.26.

14. Kalupahana, p. 59.

15. Kalupahana criticises Murti for not
distinguishing between the Early Buddhist and the
later theories of the Abhidharma. He, rightly, I
think, points out that the former did not have a
theory of moment, or atoms, nor did it distinguish
between cause and conditions. See The Central
Philosophy of Buddhism (London: Allen & Unwin,
1955).

16. Kalupahana, p. 59.

17. Jayatilleke, p. 453.

18. Kalupahana, p. 93.

19. Jayatilleke. on the other hand, is prepared
to accept that the Early Buddhist theory is a type
of regularity theory, and this is open to such a
theory's traditional criticisms--that its
characterization cannot distinguish between
accidental constant conjunctions and causal
situations. This seems to be the crux of E. J.
Thomas' criticism of Early Buddhist ideas on
causation. See The History of Buddhist Thought (New
York, 1933), p. 62.

20. Kalupahana, p. 96.

21. Ibid., p.73.

22. Jayatilleke, p. 453.

23. Kalupahana, p. 104.

24. Ibid.

25. Mark Siderits, in reviewing Kalupahana's
book. points out that "no empiricist may
consistently speak of... an experience of causal
connection... no amount of additional kinds of sensa
can render perceptible what is in principle
imperceptible." See The Journal of Indian Philosophy
8:194.

26. Kalupahana, p. 59.

27. Siderits claims that "Kalupahana represents
the Buddha as holding that there is a necessary
connection between cause and effect" (p. 96) .
However, Kalupahana does not claim this. What he
does say is that Early Buddhism viewed causation as
more than constant conjunction, but what this
specifically means is never spelt out. Kalupahana
draws back from claiming that Early Buddhists held
to empirical necessity as we noted above, and I
think Kalupahana is wrong so to draw back. See
Journal of Indian Philosophy 8:193.

P.166

28. See "Naming and Necessity" in The Semantics
of Natural Language, edited by Donald Davidson and
Gilbert Harman (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1972).

29. Stephen P. Schwartz, "Intorduction" to
Naming, Necessity and Natural Kinds, edited by
Stephen P. Schwartz (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1977), pp. 25-26.

30. Part of the force of Hume's epistemic
argument comes from the idea that since it is only
with repeated exposure that we discover certain
things about objects (e.g., fires), things that are
not discoverable at first glance; such things can
only be 'empirical', meaning 'not necessary'. One
must also resist the temptation to confuse problems
about empirical necessities with problems about
induction. To say that fires must necessarily burn
unclad human beings is not to claim that fires must
always (or necessarily) exist, nor is it to claim
that things that look like fires must burn things
that look like unclad human beings.

31. R. Harre and E. H. Madden, Causal Powers
(Oxford: Basil Blackwood, 1975), p. 55.

32. Kalupahana, p. 84.

33. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding,
Section VII.

34. Harre and Madden, p. 57.

35. Jayatilleke, p. 440.

36. David Kalupahana, Buddhist Philosophy: A
Historical Analysis (Honolulu: University Press of
Hawaii, 1976), p. 39.

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid., p.41.

39. Ibid., p. 69.

40. T. W. Rhys Davids and W. Stede, eds., The
Pali Text Society's Pali-English Dictionary (London,
1921-1925), p. 655.

41. Majjhima Nikaaya, in The Middle Length
Sayings, vols. I-III, trans. I. B. Horner (London:
Luzac & Co., Ltd., 1967), I, p. 193.

42. Ibid.

43. Ibid., II, p. 156.

44. Ibid., I. pp. 181-182.

45. Rune Johansson, The Psychology of Nirvana
(London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1969), p. 61.

46. Kalupahana, Buddhist Philosophy, p. 83.
Emphasis mine.

47. Majjhima Nikaaya I, p. 179.

48. Ibid.

49. Johansson, p. 61

50. Ibid., p. 62

51. Ibid., p. 63

52. Jayatilleke discusses the Early Buddhist
theory of meaning and claims that for them a
statement is meaningless if no experiential content
is attached by the speaker or hearer of the words
used in the statement. See Early Buddhist Theory of
Knowledge, p. 321.

53. Kalupahana, Buddhist Philosophy, p. 180.

54. Majjhima Nikaaya, II, p. 165.

55. Mark Siderits, "A Note on the Early Huddhist
Theory of Truth," Philosophy East and West 29, no. 4
(October 1979): 491-99.

56. I am thus puzzled by Siderits' claim that
"Once we see... that such predicates as 'reborn'
simply do not apply to the arahat and that the
deceased arahat is subsumed under a different
category, the seeming oddity of the position (the
Buddha rejecting the four alternatives) vanishes."
(Ibid., p. 494). I would like to know what this
"different category" is. I would also like to know
why, if the Buddha did see these questionsjust in
terms of rebirth (i.e., questions about whether the
Tathaagata exists after death were to be understood
as asking if the Tathaagata was reborn), he was
perfectly happy on some occasions to say plainly
that the Tathaagata was not reborn, while on others
he was extremely coy, and why these latter occasions
coincided with those times he was asked, not about
rebirth, but about existing after death.