Asian Religions, page 20
The vow to avoid sexual misconduct
In Asia, Buddhists are socially conservative when it comes to sexual practice. For most, this means that sexuality should be expressed only within the context of marriage or of a committed relationship. Attitudes toward homosexuality are determined by culture as much as by religion, and some Buddhist countries are more tolerant of homosexual practices than others; in Japan and Thailand homosexuality and other forms of sexual expression are not seen to be inconsistent with the dharma and homosexual traditions are centuries old.
Attitudes toward abortion are, again, cultural as much as they are religious, but one of the main reasons why Buddhism in Asian countries discourages sex outside of marriage is that it can result in unwanted pregnancies. Abortion is legal in some Buddhist countries and not in others, but is readily available. Still, it is seen to be regrettable, and in Buddhist scriptures an unborn child is regarded as a sentient being. In Japan women who have elected to terminate a pregnancy can sponsor a Buddhist temple to conduct a “water-baby rite” (水子供養, mizuko-kuyō), which comforts and pacifies the spirit of the aborted fetus.
Monks and nuns, by definition, do not have sex, and a major portion of the Vinaya (the monastic code) enumerates sexual practices that are prohibited. We will look at the code in depth in Chapter 23. Sexual intercourse is one of four reasons why a monk or nun would be expelled from a monastery; and sex in general is seen to be harmful to religious self-cultivation. Why? First, sex impedes spiritual progress by arousing desire, the cause of suffering. Second, sex entails responsibilities that monks and nuns, living a communal life, cannot fulfill (buying or renting a house, caring for children and raising them, managing the family income, and so on). From a monastic point of view, any kind of sexual behavior constitutes “sexual misconduct.” Monks and nuns are encouraged to “desexualize” the body by wearing loose-fitting, non-gender-specific robes and by shaving the head; they are trained to regard the body as undesirable, a “sack of blood and pus” that ties us to the world of suffering from which we ultimately hope to escape. The main issue here, for both lay and monastic Buddhists, is to reduce our infatuation with sex and the inevitable suffering it causes, and – for laypersons – to practice sex in a way that is responsible, caring, considerate, and unharmful.
The vow to avoid harmful speech
Buddhist ethical conduct includes “right speech”: abstaining from the “four vocal wrong deeds,” namely lies, slander, abuse, and gossip. “Speech acts” such as these can be psychologically harmful, and so this precept is in some ways an extension of the first one, related to non-injury. But there is a reason why this precept is listed separately: lies, slander, abuse, and gossip not only cause harm but also distort the truth. In other words, they promote non-awareness, when the primary goal of Buddhism is enlightenment and awakening. Awareness of the self and of the world is the goal of meditation and ultimately leads to enlightened insight, as we will see in Chapter 22.
Avoidance of the “vocal wrongs” can also be placed on a continuum, from less strict to more strict observance. For example, think about the difference between these two expressions:
“speaking what one knows not to be true” (related to lying and slander);
“speaking what one does not know to be true” (related to abuse and gossip).
If I say something that I know not to be true, then I am lying: I am saying or repeating something that I know to be false. These are the first and second of the four vocal wrong deeds: lying and slander. (“Slander” entails not simply lying, but spreading lies as well.) Most lay Buddhists interpret the fourth precept as an injunction to avoid lying whenever possible.
The second phrase, “speaking what one does not know to be true,” describes a more demanding awareness of my speech. Gossip, for example, is not a deliberate form of lying, but it does involve spreading rumors, that is, saying things that I know only by hearsay. Is such speech harmful? Perhaps not directly, but gossip certainly does not enhance the pursuit of truth or the cultivation of awareness.
What would be the most extreme practice of “avoiding speaking what one does not know to be true”? Since we can never be absolutely sure about anything we know, strict observance of this precept confines one to silence. Indeed there is in Buddhism a tradition of forest monks who make a vow of silence, either temporarily or for many years, in observance of this precept.
The vow to avoid intoxicants
To the chagrin of many Euro-American Buddhists, the fifth of the Five Precepts discourages the consumption of alcohol and mind-altering drugs. Since clarity of mind is the goal of meditation, we should not subject ourselves deliberately to distortions and illusions. In addition to causing lack of awareness, intoxicants should be avoided because they loosen one's inhibitions and make it difficult to follow the other four precepts. The daily news certainly make us aware of the injurious effects of alcohol and other drugs: they cause harm to self and others, contribute to crimes against persons and property, incite to sexual behaviors that one may later come to regret, and reduce one's ability to control one's speech. In a monastic setting, this precept is extended to entertainments such as novels and movies, which are also “intoxicating” and promote “illusory” thinking – though I have visited monasteries that feature an occasional movie night for the entertainment of the monks.
Survey 4 The Five Precepts Survey
The weblink for this survey is http://goo.gl/JpYuyR. The survey allows you to apply Buddhist ethics to your own behaviors, as well as to your ideals for ethical living.
Notes
1 The primary way in which Asian Buddhists differ from American social conservatives is that they see ethical self-cultivation as a personal commitment rather than as a political position or as promotion of traditional public policies.
2 As we will see in Chapter 26, more and more Western Buddhists are also recognizing Buddhism as an ethical tradition. Whereas Western Buddhism once focused almost exclusively on the practice of meditation – and in fact saw Buddhism as ethically neutral, or even permissive – today ethics is a core dimension of Buddhist practice in the West.
22
The Fruits of Meditation
Buddhist enlightenment is a state of mind that is exceedingly difficult to describe. Unlike the Judeo-Christian tradition, Buddhism does not represent the goal of religious practice as a heaven or paradise, or indeed as any kind of “place” at all. It is rather a state of awakened consciousness. The Eightfold Path outlines three stages of meditation leading to this realization: mental preparation, focused concentration, and enlightened consciousness.
Meditation
Not all Buddhists meditate. However, what was once a tradition limited to monks and nuns is now widely practiced by lay Buddhists, both in Asia and in the West. Meditation entails the quieting of the body and mind, focused attention on physical and mental activities (such as breathing and thinking), disciplined “non-attachment” to thoughts and sensations, and a state of insight and contentment that arises from meditative practice (see Figure 22.1). Meditation teachers warn against either deadening the mind or “blissing out” on a euphoric high. Meditation is not trance, and it is not ecstasy. Rather it is keen awareness of one's range of experience (thoughts, sensations, emotions, feelings, and perceptions), without assuming their permanence or continuity over time. Ultimately, meditation leads to the consciousness of “no self” or “no mind.” This is not “self-annihilation” – Buddhism is not nihilistic in this sense – but the overturning of the idea of the self as a permanent, unchanging thing. Meditation helps us to overcome our attachment to that idea and to recognize all aspects of the self – thoughts and sensations, emotions and desires, and the very sense of “I” – as impermanent and in a constant state of flux, coming and going.
Figure 22.1 Seated meditation. © Qingqing / Shutterstock.
If there is no permanent and unchanging center of the ego – if this idea is “illusory” – then what is there? What constitutes personal identity? The Buddha described five skandhas or aggregates of personal identity: the body, perceptions, emotions, karmic dispositions (what Western psychological interpreters have called “unconscious motivations”), and consciousness. In meditation, one observes these elements and finds them all to have a number of common characteristics:
First, they are mutually interactive, with relations of cause and effect upon one another – not having had enough sleep, I feel cranky; smelling a fragrant scent, I am reminded of a scene from my childhood; thinking of a parent's imminent death, I feel shortness of breath and a knot in my stomach; and so on.
Second, they are “event-like” as much as they are “object-like”: that is, the processes of thinking and sensing are constantly moving and changing; nothing stays the same from one moment to the next.
Third, none of these “object-events” are permanent; dispassionate observation of my “self” yields nothing that is eternal – the objects of observation disappear before my very eyes.
On the basis of these meditative observations, the Buddha abandoned the traditional idea of any permanent thing in the universe, including Ātman and Brahman. This is why many Western interpreters of Buddhism – and now some Asian Buddhist intellectuals as well (especially those who are familiar with Western religions) – describe Buddhism as a religion that promotes “atheism” – or even go so far as to say that Buddhism is not a “religion” at all. As we will see in Chapter 24, however, there is plenty of supernaturalism within the Buddhist tradition, and the Buddha himself never argued for the non-existence of Ātman and Brahman. Rather, his teaching of anattā (non-Ātman) should be understood as avoidance of all “clinging ideas,” including ideas of permanent existence or non-existence. In fact the Buddha denied all of four statements, a set of denials that has been described as the “negative tetralemma of the Buddha”:
denying that self exists;
denying that self does not exist;
denying that self both exists and does not exist;
denying that self neither exists nor does not exist.
That is to say, Buddhism avoids both eternalism and nihilism. When asked to explain this difficult philosophical point, the Buddha resorted to an analogy. One of his followers could not stop peppering the Buddha with questions about the soul, one's state of existence before birth and after death, the nature of nirvāa, and so on.
The Buddha said, “You are like a man who has been shot by an arrow. As the man is rushed to the field hospital, the doctor says to him, ‘If the arrow is not removed, you will die.’ Just as the doctor begins to extract the arrow, the warrior stops him, saying, ‘Before you remove the arrow, tell me, who shot it? What is his name and where is he from? What tree made up the arrow's shaft, and what stone its point? From what bird's plume were its feathers made to guide its flight?’
And before the warrior could exhaust his questions, he died. I have come to suggest a way to end suffering, not to engage in philosophical speculation.”1
Meditation is the tool by which the practitioner overcomes the illusion of self and the most fundamental of all the attachments; in this way, meditation is a path to enlightened consciousness and to nirvāa.
Nirvāa
Why is the state of existence that is described by the English word “enlightenment” called in Sanskrit nirvāa, literally “annihilation”? And how is this state attained?
Nirvāa is the “annihilation” of the false idea of a permanent and undying self. But if this idea is rejected, what new understanding arises? What, in other words, are the fruits of meditation, the insight that arises from practice? The Buddhist tradition has developed answers to these questions over centuries of its historical evolution, in various social, cultural, and sectarian environments. We can examine the idea of enlightened consciousness in three major historical, social-cultural, and sectarian contexts: the three yānas or “turnings of the dharma wheel” – Theravāda, Mahāyāna , and Vajrayāna – as well as in the major philosophical schools associated with each (see Table 22.1).2
Table 22.1 Three turnings of the dharma wheel.
The First Turning of the dharma wheel is a scholastic tradition corresponding to the Theravāda branch of Buddhism – the “school of the elders.” Its canonical texts were first composed in Pali before the Common Era, some 100–200 years after the life of the Buddha. The word “elders” here refers to monks: Theravāda Buddhism reveres the monastic life and sees monastic renunciation as the highest form of Buddhist practice. Today Theravāda Buddhism is centered in Southeast Asia, and its most vibrant monastic communities can be found in Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Philosophically it is centered on Abhidharma thought and on a tradition of commentary based on the sūtras (sayings of the Buddha) attributed to Siddhārtha Gautama.
In reaction against the body–soul dualism of the ancient Indian (Hindu) sages, Abhidharma thought emphasizes anattā (no soul) and non-attachment to self. Non-attachment of every kind is best attained through self-denial (though not to the point of asceticism) and rejection of mental and physical attachments – attachments to ideas, to ego, to pride, to the body, to money, and to material possessions. On the basis of the suffering nature of the world, its constant fluctuation, and its impermanence, Buddhist monks are encouraged to cultivate an attitude of aśubha, “revulsion,” toward the things of this world. The word aśubha means loathesomeness, inauspiciousness, something impure or unpleasant. An example is the practice of “meditation on corpses” – that is, observing a dead body in the process of decay in order to contemplate the fleeting nature of life. In the Theravāda tradition, nirvāa is a state of existence that is far removed from the suffering and stress of everyday life; it stands in contrast to the world, an escape from the wheel of samsāra.
The Second Turning of the dharma wheel involves an internal critique, reflected in the philosophical tradition called Madhyamaka, the school of the “middle way” and conceptual non-dualism. The texts of this school were composed in Sanskrit and include sūtras that were reputed to have been hidden away for some 500 years after the time of the Buddha. This tradition arose, then, in the first years of the Common Era and spread north and east; it originated in India but is now centered in China, Korea, and Japan. This is the Mahāyāna (“Great Vehicle”) tradition. In Mahāyāna Buddhism the dualism between samsāra and nirvāa is rejected. Nirvāa is found within samsāra – within this world of everyday experience. When one looks deeply into the true nature of reality, as the Buddha taught, all things are found to be enmeshed in a universal web of cause and effect, such that no one thing or being can stand alone, independently of the rest. In Madhyamaka thought, things are said to be “empty of own-being,” “empty of essence,” or “empty of self-existence”: this is known in the tradition as the “doctrine of emptiness” (śūnyatā).
Philosophically, all things are interconnected and interpenetrating; this is termed pratītya-samutpāda, the interdependence of all things. This condition extends to the very notion of nirvāa itself – which is why nirvāa should not be conceptually separated from everyday life. As the great second-century ce Indian philosopher Nāgārjuna wrote in his Mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā (Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way): “There is nothing whatsoever to distinguish nirvāa and samsāra. They are both empty of essence.”
Ontologically (that is, in relation to the fundamental nature of things), all “being” is seen to be “becoming.” Since nothing has an innate, fixed, unchanging essence or core, things are rather in constant flux, appearing and disappearing like bubbles on a stream. All things are embedded in a web of existence: a slight change in one element of the whole sparks a system-wide, universal transformation. This is analogous to the popular idea of the “butterfly effect,” so named from a Zen Buddhist expression: “the track of a butterfly in the sky changes the entire universe.” A person, a tree, an egg, a house, a brick, a flower, a mountain is not so much a “thing” as it is an “event,” and part of the “event system” of a dynamic universe.
Religiously, the Buddha also exists in interdependence and cannot stand alone as an independent being or as just “one” enlightened being. So Mahāyāna Buddhism affirms the belief in many Buddhas existing simultaneously and in direct interaction with sentient beings in the world. This is the bodhisattva doctrine of Mahāyāna Buddhism: the belief in innumerable enlightened beings (bodhisattvas) who delay their own enlightenment until all other beings can be enlightened as well. In other words, the idea of pratītya-samutpāda (interdependence) makes “private” enlightenment inconceivable and affirms a doctrine of universal salvation, sometimes projected into the future as an eschatological ideal. We will look at this theme in more detail in Chapter 24, on faith.
Socially and institutionally, monks and nuns should not isolate themselves or hold themselves above others. Mahāyāna emphasizes the spiritual accomplishments of insightful laypersons and does not insist upon monasticism as a religious requirement, though the monastic tradition remains strong in East Asia. Mahāyāna monks and nuns are often self-deprecating, seeing their monastic lifestyle as a function of their own weakness, of their inability to deal with the troubles of the world. While certainly respected, monastics are not held in the same reverential esteem as they are in Southeast Asian Buddhism, and lay practice is encouraged and respected. Moreover, the non-essentialism and non-dualism of Madhyamaka encourages non-hierarchal modes of institutional organization, including gender equality. Indeed, today the order of nuns is vibrant in East Asian Buddhist countries, whereas in the Theravāda cultures of Southeast Asia it died out some centuries ago, for various historical reasons.
