In part 1, I examined the Mahakammavibhanga Sutta pointing out some evidence for interpolations and argued that that the same conclusion could still be made, and even clarified, if the interpolations were removed.
My strongest argument for the text being tampered with is located in the concluding passages where the Buddha spells out the main point to be drawn from the sutta:
As to the person here who kills living beings . . . and on the dissolution of the body, after death, reappears in a state of deprivation . . . even in hell: either earlier he did an evil action to be felt as painful, or later he did an evil action to be felt as painful. . . .The difficulty with these passages lies with the mixing of psychological processes with metaphysical ones. The juxtaposition of two distinctly disparate processes together in an effort to suggest they are somehow related leaves a rather contrived feeling; it almost seems that the author is trying to force two things together that simply do not belong together.
As to the person here who kills living beings . . . and on the dissolution of the body, after death, reappears in a happy destination . . . in the heavenly world: either earlier he did a good action to be felt as pleasant, or later he did an action to be felt as pleasant . . .
As to the person here who abstains from living beings . . . and on the dissolution of the body, after death, reappears in a happy destination . . . in the heavenly world: either earlier he did a good action to be felt as pleasant, or later he did an action to be felt as pleasant . . .
As to the person here who abstains from living beings . . . and on the dissolution of the body, after death, reappears in a state of deprivation . . . even in hell: either earlier he did an evil action to be felt as painful, or later he did an evil action to be felt as painful.
It is essential to note that at the beginning of the sutta the Buddha gave a brief, concise exposition on kamma conveying that the fruits of an intentional action lead to either pleasant, unpleasant, or neither pleasant or unpleasant feelings. The passages quoted above appear to be a continuation of this initial mentioning, but the link between the two is not as clear with the various metaphysical pericopes or stock passages interspersed amongst the core textual element of kamma and the resultant feeling.
If we take these concluding passages at face value the basic import seems to be that any intentional action which produces a certain feeling will lead to a particular post mortem existence. For example, if we commit “an evil action to be felt as painful”, we will end up in hell.
But this is problematic. What happens to one who commits an evil action to be felt as pleasurable and not painful (for example, putting cocaine in someone’s drink)? Do we still go to hell or do we go to heaven? In a similar case, what happens if we commit a good action to be felt as painful (violently pushing a person aside so they do not get hit by a moving vehicle), does that mean we will end up in hell?
Another issue is the fact that a person will commit thousands if not hundreds of thousands of intentional actions over the course of a lifetime that could be described as causing pleasurable or painful feelings. So which of these actions determine our post mortem destiny? All of them? Only the worst ones? The actions that have the most prevalence? Do we go to hell or heaven equal to number of times we experience pleasant or unpleasant feelings? Or do we only go once? But which one, heaven or hell, or both?
As argued in part one, we can go ahead and remove these stock passages (and add a few logical substitutions based on the Buddha’s first succinct exposition of kamma in the intial part of the sutta) and still reach the same overall conclusion of the text:
As to the person who did an evil action and feels pain: either earlier he did an evil action to be felt as painful, or later he did an evil action to be felt as painful. . . .Notice that this constructed passage is now a lot clearer and also follows logically from the Buddha’s initial exposition that solely described a psychological process. The difficulties I described above are for a large part now gone.
As to the person here who did an evil action and feels pleasure: either earlier he did a good action to be felt as pleasant, or later he did a good action to be felt as pleasant . . .
As to the person here who did a good action and feels pleasure: either earlier he did a good action to be felt as pleasant . . .
As to the person here who did a good action and feels pleasure: either earlier he did an evil action to be felt as painful, or later he did an evil action to be felt as painful.
Conclusion
The Buddha took the Vedic notion of kamma and gave it a psychological and ethical dimension to it. This was a revolutionary innovation which was more subtle than the prevailing notions of karma at the time.
The Mahakammavibhanga Sutta is a sutta that I believe originally delved deeper into the psychological aspect of kamma and not the cosmological aspect in an effort to remind the reader to be careful about drawing conclusions about kamma and thus moral causality when examining instances where one lacks the capability of obtaining all the necessary information. While the cosmological aspect per se does not detract from this conclusion, it obscures rather than clarifies.
I suspect you're taking "pleasure, pain, and neutral" a bit too literally here; it's not confined to physical experiences but mental as well, the mind being one of the six senses in those times. So the causing of physical pain to save a life, with intention being the activator of kammic results (in the Buddha's view), the physical pain would be of no relevance whatever.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the whole point seems to be that while it all balances out in the end, it's complex. Too, if we're not talking literal hells and heavens, well, we know we can experience a rapid rush of one emotion after another for example after shouting at someone we may feel high, and then ashamed, and then stung by the backlash, feelings complicated by past karmic actions as well.
There is not much language describing complex emotions in the suttas -- I hear about remorse and shame, some, and anger -- lots! but there just isn't a whole lot of talk about emotions, so if the Buddha were to try to describe the varied types and depths of feelings one gets as fruits of one's actions, how better to explain it than in familiar (in those times) terms of heavens, hells, lives as animals and such?
Star, I point out in the first paragraph that. "The difficulty with these passages lies with the mixing of psychological processes." Pleasure, pain and so on are definitley psychological.
ReplyDeleteFrom my understanding, the Buddha was only really interested in the psychological aspect of pain. While one may hurt oneself by stubbing one's toe, for example, it is how we handle the situation which I believe the Buddha was primarily interested in -- do we add to the pain by blaming ourselves and so on, or do we acknowledge the experience and rise above it.
In the suttas there are mentionings of "experiencing painful feelings as if being in niraya (hell)." It is quite possible that the Buddha did go ahead and use such comparisons.
But like I am trying to point out, when these passages have been taken out of context to form a pericope, they becomre more like doctrinal absolute statements.
I have tried to point out that these pericopes don't fit very well when taken the starting context of the sutta.