PRESENTED TO THE BUDDHA CENTER ON SUNDAY, APRIL 26, 2015, AND AGAIN TO THE NEW BUDDHA CENTRE ON SATURDAY, JANUARY 4, 2025 (REVISED).

The Discourse on the Origins
Digha Nikaya 27

Country: Kosala
Locale: mansion of Migara’s mother in the East Park, Savatthi
Speakers: Vasettha, Bharadvaja, the Buddha
Date of Composition: 5th-4th cent. BCE

Savatthi, a.k.a. Shravasti, a prosperous trading centre located on the bank of the Aciravati (now West Rapti) river, and the capital of the ancient kingdom of Kosala, was one of the six largest cites in India at the time of the Buddha, with a population of fifty-seven thousand households. The Buddha spent twenty-four rainy seasons in Savatthi during his lifetime.

Vasettha and Bharadvaja are the two young Brahmans in discourse 13, where they were arguing about right and wrong paths. In this discourse, they are living among the monastics, hoping to become monastics themselves. In the evening, the Buddha comes out of “Migara’s mansion,” in the East Park of Savatthi, having spent the day there in secluded meditation, and begins walking in the shade. Vasettha, noticing this, suggests to Bharadvaja that they follow the Buddha in the hope of hearing a dharma talk from him.

The Buddha asks Vasettha and Bharadvaja if the other Brahmans criticize them for hanging out with the Buddha’s monastics. They say the Brahmans accuse them of abandoning the highest, fairest, purest caste who consist of the children of God (Brahma). Instead, they are the base caste of the Buddha’s disciples, described as “shaveling petty ascetics, servants, dark fellows born of Brahma’s foot.” The Buddhist order makes no distinction between the castes, so to the Brahmans the order is a mixed-race rabble with whom one should not associate. The order is egalitarian.

There are several colour references in this discourse, associating the Brahmans with a fairer and therefore better caste of people. This Indian view of race is consistent with the Aryan migration theory, in which fair-skinned Indo-European migrants from the northwest assimilated into a local, darker, Aboriginal people. There is no indication in the Pali Canon, however, that the Buddha shares this racial bias.

The Buddha replies that such an attitude shows that the Brahmans have forgotten their ancient tradition, an oft-repeated assertion of the Buddha. The Buddha has identified himself as restoring the primordial Brahmanic tradition to its original purity and perfection, identified with the ancient Vedic seers as well as a prehistoric or transhistorical lineage of perfected buddhas. The Buddha points out that Brahman women give birth, just like the women of other castes. Therefore, the statement that Brahmans are “born from the mouth of Brahma” is a myth. As a lie, such an assertion earns much demerit (he says). Here the Buddha reveals his rationalistic side, criticized by the Vedic traditionalists.

The Buddha gives an account of the castes, which he itemizes as warriors, priests, traders, and workers, in that order. The Buddha places the noble or warrior caste above the Brahmans. This was their original and proper place in northeast India at that time, which the Buddha identified with the ancient tradition, before 500 BCE, whereas the Brahmans usurped the authority of the warrior caste in the west, where they are the dominant group. The Pali Canon portrays the Brahmans as subject to the military rulers, though clearly favoured, as they often fulfilled such roles as governors of towns, which they practically owned.

The Buddha points out that all the castes are equally subject to moral causality, both bad and good. Once again, the list of what we otherwise recognize as the precepts does not prohibit alcohol. Both bright and dark qualities—good and bad karma—are scattered indiscriminately among all four castes. Therefore, the fact that anyone of any caste who destroys the corruptions that bind them to rebirth may become emancipated through gnosis and thus become an arhant, who is above all the castes, disproves the claim of the Brahmans to supremacy. In the same way as the Shakyans submit to Pasenadi, the king of Kosala, so too does the king submit to the Tathagata.

The Buddha points out that all the members of the order, though they come from different births, names, clans, and families, are all ascetics, followers of the Shakyan. This is also how they should refer to themselves if asked (he says). The Pali word is Sakyaputta, literally ‘sons of the Shakyan clan.’ It may also mean ‘children of the Shakyans’ or even ‘children of those who are able,’ the literal meaning of Shakya. The Buddha thus elaborates this statement: “I am a true son of Blessed Lord, born of his mouth, born of Dhamma, created by Dhamma, an heir of Dhamma,” thus appropriating to himself and the teaching the role of Brahma. One often reads in the literature that the English term “Buddhist” does not correspond to a word that the Buddha used, but Buddhist, literally ‘one concerned with the Buddha,’ is not that far different in meaning from Sakyaputta, so we may say that Buddhists are “Shakyaists.”

The Buddha says that they may refer to themselves in this way because the Body of the Teaching “designates” the Tathagata. This is a rare explanation in the Pali Canon of the meaning of tathagata, the mysterious epithet that means something like ‘one who has come and gone.’ The “real body” is one of the three bodies of the Buddha in Mahayana Buddhism, representing the highest, unmanifested, inconceivable aspect of a Buddha. The Buddha glosses this phrase as ‘the Body of Brahma,’ ‘Become Dhamma,’ or ‘Become Brahma,’ meaning that the Buddha, as the Tathagata, has realized the highest reality. The other two aspects are the energy or ecstatic and the physical bodies. The real body is the most inscrutable, immortal, and timeless essence of a tathagata.

The Buddha describes the contraction of the universe, when most beings are reborn in the Abhassara Brahma world, corresponding to the second meditative attainment. The Abhassara realm refers to the radiant devas, who are our own origin as people prior to being reborn on the earth plane. This is the realm next above the Brahma world. The Buddha describes the residents of this world as “mind-made, feeding on delight, self-luminous, moving through the air, glorious,” and long-lived. After an astronomical period, the universe begins to expand again, much as described by the so-called “big bang” theory of modern physics. During the period of this expansion, most of the beings from the Abhassara realm are reborn in this world. Here they abide in the same way, mind-made, feeding on delight, self-luminous, moving through the air, glorious. This description is reminiscent of Plato’s bisexual luminous spheres that, he says, are the original nature of people, perhaps implying a primordial, prehominid occupation of the earth by these luminous aerial beings. Once again, we see an apparent reference to what we know as the UFO archetype.

The Buddha tells Vasettha a myth about the origin of the world and life. Water originally entirely covered the earth, and everything was blinding darkness. There were no sun, moon, stars, night, days, seasons, or gender. Interestingly, scientists believe that water covered the earth about 2.5 billion years ago. The only life on Earth was sexless algae and bacteria. After an astronomically lengthy period, a skin formed on the surface of the water. The cause of the one world ocean was the deep mantle of the earth, which was 200 degrees hotter than it is now. As it cooled, the continental crust formed.

During the water world era, reactions with decaying organic matter in the oceans would have quickly used up any oxygen produced by photosynthesizing bacteria.

When the newly emergent land eroded, it produced sediment that washed into the oceans and buried the organic matter, preventing further reactions with oxygen. As a result, oxygen built up in the atmosphere and enabled oxygen-breathing life to evolve and flourish. The eroded sediment would also have fertilized the oceans with phosphorous, an important nutrient for living things.

The Pali Canon calls this phosphorus “skin” ‘earth-sap.’ Interestingly, in view of the subsequent reference to luminance, phosphorus emits a faint glow when exposed to oxygen. It is also an essential element of the human genetic material, DNA and RNA.

Until this time people were still like divine beings, even though they inhabited our universe. One of these divine beings tasted the earth-sap and discovered that it was extremely sweet. This was the cause of craving. As a result, their self-luminance gradually disappeared, the sun and the moon revealed themselves, and nights, days, and seasons all appeared, restarting the evolution of the universe.

Over time the divine beings continued to feast on the earth-sap and as they did, so their bodies became more material and their appearance began to acquire individual differences. Beauty and ugliness arose, leading to pride, which in turn led to the disappearance of the earth-sap. As the beings became more material the more refined earth-sap became inaccessible to them, or they required denser food. In place of the earth-sap, a mushroom-like fungus appeared. So, the divine beings started to feast on the fungus instead of the earth-sap, and their bodies continued to coarsen. The process continued over eons. Each time the existing food disappeared, and a new one appeared. Creepers, bamboo, and rice followed the fungus.

When rice became the main food, female and male sex organs appeared and people began to copulate. This is really the point at which people as we know them appear. The concepts of property and territoriality arose. People began to exploit the wild rice and damage the environment. In fact, this began to occur about 10,000 BCE, corresponding to the Neolithic Revolution. As a result, they divided the rice fields with boundaries. Because of dividing the rice fields up into plots, people began to steal each other’s property, and all kinds of civil strife arose, which in turn required repressive measures. Because of this civil strife, the people had to appoint someone to keep order in exchange for a share of the rice. This person was the Mahasammata—literally ‘great appointee,’ the precursor of the warrior caste. The premise here is that the primordial state of humanity postulated by the Buddha is a direct democracy of the people, corresponding to primitive hunter-gatherer groups. The warrior caste and the title of ‘king’ also appear, which together constitute the “first” or original caste.

This quasi-mythological, proto-historical account of the progressive devolution of beings culminating in the appearance of property, territoriality, government, civil order and disorder, etc. is a specialized application of the interdependent origination doctrine.

The Buddha identifies the origin of each of the castes as a process of continuous degeneration: the Brahmans in ethical judgment, meditation, and scholarship; the merchant or trader class in sensuality and the settled householder life; and the artisans or workers in hunting and gathering. Finally, the ascetics appear out of all the castes in response to the realization of fundamental dissatisfaction. The text presents this as a kind of quasi-historical development. The castes reap the consequences of bad and good karma alike, but all can attain emancipation. Therefore, the ascetics are above the castes and the true aristocrats or ‘Aryans.’

The Buddhist view of the tendency to degeneration is in striking contrast to the Western evolutionary bias, which tends to see the arrow of time progressing toward ever better and more successful states, whereas in fact we are now on the verge of biological extinction. The Buddhist view is more akin to the scientific perspective that time is entropic, but with negentropic modes or phases. However, properly speaking, Buddhism sees time as cyclical, eternally alternating between periods of devolution and evolution, on both human and cosmological scales.

Finally, the Buddha quotes the Brahma Sanat Kumara. He is one of the four mind-born sons of Brahma: “The Khattiya’s best among those who value clan, / He with knowledge and conduct is best of gods and men.” The Buddha affirms that the order stands in relation to the spiritual life as the warriors stand in relation to society. It is clear, however, that the Buddha himself is not one of those who value clan, so he is not actually affirming the supremacy of any caste.

Note

1. “Early Earth ‘Was Covered in Water,” Dec. 31, 2008, Metro News, http://metro.co.uk/2008/12/31/early-earth-was-covered-in-water-274995.