Presented to the members of the Buddha Center on Sunday, November 15, 2015.

The Discourse on What Cannot Be Avoided

Majjhima Nikaya 60

Date of Composition: early 4th cent. BCE

The Buddha is staying in the village of Sala, after wandering through Kosala with his entourage. Kosala was a monarchy whose king, Pasenadi, was a follower of the Buddha. Pasenadi’s minister dethroned him and  placed Pasenadi’s son on the throne. Pasenadi subsequently died of exposure. Soon after the kingdom of Magadha annexed Kosala.

The Brahman householders of Sala hear of this, and they go to visit him. Sala is located at the entrance to a forest, where many different recluses and Brahmans stay, all disputing with each other as to whose view is best. Thus, the Buddha asks householders which teacher they rationally prefer. The householders reply that they have not found a teacher. The Buddha offers to teach them a teaching that is without fault and leads to welfare and happiness.

Many Westerners think of ancient India in fanciful terms, but the Buddha’s statement shows us that ancient India was not only spiritual. At least some people denied the value of merit, moral causality, rebirth, filial duty, divine beings, and spiritual realizations. This is the sort of rationalist nihilism that pervades much modern thinking.

The nihilist view is opposed by its opposite, which the Buddha identifies with the teaching. Here the teaching refers broadly to all those who maintain what we might call a spiritual worldview, including merit, moral causality, rebirth, filial duty, divine beings, and spiritual realizations.

The Buddha objects that nihilists tend to act in unethical ways because they have no reason not to do so. For this reason, he accuses nihilism of corruption. Nihilism presents a problem that demands solution.

The Buddha’s ingenious solution is to consider the consequences of accepting the truth or falsehood of what each view asserts.

If there is no rebirth, then the nihilist is safe from suffering in terms of a non-existent afterlife but is reviled in this world as a dishonourable person and, if there is rebirth, they are reborn in a hellish state, whereas, if there is no rebirth, the practitioner of the teaching is respected in life as an honourable person and, if there is rebirth, then they go to a spiritual state. Comparing the choice of which to believe to gambling, the Buddha says that the nihilist has made two “unlucky throws” in that they suffer in this life and in the next. One can taste the irony in the Buddha’s application of the phrase “good person” to the nihilist as he explains the moral consequences of this choice of worldview. Similarly, the practitioner of the teaching has made two good “throws,” in that they are immune from suffering both in this life and in the next. In this way, the Buddha asserts that his teaching is the incontrovertible or “faultless” teaching.

In Digha Nikaya 1, the Buddha refutes sixty-two kinds of wrong view. Similarly, in this discourse he summarizes and refutes five wrong views along the same lines.

These doctrines bear many similarities to the alternative philosophies of the Buddha’s time, including amoralism, fatalism, materialism, eternalism, Jainism, and agnosticism. Reading the doctrines of these schools, one realizes that they are all varieties of nihilism. The Buddha summarizes five doctrines of wrong view, to which he applies the same sort of analysis.

Doctrines of Wrong View

1. There is nothing given, nothing offered, nothing sacrificed; no moral causality; no this world, no other world; no mother, no father; no beings who are reborn spontaneously; no good and virtuous recluses and Brahmans in the world who have themselves realized by direct knowledge and declare this world and the other world. (Nihilism)
2. When one acts or makes others act, when one mutilates or makes others mutilate, when one tortures or makes others inflict torture, when one inflicts sorrow or makes others inflict sorrow; when one oppresses or makes others inflict oppression, when one intimidates or makes other inflict intimidation, when one kills living beings, steals, breaks into houses, plunders wealth, burgles, ambushes highways, seduces another’s wife, utters falsehood—no evil is done by the doer. (Non-doing)
3. There is no cause or condition for the defilement of beings; beings are defiled without cause or condition. There is no cause or condition for the purification of beings; beings are purified without cause or condition. There is no power, no energy, no manly [sic] strength, and no manly [sic] endurance. All beings, living things, creatures, and souls are without mastery, power, and energy; moulded by destiny, circumstance, and nature they experience pleasure and pain in the six classes of rebirth. (Non-causality)
4. There are no immaterial realms.
5. There is no cessation of being.

The doctrine that “if, with a razor-rimmed wheel, one were to make the living beings on this earth into one mass of flesh, into one heap of flesh, because of this there would be no evil and no outcome of evil,”  is that of Purana Kassapa. Purana teaches a theory of non-action, in which there are no soul, merit, or demerit. The core of Purana’s doctrine is that he denies the Law of Moral Causality. Purana, who claims to be omniscient, eventually drowns himself. Purana’s actual ethic consists of doing nothing; hence the name.

The doctrine that suffering is inherent is the philosophy of the fatalist ascetics, founded by Makkhali Gosala. They believed in predestination, so that no one can do anything to alleviate suffering.

The reference to “manly strength” is interesting. “Energy” is related to the etymological root referring to the male gender (virility) (cf. Taoist te, lit. ‘virtue,’ from Lat. vir, man). This is also the energy by which the Buddha can defer his passing on for three months and might have done so for twenty or more years if Ananda had asked. The primordial philosophy commonly identifies the male or “psychic” polarity with the spiritual principle,  and the female with the somatic or physical principle. This relates to the spiritual misogyny that one finds for example in the Roman Church and which one also finds in the Pali Canon. Various Indian spiritual theories concerning sexuality also underlie Indian misogyny as well as Muslim and British influences. However, the Buddha himself does not appear to have been a misogynist, as I have discussed at length in “The Status of Women in Ancient India and the Pali Tradition.” The doctrines that there are no immaterial realms and no cessation of being, i.e., emancipation, suggest the philosophy of materialism.

The last section of the discourse on the four kinds of persons has little to do with the incontrovertible teaching and seems to have been spliced in as we also see in some other discourses. This section summarizes part of discourse 51; it classifies people according to whether they torment and torture them-selves and/or others. The person who torments himself is the ascetic. The person who torments others is anyone who follows a bloody occupation, such as butchers, fowlers, trappers, etc. Interestingly, those who torment themselves and others include kings and Brahmans. Finally, one who does not torment themselves or others is the tathagata. This classification covers all the general classes of person in the Buddha’s world, including ascetics, householders, nobles, Brahmans, and arhants. After hearing this, the Brahman householders of Sala become lay followers of the Buddha.