Advice to Sigala Part 1: On Impure Actions, Harmful Deeds

Well, enough talking about world events and wondering why monks are doing this-and-that with regard to politics. Time to talk about suttas again.

One of the most important ones for laypeople, perhaps, is DN 31: the Sigalovada Sutta (Narada Thera | Kelly/Sawyer/Yareham) also known as the Layperson's Code of Discipline. Note there is more than one translation on Access to Insight, and it doesn't include the Maurice Walshe translation from The Long Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Digha Nikaya.

So which translation do I use? Well, I'm too lazy to type from a book so I'll use one of the ones that I have in electronic form. The John Kelly, Sue Sawyer, and Victoria Yareham translation seems to be a bit more colloquial (using terms like "drinking buddies") while Ven. Nerada's translation is a bit more literal (using terms like "bottle friend"). I'll use the former with reference to the later.

For those who aren't familiar with it, this is a sutta about Sigala the householder, who encounters the Buddha during his morning ritual of "worshiping the six directions" in the literal sense. The Buddha recognizes that the young householder is taking things too literally and doesn't see the significance of the six directions.

At that time a young householder named Sigalaka arose early and set out from Rajagaha with freshly washed clothes and hair. With palms together held up in reverence, he was paying respect towards the six directions: that is east, south, west, north, lower and upper.
...
[The Buddha said:] "But, young man, that is not how the six directions should be worshipped according to the discipline of the noble ones."

The Buddha starts out talking about protecting oneself in the general sense through basic virtue:

"Young man, by abandoning the four impure actions, a noble disciple refrains from harmful deeds rooted in four causes and avoids the six ways of squandering wealth. So, these fourteen harmful things are removed. The noble disciple, now with the six directions protected, has entered upon a path for conquering both worlds, firmly grounded in this world and the next. At the dissolution of the body after death, a good rebirth occurs in a heavenly world.

"What four impure actions are abandoned? The harming of living beings is an impure action, taking what is not given is an impure action, sexual misconduct is an impure action, and false speech is an impure action. These four are abandoned."

At this point he is not addressing the directions specifically but in the more general sense of protecting all directions from oneself and oneself from all directions. Note that the Buddha is speaking of rebirth in a heavenly world and protection in this world; he isn't talking about Nibbana. I should try to find some commentary to confirm, but it sounds like he is speaking to someone who hasn't gone for refuge and may not know anything of Buddha-Dhamma. Therefore we can probably conclude that this is the sort of advice that the Buddha would give to anyone regardless of their stated religion.

Note also that he has covered the first four of the Five Precepts. Why? Because these are the ones that "really matter"; the fifth precept (to abstain from intoxicants) is mostly there because intoxication tends to cause one to break the other four. It's quite possible that intoxicants would be just fine if they didn't cause heedlessness, but really the causes of heedlessness aren't limited to chemical intoxicants. In fact, the Buddha doesn't mention this yet because he's about to elaborate on the whole subject of heedlessness-causing things in a big way later in the sutta. He may also not mention it in brief here because, without additional explanation, urging him to avoid intoxicants might seem arbitrary and dogmatic to Sigala at this point.

So, this covers the four impure actions. These four actions tend to be condemned by Buddhists and non-Buddhist alike.

"What are the four causes of harmful deeds? Going astray through desire, hatred, delusion, or fear, the noble disciple does harmful deeds. But, young man, not going astray through desire, hatred, delusion, or fear, the noble disciple does not perform harmful deeds."

That is what the Buddha said.

Summing up in verse, the sublime teacher said:

"Desire, hatred, delusion, or fear:
Whoever transgresses the Dhamma by these,
Has a reputation that comes to ruin,
Like the moon in the waning fortnight.

Desire, hatred, delusion, or fear:
Whoever transgresses not the Dhamma by these,
Has a reputation that comes to fullness,
Like the moon in the waxing fortnight."

Now the Buddha is getting a bit deeper, talking not only about the more obviously harmful actions but harmful deeds in general and what causes them. Why he would describe these in terms of "reputation" I'm unsure, but perhaps it's because this would have more obvious meaning for Sigala, who might not believe in a doctrine of kamma.

For negative actions that one might "get away with" in the legal sense, because perhaps the actions are bad but not actually illegal, reputation and the political consequences of being a harmful individual are probably the most obvious natural consequence. And again, we might imagine here that the Buddha could be talking to a Christian or someone to whom the idea of kamma might not mean anything, whereas "bad reputation" would.

So at this point the Buddha has covered basic core virtue for anyone, and the six directions only in general. Next in the sutta the Buddha describes specific activities to be avoided (and thus some things with more specific political implications) and that will be the topic of my next post.

Book Review: The Foundations of Buddhism

This is my little review of The Foundations of Buddhism, by Rupert Gethin. The author originally got my attention because of a paper mentioned in a previous post.

This is a pretty good "scholarly" book that touches on many things within the the huge degree of variation in Buddhism. Being a Theravada Buddhist I'm annoyed by the constant use of Sanskrit terms (Dharma vs. Dhamma) even when speaking in a Theravada context. Considering that most of the book is about "core" Buddhist beliefs, it seems like he should be using Pali terms rather than Sanskrit, but perhaps scholars who study all of this stuff have largely standardized on the Sanskrit or something.

Since I already have a fairly good understanding of Buddhist doctrine (the Theravada anyway) I mostly found the chapters on history, the evolution of Buddhist scriptures, Abhidhamma, and Mahayana to be interesting. I particularly wasn't aware of the variation in Abhidhamma between Northern, Southern, and Eastern branches of Buddhism. I think the author does a good job of contrasting differences within different Buddhist schools and this is where I learned the most from this book.

For example, the Bardo state which is made much of in Tibetan Buddhism comes from Sarvastavadin Abhidharma. Not exactly earth-shattering information, but interesting to know.

Page 100 contains a reference to politics titled "A note on the Sangha and the state" part of which I quote below:

Strictly speaking the Sangha is an autonomous organization and no provision is made with the Vinaya for formal links with the state or government. But this does not mean that in practice close links between the Sangha and the state have not developed. The history of Buddhism in all the regions of the world where it has taken root, from ancient times down to the present day, affords numerous examples of such links and associations.

He then mentions some stuff about king Asoka, but doesn't get into any really important details, unfortunately. He then continues:

Once a king has become involved in supporting the Sangha, the avenues are not only open for state interference in and control of the affairs of the Sangha but also for the Sangha to become involved in the affairs of the state and political intrigue. The state may seek to justify its actions—including war—in the name of support for the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha; it may seek to support the sections of the Sangha that it judges as representing the true Dharma; the Sangha may connive in this, with different factions appealing for state support.

He then mentions some stuff like the Mahavimsa, Tendai monks fighting in mideval Japan, and the role of Buddhism in the legitimization of power in Southeast Asia.

I am a bit disappointed that he mentions "no provision is made with the Vinaya for formal links with the state or government" but then leaves out any mention of the political nature of certain aspects of "wrong livelihood" for monks which is mentioned in the Vinaya. Not sure if he didn't know about that or if he just didn't mention it considering the limited space he decided to devote to the subject.

In any case, I originally got this book hoping to learn more about history and the conditions in the time of the Buddha. This book focuses more on Buddhism and the variations of different schools rather than the historical context of Buddhism. For that I guess I'll have to look for another book. (Any recommendations?)

By the way, I've set up a list of books on political buddhism on Google Books. You can subscribe to my tag via RSS if desired and you'll see any new books I add to the list as I add them. I also added an RSS feed page element to the left that will link to books as I add them, but unfortunately I can only get the page element to list the last 5 books I added.

Poll: What political activities should be considered permissible for monks?

I added a poll "What political activities should be considered permissible for monks?" Click here or scroll down to the bottom of the page to see it. You can select more than one option in this poll, so select all that you think are permissible (or should be) for monks.

If there are any options you wish were on the poll that aren't there, please comment on this post and say what they are.

Blog on Burma: Ashin Mettacara

I've been too lazy, or maybe tired, to post anything for a while, but someone just submitted this to me so I thought I'd create a real blog post about it.

Ashin Mettacara has a nice looking blog on the political situation in Burma. It looks useful for keeping up with the situation there. The author is a 27 year-old monk in Burma, though he doesn't say much more about himself and I don't really blame him given the circumstances.

Anyway, check it out. (Preview below in widget form.)

Nirvana and other Buddhist felicities

I finally got a hold of a copy of Nirvana and Other Buddhist Felicities: Utopias of the Pali Imaginaire, By Steven Collins. This is a fairly expensive scholarly book and luckily I was able to borrow it using my state's interlibrary loan system.

The first part of the book is about "What is Nirvana?" which is of course less of a unique subject than the second part of the book which "explores other Buddhist utopias and relates Buddhist utopianism to studies of European and American utopian writing." Of particular interest to me is "Chapter 6: The perfect moral commonwealth? Kingship and its discontents" which talks about the political implications of the Pali texts.

Anyway, I'm going to read the interesting parts of the book and attempt to post some of its more interesting points here as I get time.