Edited Transcript of Lecture on Walpola Rahula's Book What the Buddha Taught
by Rev. Dhammabodhi (John Freese)
The Clerical Scholastic Mode of Knowledge Production and Background to Walpola Rahula and the Book
Today we're going to begin talking about the clerical scholastic mode of knowledge production. For three weeks we will talk about the three main scholastic teachings of Buddhism from South Asia. Today we will look at Theravada scholastic teachings on the Four Noble Truths from the book What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula.[1] Then in the next two weeks we will talk about the Madhyamika teachings on emptiness and the Yogacara teachings on the eight consciousnesses and Buddha Nature. One of the main differences between the city-state yogic mode of knowledge production and the clerical scholastic mode of knowledge production is that the former is an oral tradition while the latter involves reading and writing. Historically the material base for the clerical scholastic mode of knowledge production is either a monarchy or an empire. Scholastic Christianity was the product of the Roman Empire supporting the scholasticism of Christian scholars in monasteries. In Buddhism in South Asia, it was the Anuradhapura, Satavahana, and Kushan monarchies that supported monastic scholasticism at monasteries. These monastics were engaged in reading and writing.
There was probably some kind of middle territory in Buddhism between the oral tradition and the written tradition where before reading and writing were introduced you had monks and nuns spending more time talking and debating than meditating. My sense is that new discourses were created in the oral tradition that were more philosophical. You probably still had monks and nuns doing intense meditation practice based on the earlier yogic teachings. But you also probably had monks and nuns that were engaging more in discussion and intellectual debate. Then at a certain point, reading and writing were introduced. That caused the intellectual debate to be even further developed via newer written discourses.
I first read this book What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula when I was in college. I took a class on Buddhism, and this was the textbook for the class. At the same time I also learned yogic meditation from Zen Mountain Monastery. In the classroom, I learned about Theravada scholastic Buddhism. Walpola Rahula was a scholar monk from Sri Lanka. He lived from 1907 to 1997, so he lived to be 90 years old. He was alive in Sri Lanka during the time when it went from being a colony of England to being an independent nation-state. A lot of the independence movement in Sri Lanka was focused on the revival of Buddhism. He ordained as a monk in 1920 at the age of 13. Traditionally it has been very common in Buddhist countries for young boys to go to a village temple to get their education. They ordain as children and get a basic education. Then some continue being a monk as an adult.
Walpola Rahula learned Pali and studied the Pali Canon as a monk in Sri Lanka. Then he went on to study at the University of London campus in Colombo, Sri Lanka. So he went from studying Buddhism at a monastery to getting a nation-state academic education at a university. He excelled in his scholarly studies, so he got to go to the Sorbonne in France in 1950 for postgraduate study. I'm not exactly sure about the details, but it may be that he got a PhD in Sri Lanka, and then he went to France after that. I assume he earned some kind of graduate degree in Sri Lanka. While he was in France, he wrote What the Buddha Taught which was published in 1959. This was seen as one of the first and most important scholarly books in English on Buddhism from a Buddhist monk. It presented an overview of what the Buddha taught from the perspective of Theravada Buddhism. I think it's a very good book that has held up over time. I think it's still a very good presentation of the Theravada scholastic teaching.
Walpola Rahula became a religious studies professor at Northwestern University in Chicago in 1965, probably because of this book. Northwestern is a pretty high-level university. Using our theoretical framework, we can say that he was trained in the Theravada clerical scholastic mode of knowledge production at monasteries in Sri Lanka. Then he learned the nation-state academic mode of knowledge production at universities in Sri Lanka and France. In his work he combined these two modes of knowledge production. He studied Buddhism using a modern nation-state academic methodology. In other words, he took an historical critical approach to studying Buddhism. But the content of his study and his perspective came from the clerical scholastic mode of knowledge production. In other words, he still adhered to the traditional Buddhist worldview and continued being a Buddhist monk. He returned to Sri Lanka in the 1980s and played a prominent role in establishing the Buddhist and Pali University of Sri Lanka.[2]
I would say he was probably not aware of the distinction between early city-state yogic Buddhism and later clerical scholastic Buddhism, because that distinction really hasn't been understood until more recently. As I have argued it has only been within the past 20 years or so that that difference has been clearly understood in the scholarly research on Buddhism. Walpola Rahula’s understanding was that the Theravada scholastic teachings were what the Buddha himself taught. There has been a lot of pressure in the modern era for clerical scholastic Buddhism to conform with the nation-state academic mode of knowledge production because Western academic scholars have mainly focused on clerical scholastic Buddhism. They want to see Buddhism as a scholastic philosophy. When Sri Lanka was trying to become independent of England there was a lot of pressure for Buddhism to prove that it could be just as scholarly and academic as Western academic scholarship. There was pressure for Buddhism to be more scholastic than yogic and to repress the earlier yogic teachings. As a result, the Western academic world thinks scholastic Buddhism represents early Buddhism. It has failed to make the distinction between early yogic Buddhism and later scholastic Buddhism. It hasn't tried to understand what the earlier yogic teaching are. Even within Buddhism in Asia before colonialism the clerical scholastic teachings tended to cover up the earlier yogic teaching. The added pressure of colonialism and modernity made that worse.
Buddhist civilizations in Asia before colonialism probably had a mix of yogic teaching and scholastic teaching. In Buddhism there is a traditional distinction between a forest monastic and a city monastic. In modern times someone like Ajahn Chah was a forest monk from the Thai Forest tradition whereas someone like Bhikhu Bodhi is a city monk in the Sri Lankan scholastic tradition. Forest monastics focus mainly on meditation. They're spending most of their time meditating. City monastics spend most of their time reading and writing, i.e., scholastic study. A forest monastic would study and practice the yogic teachings. They would study the written teachings, but they would focus on the yogic spiritual teachings that help them with their meditation practice. They would not spend a lot of time on the philosophy of the scholastic teachings. City monastics would spend more time on the philosophical teachings. They would meditate very little, or maybe not at all. This is a general characterization. Of course, some monastics living in city temples meditate a lot so it is not an absolute rule, but just a general distinction. We need both scholarship and yogic spiritual practice. The strength of Buddhism is that it has both.
Early Buddhism was mainly monastics meditating in the forest outside of villages or in a park outside of cities. The teachings were oral and focused on meditation. Over time brick monasteries got built, and then reading and writing came in. Over time you had monks and nuns that preferred to just spend their time reading, writing, and debating. They preferred not to be meditating. We need both. It's good to have philosophy. It's good to have scholastic study. But we also need to keep intensive meditation and intensive spiritual practice going. Meditation is harder to do because you have to go inside of yourself, get in touch with your suffering, and transform it. That can be very intense. It’s not for everybody. Some people have a gift for scholarship. They have a scholastic mind and it's easy for them to focus on reading and writing. That is what they find interesting. That is what gives them energy. To me, the important thing is to know that the monastic tradition can have a full range of experience, and that we should support that full range of experience. Some people want to meditate. Some people want to study. Some monastics want to do service work like in a hospital or a school. Or it could be you're a monastic for many years and you do different things at different times. You might start in one area and then switch to another area. A full monastic tradition should have all three of these areas and people should be supported to do all three.
What has happened in Western culture is that scholars have tended to focus on the scholastic teachings of Buddhism. They think Buddhism is mainly a philosophy. Most people think what the Buddha taught is what Walpola Rahula says the Buddha taught in his book What the Buddha Taught because it says that this is what the Buddha taught. But the book What the Buddha Taught is really what Sri Lankan Theravada scholasticism says the Buddha taught, and not actually what the Buddha taught. Now, don't get me wrong. There is a fair amount of what the Buddha Taught in the book What the Buddha Taught, but there's also a lot of later Theravada scholasticism in it. Theravada scholasticism is based on looking at the whole of the Pali Canon. It does not distinguish between the earlier yogic layer and the later philosophical layer.
The breakthrough research over the past 20 years or so has shown that the early yogic teachings in the Samyutta Nikaya is really what the Buddha taught. I agree with that claim, and I make it also. My argument is that what the Buddha really taught is what is in the Samyutta Nikaya. Then over time, the other Nikayas got added to the Pali Canon making it a much bigger collection. All of the discourses in the Pali Canon are said to be from the Buddha himself and his direct disciples. You read a discourse, and it says this is the Buddha saying something. But if we take a more historical critical perspective, we can see that there are layers. This can be challenging or upsetting. Take for example the Bible. You have the four main gospels where Jesus is teaching, or his disciples are talking about Jesus. But in the historical critical study of the Bible, it appears that the Book of John was written later than the other three gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.[3] If you're a Christian and your whole life you've read the Bible, and then you hear somebody say that the Book of John was written later, you could get very upset because you want them all to be the same. You want everything to be directly from Jesus and you don't want to hear somebody tell you it's not. As a Buddhist studying Christianity, you're not invested like that so you can hear these things and it doesn't upset you. But as a Buddhist studying Buddhism, if you study Buddhism your whole life and you start hearing, wait a minute, maybe the Four Noble Truths are a later teaching and not what the Buddha himself taught, that could be very upsetting. So be prepared.
Before I get into the book, I will review the research that makes the distinction between the earlier yogic layer and the later scholastic layer in the Pali Canon. I spoke about this earlier in the semester, but I will bring it up again now as a refresher. In the second class of this semester, I put forward my threefold Dharmic methodology of studying Buddhism by studying the sacred texts, the history of the tradition, and living traditions of practice. In terms of the sacred texts it has been the work of Master Yin Shun in Taiwan, Chung Moon Keat at the University of New England in Australia, and the Thai Forest monk Sujato Bhikkhu who is from Australia who have argued that the Samyutta Nikaya in the Pali Canon and the Samyukta Agama in the Chinese Canon are the oldest layers of teachings in those canons.[4] In terms of the history of the tradition you have the work of Indologist Johannes Bronkhorst which shows that early Buddhism came from the network of city-states in northeast India that made up Greater Magadha. His work shows that early Buddhism did not come out of Hinduism because the early Hindu culture in northwest India was separate and distinct from the early Buddhist culture in northeast India.[5] When you read the Samyutta Nikaya the world it describes is consistent with Greater Magadha and the westward expansion of the Mauryan Civilization. The Samyutta Nikaya doesn't have debates between Buddhist monks and Hindu Brahmin priests about whether there is a self or not or whether the caste system is good or not like you have in the other Pali Nikayas. Those debates happened later when Buddhism and Hinduism mixed with each other.
In terms of living traditions of practice, you have the Burmese Ledi Saydaw vipassana lineage and the Thai Forest Ajahn Mun lineage which both use the early yogic teachings. The Ledi Sayadaw lineage has mindfulness of breathing at the nose and then the body scan practice within the context of the 12 links of dependent origination, so that is a living tradition whose teachings go back to the early yogic teachings.[6] The Ajhan Mun lineage teaches the 16 exercises of mindfulness of breathing the way they are taught in the Samyutta Nikaya. They teach mindfulness of breathing and the whole body to get into the four absorptions and then they teach the heart-mind practice within the context of the 12 links.[7] That also goes back to what is in the Samyutta Nikaya. Because the evidence from the sacred texts, the history of the tradition, and living traditions of practice all point to the same thing, it provides the grounds to claim that there is an early yogic layer of teachings in the Pali Canon and then a later more philosophical layer.
I make the claim that Samyutta Nikaya is the oldest layer of teachings in my dissertation.[8] I have also published an Anthology of 50 Discourses from the Samyutta Nikaya which is what I see as the main teachings in the Samyutta Nikaya.[9] I have two upcoming books that will also make this claim. So far, people are not as brave as me to say it this boldly. As far as I know, I'm the only one so far that has put all three of these sources of evidence together. In addition, I add the comparison of early Buddhist yogic teachings with early Daoist Daoist yogic teachings, and I also point to the work of Hal Roth to show historical similarity between early Buddhism and early Daoism.[10]
The First Noble Truth in Walpola Rahula’s What the Buddha Taught
Walpola Rahula presents the Four Noble Truths from the Theravada scholastic teaching. It is very good stuff as far as philosophy goes. This is very good philosophy. It also touches on the earlier yogic teachings but it's not exactly the same thing. According to Walpola Rahula, “The heart of the Buddha’s teachings lies in The Four Noble Truths (Cattāri Ariyasaccāni) which is expounded in his very first sermon to his old colleagues, the five ascetics, at Isipatana (modern Sarnath) near Benares.”[11] Walpola Rahula is referencing the Discourse on Rolling Forth the Wheel of Dhamma (Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta SN 56.11) which is in the Samyutta Nikaya. It is in the saccasamyutta (subcollection on the truths) inside the mahavaggasamyutta (main great collection on practice). Dhamma means the “Dharma,” cakka means “wheel,” pavattana means “rolling forth,” and sutta means “discourse.” This discourse presents itself as the first Dharma talk the Buddha gave after he attained enlightenment. He is said to have attained enlightenment in Bodh Gaya, and then he went to Sarnath outside of what is now the city of Varanasi. Isipatana is translated “Deer Park” although it might literally translate as “place of the rishis” or “place of yogic seers.” Benares, also known as Varanasi, is the city Sarnath is near. Varanasi used to be called Kashi (Pali Kasi). That was the ancient name. There was the Kingdom of Kashi. It was a city-state on the Ganges River.
When I read the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, it reads like it is in the time of either Greater Magadha or the westward expansion of the Mauryan Civilization. It is at the very end of the Samyutta Nikaya, not at the beginning. The Four Noble Truths is not the core theory in the Samyutta Nikaya. The core theory is the 12 Links of Dependent Origination in the nidanavaggasamyutta which is the first main collection where the Buddha really starts teachings. Before that you have the main collection of discourses with poetic verses (sagathavaggasamyutta) which I see as a warmup to the main collection on the 12 links (nidanavaggasamutta). There is no vaggasamyutta on the Four Noble Truths. There is just a sub-collection (samyutta) the end of the mahavaggasamyutta.
Just because this discourse (SN 56.11) claims to be the first Dharma talk of the Buddha doesn't mean it is actually the first Dharma talk of the Buddha. It could be a later discourse by the Buddha or one that was added in after he died. The Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta depicts the Buddha teaching to five wandering yogic ascetics. That is consistent with the culture of Greater Magadha. But the discourse also makes mention of the god Brahma, the Brahmins and other elements of Vedic culture. So that could mean it was composed during the westward expansion of the Mauryan Civilization when there was more mixing between Buddhist monastics and people from the Vedic culture. The Buddha could have taught the Four Noble Truths as a way to summarize what is in the Samyutta Nikaya. But it's not necessarily true that the Dhammacakkapavattana Sutta was the first Dharma talk that he gave. In the Samyutta Nikaya Savatthi is the main location and, as I just mentioned, the teachings on the 12 Links is the core theory. But because this discourse (SN 56.11) says it is the first Dharma talk the Buddha gave after his enlightenment, that is what everybody thinks. That is what the tradition of Theravada Buddhism thinks. Don’t get me wrong, the Four Noble Truths is an amazing teaching, and this is an amazing discourse. The way it has been interpreted by Theravada scholasticism is a masterpiece of the clerical scholastic mode of knowledge production.
The First Noble Truth in Pali is dukkha. According to Walpola Rahula,
“It is true that the Pali word dukkha (or Sankrit duhkha) in ordinary usage means ‘suffering’, ‘pain’, ‘sorrow’, or ‘misery’, as opposed to the word sukha meaning ‘happiness’, ‘comfort’ or ‘ease’. But the term dukkha as the First Noble Truth, which represents the Buddha’s view of life and the world, has a deeper philosophical meaning and connotes enormously wider senses. It is admitted that the term dukkha in the First Noble Truth contains, quite obviously, the ordinary meaning of ‘suffering’, but in addition it also includes the deeper ideas such as ‘imperfection’, ‘impermanence’, ‘emptiness’, ‘insubstantiality’.”[12]
As you can see, Walpola Rahula presents this teaching on suffering as a “philosophical” teaching related to the Buddha’s “view of life and the world.” He does not describe it as a yogic spiritual teaching. He is talking about The Four Noble Truths as a way to understand the nature of reality. He goes on to talk about how there are three levels of dukkha. This three-level view of suffering is based on an analysis of what the Buddha says about suffering in the Dhammacakkapavatana Sutta. Walpola Rahula is presenting the Theravada scholastic analysis of what is in the discourse.
The first level is dukkha as ordinary suffering, which is dukkha-dukkha. That is regular physical and emotional pain. If you are cooking and you burn your hand on the stove, that's dukkha-dukkha. If you are married and your spouse says, “I don't like you anymore, I'm getting a divorce,” that’s dukkha-dukkha. Dukkha-dukkha is obvious physical and emotional pain that we inevitably experience in life. The second level is dukkha produced by change which is viparināma-dukkha. This is the awareness that pleasant experiences will change and go away. Everything may be going very well for you in your life. You have a lot of happiness. You have a good job. You have a good partner. You're happy in life. But you know that sooner or later, it's going change. It's going to go away. Being aware of that is the suffering of impermanence, suffering due to change, viparinamā-dukkha. For example, I have my dog Rama, who I love very much. He's my favorite dog. I love him, but I know I'm probably going to outlive him. He's probably going to die before I do. One day I'm going to be very sad when he dies. Right now, he brings me a lot of happiness. I feel so much love for him, but I know one day he's going to pass. If I think about that, I know that is going to suck. That's going to hurt. I'm already planning his funeral. That is suffering caused by change or the anticipation of how happiness will turn into sadness.
The third level is dukkha as conditioned states. Walpola Rahula spells it samkāra-dukkha. I usually see it spelled sankhara which means “mental formation.” But sankhara can also mean “conditioned phenomenon.” All of the five aggregates are conditioned phenomena. This third level of suffering is the identification and attachment to the five aggregates. This is a deeper level of suffering that's hidden. In the Dhammacakkapavatana Sutta the Buddha calls this the five clinging aggregates (pañcaupādānakhandā). Pañca means “five,” upādāna means “grasping,” and khandā means “aggregates.” This is the experience of identification with and attachment to the body and mind as self. It is hidden because you have to experience nirvana, the deeper spiritual ground, to no longer identify with and attach to the body and mind as self. Before you have an experience of nirvana you take it for granted that “I am my body and mind.” We don’t question how it could be otherwise? As far as we know, that's how it is. But if you experience nirvana, then you realize, oh, there's this deeper spiritual ground or reality that's my true nature. Compared to that, identifying with and attaching to the five aggregates is suffering. Compared to nirvana, the experience of having a body and mind is suffering.
This understanding of the third level of suffering and the possibility for the cessation of that suffering is the radical teaching in Buddhism. You have the normal physical and psychological suffering, but then you have this deeper level of suffering. It is the Buddha attaining nirvana that was able to expose that. The problem with a lot of modern Western Buddhism is they only talk about the first two levels of suffering. They are ignorant of the third level of suffering, or they try to water it down into an existential philosophy. They don’t recognize rebirth and liberation from rebirth. They don’t recognize the deeper spiritual ground. They talk about nirvana as just being aware of impermanence or no self as a concept or existential insight. They don't know about the deeper spiritual awakening. It is just mindfulness-based existentialism. But that is what happens when the nation-state academic mode of knowledge production takes over. They take the clerical scholastic teaching and stick it into the worldview of scientific materialism so then you lose the full meaning and depth of the teaching
The Second Noble Truth in Walpola Rahula’s What the Buddha Taught
The second noble truth is dukkha-samudaya. Dukkha means “suffering,” and “samudaya” means “origin” or “cause.” According to Wapola Rahula,
“It is this “thirst (craving, tanhā) which produces re-existence and re-becoming (ponobhavikā), and which is bound up with passionate greed (nandirāgasahagatā), and which finds fresh delight now here and now there (tatratatrābhinandinī), namely, (1) thirst for sense pleasures (kamā-tanhā), (2) thirst for existence and becoming (bhava-tanhā) and (3) thirst for non-existence (self annihilation, vibhava-tanhā).”[13]
This is pretty much coming straight from the Dhammacakkapavattanasutta where the Buddha describes the cause of suffering as “craving” (tanha). There are three kinds. There's kamā-tanhā, which is craving for sensual pleasures. There is bhava-tanhā, which is craving for existence or becoming, which also means craving for rebirth. It can also mean craving for rebirth at a certain spiritual level. Then there is vibhava-tanhā which means you crave for non-existence. You just don't want to exist anymore. It can also relate to formless states of consciousness such as the realm of experiencing nothingness. Walpola Rahula goes on to say that craving as the Second Noble Truth should be understood within the context of the 12 links. Basically, what he is saying is that if you don't understand the 12 links, you don't fully understand the Second Noble Truth.
In the 12 links, craving is just one of the 12 links. If you thought the Second Noble Truth is only craving without the rest of the 12 links, you're not fully understanding what the Second Noble Truth is. This raises the question as to why the link of craving is isolated as the Second Noble Truth as opposed to any of the other 11 links? We can say that craving is where the chain can be broken in terms of contact, sensation, craving, grasping, and becoming. Craving is an intention/emotion arising from sensation that can be acted on or not depending on the circumstances. You're already experiencing body sensations. You're already experiencing craving come up from pleasant sensations, aversion come up from unpleasant sensations, and ignorance come up from neutral sensations. That's already happening. There's nothing you can do to stop that or control that. You cannot prevent any of that from happening.
What you can control, with practice, is whether you act on the craving or not. With practice, when craving comes up, you can choose whether you act on it or whether you let go of it. When aversion comes up, you can choose whether you act on it or whether you let go of it. With practice you can be aware of neutral sensations instead of not being aware of them. If you don't study the teachings and practice, when somebody yells at you, you get mad and you yell back at them right away. But if you study and practice, you can be aware, oh, they've yelled at me, there's unpleasant sensations in my body, and it's giving rise to anger which is making me want to yell back. If I practice coming back to my breathing and my body, I can be aware of the unpleasant sensations and the anger, and then I can choose whether to act on it or not. You can discern if it is healthy anger where you are setting a boundary or if it is unhealthy anger that will get you in trouble. If you determine that it's unhealthy, you don't want to act on it. You can contain it by staying with the breath and the body sensations so you can hold the emotions and not be overwhelmed by them. You can let the anger be there and let it go back down. So craving is a place in the chain where you have a choice. Once you act on the craving which is the next link of grasping, the arrow has left the bow, and you can't bring it back. You will automatically experience the result of the action which is the next link of becoming. You can't avoid that. So that is also unavoidable.
In actual practice you want to upgrade the quality of your craving, and then you want to go beyond all craving. In other words, you want to replace acting on unwholesome desires with acting on wholesome desires. Then eventually you want to go beyond all desires. You have to deal with the craving that comes up from pleasant sensation, aversion that comes up from unpleasant sensation, and ignorance that comes up from neutral sensation. You have to work with your body and with sensations to start with. Then you can go to the deeper level where you're working at the heart-mind. Working on the heart-mind is what gets you to the first five links of the chain where you have ignorance and volition coming out of ignorance which results in your identifying with the body-mind. So that's the next level of practice where you're working on ignorance and volition that's coming out of your heart-mind. You have to uproot the ignorance which is the habit of identifying with the five aggregates.
It is in the subcollection of discourses on sensations (vedanasamyutta) in the Samyutta Nikaya where it talks about the three kinds of sensations and the habit energies that come up from them. That is where it says that you have pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral sensations. That is where it says from the pleasant sensations, the habit of craving can come up. From unpleasant sensations, the habit of aversion can come up. From neutral sensations, the habit of ignorance can come up. When the sensation is neutral it's kind of boring, so you don't pay attention to the details of it. When you do the body scan practice, you want to increase your sensitivity to body sensations so you can be aware of all the sensations in your body, even if they're neutral. Not being aware of neutral sensations is one kind of ignorance. Then when we talk about ignorance as the first link of the 12 links, that is a deeper level of ignorance. That is related to the third level of hidden suffering caused by identifying and attaching to the five aggregates. It's such a deep habit it just happens automatically. But at a deep level of meditation, you can get to where you're more aware of that habit. So that is ignorance at a deeper level. I'm not enlightened so I can't fully describe this level of ignorance because I am still in it. That brings us to the Third Noble Truth.
The Third Noble Truth in Walpola Rahula’s What the Buddha Taught
The Third Noble Truth is the “cessation of suffering” (dukkha-nirodha). Nirodha means “cessation.” So dukkha-nirodha means cessation of suffering. Nirodha is another word for nibbana in Pali which is “nirvana” in Sanskrit. In the Samyutta Nikaya the Buddha defines full awakening, i.e., the complete cessation of rebirth, as the eradication of the ten deeply rooted habit energies (sankharas) that cause rebirth. These are the “ten fetters” (samyojana). The word samyojana is similar to the word samyutta. They start with the same prefix of samy which has the connotation of being interconnected. The samyojana are an interconnected network of habit energies that cause rebirth. If you have the full experience of nibbana, it means you have uprooted these 10 fetters. So cessation of suffering means the elimination or the eradication of these 10 fetters. In the Discourse on the Lower Fetters (SN 45.179 Orambhāgiyasutta) and the Discourse on the Higher Fetters (SN 45.180 Uddhambhāgiyasutta) from the maggasamyutta of the mahavaggasamyutta in the Samyuta Nikaya, the Buddha lists the 10 fetters as what gets uprooted by fully developing the Eightfold Path.
“Mendicants, there are five lower fetters. What five? Identity view, doubt, misapprehension of precepts and observances, sensual desire, and ill will. These are the five lower fetters. The noble eightfold path should be developed for the direct knowledge, complete understanding, finishing, and giving up of these five lowers fetters.
[….]
Mendicants, there are five higher fetters. What five? Desire for rebirth in the realm of luminous form, desire for rebirth in the formless realm, conceit, restlessness, and ignorance. These are the five higher fetters. The noble eightfold path should be developed for the direct knowledge, complete understanding, finishing, and giving up of these five higher fetters.”[14]
The lower fetters are what cause you to be reborn in the desire realm, meaning the world of normal physical sensations. The higher fetters are what cause you to be reborn in the realm of luminous form and in the formless realm. So this is the triple realm that you can be reborn into. With the lower fetters, you're going to get reborn in the lower realms. With the higher fetters, you're going to get reborn in the higher realms. These are what you want to uproot. In the Discourse on the Full Awareness of Breathing (MN 118 Anapanasati Sutta) in the Majjhima Nikaya it talks about the four fruits of attainment. These are four levels of realizing nibbana. With each one you have an experience of nibbana which causes some of these fetters to be eradicated or weakened. The Third Noble Truth is about these experiences of nibbana in which some of the ten fetters are weakened or destroyed.
Stream entry (sotāpanna) is the first level. When you experience stream entry, you have an experience of nibbana, and the first three fetters are uprooted. That's identity view, doubt, and misapprehension of precepts and observances. What I understand this to mean is, if you have an experience of nibbana, you temporarily are not identifying with the five aggregates. Then your experience of the five aggregates comes back. But because you had that experience, your identity view is not there anymore. Your ego is still there, but you don't believe in it like you did before. For me the identity view is that I'm John Freese, I'm this particular lifetime, blah, blah, blah. But if I experience stream entry, I don't take that so seriously anymore. Doubt getting uprooted means you don't have doubt anymore that it's possible to experience nibbana because you've had an experience of nibbana. Before you’ve had an experience of nibbana, you don't know if it's true or not. Misapprehension of precepts and observances means you don’t think just keeping precepts and doing rituals without doing the deeper meditation practice will result in nibbana. The experience has to come through meditation practice and possibly also being around an awakened teacher that that can cause it to happen in you when you are ripe enough. The understanding is that if you have attained stream entry, then you have weakened the karmic momentum of rebirth to where now you're only going to be reborn as a human for seven more lifetimes.
Once returner (sakadāgāmī) is the second level of attainment. With this you have an experience of nibbana and the fetters of sensual desire and ill will are weakened. Your craving for sensual pleasures and your feeling of hatred or aversion towards physical pain is weakened. They are not destroyed, but they are weakened. That tells you how strong sensual desire and hatred are that you can have a whole other experience of nibbana and they still haven't been totally uprooted. This level of attainment is called “once returner” because you will only have to be reborn as a human one more time. You still have enough sensual desire and aversion towards physical pain that you're gonna have to come back one more time.
Non-returner (anāgāmī) is the third level of attainment. With this level sensual desire and ill will are completely uprooted. As a result, you will be reborn in a spirit world. You're not going to be reborn in the physical world anymore. Within the spirit world, you'll continue your practice and then you can realize nibbana there. Sensual desire and ill will are so strong it takes three whole whacks of nibbana at them to uproot them. So those first five fetters are the lower fetters.
Arahant is the fourth level of attainment. That is someone who had uprooted all of the ten fetters. The last five fetters are the higher fetters. They include desire for rebirth in the luminous form, desire for rebirth in the formless realm, conceit, restlessness, and ignorance. Conceit (mana) can also be understood as I-making (ahamkara). I'm not totally sure what restlessness and ignorance mean here because I am not enlightened so I can't tell you exactly what they mean. It's whatever is left over that has to be uprooted to become an arahant. The Buddha became an arahant when he realized nibbana.
The Fourth Noble Truth in Walpola Rahula’s What the Buddha Taught
The Fourth Noble Truth is the path leading to the cessation of suffering (dukkhanirodhagāminipatipada) which is the Noble Eightfold Path (ariyaatthangikamagga).
Dukkha nirodha means “suffering cessation.” Gamina means “leading to.” Patipada means “practice.” So “suffering, cessation, leading to, practice” is the literal meaning. Then you have the Noble Eightfold Path. Ariya is “noble,” attangika means “eight limbs,” and magga means “path.” Atthangika Magga is similar to Ashtanga Yoga (Eight-Limb Yoga) from Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutras in Hinduism. You can think of the Buddha’s atthangika magga as his eight-limb yogic practice. As we have discussed in a previous class, the Eightfold Path is
• Right View: Sammā Dithi
• Right Intention: Sammā Sankhapa
• Right Speech: Sammā Vācā
• Right Action: Sammā Kammanta
• Right Livelihood Sammā Ājiva
• Right Effort: Sammā Vayama
• Right Mindfulness: Sammā Sati
• Right Concentration: Sammā Samadhi
Walpola Rahula summarizes the Eightfold Path by talking about the threefold training (tisarena sikkhā) of precepts (sila), concentration (samadhi), and wisdom (pañña). The threefold training is not necessarily coming from the earliest layer of teachings, but it is a good summary of what is in the Eightfold Path. The foundation of practice is to keep the ethical precepts. Then you engage in meditation practice. That results in liberating insight or wisdom which is spiritual awakening.
In later Theravada Buddhism, you get the separation between concentration and insight. In the early teachings, you do not have this separation. The later teachings distinguish between concentration practice (samatha) and insight practice (vipassana). In later Theravada teachings, you have what's known as the “path of serenity” and the “path of dry insight.” In the former you are supposed to cultivate the eight meditative absorptions first for concentration practice and then you do the insight meditation. In the latter you just develop access concentration and then go into insight meditation. In early Buddhism, you only have four meditative absorptions. Over time four more got added for a total of eight. In addition, in later Theravada Buddhism, you enter meditative absorption by being aware of a subtle mental sign (kasina), and when you enter absorption, you are no longer aware of your body and mind. In early Buddhism you enter absorption by being aware of your breath, your whole body, and your mind. The later understanding is what is presented in the Theravada scholar monk Buddhaghosa’s text called The Path of Purification (visuddhimagga). I will say more about him below.
The main discourse that scholastic Theravada Buddhism focuses on for insight meditation (vipassana meditation) is the Discourse on the Four Establishments of Mindfulness (Satipatthana Sutta MN.10) from the Majhima Nikaya. This is a later discourse in the Pali Canon. It teaches mindfulness of the body (kaya), feelings (vedana), mind (citta), and objects of mind (dhamma). Unlike the early teachings on the 16 exercises in the Samyutta Nikaya, this discourse does not teach that you should practice being aware of the four establishments in order from the body, to sensation, to the heart-mind, to the Dhamma as the 12 links. Instead, you are just aware of what arises in your awareness willy nilly. The four establishments are just used to categorize what arises. In addition, the Satipatthana Sutta doesn’t teach Dhamma as the teachings on the 12 links. Instead, it speaks of dhamma as “object of mind” or “phenomenon” which is a later more philosophical understanding of what the word dhamma means. The discourse also does not teach about the four meditative absorptions the way the 16 exercises do. Theravada scholasticism sees the Satipatthana Sutta as teaching dry insight where you don’t cultivate the four absorptions at all. Instead of using the 12 links as its core theory it uses the teachings on the three marks of existence (tilakhana) as its core theory. The teachings on the three marks state that all conditioned phenomena are impermanent, suffering, and not self. This is a later philosophical teaching from the clerical scholastic mode of knowledge production.
Most of modern American Buddhism thinks insight meditation from the Satipatthana Sutta is what the Buddha taught for meditation. They got that from the Sri Lankan Buddhist Publication Society and the Burmese Mahasi Sayadaw vipassana lineage which are coming from the clerical scholastic mode of knowledge production. If you want the early yogic teachings, you have to go to the Burmese Ledi Sayadaw vipassana lineage and the Thai Forest Ajhan Mun lineage. Their teachings are in accord with the early teachings on meditation from the Samyutta Nikaya. The Ledi Sayadaw lineage focuses on mindfulness of breathing and body sensations within the context of the12 links. The Ajhan Mun lineage focuses on the 16 exercises the way they are presented in the Samyutta Nikaya.
Theravada scholasticism uses the teachings on the three marks of existence to make sweeping truth claims about the nature of reality. They say all conditioned phenomena are impermanent, suffering and not self. That is a truth claim about the nature of reality. It frames the goal of practice as being to gain insight into the nature of reality. The teachings on impermanence, suffering, and no self in the Samyutta Nikaya are not sweeping truth claims about the nature of reality. They are just skillful perception that you use to not identify and attach to the five aggregates and the six sense spheres. They are practical meditation teachings that you use in certain circumstances. The goal of practice in the Samyutta Nikaya is not to gain insight into the nature of reality. The goal is to become liberated from rebirth as understood in the teachings on the 12 links. It's not that the later teachings on the nature of reality are not true, it’s just that they’re different from the earlier yogic teachings. Despite what most people think, the Buddha was not a philosopher telling us what the nature of reality is. He was a yogic spiritual adept telling us how to work with the process of rebirth. He used the four establishments as a yogic structure that is similar to the yogic structure of early Daoism, Hindu Yoga, and Chan Buddhism.
Buddhaghosa and the Buddhist Clerical Scholastic Mode of Knowledge Production
Within Theravada Buddhism you have Buddhaghosa who is the most famous scholastic philosopher in Theravada Buddhism. He was a monk from India that went to the Anuradhapura Kingdom in Sri Lanka. That kingdom existed from 437 BC to 1118 CE. This kingdom is where the Pali Canon got written down around the year 100 CE. The Pali Canon existed in India as an oral teaching and then it got written down in Sri Lanka. Buddhaghosa was alive in the fifth century which means the 400s in the Common Era. He wrote a number of texts. As mentioned above the vissudhimagga (path of purification) is his famous text on meditation. Here is where you have the teachings where you're meditating on a subtle mental image for concentration and where you are separating meditative concentration from insight meditation. This is where you have the path of serenity and the path of dry insight. If you're doing meditative absorption, it is taught as focusing on a subtle mental image. When you do the insight practice, it is taught that that's when you're focusing on the four establishments of mindfulness. This is a later scholastic understanding of meditation from the clerical scholastic mode of knowledge production. Most people in Western academia think this is what the Buddha taught for meditation. This is what people from the so-called Western Vipassana Movement think as well. They are from the Insight Meditation Society, Spirit Rock, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, Mindfulness Based Self Compassion, and Buddhist-informed neuroscience and psychotherapy. They represent a nation-state academic interpretation of the clerical scholastic teachings from the Buddhist Publication Society in Sri Lanka and the Burmese Mahasi Vipassana lineage. They are ignorant of or have repressed the teachings from the Ledi Sayadaw and Ajhan Mun lineages. They also are ignorant of the research on the Samyutta Nikaya.
As I mentioned at the start of this lecture, next week, we're going to talk about the Mahayana teachings on emptiness, which is coming from Nagarjuna from the Satavahana Kingdom. Then the following week we'll talk about the Yogacara teachings on the eight consciousnesses and Buddha Nature from Asanga and Vasubandhu from the Kingdom of Ghandara, also known as the Kushan Kingdom. When we are talking about Buddhism in South Asia, the material base for the clerical scholastic mode of knowledge production is usually a kingdom where you have monasteries functioning as universities that engage in reading and writing. Theravada Buddhism is one version of that. Walpola Rahula’s teaching is really coming from this Theravada scholasticism. The teachings on the Four Noble Truths do connect to the early yogic teachings. But in the later layers of the Pali Canon, they became more philosophical.
You need to be able to tell the difference between clerical scholastic Buddhism and city-state yogic Buddhism. Even though Theravada scholasticism presents itself as what the Buddha taught, it's really not exactly what the Buddha taught. But because everybody associates Theravada with early Buddhism, they think that's what early Buddhism is. But really Theravada is later scholastic Buddhism in the same way that Mahayana Buddhism is later scholastic Buddhism. The Theravada teachings on the Four Noble Truths and the three marks of existence, the Madhyamika teachings on emptiness, and Yogacara teachings on consciousness represent the three main scholastic doctrines of South Asian Buddhism. All of the other scholastic doctrines in Buddhism that get developed in Asia come from them.
[1] Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught: Revised and Expanded Edition with Texts from Suttas and Dhammapada, Revised edition (New York: Grove Press, 1974).
[2] “Buddhist & Pali University of Sri Lanka,” Home, accessed August 3, 2024, http://www.bpu.ac.lk/.
[3] Bart D. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee, Reprint edition (HarperOne, 2014); Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, Reprint edition (Vintage, 2004).
[4] Mun-keat Choong, “Ācāriya Buddhaghosa and Master Yinshun 印順 on the Three-Aṅga Structure of Early Buddhist Texts,” accessed May 3, 2024, https://www.academia.edu/44055729/%C4%80c%C4%81riya_Buddhaghosa_and_Master_Yinshun_%E5%8D%B0%E9%A0%86_on_the_Three_a%E1%B9%85ga_Structure_of_Early_Buddhist_Texts; Choong Mun-Keat, The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism: A Comparative Study Based on the Sutranga Portion of the Pali Samyutta-Nikaya and the Chinese Samyuktagama (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2000); Ajhan Sujato, A History of Mindfulness, How Insight Worsted Tranquility in the Satipatthana Sutta, Second (New South Wales, Australia: Santipada, 2012), http://santifm.org/santipada/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/A_History_of_Mindfulness_Bhikkhu_Sujato.html#tth_sEc9.4; Ajhan Sujato, How Early Buddhism Differs from Theravada (Publisher at the End of the World, 2022).
[5] Johannes Bronkhorst, Greater Magadha: Studies in the Culture of Early India, Greater Magadha (Brill, 2007), https://brill-com.uwest.idm.oclc.org/view/title/13862; Johannes Bronkhorst, Buddhism in the Shadow of Brahmanism (Brill, 2011), https://brill.com/display/title/19810.
[6] Sayagyi U. Ba Khin and S. N. Goenka, Sayagyi U Ba Khin Journal: A Collection Commemorating the Teaching of Sayagyi U Ba Khin (Onalaska, WA: Vipassana Research Publications, 2017).
[7] Ajhan Lee Dhammadharo, Frames of Reference, trans. Thanissaro Bhikkhu (Metta Forest Monastery, 2011); Bhikkhu Thanissaro, With Each & Every Breath: A Guide to Meditation (Valley Center: Metta Forest Monastery, 2013); Bhikkhu Thanissaro, The Paradox of Becoming (Valley Center, CA: Thanissaro Bhikkhu, 2008).
[8] John B. Freese, “A Mutual Critical Correlation of Buddhist Meditation and Trauma Therapy” (Claremont School of Theology, 2022), Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/freese-2022.
[9] Dhammabodhi, ed., An Anthology of 50 Discourses from the Samyutta Nikaya, trans. Bhikkhu Sujato (Penasco New Mexico: Dhamma Vinaya Press, 2023).
[10] John Freese, “Daoist Internal Alchemy as a Model for Understanding the Buddhist Monastic Three-Fold Training of Precepts, Concentration and Insight” (American Acadamey of Religion Western Region Conference, Institute of Buddhist Studies, Berkeley California, 2018); Harold Roth, Original Tao: Inward Training, Bilingual edition (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2004); Harold D. Roth, Contemplative Foundations of Classical Daoism, The (Albany: SUNY Press, 2021).
[11] Rahula, What the Buddha Taught, p.16.
[12] Rahula, p.17.
[13] Rahula, p.29.
[14] Dhammabodhi, An Anthology of 50 Discourses from the Samyutta Nikaya, p.36.