Introduction 13metaphysics. And like all systems of metaphysics, it also created a
halo in the brightness of which all the details of felt experiences lost
their reality and meaning. The ultimate cause of all human sufferings
was traced to avidyaor ignorance, i.e. the sufferings became the phan-
tom of imagination. The problem was solved simply by removing it
from the realm of reality (Chattopadhyaya 1981: 504).There are, however, many problems with this interpretation. First,
Chattopadhyaya ignores all the history of Buddhist scholarship,
going back over a century, which analyses Buddhist texts suffi-
ciently to make the citation of evidence from any one source prob-
lematical. (‘Deconstruction’ begins early in Buddhism, certainly
with Nagarjuna, possibly with the Buddha himself, and even more
clearly with Buddhist scholars of the modern era such as T.W.
Rhys Davids and Carolyn Augusta Foley). Second, the very sutta he
quotes concludes with a hopeful note: ‘Long have you experienced
stress, experiences pain, experienced loss—enough to become dis-
enchanted with all fabricated things, enough to become dispas-
sionate, enough to be released.’ Finally, in his haste to give a
Marxist interpretation of the teaching of dukkhaas arising due to
the experience of the social exploitation of a newly arising class
society, Chattapadhyaya ignores the issue of individual sorrow and
suffering. Death, disease and old age are human realities that
would continue even in a classless society. The karma/rebirth cos-
mology does not add anything essential to the issue of the vulner-
ability of the individual before the universe.
It is true that this karma/rebirth-based vast cosmology of human
suffering was part of the thinking of Indians in the first millennium
BCE. However, the question remains, can the Dhamma make sense
without it? Is it not a fact, as many have argued, that many aspects of
the Buddha’s teaching—especially the idea of anatta, (‘no soul’)—
contradict it? Ultimately the question is whether the main teachings
of the Buddha should be given a psychological interpretation or a
spiritualistic, cosmological one.
Another recent study, that by Grace Burford, directly takes up
the issue of a ‘this-worldly’ interpretation of Buddhism. She argues
from a textual analysis of one of the earliest Pali texts, (the
Atthakavaggaof the Sutta-Nipata), that there is a conflict of ulti-
mate values in the Theravada tradition. She shows that the teach-
ings about the goal of seeking and the path to it given in this textwhether there is any ‘essential’ feature of Buddhism at all—and the
only answer Gombrich can give to this is the historical derivation
from the teachings of Gotama (ibid.: 6–7). If this is true, any inter-
pretation which grows out of Buddhism historically, including that
of Ambedkar, could stand.
Of the more fundamental issues, a group of scholars recently have
been questioning some of the usual interpretations of karma/rebirth,
the goal of nibbanaand other themes. For example, in her book
Carol Anderson illustrates a tradition that relativises the idea that the
‘four noble truths’ constitute a foundational aspect of Buddhism. She
notes the argument that the search for such a ‘basic doctrine’ reflects
a ‘westernised’ interpretation. She backs her arguments with linguis-
tic evidence to claim that in their original form the four truths were
simply mentioned as: this is pain, this is the origin of pain, this is the
ending of pain, this is the path leading to the ending of pain. They
were thus only somewhat later described as ‘noble truths’. And she
concludes that the evidence demonstrates that the four noble truths
were probably not part of the earliest strata of what came to be
recognised as Buddhism, but rather emerged as a central teaching
throughout the world of Indian Buddhism in a period around the
middle of the first millennium (Anderson 1999: 20–21).
What about the question of pessimism and other-worldliness?
The idea that Buddhism is both pessimistic and idealistic is summed
up by Deviprasad Chattopadhya, whose work Lokayatagives one
of the most influential Marxist interpretations of first-millennium
thinking, including Buddhism. He arrives at the conclusion on the
basis of the ‘Four Aryan Truths’ and the interpretation of the cause
and end of suffering through the doctrine of paticca samuppada
(Sanskrit pratitya samutpada, the chain of causation), and then
quotes a sutta on ‘tears’ (theAssu Sutta of the Samyutta Nikaya) in
which the Buddha describes graphically and with great emotive
power the sufferings that all beings undergo through innumerable
lives, journeying from inscrutable beginnings, shedding tears for
the death of loved ones again and again. Chattopadhyaya then
writes, ‘Before such a story of the beginningless, fabulous and fan-
tastic misery, the actual miseries arising from the new social condi-
tions paled into insignificance’ and concludes that
Thus, with all his express distaste for metaphysical speculations,
the Buddha laid a foundation for a grand system of speculative12 Buddhism in India