Buddhism in India

The Dhamma 57

with faith. Instead, the Dhammacakkappavattana Suttaand the

other most frequently used teaching of the four truths begins,

rather, with craving (tanha). It is the overcoming of this that is the

way to the end of suffering. What is required for liberation, then,

is not renunciation of the world itself, but of desire for the world;

what must be done is to gain control over the passions. As beautifully

stated in the great collection of Tamil moralistic poems, the Kural,

written under Buddhist influence,

The wise declare, through all the days, to every living thing

That ceaseless round of birth from seed of strong desire doth spring.

If desire you feel, freedom from changing birth require!

‘Twill come, if you desire to ‘scape set free from all desire...

Men freed from bonds of strong desire are free;

None other share such perfect liberty....

Affliction is not known where no desires abide;

Where these are, endless rises sorrow’s tide.

When dies away desire, that woe of woes,

Even here the soul unceasing rapture knows (Kural, #37).

If craving is the root of sorrow, then the end of sorrow requires the

destruction of the craving. This is primarily morality: it is a morality

of self-control, not simply of avoiding action, but of controlling

and ending the passions involved in action. Again, as a beautiful

verse in the Dhammapadaputs it,

There is no fire like passion,

no chains like guilt

no snare like infatuation,

no torrent like craving (#251).

Renunciation, then, means not so much the renunciation of luxury,

worldly goods and power as the renunciation of passion, of craving;

it leads to a compassion for all beings, and a realisation of the

emptiness of worldly pleasures. Again and again, the ideal person,

a bhikku, an arahat, a Buddha, is depicted as calm, self-controlled,

dispassionate, but at the same time filled with compassion and

love. Metta, love for those who are equal and karuna, compassion

for those more deprived, are the great Buddhist values. Love and

righteousness are more important to the Buddhist than simple

adherence to rules and rituals. This is in major contrast both

to the ritualistic, caste-bound pseudo-morality of the Brahmans,

who renounces violence towards all beings,

such a person is a Brahman, a samana, a bhikku (Dhammapada, #142),

In this way, the Buddha interpreted kamma not in terms of
the chain of actions leading to rebirth itself, but in terms of the
immediate, psychological, subjective actor in the immediate pre-
sent. This focus on the concrete acting individual, and especially on
the intention of his action, was a unique contribution of Buddhist
thinking.
On the basis of these considerations we can turn to the under-
standing of the ‘four noble truths’ which troubled Ambedkar so much
and yet are considered to be a fundamental teaching of Buddhism
(see also Anderson 1999: 55–84). The Dhammacakkappavattana
Sutta, the ‘turning of the wheel of the Dhamma’, is the story of what
the Buddha taught in his very first sermon after the Enlightenment.
Its begins with a reference to the avoidance of the two extremes, of
worldly yielding to the passions and sensuality, on one hand, and
extreme and painful self-mortification on the other. This is the
Middle Way, defined as ‘right views, right aspirations, right speech,
right conduct, right livelihood; right effort; right mindfulness and
right contemplation.’
Following this is the discussion on the four truths. These are that
sorrow (dukkha) exists, that there is an origin of sorrow, an ending
to sorrow, and a path to the ending of sorrow. Elaborating on these
in the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta(6–7), the Buddha says,
regarding the truth of the origin of sorrow,

Verily it is that thirst (or craving), causing the renewal of existence,

accompanied by sensual delight, seeking satisfaction now here, now

there—that is to say the craving for the gratification of the passions, or

the craving for a future life, or the craving for success in this present life.

And this linkage of thirst/craving (tanha) with sorrow is simply
repeated in the third truth, ‘Verily it is the destruction, in which no
passion remains, of this very thirst; the laying aside of, the getting
rid of, the being free from, the harbouring no longer of this thirst.’
Tanhais a crucial category in Buddhist thinking, and it points to
a psychological state and not an intellectual one. This is crucially
different from the later elaboration of the chain of causality (the
pattica samuppadawith its classical 12 stages) where the origin of
suffering lies in ignorance, avijja, while the end of suffering starts

56 Buddhism in India