Buddhism in India

The Dhamma 63

In so far only, Ananda, can one be born, or grow old, or die, or dissolve,

or reappear, in so far only is there any process of verbal expression, in

so far only is there any process of explanation, in so far only is there any

process of manifestation, in so far only is there any sphere of knowledge,

in so far only do we go round the round of life up to our appearance

amid the conditions of this world – in so far as this is, to wit, name-and-

form together with cognition (22).

This is a statement about the dialectical unity of material body and

consciousness; matter and spirit. It is after this that the discourse

turns to the notion of ‘soul’, but the stress is on refraining from

making declarations about it. In the end, as far as rebirth is concerned,

there is a rejection of ‘verbal expressions’: to say that an Arahat

does or does not go on after death, is declared to be meaningless.

Thus the thrust of the basic teachings is psychological and

empirical, not metaphysical (whether idealistic or materialistic).

Reading the Buddhist ‘scriptures’ in contrast to the Upanishads, to

the Dharmashastras, to the Bible or the Koran is striking: there is

no supreme god,^4 no ritualism, no magic. There are many stories,

though a few legends and only a few miracles (though they are

there). There are few things that are put forth as commands, and

little that is seen as ‘coming from on high’. The tone is calm and

discursive; ideas are presented; they are urged, but the basis is

rational; it is calmness, the truth, reasonability that convinces

everyone. What is said is geared to the listener; the Buddha talked

in the terms and within the assumptions of Brahmans and house-

holders, whether they were searching for simple answers to simple

problems or asking more complicated cosmological questions. He

rejected the idea of providing a metaphysical framework for explain-

ing the universe and good and evil—but he was ready to answer all

questions—in his own way.

The classical Theravada presentation of the Dhamma assumes

that the end of rebirth is the goal, but there are contradictory

passages in the Pali canon where the stress is not on this so much as on

ending rebirth as on the need to do away with the desirefor rebirth.

The main focus is on ethics. Whereas the Brahmans ritualised the

earlier religious teachings, the Buddha took the main ideological

material–psychological existence of the individual immersed in the
world and not from the illusion which the individual has of being
immersed in the world. It is clearly stated that nama-rupacauses
vinnanaand in turn vinannacauses nama-rupa,a kind of dialectical
unity of the mental and material world. And this is repeated in an
earlier sutta giving the same statement regarding the enlightenment
of Vipassi, the ‘first Buddha’, and is presented in Asvaghosh’s
Buddhacarita,an important poetic biography of the Buddha written
around the 1st century: ‘consciousness and name-and-form are
causes of one another’ (Asvaghosh1936: 212).
Further, the explanation of the cause–effect relationship follows a
formula that actually shows indeterminacy. In Rhys David’s transla-
tion of the Mahanidana Suttanta(Great Discourse on Causation),

I have said that grasping is the cause of becoming. Now in what way

that is so, Ananda, is to be understood after this manner. Were there

no grasping of any sort or kind whatever of anyone at anything – that is

to say, no grasping at things of sense, no grasping through speculative

opinions, no grasping after mere rule and ritual, no grasping through

theories of the soul – then, then there being no grasping whatever,

would there, owing to this cessation of grasping, be any appearance

of becoming?’ ‘There would not, lord’. ‘Wherefore, Ananda, just that

is the ground, the basis, the genesis, the cause of becoming, to wit,

grasping’ (6).

In this statement of the relationship between two phenomena, one
is necessary (though perhaps not sufficient) for the other. This is
not a statement asserting absolute determination. It is in many
ways appropriate for understanding psychological causation in
which the very ground of morality requires that there should be
some freedom of choice, some ability in humans to overcome their
conditioning and act in an ethical way. There is conditioning,
but it can be overcome; that is, the ‘chain’ can be broken, destroyed
or transcended.
The sutta also contains an extended discussion of the development
of the basic personality, name-and-form (nama-rupa), along with
cognition or consciousness (vinnana), and again name-and-form
are declared to be the cause of cognition, and cognition is declared
to be the cause of name-and-form. Rather than looking on this as
a logical circle, what is being stressed here is the unity of physical
form and consciousness or cognition:

62 Buddhism in India

(^4) Though the paraphenalia of devas, asuras, rakshasas etc. are accepted, they are all
seen as beings caught in samsara, not so different from humans.