Dependent Origination and the Vedas

Textual analysis and comparative discussion on early Buddhist sects and scriptures.
Sylvester
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Re: Dependent Origination and the Vedas

Post by Sylvester »

While I think Gombrich cannot be so easily dismissed in his thesis, I wonder if he had addressed the fact that whatever cosmological bent the Vedas held for "Nothing" as the ground, at least one sutta explicitly rejects any cosmogony to Avijja -
A beginning point for ignorance — [such that one might say], 'Before this, ignorance did not exist; then it came into play' — cannot be discerned. This has been said. Nevertheless, it can be discerned, 'Ignorance comes from this condition.' And I tell you, ignorance has its nutriment. It is not without nutriment. And what is the nutriment for ignorance? The five hindrances...

AN 10.61
Unlike some other Buddhist traditions who envisage DO to be a circle, neither Birth-&-Death nor Dukkha are described in the Pali Canon as the abovesaid condition of Avijja -
And what is ignorance? What is the origination of ignorance? What is the cessation of ignorance? What is the way of practice leading to the cessation of ignorance?

"Any lack of knowledge with reference to stress, any lack of knowledge with reference to the origination of stress, any lack of knowledge with reference to the cessation of stress, any lack of knowledge with reference to the way of practice leading to the cessation of stress. This is called ignorance.

"From the origination of fermentation comes the origination of ignorance. From the cessation of fermentation comes the cessation of ignorance.
.....

And what is fermentation? What is the origination of fermentation? What is the cessation of fermentation? What is the way of practice leading to the cessation of fermentation?

"There are these three fermentations: the fermentation of sensuality, the fermentation of becoming, the fermentation of ignorance. This is called fermentation.

"From the origination of ignorance comes the origination of fermentation. From the cessation of ignorance comes the cessation of fermentation.

- MN9
If AN 10.61 is indeed the Buddha's words, that would neatly show a rejection of the cosmological assumptions of the Vedas by the Buddha, even if He borrowed a well-known model from them.
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Re: Dependent Origination and the Vedas

Post by Sylvester »

Just a little something for the Gombrich fans on "Namarupa".

His student, Sue Hamilton, seems to be another proponent for the argument that the Buddha's usage of "Namarupa" ought to be understood in the context of the contemporary usage of that time. I've not found her "Identity and Experience" where she argues for this in detail, but a summary of her thesis is found from p.150 onwards here -

http://books.google.com.sg/books?id=pE9 ... &q&f=false" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

In her view, the Vedic conception of "Namarupa" is that Nama constitutes that which is "named/conceptualised/conceived", while Rupa is that which is "apperceived", phenomena which differentiate and distinguish one subject from the next. Note, that her thesis differs from Jurewicz who seems to argue that Namarupa represent "naming" and "giving form".

There's a delicious hint that Hamilton discusses the wretched vinnana anidassana riddle, but lots of it are excluded from the Google Book preview. But, better yet, she develops a really good reading for DN 15's adhivacanasamphassa and patighasamphassa and ties that to her conception of Namarupa (or she could have been totally influenced by Ven Nanavira's interpretation of the same...)

Still, there is something quite useful in Hamilton's thesis which she may not herself have noticed. If Namarupa is how a "subject" is delineated by others, and such delineation of a person vide its khandhas is possible only because of that "person's" clinging, perhaps it will not be impossible to dovetail the Vedic idea of Namarupa with the unique Buddhist spin of Namarupa being the khandhas, plus some.
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Re: Dependent Origination and the Vedas

Post by mikenz66 »

Thanks Sylvester, I'll check that book out when we get back access to our library...

I'm not sure I'm a Gombrich fan, but it is interesting how, as you say, some of the academics come to these conclusions that sound similar to Vens. Nanavira and/or Nanananda, but from a quite different path.

Actually, that reminds me that a few posts above Kenshou was promising to summarise relevant parts of Jurewicz's paper in the PTS journal... :reading:



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Re: Dependent Origination and the Vedas

Post by Sylvester »

What I like about Hamilton's thesis of Namarupa is that it avoids Gombrich's proposition that the full DO presentation was the accidental hobbling together of "true Buddhist" DO and the Buddha's parody of Vedic cosmogeny.

What will be really interesting is how Jurewicz and Hamilton arrived at very different readings of Namarupa, Jurewicz' being a perspective of that which names, while Hamilton views it as that which is named.

I don't have the Upanishad handy for now, but I think there's one which attempts to explain Namarupa by the river simile - the rivers lose their nama and rupa, once they join the sea. This seems more in line with Hamilton's explanation, but I'm not sure if that Upanishad was one that pre- or post-dated the Buddha.
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Re: Dependent Origination and the Vedas

Post by mikenz66 »

Sylvester wrote: In [Hamilton's] view, the Vedic conception of "Namarupa" is that Nama constitutes that which is "named/conceptualised/conceived", while Rupa is that which is "apperceived", phenomena which differentiate and distinguish one subject from the next. Note, that her thesis differs from Jurewicz who seems to argue that Namarupa represent "naming" and "giving form".
Isn't Hamilton's view therefore closer to what I quoted from Gombrich:
4. Gombrich: "Pure consciousness is thus at best reflexive, cognizing itself. From this reflexivity, in which there is only one entity, develops an awareness of subject and object; this in turn leads to further individuation, until we reach the multiplicity of our experience: individuation both by name (nama), using a linguistic category, and by appearance (rupa), perceptible to the senses."
And this seems similar to the definition used by Ven Nanananda, though it seems unreasonably difficult to find a short definition from Ven N...

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Re: Dependent Origination and the Vedas

Post by Sylvester »

I suspect that what Gombrich calls "individuation" is on the part of Namarupa, what in grammar would be called the agent or the subject. I read Hamilton as proposing Namarupa to be that which is the "object" or patient of individuation. What makes for nama and rupa, in Hamilton's presentation, is the subjective relation by the "other" to the namarupa. But, that's just how Hamilton seems to me; perhaps my reading would change once I get my hands on her "Identity and Experience".

Therein lies the differences between Ven Nanananda's/Gombrich's functionalist nama (as naming) and Hamilton's object (as named).

I hope the differences between Hamilton and Jurewicz are not going to turn on how a Vedic word was inflected. If memory does not fail me, Gombrich mentioned a new reading of the Vedas which displaces the old scholarship of "no rebirth in the Vedas", based purely on the new reading assigning a different grammatical case to a previously accepted inflection.
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Re: Dependent Origination and the Vedas

Post by morning mist »

Hi mikenz66,
mikenz66 wrote: In the Rig Veda :

1. First there is nothing, not even existence or non-existence. This corresponds to ignorance.

2. A volitional impulse (kama - desire) initiates the process of creation.

3. Desire, 'the first seed of the mind', creates consciousness.
The term consciousness shouldn't be understood according to the Vedic definition. Consciousness is not the true self or atman in Buddhism, but merely a combination of many moments of awareness that happens very quickly to give the illusion of the observer.

The first link in Dependent Origination is Avijja. It is commonly translated as " ignorance". From the term " ignorance" we make the assumption that it means " nothing" or " nothingness " in Vedic cosmology. However, if we look at the Buddha's own explanation for what he meant by the term Avijja, it has nothing to do with " nothingness" . It has more to do with not seeing things the way they truly are while we are living , and not being able to penetrate the Four Noble Truths, which then lead to volitional formation. The Buddhist first link Avijja does not correspond with " 1. First there is nothing, not even existence or non-existence." of the Vedic teaching .

According to SN 12.1. 3:

“Monks, what is Avijja ? Monks, if someone does not know dukkha, the arising of dukkha, the cessation of dukkha and the path leading to the cessation of dukkha. To that is said avijja.

Note: Avijj is consistently explained as not fully understanding the Four Noble Truths.

Here he is referring to a living , breathing person like me and you living in a fully formed world that we are in right now. It has nothing to do with a state where "there is nothing, not even existence or non-existence".

The Vedic and Buddhist tradition originated from the same location , so it shouldn't surprise us that they share similar vocabulary. However, we need to be careful about interpreting the same terms that both teaching share according to the Vedic context. For example, the term karma and rebirth. Although both religion has this term in their teaching, but it would be a mistake to understand the Buddhist concept of karma according to Vedic karma. They both have very different explanation for the term karma. The Vedic teaching on karma leads to rituals, killing of animals and binding people to caste system. The Buddhist explanation of the same term has nothing to do with these practices. We shouldn't understand other similar terms in the context of Vedic teaching:

"The Pāli term Avijja is usually translated as ignorance is avijjā, which might be better translated as delusion. The problem is not so much that we lack knowledge, as the word ignorance might suggest, but that we have a distorted understanding of how things work. Because of our fundamentally deluded or distorted outlook, we don’t see things as they actually are. This distorted outlook is nothing other than our inability to see the three characteristics of existence: our tendency to see things as permanent when in fact they are impermanent, to see happiness where in fact there is suffering, and to see things as self when in fact they are non-self. This is the basic delusion that we live under and it is this misconception which is at the root of this entire chain of dependent origination.

The good news is that ignorance/delusion is itself conditioned by other factors; it is not a monolithic entity that exists independently of everything else. …When we understand the conditions that support delusion we also understand what sort of practice we need to undertake to reduce it and eventually abandon it altogether. So what are the conditions that prop up and perpetuate delusion? They are nothing other than the five hindrances: desire for sense objects, ill will, dullness and lethargy, restlessness and worry, and doubt. This means that the stronger these five hindrances are, the more powerful our delusion is going to be. ..Why is this so? Because the hindrances themselves distort how we see things. …Sense desire has a similar distorting effect. ….So the five hindrances, particularly anger and desire, distort our view of the world. The stronger the five hindrances are, the greater is our delusion, and the more distorted is our outlook. The less we have of these five hindrances, the less is the distortion and the clearer is our view of the world. And because dependent origination is a causal chain, the effect of the hindrances feeds the whole chain all the way down to suffering. So the weaker the hindrances are, the less suffering we experience, and the stronger the hindrances are, the greater is the suffering. It follows that if you want to reduce ignorance and suffering in your life, you have to reduce the five hindrances, that is, the defilements of the mind.

How do we reduce the defilements of the mind? In no other way than by practising the noble eightfold path." - Ven. Brahmali



Regarding to pre-existing theory Gombrich mentioned , the Buddha explained how they arrive that that theory:

“There comes a time, monks, sooner or later after a long period, when this world contracts. At a time of contraction, beings are mostly reborn in the Abhassara Brahma world. ....But the time comes, sooner or later after a long period, when this world begins to expand. In this expanding world an empty palace of Brahma appears. And then one being, from exhaustion of his life-span or of his merits, falls from the Abhassara world and arises in the empty Brahma-palace." The first one that fell thought that he is the creator of the ones that fell ( for the same reason) after him.

SEMI-ETERNALIST : The Buddha lists 4 ways in which people arrived at the Semi-eternalist views:

“There are, monks, some ascetics and Brahmins who are partly Eternalists and partly Non-Eternalists, who proclaim the partial eternity and the partial non-eternity of the self and the world in four ways. On what grounds?”

5. “But the time comes, sooner or later after a long period, when this world begins to expand. In this expanding world an empty palace of Brahma appears. And then one being, from exhaustion of his life-span or of his merits, falls from the Abhassara world and arises in the empty Brahma-palace. And there he dwells, mind-made, feeding on delight, self-luminous, moving through the air, glorious - and he stays like that for a very long time.”

“Then in this being who has been alone for so long there arises unrest, discontent and worry, and he thinks: ‘Oh, if only some other beings would come here!’ And other beings, from exhaustion of their life-span or of their merits, fall from the Abhassara world and arise in the Brahma palace as companions for this being. And there they dwell, mind-made, … and they stay like that for a very long time.”

“And then, monks, that being who first arose there thinks: “I am Brahma, the Great Brahma, the Conqueror, the Unconquered, the All-Seeing, the All-Powerful, the Lord, the Maker and Creator, Ruler, Appointer and Orderer, Father of All That Have Been and Shall Be. These beings were created by me. How so? Because I first had this thought: ‘Oh, if only some other beings would come here!’ That was my wish, and then these beings came into this existence!” But those beings who arose subsequently think: “This, friends, is Brahma, Great Brahma, the Conqueror, the Unconquered, the All-Seeing, the All-Powerful, the Lord, the Maker and Creator, Ruler, Appointer and Orderer, Father of All That Have Been and Shall Be. How so? We have seen that he was here first, and that we arose after him.”

“And this being that arose first is longer-lived, more beautiful and more powerful than they are. And it may happen that some being falls from that realm and arises in this world. Having arisen in this world, he goes forth from the household life into homelessness. Having gone forth, he by means of effort, exertion, application, earnestness and right attention attains to such a degree of mental concentration that he thereby recalls his last existence, but recalls none before that. And he thinks: ‘That Brahma, … he made us, and he is permanent, stable, eternal, not subject to change, the same for ever and ever. But we who were created by that Brahma, we are impermanent, unstable, short-lived, fated to fall away, and we have come to this world.’ This is the first case where-by some ascetics and Brahmins are partly Eternalists and partly Non-Eternalists.”- Brahmajala Sutta


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Gena1480
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Re: Dependent Origination and the Vedas

Post by Gena1480 »

the vedic discribe the Jhana of nothing
the buddha discribes cessation of feeling and perception
the difference between two
is the Jhana of nothing can be remembered even if does not have Consciousness
the cessation of feeling and percetion can not be remembered.
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Re: Dependent Origination and the Vedas

Post by manas »

Gena1480 wrote:the vedic discribe the Jhana of nothing
the buddha discribes cessation of feeling and perception
the difference between two
is the Jhana of nothing can be remembered even if does not have Consciousness
the cessation of feeling and percetion can not be remembered.
metta
Hi Gena,

I am not so sure that it can't be remembered. I recalled this, thought I should post it:
"Furthermore, with the complete transcending of the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception, Sariputta entered & remained in the cessation of feeling & perception. Seeing with discernment, his fermentations were totally ended. He emerged mindfully from that attainment. On emerging mindfully from that attainment, he regarded the past qualities that had ceased & changed: 'So this is how these qualities, not having been, come into play. Having been, they vanish.' He remained unattracted & unrepelled with regard to those qualities, independent, detached, released, dissociated, with an awareness rid of barriers. He discerned that 'There is no further escape,' and pursuing it there really wasn't for him.
It says 'he emerged mindfully from that attainment', not that he came back to mindfulness (though I seek clarification on that; if someone who understands the pali in this section could take a look, it might help solve the question, 'is mindfulness still present during saññāvedayitanirodhaṃ ?
Puna ca paraṃ bhikkhave, sāriputto sabbaso nevasaññā nāsaññāyatanaṃ samatikkamma saññāvedayitanirodhaṃ upasampajja viharati. Paññāya cassa disvā āsavā parikkhīṇā honti. So tāya samāpattiyā sato vuṭṭhahitvā ye te dhammā atītā niruddhā vipariṇatā, te dhamme samanupassati: 'evaṃ kira me dhammā ahutvā sambhonti, hutvā paṭiventī'ti. So tesu dhammesu anupayo anapāyo anissito appaṭibaddho vippamutto visaṃyutto vimariyādīkatena cetasā viharati so natthi uttariṃ nissaraṇanti pajānāti. Tabbahulīkārā natthitvevassa hoti.
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Re: Dependent Origination and the Vedas

Post by ancientbuddhism »

mikenz66 wrote:I thought it might be interesting to discuss the arguments that Richard Gombrich collects in Chapter 9 of his recent book What the Buddha Thought regarding the Dependent Origination sequence.

In brief, the argument is that the 12-step chain is the result of pasting together two chains, and that the first four links are a parody of Vedic Cosmogony.

The arguments are based on articles by Joanna Jurewicz, which unfortunately I can't easily access right now, such as "Playing with fire: the pratityasamupada from the perspective of Vedic thought", Journal of the Pali Text Society 26:77-103 (2000). ...
With reference to the book by Richard Gombrich and the article by Joanna Jurewicz cited in the OP, these can be found at the locations linked below.

What the Buddha Thought, by Richard Gombrich

Playing with Fire: The pratītyasamutpāda from the perspective of Vedic thought, by Joanna Jurewicz
Last edited by ancientbuddhism on Thu Feb 28, 2013 1:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Dependent Origination and the Vedas

Post by nowheat »

Old thread. But what the heck.

It would be wonderful to have the Jurewicz paper freely available but it is copyrighted, and scribd isn't a legitimate source (just sayin').

Meanwhile:
morning mist wrote:
mikenz66 wrote: In the Rig Veda :

1. First there is nothing, not even existence or non-existence. This corresponds to ignorance.

2. A volitional impulse (kama - desire) initiates the process of creation.

3. Desire, 'the first seed of the mind', creates consciousness.
The term consciousness shouldn't be understood according to the Vedic definition. Consciousness is not the true self or atman in Buddhism, but merely a combination of many moments of awareness that happens very quickly to give the illusion of the observer.
Consciousness isn't atman in the Vedic system either. In the mythology, we don't get a completed atman until Prajapati/brahman creates a second (Agni in one variant, the multitude of creatures in another). Consciousness is what does the seeking for knowledge of self -- it isn't the self itself. This actually is the perfect model for what the Buddha is describing in DO. Which is why my hypothesis is that this is exactly the model he uses in the early part of DO.
The first link in Dependent Origination is Avijja. It is commonly translated as " ignorance". From the term " ignorance" we make the assumption that it means " nothing" or " nothingness " in Vedic cosmology. However, if we look at the Buddha's own explanation for what he meant by the term Avijja, it has nothing to do with " nothingness" . It has more to do with not seeing things the way they truly are while we are living , and not being able to penetrate the Four Noble Truths, which then lead to volitional formation. The Buddhist first link Avijja does not correspond with " 1. First there is nothing, not even existence or non-existence." of the Vedic teaching .
Avijja in DO corresponds to the pre-creative state in the Prajapati myth -- it is "the unknowable" -- which certainly sounds like "ignorance" to me. But what the Buddha is saying with avijja is more interesting than that. Using the model of the Vedic myth's part in the creation of self, the Vedic people would have said that the myth told them that they came into the world seeking knowledge of the self -- that life was, in fact, all about knowledge of the self. Putting avijja at the start has the Buddha saying "the way we live life it's all about ignorance of the self".
Note: Avijj is consistently explained as not fully understanding the Four Noble Truths.
Which is why this makes sense. Ignorance of dukkha, its origin, that it can cease, and the way to end it is answered by saying "What we are ignorant of is (what we mistake for) the self, its origin, that it can cease, and the way to end it."

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Re: Dependent Origination and the Vedas

Post by nowheat »

Sylvester wrote:What I like about Hamilton's thesis of Namarupa is that it avoids Gombrich's proposition that the full DO presentation was the accidental hobbling together of "true Buddhist" DO and the Buddha's parody of Vedic cosmogeny.

What will be really interesting is how Jurewicz and Hamilton arrived at very different readings of Namarupa, Jurewicz' being a perspective of that which names, while Hamilton views it as that which is named.

I don't have the Upanishad handy for now, but I think there's one which attempts to explain Namarupa by the river simile - the rivers lose their nama and rupa, once they join the sea. This seems more in line with Hamilton's explanation, but I'm not sure if that Upanishad was one that pre- or post-dated the Buddha.
While humor might be expressed in parts of the DO (see my post above about avijja for one example), I don't think having humor in a presentation makes it "a humorous presentation", if you see what I mean. A few jokes amidst a serious treatise don't make it into comedy routine. DO isn't "a parody" but it does use the structure of Vedic conceptions about the self (aka "what everyone knows") to point out that those conceptions are mistaken ("what everyone knows is wrong") and to simultaneously point out what *is* going on ("here's what we should really be looking at). This is a very sophisticated structure, and one I can't recall ever having seen anyone use but the Buddha -- though maybe once the structure is more familiar people will come up with examples of others who have done something similar. It's a whole new method of discussion, to me, but now that I've seen how it's done in DO I have started noticing in other places in the canon the way the Buddha is pointing to the obvious (what everyone knows) while not-quite-saying that he's actually describing something else entirely. I would guess from the way he doesn't say "I'm talking, here, about fire and its fuel but what I *really* mean is 'consciousness'" -- that this form of speech that I am finding unusual was likely to have been common back then, and so was well understood. This is why we tend to fail to notice it -- it is not overtly stated because the audience didn't need it to be, but because it's not a way of speaking people use anymore, we don't quite get a grip on the underlying structure.

As for namarupa, I believe it is both the named and the namer, because in the Prajapati myth, when the undivided Originator splits up into name-and-form, then atman is both any one individual, and all the other individuals in the world. So from the perspective of any one of us, atman is both "me" (the subject) and everything else (the objects). Namarupa is both the way we identify ourselves, and the way we identify everything in relation to ourselves. This means both Jurewicz and Hamilton are right.


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Re: Dependent Origination and the Vedas

Post by ancientbuddhism »

Nāmarūpa is one of the most misunderstood of pāḷi idioms, of which ‘name & form’ is a poor gloss. Its context is its arising with consciousness of sense-objects, and it functions as the thoughts and intentions (saṅkappavittakkā) of these as a ‘recognition (nāma) of sense-objects (rūpa)’. The puthujjana is not dividing up nāmarūpa to concoct a self, but rather is taking the ephemera of nāmarūpa as real.
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Re: Dependent Origination and the Vedas

Post by suttametta »

Hi Folks, Take a look at Punnaji's charts

http://www.bhantepunnaji.com/ongoing.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

According to him, namarupa is name and image, and four great elements are the mental data of hardness, etc. I also want to stress that his explanations of how to put paticcasamuppada into practice provide a working model. Meaning, you can use his model and method to achieve the results he describes. In my opinion, this lends credence to his claims. Then, the claims of a parody, while possible, are just perhaps an inside joke, but not the main point. It would also render the alternative models cited in the suttas Dmytro posted as ancillary, explanatory of or subordinate to the 12-link model.
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Re: Dependent Origination and the Vedas

Post by retrofuturist »

Greetings,
ancientbuddhism wrote:Nāmarūpa is one of the most misunderstood of pāḷi idioms, of which ‘name & form’ is a poor gloss. Its context is its arising with consciousness of sense-objects, and it functions as the thoughts and intentions (saṅkappavittakkā) of these as a ‘recognition (nāma) of sense-objects (rūpa)’. The puthujjana is not dividing up nāmarūpa to concoct a self, but rather is taking the ephemera of nāmarūpa as real.
"Name and form" is fine as a couple of words used in place of a Pali compound, but your extended gloss is excellent.

What is not excellent, and is merely alright, is Gombrich's analysis of dependent origination. Whilst he does have some useful insights and goes some way towards exposing the needless over-complication of Buddhaghosa's model, I think Gombrich is a bit too hooked on the notion khandas as "processes" that explain "what we are" to see quite how radical paticcasamuppada is. I would love to point him towards the notion of upadana as appropriation and see where he could run with that.

Metta,
Retro. :)
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