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(commentary on Dhammapāda, 183)

This mind of mine went formerly wandering about as it liked, as it listed, as it pleased; but I shall now hold it in thoroughly, as the rider who holds the hook holds in the furious elephant. (Dhammapāda, 326)

Refraining from every evil is alternatively translated as the not doing of  any demerit (sabbapāpassa akaraṇaṃ) or the avoiding of “bad karma.” It is almost always practiced in Buddhism in terms of precepts, as rules of thumb that help us to become harmless. Precepts are similar to the Ten Commandments of the Bible, or to traffic laws, or to the bothersome things your parents told you to do when you were a kid, like not to watch more than seven hours of TV or not to eat the dog’s food.  They also might be compared to professional rules of ethics, such of those observed by psychotherapists (not sleeping with clients) or members of the scientific community (not faking data). Traditionally lay people throughout the Buddhist world observe at least the following five precepts:

1. I undertake the training step to refrain from killing living things,
2. I undertake the training step to refrain from take what is not given,
3. I undertake the training step to refrain from commit sensual misconduct,
4. I undertake the training step to refrain from falsehood, and
5. I undertake the training step to refrain from the headlessness of spirits, liquor and intoxicants.

Some people choose to extend this set in various way, for instance to include prohibitions against malicious, harsh or useless speech, sometimes for just one day a week. I am a Theravada monk, and Theravada monks take on a set to 227 precepts, all the time, forever.

Precepts are almost invariably stated as abstentions, things not to do, for instance, “Do not kill,” rather than “Protect life,” which is why they may be described with the phrase to refrain from every evil.  The violation of a precept generally requires intention; accidentally running over the neighbor’s cat cannot violate the precept against killing living beings. Refraining from evil, in other words, applies to karma, which means in Buddhism simply “volitional action.”

The rationale for refraining from evil. Philosophers would classify refraining from evil according to precepts a deontological or duty ethics. The advantage of its concise rule format is that this makes it reasonably clear when we are breaking a precept  or not, even when we are drawing a blank and cannot work out all the consequences of a proposed action . We are never sure if we are doing all we can to protect life, for instance, so it is nice to have a rule of thumb to commit us at least to causing no harm. Moreover, a precept is easy to learn and remember, even for the young or young at heart, or for the beginning Buddhist or the one with beginner’s mind. It tends to highlight a basic problem area in human conduct that the sages of past ages must have experienced and recognized, and it applies regardless of the complexity of the circumstances in which one proposes to act: Just don’t do it! Buddhist precepts pertain, at least in the most ancient tradition, to observable actions of body and speech, not of thought. (In contrast, thoughts may sometimes violate Christian commandments, such as coveting your neighbor’s house, cow or wife.) In short, a precept achieves power and clarity in stating minimal standards of physical (bodily and verbal) conduct. It is, in sum, very doable.

A particularly significant difference between Buddhist precepts and Christian commandments should be noted: Buddhist precepts are taken on in Buddhism entirely as training steps (sikkhāpadaṃ, in the Dhammapada verse), that is, they are undertaken voluntarily as an individual commitment, rather than as imposed by a God, a Pope, government or other authority. As a Buddhist, we vow to follow precepts, or not, or choose to take different sets of precepts. In contrast, violating a commandment in Christianity or other Abrahamic faiths is “bad” insofar as it insults the will of God. The one is a demeritorious act and the other a sin.

Although precepts and commandments widely overlap in content, the difference noted entails that one can logically commit a sin without doing or intending harm, or avoid a sin while doing and intending harm, for God’s will can work in mysterious ways. Murder, theft, bearing false witness and adultery are actions harmful to others and displeasing to God. Homosexual acts, on the other hand, making for yourself an idol, not keeping the sabbath or handling leather made from pig skin would seem harmless (“victimless crimes”), yet, we are told in the Old Testament, are displeasing to God. Stoning someone to death is clearly harmful to others and therefore demeritorious, yet might nonetheless be sanctioned by God in response to others’ deeds. As practical consequence, there are no “victimless crimes” in Buddhist ethics. Sexual misconduct in the third precept above, for instance, refers to things like acts of adultery or sex with a child, in which the harmony of standing human relations is violated, tending toward verifiable harmful results, and never to the perceived “kinkiness” that commonly adheres to sexual acts according to societal standards. Buddhist precepts are also to a surprising degree free of cultural norms and surprisingly universal.

Weaknesses of precepts (as well as commandments) as guides to ethical conduct are that they generally allow loopholes and they don’t permit appropriate exceptions, that is, precepts are porous and rigid.  There is the case in which the Gestapo shows up at your front door and asks you, gleefully aware that a Buddhist will not lie, if you are hiding Jews in the attic, or that in which you just happen to be returning from a softball game with a  bat in your hand and walk in right behind a man who has just “gone postal” and has begun shooting at fellow employees. There are, moreover, many harmful, generally mildly harmful, behaviors that simply are not covered in precepts, like taking up two parking spaces.

It is significant that the Buddha rarely sanctioned exceptions to precepts, perhaps because he wanted us to be fully aware of the dilemma of the human condition rather than regulating it away. The one example I am aware of in which the Buddha discusses the kinds of contradictions that may arise in following precepts is in MN 38 where the Buddha was challenged for his own use of disagreeable speech against Devadatta, his cousin, who had created a schism in the Sangha, had injured the Buddha in an assassination attempt and had committed other odious misdeeds. The Buddha’s response was that sometimes it is necessary to dig a pebble out of a child’s mouth even though it causes great discomfort. Providing a metaphor rather than loophole was wise: given the smallest loophole, many people might become quite creative in their exceptions to precepts, for instance, soon allowing exceptions in the case of people one does not like, or of those who they otherwise imagine to be undeserving.

It is important to note that precepts, as formal rules, sometimes serve purposes other than refraining from evil. The fifth of the common five precepts, for instance, might best be understood as sustaining certain qualities of mind (heedfulness and mindfulness) that are important in the overall project of purifying the mind, our third ethical project. Although it has ethical value in this sense, it does not have the direct relationship to harm that the other four precepts enjoy. . Similarly, optional sets of lay precepts include a prohibition against idle chatter, on the surface seemingly even more benign than inebriating oneself. This also contributes to the overall project of purifying the mind, for which its friend idle thought is understood as problematic. The very first precept in the monastic code prohibits monastics from engaging in sexual acts, a serious disrobing offense. Sex, in itself, is not necessarily harmful, but monastics practice, by definition, as renunciates. Maintaining a sexual relation is thoroughly in violation of a monastics’ practice commitments, the keeping of which are a part of the social contract with the laity that supports the monastic. If such a violation causes harm, it is an obscure kind of harm distributed over weakening practice commitments, unmet obligations, breaking of trust, weakening of the reputation of the Sangha and thereby of the Sāsana, and so on. The rationale is, rather, regulatory. Moreover, many minor monastic precepts are really rules of etiquette, and are actually exceptions to the cultural universality of precepts, in that they regulate socially acceptable comportment for the monastic community.

Entering into the practice of refraining from evil. As Buddhists we take on a number of practices and open our hearts and minds to understandings and values that may be initially unfamiliar. Taking on the precepts is one of life’s landmark decisions, like choosing a spouse, career path or dog.  We honor this decision with a sense of vow or commitment, dedication and devotion, with full awareness that, “This will be the shape of my life.”

In vowing to live according to precepts our intentions are most often mixed. A very pure motivation indeed for the practice of refraining from evil is one rooted in the virtues of harmlessness, generosity, kindness and wisdom. I think humans are born with a degree of innate goodness: people want to do good, to benefit and live in harmony with others. One sees this often even in small children and (as I observed in teaching Buddhism and meditation in prisons) to some degree in the most ignoble ruffians. To the extent that we already possess these virtues, we are already progressed in virtue ethics, the third ethics, that of purifying the mind. To the extent that these virtues are wanting, other intentions weigh in.

A second reason for becoming a precept practitioner is this very sense of vow or commitment to the Buddhist path, of which precept practice is an integral and highly recommended part. For the Buddhist born, this generally already has the great momentum of cultural and family tradition behind it, sustained already without question for many generations. It is on behalf of this kind of commitment and with the opening up to Buddhist practice and understanding that we take refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha. All of these practices are further reinforced for those active in a Buddhist community with the under the influence of its behavioral norms.

The third reason for commitment to refraining from evil is the law of karma.  Karma, we have seen, is volitional action and therefore the stuff of ethical conduct, and, in fact, the stuff of our entire Buddhist practice. All three ethical practices recognize that volitional acts have consequences for the future world, for good or bad, harm or benefit (except where some happen to be neutral). The law of karma recognizes that our volitional consequences have consequences for our personal future as well. It is roughly described as follows.

Whatever I do, for good or evil, to that I will fall heir. (AN 5.57)

Our karmic acts not only help make the world what it will be, but make us what we will be. Good deeds (meritorious karma, puñña) work to our own benefit as well as to the benefit of others. Bad deeds (demeritorious karma, pāpa ) work against our own benefit as well as against the benefit of others. The effects on oneself are often referred to as karmic results (vipāka) or fruits (phala). Now, exactly how and why the law of karma works is subtle and complex and will be discussed in psychological terms later in connection with the more sophisticated practice of purification of the mind. Nonetheless, the law of karma is taught in Buddhism, and was taught by the Buddha, even to newbies, to those who lack a theoretical understanding of the Dharma and even to children. The reason it is taught so early is certainly that its applicability to our personal situation is particularly cogent and that it therefore provides a powerful incentive for Buddhist practice, starting with the precepts. Most Buddhists see in the law of karma a system of personal reward or punishment for our karmic actions, or learn to see our actions as seeds that once planted will someday produce either sweet or bitter fruit. The actual payback may assume different forms but was most commonly related by the Buddha to circumstances of our rebirth (including possible rebirth in heavenly or hell realms). Beware that there are a host of naïve misunderstandings of the law of karma in circulation not supported in the early texts, probably exactly  because this theoretical teaching is introduced typically so early in Buddhist education.

We make decisions to shape our lives in many ways aside from taking on the precepts. Prominent among these is our choice of livelihood. Unfortunately certain livelihoods entail repeated evil behavior. Therefore a part of entering into refraining from evil is not to enter into certain livelihoods. The Buddha highlighted right livelihood by giving it the fifth position on the Noble Eightfold Path, the master checklist of Buddhist practice. Right livelihood is an enabling condition for fully entering the practice of refraining from evil.
The Buddha listed the following as livelihoods to be avoided (AN 5.177):

Business in weapons. This precludes hunting, soldiering (see SN 42.3 for more on this) or weapons manufacture. (I used to write software sometimes under Defense Department contracts, including for a project in missile guidance. This ended up being a major factor choosing my present way of life.)

Business in human beings. In the Buddha’s day this had to do with dealing in slaves and prostitutes. There may be modern institutional parallels in coercive labor markets.

Business in meat. This precludes raising animals for slaughter, slaughter itself or selling meat.

Business in intoxicants. This precludes tending bar, selling or producing alcohol, pushing drugs, growing opium, and so on. Modern allowances should be made for compassionate medicinal uses of intoxicants and poisons.

Business in poison. This would include manufacturing pesticides but also applying them to crops.

Notice that these for the most part evade the killing living things, and they are also broadened to avoid supporting conditions that might cause others to violate precepts.
Elsewhere (MN 117) the Buddha describes wrong livelihood as that which involves, “scheming, talking, hinting, belittling, pursuing gain with gain,” which sounds embarrassingly like conventional modern corporate business culture. In fact, modernity seems to provide fewer options for right livelihood than what was available to our ancient forbearers. Modern enterprises are much larger, decisions are distributed in such a way that obscure ethical responsibility and workers compensated through wages have little control over the product of their labor. For instance, given modern labor options we might be lucky to find a job at a retail store, in which we might be required to sell pesticides, booze, meat, and (especially in the USA) guns, with skillful whatever scheming, talking and hinting will close the sale. No religious exemptions are generally offered.

This raises an important question: If your act of selling pesticides to a customer (and convincing him he needs two cans, where one would do) is this your boss’s decision, or yours as his paid subordinate, that is, is it your bad karma? If your act of taking out an enemy combatant is your commanding officer’s decision, not yours, are you breaking a precept? If you don’t do it, someone else will, so aren’t you off the hook? The Buddhist answer is much like the decision of the Nuremberg Trial: you are not off the hook, orders are not just orders, you are the heir of your own deeds. This is also consistent with the role of such actions in the process of purifying the mind. Issues in right livelihood in our modern times may create dilemmas and and lead to compromises; a right livelihood may be elusive for the practitioner who us unwilling to let his family starve.

As a point of resistance to entering into the practice of refraining from evil, Westerner Buddhists often regard rules and regulations as infringing on personal freedom, or would like to keep their options open rather than to commit themselves to anything. These same Western Buddhists also often think of following ritual forms or sorting through what is skillful and unskillful in human thought as a kind of tyranny. This is a misdirected attitude:

First of all, Buddhism is not unlike many other areas in which we apply discipline in order to improve our skills. Becoming a master potter or a professional tennis player requires more than just doing our own thing, it requires years of training in technique and practice. Following a recipe in baking a pie could likewise just as well be considered an infringement on our right to cook anything we please, as we please, yet we keep buying cookbooks and following the recipes therein. In Buddhism our concern is to master the skill of life; this takes training, this takes discipline. It is not concerned with doing our own thing spontaneously in all situations. But at the same time it is an exercise of free will:  We decide to follow the discipline and take the vows in the first place. The Buddha can demand it of us no more than Julia Childs can demand that we follow her recipes.

Beyond this, the common notion of personal freedom referred to is actually almost always at odds with the Buddhist concept of liberation; the latter is not the freedom to do what you want but rather the freedom from having to want anything. The former is freedom for the self, the second is freedom from the self. In Buddhism we seek freedom from the tyranny of the self, with its endless desires and needs, dislikes and fears, that keep us stressed and miserable and that restrict the free flow of compassion and kindness to benefit the world. But then, this belongs to purifying the mind.

The practice of refraining from evil. Our incentives for following precepts compete with needy and aversive impulses rooted in the central importance of a misperceived self that must navigate a harsh, competitive and often abusive world. Without precepts we more often than not take more from the world than give, harm others, often unspeakably, as we accrue personal material advantages and become ever more entrenched in reprobate behaviors as a result of acting out our greed, hatred and delusion.

Bad deeds, and deeds hurtful to ourselves, are easy to do; what is beneficial and good, that is very difficult to do. (Dhammapāda, 163)

Following precepts requires discipline and mindfulness moment by moment, not to let our worst impulses overwhelm our vows. Most of all, it requires restraint.

The main challenge in following Precepts comes from the demands of one’s unskillful thoughts, which must often be brought under control in one way or another in order to act in accordance with the precept, for instance, in order not to sneak a cookie while struggling with an enormous sweet tooth. Following the precepts presents an opportunity to confront and begin to correct our worst impulses. As such, it actually provides a foundation in the third ethical practice of purifying the mind. The impurities of the mind largely reside in habit patterns that have been learned, traditionally over many lifetimes. Following precepts tends to thwart and break up these established patterns so that they begin to be unlearned.

In this way refraining from evil affords us an opportunity more closely to observe the contents of the mind: every time an existing pattern is broken through observing a precept, some unconsummated impulse is clearly left dangling. For instance, many Buddhist codes include a precept to abstain from gossip, which is a carefree pastime that many people enjoy without regarding it as harmful or particularly unskillful or stressful. However, following a precept not to gossip gives one pause as certain situations open up this otherwise alluring option. At that point if one looks one will see a bit of ill-will hanging unexpressed, and, peeling off of this, unmistakable stress. One will also take note that the unexpressed gossip has a dangling victim that has just benefited as a consequence of your choice not to gossip. We thus begin to see in what sense many of our thoughts and impulses are unskillful, in fact dangerous, and how renouncing or giving them up is quite appropriate.

As we break accustomed habit patterns, new kinds of mental factors arise to take their places. The results can be quite remarkable. For instance, we may start our practice with an established impulse to kill insects and other crawling “vermin,” an impulse that runs up against our new commitment not to kill living beings. As we repeatedly find ways to avoid killing living things, for instance by relocating snakes and scorpions or plugging up ants’ means of access to our living spaces, our ill-will fades and is replaced by a strong sense of kindness; we begin to feel that we are the protectors of our ugly or dangerous little friends. Impure mental factors are replaced by pure mental factors.

The precepts may feel like a box that you’ve put yourself uncomfortably into, one that affords little ability to move. Nonetheless, we are given an opportunity to observe and understand self’s needs and this understanding provides a basis for purifying the mind. There is a Zen saying that if one puts a snake in a bamboo tube it will finally become aware of its own shape. This works for us too. In summary, the practice of refraining from evil already begins to support the practice of purifying the mind. The opposite is also true. The practice of purifying the mind, which itself has a number of supporting component practices, supports the practice of refraining from evil. As the mind becomes pure, the impulses that challenge refraining from evil begin to disappear and refraining from evil becomes effortless.

We have seen that precept practice is often undertaken with mixed motives. In fact, weak, impure intentions for following precepts reinforce impurities in the mind. For instance, if we perpetually think as we apply a precept, “This makes me look good to others,” or even, “I’m making sure I will be reborn in a heavenly realm,” then indeed one is reinforcing an unskillful habit pattern, one rooted in self-centeredness and craving. However, it is rarely that simple. The desire to benefit others even if initially weak will likely be a growing part of the motivational mix as one practices with precepts, particularly as the joy that comes with pure motives continues to be experienced, and as the mind becomes purer through a variety of practices. As one’s motives center around the potential harm to others rather than around one’s own gain, one is also likely to go beyond the precepts, which are after all simply pointers for how to avoid harm, and consider every unregulated way one can avoid harm, like recycling one’s trash.

For five episodes we have been considering ways in which we might respond to a Buddhist teaching that we initially find unacceptable in some way or another from a modern perspective. We have looked at the consequences of everything from simply accepting it on faith to rejecting it out of hand and we have looked at the Buddha’s discussion of this very problem. A primary question that we have kept in mind throughout is, Why was this taught? If a given thesis plays an important functional role in the body of the Buddha’s teachings, some account, yet is nonetheless unbelievable, then perhaps its functional role can be preserved by other means.

Having sought an appropriate context for a teaching and having cleansed the mind of unexamined tacit views, unwilling to simply accept or reject it, the teaching nonetheless does not quite sit well. Perhaps it is just an archaic way of looking at things, has been superseded by modern understandings, contradicts modern norms of propriety or has simply not been interpreted properly. The teaching might nonetheless be rescued.

Series Index

How to upgrade a teaching.

The method here is to discover a modern expression for an archaic teaching true to the latter’s function.

When we view an ancient teaching with modern eyes, we can typically see that it permits a range of interpretations. We often don’t know out of hand, for instance, whether it was intended as myth or metaphor, allegory or actuality. Often it wouldn’t matter so much, as long as its intended function is upheld, and it may have been understood differently in different traditions in any case. When we view an ancient teaching with modern eyes, it may sometimes appear as a clumsy or naïve approximation of something we could state more precisely in terms of our often much more sophisticated understanding of science and psychology, history and humanities.

These considerations define the wiggle room that a skillful reading of ancient texts should exploit as one tries to wrap a modern mind around an ancient text, lest one ends up with the kind of literalism that characterizes modern fundamentalism. Having discovered modern expressions of ancient teachings, teachers will offer them to modern students to facilitate their learning. In this way a distinct modern understanding evolves. The key principle to bear in mind, though, is that an update should always be done with an eye on retaining the full functional integrity of the archaic teachings.

What follows is a couple of examples of the principled updating of Buddhist teachings, both historical and modern. I present these by way of exemplifying this final strategy for dealing with the believability gap.

Home-leaving in ancient China. The first example of update is historical, and also one in which a particularly recalcitrant presupposition was implicated. Early in the first millennium CE in China the Buddhist encouragement of home-leaving ran right up against the unshakably rock-solid value of family in Chinese folk culture. Monastics in India were home-leavers by definition, yet family and home enjoyed a solid place at the center of Chinese social values. The required update of this Buddhist teaching seems to have been a clever side-step, a high point in the annals of early public relations: Re-conceptualize the Sangha as a great big family, with family lineages, heritages and a very long history.

Tracing ordination lineages publicly established an analogy between the layperson’s parental relations and the monastic’s relationship to his or her preceptor/teacher. Monastics were given the surname Shì, for Sakyamuni. With a lot of fudging and creative imagination, family trees reaching indeed all the way back to the Buddha were drafted, spanning far more generations than almost any indigenous Chinese family history. The Sangha, now organized by ordination lineage, thus became a kind of family, such that an incipient monk or nun not so much left his or her family altogether as swapped his or her family, much as a young bride leaves one family to join another. In this way, otherwise bruised Chinese familial sensitivities seem to have been appeased, but the functional value of home leaving retained.

Actually, an analogous update seems to have been reached earlier in India, as early as the time of the Buddha or shortly thereafter, and to have involved a similar clever side-step, engineered either by the Buddha himself or later by his close disciples. The cultural presupposition was, in this case, patriarchy rather than the value of family. In a recent essay I argue that gender equality is as strongly articulated in the Buddha’s teachings as caste equality. However, it was inevitable that this way of thinking would stub its toe on the rock of patriarchy endemic in Indian folk culture at the time of the Buddha, and up to the present day, for that matter. The Buddha’s great concern must have been the acceptability of a women’s monastic order within the prevailing folk culture and even among his lay followers, particularly since the nuns, like the monks, would be dependent on receiving daily alms, and since the kind of independence he wanted to secure for nuns entailed a level of freedom from masculine control that was, in that culture, commonly identified with “loose women.” A solution would be to update his original intention by symbolically putting the nuns under the control of the monks, while ceding a minimal amount of real power to the latter. The result was the now infamous garudhamma rules (which I suggest actually postdates the Buddha himself). In this way, otherwise bruised Indian gender sensitivities seem to have been appeased, while the functional value of an independent order of fully ordained women was secured. (The irony is that those same garudhamma rules commonly bruise modern gender sensitivities. Modern disbelief in this case will likely necessitate an second update of some sort.)

Whether or not these analyses are correct, they illustrate an apt response to the inconsistency of an imported teaching with a local cultural norm that simply will not budge: update the teaching to accommodate the cultural norm while preserving as best as possible the original function.

Karmic payback. “We are the heirs of our own deeds,” the law of karma, has been explained and exemplified in various ways in different schools of Buddhism, and often described as a law of nature that eventually imposes justice for good and bad deeds. An unwholesome deed (karma) committed now, for instance, will eventually ripen by producing an unfortunate result (vipaka) immediately or at some later time, in this life or in a future life. For instance the following are some kinds of results found in the early discourses of bad deeds, in roughly descending order of frequency:

• An unfortunate realm of rebirth, for instance, as a hungry ghost or as a chipmunk,
• Unfortunate circumstances of rebirth, for instance, as a human, but born into a poor family, into poor health or into a displeasing body,
• Unfortunate circumstances in the present life, such as loss of wealth, bad reputation or declining health,
• An unfortunate incident in the present or in a future life, for instance, being struck by lightning a day after committing a theft.

The function of the teaching of karmic payback can be found in two equivalences it entails. The first is the equivalence of practice and benefit. We practice because we expect some benefit to ensue. Note that our practice is exactly karma, i.e, deeds or misdeeds of body speech and mind. Most other things that we “practice” – for instance, wood carving or ballroom dancing – we practice with the expectation of some personal advantage or satisfaction; Buddhism should be no different, and in fact it’s even more so. The second is the equivalence of personal benefit and benefit for others. Acts of generosity, kindness backed by wisdom are exactly what bring the most personal advantage and satisfaction. These two equivalences, of practice and benefit, and of virtue and reward, together encourage a life of practice rooted in the wholesome factors of generosity, kindness and wisdom.

Nonetheless, the law of karma is often found unbelievable in modern society specifically because it is unclear what kind of known mechanism might account for the various ways in which a deed might ripen. OK, Santa Claus may have young children covered on a year-to-year basis, but how could my act of generosity now possibly ripen as financial success in my next life? Who is keeping track for me? The following update of the law of karma might resolve this believability deficit.

Rather than presenting karmic payback as a law, let’s break the law of karma into a set of causal relations, focusing on unwholesome karma:

• Craving manifests as suffering. This is the second Noble Truth. Therefore unwholesome karmic acts driven by greed or hate experience an immediate partial payback as suffering.
• Craving is based in delusion. Therefore unwholesome karmic acts driven by delusion are also likely to lead to suffering.
• Repeated karmic acts of a given type turn to habit, and habits become definitive of character. For instance, repeated acts based in anger make one into an angry person. This ensures future acts rooted in anger, each of which, involving a kind of craving, will entail further future suffering.
• Habitual suffering (anxiety, stress, etc.) often manifest in physical health. For instance, an habitually angry person suffers almost constant stress, which famously weakens the cardiovascular system. An habitually needy person might likewise suffer from depression and alchoholism.
• Unwholesome acts often manifest as social censure. Few of us enjoy the company of an angry or needy person. Once cheated by a merchant we are unlikely to return to his place of business, nor recommend it to friends. Social censure even manifests as retribution in many cases. Unwholesome acts therefore often lead to unfortunate circumstances.
• Craving distorts perception. For instance, a person aflame with anger will see a his antagonist as a demon. The habitually angry person will live in a world of demons, a kind of hell realm. Living under social censure will only magnify this experience.

Our updated understanding of karmic payback posits that the archaic law of karma is a generalization over the effects of these principles, at least as a rough and easily formulated approximation. These principles themselves require no substantial update of the Buddha’s teachings. Furthermore, updating the law of karma in this way continues to uphold the functionality of the archaic law of encouraging a life of practice rooted in the wholesome roots of generosity, kindness and wisdom.

This leaves only the question, Does our update account for the specific examples of karmic payback found in the Buddha’s discourses? The most common of these examples make reference to conditions and realms of rebirth. However, these are consistent with our update of karmic payback: The latter traces much of human suffering to the development of the human character, with its ingrained habit patterns. Rebirth is taught as the force of that selfsame karmically formed character projecting itself into a new life. For instance, an angry character plagued by demons in this life will likely be reborn in a hell realm of his own making; he already lives in one even before death.

Unfortunate incidents – Mahamogallana is, in later teachings, said to have been murdered as a karmic payback for having caused the death of his parents in a previous life – are not accounted for in the update. Indeed it would be difficult to imagine what causal mechanisms might be at play in these cases in any account. However, we should note, first, that such incidents are relatively rare in the early discourses, and, second, that the discussion of karmic payback was there quite characteristically marked by allegory.

Allegory is well suited for explicating abstract principles, like the law of karma, by simple example, since the examples are chosen not for their factuality, but for their illustrative qualities. “If you do this bad thing, that bad thing is the likely result” is an optimal way of illustrating the law of karma; what could be more concrete? It doesn’t even matter if “that” is actually a bad thing, as long as people generally think it is. For instance, is being born in a wealthy family (as opposed to a middle class family) really a predictor of future well-being? Many Asian Buddhists think that by performing meritorious deeds they will improve their chances of winning the lottery. However, research tracing the fates of lottery-winners finds that these on average are very unfortunate people indeed. The early examples also tend to ignore cumulative effects of karma, for instance, the results of habitual actions, and to favor one-to-one correspondences of karmic act and result, for instance that offering this food to this monk in this life will result in vast wealth in the next. This balance makes no literal sense: we perform thousands of karmic acts in a day but suffer rebirth, the most common karmic result, only occasionally. But this balance is exactly what the allegorical nature of the discussion of karmic payback would suggest: a one-to-one correspondence makes a better story.

My intention here is not to provide an air-tight case that this is the optimal modern understanding of the law of karma – though I personally am rather partial to it –, but rather to illustrate how the principled updating of archaic teachings might work. I hope this example, like the ones before it, at least tells a good story. Updating teachings in this manner is, I feel, the most principled way in which Buddhism will adapt to modernity. Actually updating is an inevitable consequence of a Buddhist fully engaged understanding and practice. This is because we are not asked to accept teachings passively, but to examine them, put them to the test and relate to them in our own experience, that is, to reach an understanding that is our own. A modern mind will rarely arrive at the same understanding as the ancient Indian mind, nor of the variety minds that required the various historical updates of teachings still preserved in the various traditions of Buddhism. Updating is integral to the reasonable skeptic’s process of understanding.

Conclusion to the Series

I hope that at least two or three readers are still with me in what has turned out to be a rather long-winded discussion of Believability in Buddhism.

We are in a (rather exciting) historical process in which Buddhism, of Asian origin and historical development, is encountering modernity, essentially of European origin but spread with empire throughout the world. As these two great movements pass over and through one another, unbelievability stands as the most turbulent center of this encounter. Unbelievability is the “humbug” response, whose impulse is immediately and decisively to reject out of hand – to take the modernist’s perspective – any Buddhist teaching that conflicts with a modern world view. Among secular Buddhists the appropriateness of this impulse is even commonly accepted as a point of faith.

To my mind this unbelievability impulse is ill-considered because many of the teachings thereby rejected turn out to be body parts of the baby – not the bathwater –, that is, parts functionally integral to living, breathing Buddhism. To my mind this impulse is ill-considered also because there are more reasoned alternatives that – rather than making our own quick and easy Buddhism – will make Buddhism even more fully our own.

Making Buddhism our own is a natural and time-honored outcome of the tension in Buddhist between understanding (or theory) and practice. The Buddha describes how we understand the Dharma initially as a matter of faith, but then are challenged to discover the Dharma in our own practice experience, often as something quite different from what we had at first thought we understood. This is how we make Buddhism our own. The reasonable skeptic is perhaps in the best position to succeed in this endeavor: The naïvely credulous is likely to fix on an understanding that is unassailed by mere practice. The die-hard skeptic is unlikely to take the more challenging teachings seriously in the first place. The reasonable skeptic will take the teachings seriously, but, ever questioning, will allow experience and wise reflection to challenge what might have been an initially faulty understanding in any case. I identify the unbelievability impulse with the die-hard skeptic.

Most Buddhist teachings are quite readily acceptable to moderns, even when obscure, yet still in need of verification. Others are simply incidental and good candidates for rejection or ignoring. However some will be functionally significant in the system of the Dharma, yet difficult to accept or even unbelievable for many moderns. This case requires some kind of accommodation, either by adapting the teachings to modern views or by adapting modern views to the teachings. These are the the upgrade and reconsideration strategies respectively. An third strategy is contextualization, which is really a subtype of reconsideration, since it reconsiders the modern strict imposition of scientific standards on religious teachings. Reconsideration is significant in that it presents a challenge to the very widespread hubris that the the modern worldview is superior to alternative worldviews, including the Buddhist worldview. This is part of the reasonable skeptic’s challenge of engaging with Buddhist teachings completely

Series Index

This is the first of a six-part series on coming to terms with Buddhist teaching, particularly where it seems to conflict with common modern predilections. It relates to issues in faith and reason, Secular Buddhism, Buddhism and science and modern attitudes about religiosity.

Introduction

The ancient teachings of Buddhism sometimes raise skeptical modern eyebrows. For instance, which of the following might the modern Buddhist or would-be Buddhist find believable?

• Deities?
• Supernormal physical powers such as levitation, appearing in multiple places at once or jumping up to touch the sun?
• Supernormal knowledges, including reading minds or knowing others’ destinations upon rebirth?
• Rebirth?
• Heavenly realms or hell?
• The law of karma?
• Exalted states of consciousness, including complete awakening?
• The efficacy of bowing, of taking refuge, or of monks, robes and shaved heads?
• The admonition to cultivate renunciation, disenchantment and unnaturally wholesome qualities of mind?

I will assume that the reader finds at least consciousness and volition believable; otherwise your interest in Buddhism would have been very short-lived indeed (I have been told that there are behavioral psychologists who regard even these as unbelievable). In any case, all of the things in this short list are found in the earliest Buddhist scriptures yet commonly rejected in modern Buddhism, particularly eagerly in its “secular” wing(i). I will refer to these uniformly as “teachings,” even though some of are undoubtedly referenced casually in passing, until we can sort them out. My aim here is not to argue for or against any of these factors, but to offer practical advice on what considerations are important in integrating, or not integrating, such teachings into the understanding and practice of Buddhism as the student encounters them. Sometimes they ask to be worked with a bit. What I have to say belongs, to give it a fancy name, to prescriptive epistemology.

I should, before proceeding, acknowledge that eyebrow-raising seems to be relatively exceptional in Buddhism, in contrast to many other traditions of antiquity. Buddhism is sometimes described as thoroughly consistent with modern, scientific, rational thought, in spite of coming out of such a distant time and remote culture. There are a number of reasons that might be identified for this; it is not that the Buddha was a modern iron-age scientist. First, Buddhism’s concern is primarily in teaching a skill, as Ajahn Thanissaro(ii) likes to point out, in this case the skill of appropriate thought and action. This in itself makes it an empirically oriented endeavor, like woodworking or pottery, in which it is imperative to become deeply familiar with the medium as it actually presents itself, be it the grain and hardness of wood, the feel of clay between one’s fingers or the texture of human mind. Second, Buddhism’s empirical method is introspective rather than objective, which gives relatively little opportunity to disagree with results in modern science. Science has remarkably little to say about consciousness nor volition, nor about the other mental factors that form Buddhism’s primary subject matter, and Buddhism has little to say about the material world that forms the primary subject matter of science. Third, the Buddha scrupulously avoided pointless speculation about matters not relevant to spiritual progress.(iii) This gave Buddhism a relatively small footprint with which to step on modern toes. And fourth, Buddhism has often been intentionally repackaged for modernity for almost the last century and a half, to deemphasize those factors most likely to be found unbelievable by moderns.(iv) In spite of all this, Buddhism in its traditional and early forms has a distinctive transcendent dimension, much as pottery has an aesthetic dimension, as well as a characteristic dimension of ritual and communal religiosity. It is primarily in these dimensions that modern skepticism arises.

In approaching this topic, I want to focus specifically on unbelievability, which I take to be the phenomenon of rejecting something out of hand as an almost immediate response with little or no case-specific examination. Notice that something does not have to be unbelievable to be not believed, specifically when it is rejected after careful reflection rather than out of hand. Unbelievability is the “humbug” response, immediate and decisive, the die-hard skeptic’s first line of offense. Something might be deemed unbelievable, for instance, for being “paranormal,” “new-agey,” “woo-woo and way out there,” “religious,” “unscientific,” or for “going native,” and therefore deemed unworthy of further consideration. Of course, it might be likewise deemed unbelievable for exactly the opposite reasons, such as, “not woo-woo enough,” depending on the deemer. Standards of believability vary widely, though many are recurrent as modernity meets Buddhism.

As the reader might already suspect, I would like to discourage unbelievability in favor of careful examination. The danger of unbelievability is that something important might be inadvertently lost without due deliberation, to you and, in the case of wide-spread unbelievability, to future generations, something important to the functional integrity of the Dharma. I will assume that the reader would like to enjoy the fruits of Buddhist practice and understanding without hindrance, much in the way these were commonly enjoyed in ancient times when arahants roamed the earth.

Suppose you encounter a teaching that stretches your personal standards of believability. I want to offer and discuss five fundamental strategies – all of which I have personally tried, I think with some success, in my own Buddhist practice and understanding – to try out in order to ensure that that teaching receives due consideration:

• Accept it,
• Reject it,
• Contextualize it,
• Reconsider your standards for believability, or
• Upgrade its interpretation.

You might even apply more than one of these options at the same time. For instance, you might upgrade its interpretation to understand deities as referring to wandering cows, such that what was earlier solidly unbelievable becomes marginally believable, then accept or contextualize that. These strategies are widely applicable outside of Buddhism as well, in other faith traditions, in forming political views, or even in the study of science.

My intent here is not to advocate or indict particular options, but to make as much open-minded room for personal predilections as possible, with minimal offense to the functional integrity of Buddhist understanding and practice. My intent here is also to encourage deep processing of the Buddha’s teachings, not to readily accept or reject each teaching on first exposure, but to turn it over in different ways, to understand the variety of ways it might be understood, to understand its meaning and purpose, to integrate it into the overall body of the Buddha’s teachings, to integrate it into one’s personal world view and to resolve inconsistencies and make adjustments here and there. These things require a healthy, but not a die-hard, skepticism. Moreover, my intention is to avoid deal-breakers, the reaction to certain teachings that induce one to throw up one’s hands and abandon the Buddha way altogether, perhaps in favor of fly fishing or Sufi dancing.

I do not consider here the question of authenticity, that is, whether or not an encountered teaching has been correctly transmitted or interpreted – for simplicity I will assume that it has been. I have discussed the issue of authenticity elsewhere.(v) I should mention though that the kind of turning over and reflection advocated here for considering and integrating teachings in practice goes hand in hand with evaluating the authenticity of teachings as they are presented in texts that may have suffered unskillful reworking. Ultimately, if rejection of a given teaching seems unavoidable, it might not be because the student is unprepared or under the influence of modernity, but because it is something the Buddha never would have taught.

In the following sections I consider each of the five strategies in turn.

To be continued.

Endnotes

i. A particularly strong instance of this is the definition of secular Buddhist found at https://secularbuddhism.wordpress.com/definition/, though I imagine few secular Buddhists would actually endorse all of these points.

ii. For instance, in “Questions of Skill” (2001) available online.

iii. Consider, for instance, the “handful of leaves” simile in SN 56.31.

iv. Cintita, 2014, 104-107; Protero, 1996; McMahan, 2008; Snodgrass, 2003.

v. Cintita, 2014, 5-9.

The completed published version of Through the Looking-Glass: an American Buddhist Life by Bhikkhu Cintita is now available, either for free download or through a printer at nominal cost. Please go here for more information.

As previously announced, the book A Culture of Awakening: the Life and Times of the Buddha-Sasana is similarly available. Please go here for more information.

The author’s (my) page at Lulu.com, where either book can be obtained in hardcopy is here.

Free distribution copies of this will also be available at the Sitagu Buddha Vihara in Austin, Texas USA.

My book, A Culture of Awakening: the life and times of the Buddha-Sasana is available at Lulu.com for a nominal printing cost ($4.29) plus postage.

Blurb. The Buddha-Sasana is the living Dharma, that is, Buddhism in its personal, cultural, social and historical dimensions. This rather unique book lays bare the inner life of the Buddha-Sasana to reveal why Buddhism has proved so adaptable to cultural influences yet so faithful to the Buddha’s original message, tracing these factors to the time-honored role of the monastic order. Significantly, it explores the condition of the Buddha-Sasana as it is taking root in the West.

Please go HERE to order. We will make some copies available in Austin for free distribution.

You will notice that my autobiography, Through the Looking Glass, is also available for order on this page. It will undergo some proof editing during the next weeks, so this should be regarded as a prepublication version.

I am finally, after five years, ready to seek a publisher for Through the Looking-Glass: An American Buddhist Life, available for download here on this site. I am gratified that many of you have read this text or one of the various early drafts and have provided favorable feedback, everything from “It’s a real page-turner” to “It sure has, uh, a lot of pages.”

I am looking for a few distinguished people who are reasonably familiar with this text to write a blurb, much like one finds on the back cover of a book. I don’t expect any readers of my blog to be arbitrary people, but by distinguished I suppose one of the following is meant in this context:

• The Dalai Lama,
• Other Monastics or Buddhist teachers,
• Scholars,
• Authors or journalists.

If you would like to submit a blurb, I would like to have them by about September 17 (one week’s time).

Hot off the Press!

I have completed my autobiographical narrative, after about five years of writing. This is a proof, for which I request any constructive criticism, particularly editorial corrections. This is available as a pdf file, and is about 340 pages long.

Please click on the picture to the left for more information.

Short film with views of Myanmar

Blog with interesting posts on Buddhism in Burma