How properly to interpret Dhamma

A modern trend in the scholarly study of Buddhism is to prioritize the “Early Buddhist Texts” (EBT), the earliest stratum of Buddhist scriptures. This approach allows us, in principle, to avoid becoming entangled in the inter-sectarian inconsistencies that have developed historically by focusing on the Dhamma as the Buddha taught it, as far as we can determine. What generally count as EBT are roughly the bulk of discourses of the Buddha and early disciples found in the first four Nikāyas, parts of the fifth Nikāya, and parts of the Vinaya, as found in the Pali canon, as well as in in parallel traditions preserved in other languages, primarily in Chinese.

Although time seems to have preserved the content of these early texts remarkably well, it is clear that they were re-edited in the early centuries in many ways, primarily to support their retention in memory, but also to some extent in ways that corrupted their original meanings. Moreover, even where the literal texts themselves are untarnished, their interpretations have often been lost, obscured or altered in later traditions, often due to non-Buddhist influences. In the Theravada school, (sometimes faulty) interpretations of many early teachings have become crystallized into an orthodoxy in the later tradition that has remained unchallenged for many centuries. Many misinterpretations are simply missing, and their study simply reduced to the memorization of lists of factors that presumably cohere in some way.

This need not be fatal to the practice of Dhamma, for understanding of Dhamma is primarily a matter of self-discovery based on a conceptual corpus, and we tend to fill-in gaps where to corpus fails to provide guidance. Consider that historically almost no one has had access more than a small part of Dhamma teachings, where today we can find any of the early Pali texts in Pali, or in English translation at the click of a mouse.

Recovering the appropriate interpretations of the early Buddhist texts is a primary task of a number of Buddhist scholars, and a primary preoccupation of my own. There remain various points of disagreement among teachers and scholars about what these ancient texts actually say. I have for years been seeking out the most defensible interpretations of the teachings of the EBT, employing a variety of criteria that I describe below, but by and large letting the early texts speak for themselves. The rsults are reflected in my various writings. Often failing to find any convincing or meaningful interpretation, I have relied on my own creative faculties, sometimes with controversial results. However, I take great care in providing sound arguments for my conclusions. I disagree with the apparent timidness within Theravada scholarship to advance an interpretation that may be wrong in favor of no interpretation at all.

The criteria that I employ in assessing the plausibility of an interpretation for a particular teaching fall under the following categories:

• etymology,
• functionality,
• coherence,
• verification in practice, and
• naturalness.

Each of these criteria lends plausibility or implausibility to particular interpretations, but is not conclusive in itself. They most be balanced against each other in arguing for a particular interpretation.

The broad principle here is that the Buddha, in his choice of words, most plausibly meant what he said. Alongside the use of words in their conventional everyday meanings, he Dhamma makes use has its own “technical vocabulary,” words given a special meaning in the Buddhist context, often explicitly defined as such. For instance, the Buddha defines the technical sense of kamma (‘action’) as “volition” (cetanā). Moreover, words readily take on new meanings on their own in specific contexts, including in the context of Dhamma. However, the processes ye which words are extended semantically, or come to occupy new semantic spaces are generally well understood in modern linguistics, and almost always trace reliably back to their etymology. The designation at the source of Pali sati, for instance, is “memory” or “recollection.” Interpreting it as “bare attention,” or “being in the present moment” is etymologically implausible. Moreover, the Buddha does give sati an explicit technical meaning, and memory is at the center of his definition.

Ad hoc interpretations of terms in specific contexts are questionable, without independent verification. For instance, the compound vitakka-vicāra has a critical role in the Buddhist teaching of the jhānas. In common usage means something like ‘thought and deliberation’ or ‘discursive thinking.’ However, in discussions of jhāna—and nowhere else—it is interpreted (implausibly, all else being equal) as “initial and sustained application,” in reference to a technique for establishing one-pointedness of mind. The term viññāṇa (‘consciousness’) has a clear technical sense in the early texts, consistently applied to a transient and generative instance of awareness. Yet in the popular “three-lives” interpretation of dependent co-origination—and nowhere else—it takes on a new (implausible, with regard to etymology) designation, as something that conveys dispositions from the previous life into the womb in the process of rebirth. In a later tradition did this special interpretation of viññāṇa was designated as paṭisandhi-viññāṇa, a term absent in the early texts.

What the Buddha taught was not philosophy, not science, not speculation, but a guide to practice. The Dhamma serves to guide practice. Practice serves to produce immediate benefit, and moreover to produce a different kind of person: wise and virtuous, ultimately fully awakened. This is much as a cookbook serves cooking, and cooking serves to produce tasty food, and moreover to produce master chefs. A Dhamma teaching would be impractical if it could not be put into practice, or if it supported a practice that had no prospect of short- or long-term benefit. The functionality of Dhamma is made clear in the early texts.
You may understand as the teacher’s doctrine those things which you know lead to the goal. (AN 7.83)

In the famous Handful of Leaves Sutta he explicitly limits the Dhamma in terms of functionality, for instance, precluding speculation, or teaching something merely because it is true:
“…, monks, there are many more things that I have found out, but not revealed to you. What I have revealed to you is only a little. And why, monks, have I not revealed it? Because, monks, it is not related to the goal, it is not fundamental to the holy life, does not conduce to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation, tranquility, higher knowledge, awakening or nibbāna. That is why I have not revealed it.” (SN 56.31)

In advancing a particular interpretation of a given Dhamma teaching, it is therefore incumbent on us to ask, “How do I put this into practice? How does this conduce to awakening? Why did the Buddha teach this? Where is the benefit?” For instance, How do I put the five aggregates of appropriation into practice? Why did the Buddha teach samādhi? In principle the answers to such questions put a strong constraint on what can be considered a plausible interpretation of the early texts. However, it is important to acknowledge that actual functionality may be difficult to recognize as such.

An important question to raise is, “Why did the Buddha teach rebirth?” This question takes priority over the question, “Is rebirth true?” The second question leads to mere speculation, not to a functional explanation. A plausible explanation would be that it provides a panoramic perspective from which to view progress in Buddhist practice, as well as its consequences. Truth is not necessary: neither money nor sports are real, except in terms of social convention, yet each is highly functional.

I have to admit that on first encounter the early Buddhist texts struck me as abstruse and disconnected, and that – given their antiquity and obscure history – I fully expected them to remain so. However, with further study and practice over time, and after recognizing connections among various teachings, I was delighted to discover a brilliant, methodical and consistent mind shining through those profound teachings, and now I marvel at how well time has treated these ancient texts. The genius of the Buddha leaps out of this corpus, the product of a single, extraordinary, and original, ancient mind.

Nonetheless, this is not entirely the case. There are many things that just don’t fit. The early Buddhist texts themselves are often shown to be unreliable victims of early editing. Moreover, various ways of interpreting the ancient texts, conditioned by all manner of influences through the centuries up until modern times, have crept in, and often become widely accepted, often obscuring their ancient intent. As I encountered interpretations that seemed to me not to cohere, I became a skeptic, and explored alternative interpretations, as well as the means for assessing alternatives discussed here.

I’ve come to view this task as like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle in which some pieces are missing, and in which other pieces have been mixed in from other jigsaw puzzles. At some point we nevertheless recognize, “By George, it’s the Golden Gate Bridge!” A coherent interpretation of the whole has shone forth that we cannot easily disregard, and once this has happened it becomes the basis of interpreting the remaining unplaced pieces, and of rejecting some of these altogether as intruders from other people’s jigsaw puzzles. Although such conclusions are still debatable, the convergence of evidence from many sources leave little doubt about their viability. And what shines forth is repeatedly, it seems to me, a coherent, functional system of teachings. Since the Buddha was a very systematic and practical thinker, coherence offers another strong constraint on interpretation.

I find that where coherence seems to break down most commonly is in association with one of five pervasive pervasive themes in the Dhamma: functionality, subjectivity, insubstantiality, conditionality? and verifiability. We’ve already discussed functionality. I’ll take up the others in turn.

Most of us find that the Buddha’s teachings on topics like emptiness and non-self are the hardest aspects of Dhamma to comprehend, and the Buddha predicted these would be the first to be forgotten.

But what is the status of the outer world “out there,” where “real” things dwell, like trees, keys, bees, and waterfalls, cars and airplanes, dogs and cats, bank accounts, yoga classes, other people and the moon? Certainly we experience such things, so we are justified in referring to an ‘outer world.’ But we have to take care to notice a fine line here, lest we admit too much to the world of experience:
We certainly do (1), and because we do (1) we are convinced that we do (2), but we do not know that these things are real. The reason we equate (1) and (2) is that we presume that how we experience the outer world accurately reflects natural reality, what is true “out there,” beyond experience. In other words, we take our experience of “out there” at face value. We don’t know how true this presumption might be, because we cannot actually see beyond our experience to check. (Imagine we live in The Matrix.)

We make a lot of presumptions about the outer world. But presumptions themselves are mental events, experiences that belong to the inner world. Insubstantiality means that the Buddhavacana avoids ontological claims, claims about what is real “out there.” That we experience something as real is Buddhavacana, but not that something is real in the absolute or substantial sense of “real independently of experience.” This is a pivotal point for the Buddha, who claims, right at the beginning of the Dhammapada,
All phenomena are preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind.
(Dhp 1-2) = what we experience is viable within the workings of human cognition.

Trees, keys, bees, and waterfalls, dogs and cats are preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind, in our world of experience. This is not to deny that real objects are somehow underlying causal factors in our experience; the Buddhavacana simply does not take a stand on natural reality. “Reality” becomes another underlying mechanism behind our experiential world that we might be inclined to speculate about, but that we know not of.
If we experience something as “out there,” we might seek to explain it in either of two ways. Suppose we experience a UFO; we see lights moving in the sky, say, in a bizarre pattern. We might seek to explain it objectively: “It must be of extraterrestrial origin, because the technology to produce that pattern is unknown on earth. But from what planet did it come? How did it get here?” Alternatively, we might seek to explain it epistemically: “Am I hallucinating? Did I pop one too many pills? Is a twiddle bug larva creeping across my glasses? Can weather or optical effects explain what I am seeing? …” Insubstantiality is agnosticism or skepticism toward objective explanation; it does not take the outer world at face value.

Magic of the mind

It thereby leans toward the epistemic perspective of attributing our experience not to natural reality, but rather to the other processes that produced that experience. These are for the most part mental processes, and this is the significance of mind preceding all things. Insubstantiality points toward the epistemic perspective of what makes us think we know what we think we know, rather than toward the objective perspective of what is actually going on “out there.” This is a key point in properly understanding the chain of dependent coarising.

We tend to take the outer world at face value, presuming all over the place that it simply reflects natural reality directly. As we presume, the outer world becomes a predetermined thing, and therefore not something we can experience differently. Since our practice is directed at experiencing differently, our options in practice are greatly reduced when we take the outer world at face value. We contact it.

And the sage at peace is not born, does not age, does not die; he is not shaken and does not yearn. For there is nothing present in him by which he might be born. (MN 140 iii246)→ prioritize “direct” experience as opposed to presumed.
Accordingly, we will find in the chapters that follow that the Buddhavacana guides our practice toward presuming otherwise and ultimately toward not presuming at all. The teaching and internalization of non-self is part of this project, for “me” is the most vexing of the things we experience as real. The practice of samādhi, and its cultivation as a particular mode of perception in which we view concepts or experience as empty (suñña), is also part of that project. the (mental) constructedness of our presumed reality, and to learn to presume otherwise.

Hamilton puts it, to acquire insight into the very nature of cognition, into how our experience operates. which she equates with knowledge and vision of how things are, which famously brings us oh so close to awakening. Cognitive viability
So far we’ve looked at things in the outer world in terms of insubstantiality. A further aspect of insubstantiality is the Buddha’s routine refusal to endorse views. For the Buddha, we have no basis for ever knowing if something is really true or false:
There are five things, Bhāradvāja, that may turn out in two different ways here and now. What five? Faith, approval, oral tradition, reasoned cogitation, and reflective acceptance of a view. These five things may turn out in two different ways here and now. (MN 95 ii170)

Conditionality

The primary tool for discovering consistencies and structure is the discovery of dependencies.
they cannot resort to underlying mechanisms or hypotheticals beyond experiential verification (in stark contrast, for instance, to the scientific method). Conditionality is essentially what remains to explain the single stratum of what is directly observable. Just as insubstantiality tends to limit explanation to epistemic processes, subjectivity tends to limit explanation to conditional relations.

Contingency = impermanence + conditionality
The four parameters of the Buddha’s method gives us a progressively more refined notion of what the Buddhavacana is, and what it is not. Practicality tells us the the Buddhavacana is squarely a practice tradition, not a set of obscure theories. Subjectivity tells us that its scope is the world as we experience it, not what is hidden from us. Insubstantiality admits to that world the presumption of things being real “out there,” but not the things themselves . Conditionality excludes what is hidden from experience from playing a role in discovery and description.

Verifiability

(Dharma→Practice, Subjectivity) → “Field testing” occurs through the actual “practice” of a particular candidate interpretation of Dhamma. The Buddha made abundantly clear that the Dhamma is to be “verified by the wise” and instructs us to “come and see,” and so we do. In fact, the purpose of satipaṭṭhāna, in particular, is to support such experiential verification of Dhamma. It follows that the Buddhist adept, accomplished in practice, will be in an especially good position to evaluate viable interpretations in terms of practice experience, in fact, in a far better position to witness this shining through than the mere scholar. The adept is like the jigsaw enthusiast who has actually been on the Golden Gate Bridge, who is already familiar with its features and the contours of the landscape and sea-scape around it. Field testing is an essential, ultimate constraint on interpretations, that might otherwise easily result solely from scholastic cleverness.

The Dhamma is well expounded by the Blessed One, directly visible, immediate, inviting one to come and see, applicable, to be personally experienced by the wise. (SN 11.3, AN 3.70, AN 11.12, AN 11.13,
Thag 6.2) The parameter of subjectivity is expressed in no less that four of the six qualities of the Dhamma mentioned above. The Dhamma is (excluding the two factors already discussed):
(2) visible (sandiḍḍhita),
(3) immediate (akālika),
(4) to ‘come and see’ (ehipassika),
(6) to be experienced by the wise (paccattaṃ veditabba viññuhi).
These four factors speak to accessibility and verifiability in actual experience.
The sixfold sphere (saḷāyatana, aka the (six) sense spheres) With reference to the sixfold sphere,
In the six the world has arisen,
In the six it holds concourse.
On the six themselves depending,
In the six it has woes. (SN 1.70)

Our experiential world is dysfunctional, at least for most of us, in that it produces great suffering. The subjectivity of Buddhavacana and practice gives us the opportunity to understand this dysfunction, and through practice to learn to experience in a more wholesome way, to experience otherwise, and thereby to limit or overcome this dysfunction.

Trained in modern science, I tend to highlight the naturalistic and functional aspects of the Buddha’s Dhamma. They tend to jump out for one with that perspective. However, I do not dismiss the cosmological aspects (rebirth, for instance), but instead ask, how does the presumption of Buddhist cosmology benefit one’s practice? Moreover, I regularly apply consistence of modern understandings of human cognition as a basic criterion for interpreting the Buddha’s many psychologically oriented teachings. Because Buddhism is a practice tradition, I find that this is very effective in my research.
Examples: samādhi and flow, intrinsic cognition
Don’t use lack of natural explanation as basis for rejecting teaching or intepretation.

Dhamma exists within the constraints of human cognition. Finally, “cognitive viability” asks that our interpretation makes sense in terms of what is independently known about how the human mind works. When we practice samādhi, when we gain insight into non-self and impermanence, when we gain independence from crippling attachments, or when the most progressed among us attain awakening, it must be within the capabilities of human cognition. As an erstwhile cognitive scientist, I bring a useful degree of erudition to the table in this regard, alongside great admiration for possibly the world’s first cognitive scientist: the Buddha.
My experience has been that the constraint of cognitive viability, in fact, expands as well as limits the scope of possible interpretations; the reason is that we tend to underestimate the capabilities of human cognition. I have found that a cognitive perspective seems to have been particularly productive for understanding what is going on in satipaṭṭhāna practice.

Example

For instance, Dhamma practice is about acquiring and applying skills: effectively it teaches us to become “a virtuoso of virtue,” “a wizard of wisdom,” and “a master of maturation [bhāvanā].” Modern research tells us that skill acquisition and training are largely a matter of “internalization” of previously explicit conceptual know-how so that it becomes spontaneous, effortless, intuitive, quick and quiet. A virtuoso pianist does not think, but lets the music simply arise through her, as if in a trance. This helps us understand the how the silence of the jhānas helps, rather than hinders, acquiring the wisdom of the Buddha.
The coming of Buddhism to the west, and its penetration into modern cultures (which now exist all over the world) has in many ways been a boon for the understanding of Dhamma in its various traditions. Modern people tend to see the Dhamma with new eyes, and to question crystallized orthodoxies. There seems to have been an historical tendency for the understanding of Dhamma to blossom with each infusion into a new culture. Zen Master Dogen, for instance, is representative of this trend. Already modern scholarship has come far in dating Buddhist texts, and has thereby provided a basis for distinguishing early Buddhism as a field of study and as a comprehensive basis for practice.
Nonetheless, Buddhism (early or later) is undergoing many growing pains as it seeks to establish itself in the west. I’ve come to be convinced by the traditional Asian wisdom that Buddhism fully establishes itself in a new land only with the founding of a flourishing, vital, indigenous monastic Sangha. This is one of the reasons I sought monastic ordination. So far it it consists of alarming small assemblages of bald eccentrics in robes intent on getting it right, like me, by living Dhamma in the ancient way. As a result, what passes as modern Buddhism is often based more—sometimes almost entirely—on philosophical, spiritual and psychological understanding of western origin, that seem to make sense. Common influences are Protestant Christianity (even for atheists), the European enlightenment, Romaticism, psychotherapy, individualism, and consumer culture.
This is not to say that we should comprehend Buddhism without a modern perspective. I don’t think that is possible. But we do best to let Buddhism be Buddhism, to avoid dismissing what challenges modern ways of thinking out of hand. We should hope one day rather to have learned to comprehend modernity from a Buddhist perspective, to see modernity’s flaws and understand why it is in a state of crisis.

Chapters in DCO and RS
Sujato and Brahmali
Wisdom Nikāyas
McMahan
Hamilton