The Indian Philosophy Blog

Indian Philosophy/Theology and Multilingualism

Mon, 26 Oct 2020 08:00:41 GMT

I am Manasicha Akepiyapornchai, a Ph.D. candidate in Asian Studies, Cornell University, NY, USA. I am excited to have a conversation with you this month, and I am very grateful for Elisa and other members who gave me this opportunity! Let me start by introducing myself and my research.

I have been in Asian Studies at Cornell for almost seven years for my master’s, and I am finishing up my Ph.D. in hopefully a year from now. My research focuses on the intellectual history of Indian Philosophy and Theology of the schools of Vedānta, in particular. I am also interested in Mīmāṃsā and Buddhist philosophy as they serve as the intellectual interlocutors of these schools and provide critical backgrounds. I pay attention to language choice and multilingualism in the composition and how the use of languages and linguistic movements shape and transform philosophy or theology in premodern India.

Specifically, my dissertation investigates the intellectual history of self-surrender, the primary soteriological doctrine of the South-Indian based Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition, which has Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta as its philosophical counterpart, through its multilingual scriptures and theological treatises. This tradition is devoted to God in the form of Viṣṇu-Nārāyaṇa and believes that a person can be liberated from the cycle of births only by surrendering to God, which is in accordance with one’s subordinate nature. Since the beginning of the tradition (around the tenth century CE), the Śrīvaiṣṇavas used Tamil and Sanskrit to hand down scriptures and expound theology. The Sanskrit scripture comprises the Vedas, the Upaṇisads, and other scriptures that are part of the broader Vedic orthodoxy. On the other hand, the Tamil scripture is believed to be composed by the first generation of the Śrīvaiṣṇavas, the Āḻvārs, South Indian devotional poets. While the Sanskrit scripture is shared by other intellectual and religious communities, the Tamil scripture is mainly revered within the Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition.

The doctrine of self-surrender is rooted in the confluence of the traditional scriptures in Sanskrit and Tamil. Interestingly, the early Śrīvaiṣṇava authors were directly engaged with only the Sanskrit scripture and composed exclusively Sanskrit texts. As the tradition socially expanded to accommodate more people from lower castes and those from different cities around the twelfth century CE, we see the early medieval authors’ attempt to bring two scriptural heritages together to accommodate the multiple communities. They initiated the use of a hybrid Tamil-Sanskrit or Maṇipravāḷa in their commentaries on the Tamil scripture and then independent treatises on the doctrine of self-surrender. During the twelfth to fifteenth century CE, the doctrine of self-surrender became central in the philosophical and theological treatises as well as ritual manuals in both Sanskrit and Maṇipravāḷa.

My dissertation deals with both Sanskrit and Maṇipravāḷa treatises on the doctrine of self-surrender across three generations of Śrīvaiṣṇava authors from the twelfth to fifteenth century CE, after the introduction of Maṇipravāḷa in the Śrīvaiṣṇava composition. In each chapter of my dissertation, I pair a Sanskrit treatise with one in Maṇipravāḷa from the same period to show the parallel yet differing doctrinal development in the two linguistic domains. Each chapter also indicates how the two linguistic media direct the doctrine in different directions. These three generations’ treatises on the doctrine in the three main chapters of my dissertation chart the turning points in the doctrinal development within the Sanskrit-Maṇipravāḷa interaction, namely systematization, heterogeneity, and harmonization. They also show that the turning points are conditioned by the expansion and contraction of the linguistic boundaries. The development of the doctrine during these three generations intersects the discursive linguistic movements, resulting in the theological multiplicity.

My project also aims to complicate the recent scholarship on South Asian multilingualism that focuses on a macro-binary paradigm between Sanskrit and a vernacular like Prākrit (e.g., Pollock 2006 and Ollett 2017). Rather than charting the linguistic evolution at the macro-level, I want to capture the nuances and complexity within locally territorialized linguistic movements with the attention to a hybrid language such as Maṇipravāḷa.

I am so looking forward to comments and discussion and I hope to share my methodology in the next post!

New book on Gandhi and political thought

Wed, 07 Oct 2020 18:19:50 GMT

Sanjay Lal recently published a book titled Gandhi’s Thought and Liberal Democracy (Lexington Books, 2019).

You can now listen to Sanjay Lal discussing it on the New Books network, here.

General and specific rules in Mīmāṃsā?

Tue, 06 Oct 2020 18:24:04 GMT

What happens when commands clash? A standard devise to deal with the topic is the idea of taking one as a general rule and the other as a specific one. In Sanskrit, these are called, respectively, utsarga and apavāda. Mīmāṃsā authors have, however, other devices.

For instance, Kumārila, discusses the prohibition to perform violence and its seeming conflict with the ritual prescription to perform ritual killing within a given sacrifice.
See his Commentary in verses (Ślokavārttika), chapter on Injunction (codanā), vv. 223—224:

तेन सामान्यतः प्राप्तो विधिना न निवारितः ||
फलांशोपनिपातिन्या हिंसायाः प्रतिेषेधकः |
“Therefore the prohibition to killing, obtained in general applied and not stopped by another injunction, prohibits the killing when it pertains to the fruit-portion |

Is this a case of a general rule overturned by a specific one (as claimed in Kei Kataoka 2012, Is Killing Bad?)?

If it were so, we would have the general prohibition to perform violence (F(violence)/T) being overruled by the more specific obligation to perform ritual killing in a specific setting:
F(violence)/T
O(violence)/sacrifice for Agni and Soma

However, this is not the solution adopted by Kumārila. Rather, Kumārila’s point is that the original prohibition to perform violence should be reconfigured as a prohibition regarding only violence as the result of the action, and not regarding instrumental violence.

That is, according to Kumārila, the Vedic prohibition to perform violence should not be read as
F(violence)/T
but as
F(violence as a result)/T
which does not conflict with (instrumental violence)

Comments, as usual, welcome!

A god for the real world

Sun, 04 Oct 2020 22:00:00 GMT

I don’t believe in God. But if I did, that God might need to be Krishna.

I have come to believe that the problem of suffering is effectively insurmountable. That is, the vast suffering in the world clearly implies that there cannot be an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God, as the God of the Abrahamic traditions is generally supposed to be.

But what about a god who isn’t omnipotent or omnibenevolent?

If we deny one of those two attributes, then the problem of suffering goes away. It is really only a problem for those who believe in an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God, which is why Indians spent so little time asking the question “Why do good people suffer?”, even though they had an answer to it.

So when Elisa Freschi asked me about later Vaiṣṇava Mīmāṃsakas who believed in a god attained through worship, irrespective of qualities of omnipotence or omnibenevolence, I said sure, such a god could exist, in a way that the Abrahamic God could not. I just didn’t have particular reason to believe in one.

As I grapple a bit more with nondualism, though, the possibility of a God comes up again. The ultimate One of nondualism can look a lot like many conceptions of god. And that leads me to start thinking about concepts of God that I could accept.

Here I see a lot of power in the figure of Krishna, for a simple reason: not only is Krishna not omnibenevolent, it’s not even clear that Krishna is good. Krishna just is. In all the main stories told about him, he is at least morally questionable – whether he’s stealing butter as a kid or being an adulterous adult. (I greatly appreciated stories of Krishna when I was a child myself; he seemed far more “relatable”, as the kids say now, than did “little Lord Jesus / No crying he makes”.) The Bhagavad Gītā portrays Krishna as a font of ethical wisdom – but it is embedded in the larger Mahābhārata in which Krishna later quite flagrantly urges the violation of that same advice.

A watercolour depicting Krishna’s universal form.

What the Gītā also depicts, though, is Krishna’s awesomeness – in the older sense of “awesome”, not the one popularized by my generation in which it simply means “really good”. Krishna is not omnibenevolent, but he does seem omnipotent or something close to it; he may not be good, but he still inspires awe. Possibly the most famous part of that text is its eleventh chapter, in which Krishna reveals his true form to Arjuna: a terrifying yet beautiful vision in which he is covered in dazzling adornments but devours everyone in his “blazing deathlike faces and awful teeth”. And this, it seems to me, is a good representation of the true nature of the world: terrifyingly indifferent to the aspirations and sufferings of human subjects, yet amazing and beautiful and awe-inspiring all the same. A cruel, crazy, beautiful world.

Crucially, such a god does not seem to merit our trust. It is not clear that what he does is all for the best. Krishna is the divine agent who brings about the events of the Mahābhārata – a famously apocalyptic war, pitting family against family and often involving brutal, wholesale, vengeful slaughter. The most notorious such slaughter, Aśvatthāma’s massacre of his foes in their sleep, comes out of Aśvatthāma’s rage at his father being slain through deception: a deception recommended by none other than Krishna. And what is it all for? Krishna needs to makes the great destruction of the Mahābhārata happen in order to clear away the old historical age and bring about a new one. But the new age is the kaliyuga, an era even worse than the one before. Congratulations?

A next question might be: does Krishna merit worship? That, perhaps, depends on what we mean by “worship”. Krishna, as far as I can tell, is a being who merits awe but not trust. This should not be an unfamiliar combination of feelings – we can feel it before the music of Wagner, or the Egyptian pyramids built on the backs of slaves. That absence of trust does seem like it could get in the way of saksit; it’s harder for a feeling of awe and reverence to motivate you to be a better person, when it is directed at an object that is itself morally questionable. Still, I think there is something valuable to the experience of awe even when it is directed at such a questionable object. At the very least the experience can teach us some humility, reminding us of something out there greater than ourselves. Burke and Kant would call such an object sublime. Perhaps “sublime” is the best word for us to think about Krishna. If so, then perhaps even more importantly, it is a way to think about nature and the universe themselves: the grand, majestic, awesome, even delightful infinity to which we human beings are an afterthought.

Cross-posted at Love of All Wisdom.

Is the eudaimonist proposition true?

Sun, 27 Sep 2020 22:00:00 GMT

Evan Thompson’s critique of my eudaimonistic and probabilistic approach to karma has two prongs: that it is not really karma, and that it doesn’t work on its own terms. I addressed the first criticism last time. Now I’d like to turn to the second, which I personally find to be the more interesting and important of the two.

Let us start with the word “probabilistic”, which I use in a non-technical way. My eudaimonism is a probabilistic claim (as opposed to a deterministic claim) in the same sense that “brushing your teeth will prevent cavities” or “running into the middle of a busy street will get you run over by a car” are probabilistic claims. That is, we assert that these causal correlations are likely, not certain. In the case of the busy street, I’m not sure we have a detailed statistical model of how likely you are to get run over by a car, but I don’t think we need one. Everyday observation is sufficient to determine that. In the case of virtue and happiness, I’ve mentioned a couple of ways that Śāntideva says one leads to the other, in this life; there is a lot more to say about it, and I intend to say it in my book – not with a statistical model, but again I don’t think that’s necessary. This is what I mean by “probabilistic”. I’m not wedded to that specific word: so far “probabilistic” has seemed the most appropriate word to express the concept in question and I haven’t been convinced that it isn’t, but I wouldn’t mind expressing the concept just described with a different term if a better one is available.

If I read Thompson’s objections on that point correctly, though, I don’t think they are about a statistical model or its absence. Rather, his bigger concern is this: “Normative concepts operate in the logical space of reasons—the logical space of being able to justify what you say in relation to norms and values. The concept of probability, however, is a descriptive one that operates in the logical space of causes.” This is a Sellarsian way of making a sharp fact-value distinction, and I don’t think that such a sharp distinction is tenable. Without the kind of connection between facts and values that eudaimonism provides, I think that moral claims are left without any rational foothold – any reason for us to follow them. A Kant is powerless against a Nietzsche, but an Aristotle (or a Śāntideva) is not. For when normative claims are held to operate in an entirely separate space from the world of cause and effect (as they are in Kant), one has good reason to ignore those normative claims and do whatever one was going to do anyway; the normative claims are left as an empty “you just ought”, unable to motivate. In my view, this is a problem that eudaimonism does a great deal to solve. It gives us reason to be good, starting from the motivational set we already have.

Now Thompson also says “the proposition that good and bad actions are more likely to produce experienced good results, and bad actions are more likely to produce bad experienced results isn’t obviously true as a general empirical proposition about the world. Maybe it’s true, and maybe it’s false.” That criticism – that eudaimonism might not be factually true – is an extremely important one, and I have acknowledged that the arguments I have made so far against it are insufficient on their own. That’s part of the reason I’m writing a book, and it’s my intent that this proposition will stand or fall on the book’s case – some of which, I’m sure, will be developed in this space over the next couple years. There is plenty to return to in the future, which is itself a sign of the productiveness of this discussion.

I do need to say at least a little about it now, though, in order to clarify what I’m claiming. First, Thompson treats the claim that good actions bring about good results as separate from the claim that they generate pleasant mental states. I don’t. I think that mental states, characterized above all by less suffering, are among the most important of the good results – for Śāntideva and for myself. (Thanks to this conversation, though, I am realizing that “pleasant” is not a wide or powerful enough term for them.)

That leads me into the second point, where Thompson asks why a eudaimonistic claim would be true, if it were indeed so:

Is it true because of some inherent causal power on the part of good and bad intentions, as traditional Buddhists believe? (Mādhyamikas are an exception, because they deny that anything has inherent causal powers.) Or is it true because of social and political structures that regulate human behaviour? If the latter factors carry more of the causal weight, then eudaimonistic karma loses causal relevance in proportion.

A major intent of my dissertation on Śāntideva was to understand him on his own terms. How exactly does karma work, for him – including in our future lives? To scientifically minded people like Thompson and myself, the supernatural causality involved in rebirth is weird enough that it’s tempting to write it off as mysterious unexplainable wooj: it’s some inherent causal power, and we can’t really say anything about which such power. But we do not need to write the supernatural causality off in this way entirely, for Śāntideva provides us with at least some sense of how he thinks karmic rebirth works. Charles Goodman’s chapter in Jake Davis’s A Mirror is for Reflection shows us how even Śāntideva’s passages about rebirth in the hells are often written in such a way that the suffering caused to the agent in hell mirrors the suffering caused to the agent in worldly life. (As is the case in many readings of Dante’s Inferno.) A man who engages in sexual misconduct will continue being reborn in a hell where he is devoured by women made of iron and fire, because his lust continues to drive him toward them. One who murders will be reborn in a hell encircled by enemies, alone and friendless. Goodman points out that similar fates likely await murderers in this life, in ways that go well beyond the punishments meted out by social and political institutions:

Quite obviously, once you start murdering people, the number of friends who will stand up for you and help you diminishes rapidly, while the number of enemies you have (starting with the SWAT team) increases just as rapidly. Even more significant, the murderer comes to perceive the world as a hostile and threatening place, full of enemies. No one can be trusted; anyone could stab you in the back at any time. This world, in this life, becomes a harsh realm of conflict, full of fire and demons. The murderer comes to perceive the Earth as a hell. (Goodman 134)

Goodman’s point here – an extrapolation from Śāntideva’s writing on rebirth – is a start (and I recognize it’s just a start) to answering Thompson’s important objection about a hypothetical person who enjoys tormenting young animals (or children) because of the pleasant mental states that the act gives in the moment. As with tobacco or cocaine, the pleasures offered by such experiences do not come in isolation; they are part of a larger package of harmful mental states, as well as social consequences not limited to institutions.

Furthermore, the Dalai Lama, in the passage I quoted earlier, makes it explicit that the causal process involved in rebirth is a function of mental habits and dispositions, the same ones that are at the heart of eudaimonism. That is, the habits that have led us to internal bads in this life manifest in the world at the time of death and rebirth, leading us to external bads in the next life. Once we understand the causal power that guides rebirth in the works of Śāntideva and the Dalai Lama, we see how it is closely connected to the causality of habit and psychology that (we eudaimonists claim) underlies eudaimonism in this life.

So – the big question – does such a view hold up in this life? Again I think the truth of eudaimonism stands in part on the claim that a great deal of human flourishing is constituted by the internal goods, including good mental states, that virtue brings – rather than the kind of external goods that social and political structures can provide. If our focus is primarily on the latter, then yes, eudaimonism is likely hard to sustain. (I think Thompson and I may be mostly in agreement on that point.) The Stoics and Epicureans manage to be determinist eudaimonists without believing in rebirth, specifically because they take external goods to be valueless. I do not take their strong ethical stance, though I do think that their stance is very close – closer than mine – to that of traditional Indian Buddhists. (On this point I disagree deeply with Goodman: Śāntideva, just like the Stoics and Epicureans, views virtue as the truly valuable thing, with external goods and bads being a side benefit at best. That’s why he, like most classical Indian Buddhists, views political participation as fruitless.) I do, however, think that the traditional Buddhists, Stoics and Epicureans have realized a crucial truth: external goods are much less important to our well-being than human beings in most ages generally tend to think they are. To live a good life we need to turn our focus to the internal causes of our suffering, and the virtue that helps heal it. It is in that respect that I believe a this-worldly eudaimonism to be both plausible and Buddhist.

Again, there is much more to be said. But I will leave the discussion there, for now at any rate. It has been tremendously thought-provoking, as well as enjoyable, for me. I hope that it has also been so for Thompson, and for our readership. My thanks to Thompson again.

Cross-posted at Love of All Wisdom.

When does karma stop being karma?

Sun, 20 Sep 2020 22:00:00 GMT

Evan Thompson has made his last statement in our correspondence. Before I make mine, a personal note: our series of responses to date has become increasingly confrontational in tone, in a way I imagine our readers have noticed. Thompson and I have spoken about that tone in private and we agreed that it is not where either of us had hoped or intended for this conversation to go. I hope to end this series on a note of gentler and friendlier disagreement, one that invites both of us and our readers to new avenues of inquiry that the dialogue has opened up. For one thing, from the beginning, I have appreciated Thompson’s willingness to take Buddhist thought seriously by acknowledging where he finds it inadequate; this is a valuable and refreshing contrast to the kind of kid-glove treatment that it is too often given in religious studies. I think that this aspect of Thompson’s approach is very helpful for advancing contemporary discussions of Buddhist thought, and I think I should have led my opening review post with my appreciation of his work on that point.

Now to recap the state of our debate. Thompson, in his June reply, had stood his ground on the claim that karma is fundamentally about why bad things happen to good people. My ensuing July-August round of posts addressed in detail why I think he is wrong about this. While I think it was important to go into those details, I think I didn’t spend enough time on the big-picture questions that motivated them, which remain important to both Thompson and myself. So, while I didn’t think the wordplay in his June title was accurate, I think the current one was. That is, I did, to some extent at least, “lose the thread”. I am happy that the final exchange can now take us back to those larger questions.

I will attempt to restrain myself from responding to everything in Thompson’s final reply, so that this dialogue can conclude with that larger picture in mind. This approach will also allow these reply posts to be more succinct: just two. (For that reason, I will post them on my regular weekly schedule.) This first post will situate the karma discussion in the larger discussion of Buddhist modernism. The second will deal with what I think is Thompson’s most interesting line of critique: about whether eudaimonism works on its own terms.

Thompson’s book, recall, is a critique of Buddhist modernism in general. I argued in April that that critique did not apply to a modern eudaimonist Buddhism that naturalizes karma. Thompson replied that it does, on the ground that naturalized, probabilistic, or this-worldly karma was “incongruent” with karma’s “traditional meaning and function”. Thompson puts this latter claim in another, perhaps stronger and simpler, way in the final (August) post: what my theory calls karma, he says, is not karma at all. “I’d call this shwarma, not karma.”

Before we examine Thompson’s reasoning behind this claim, let’s note a key implication of it. I appreciate Thompson’s discussion in the August post of Ian Stevenson’s work on rebirth, which engages with Stevenson in more depth than I’ve been able to so far. There, Thompson comes to a conclusion that (so far) I share, namely that we do not have good reason to believe in rebirth. Notice that this conclusion implies that a karma doctrine which does involve rebirth is false, an incorrect description of reality. Therefore, if non-rebirth karma theories aren’t really karma (as Thompson claims and I do not), then all karma doctrines that are really karma, are false. That is: for Thompson, karma, qua karma, is a false idea. (As Thompson’s book title might suggest.)

So why does Thompson say that naturalized karma isn’t karma? In the August post, Thompson makes an analogy to the evolutionary point that after enough mutation from one species a new species is formed, distinct from the old. I agree with Thompson that analogous transformations can happen in traditions of inquiry and self-cultivation, where at some point something becomes something other than it was. While I accept the analogy, I do not think it settles the point. Thompson knows far more about evolutionary theory than I do and I’m happy to be corrected if I’m wrong about this, but it is my understanding that the question of when a new species has emerged is far from easy to settle. Even a quick Wikipedia search notes that “If species were fixed and clearly distinct from one another, there would be no problem, but evolutionary processes cause species to change continually, and to grade into one another.” In evolution it is often not a simple matter to declare that a new species has or has not been formed from the old, and I think the same is the case about a new concept forming from the old.

This scientific question is an application of a more basic metaphysical question: given that things are changing all the time, at what point can it be said that a thing has ceased to be the thing it once was and has instead become a different thing entirely? This was a question of great concern to classical Greeks like Plato. Their answers revolved around concepts like eidos (form) and ousia (essence): what is the underlying property that makes a thing what it is, despite its transformations? Such that when the thing no longer has that property, it has become a different thing? Indian Buddhist philosophers were often not comfortable with such concepts of essence, identifying them with the svabhāva that they thought an illusion. I do not generally share their discomfort, and it seems clear that Thompson does not either, for the language of essence is what he has effectively used by speaking multiple times of the core of the concept of karma. (For example, “I assert that the problem of accounting for why bad things happen to good people lies at the core of the formation of the concept of karma.”)

I note all these questions to situate what I think is the real question between us: at what point is a revised concept of karma no longer karma but something else? When has it become “shwarma, not karma“? Jains and other pre-Buddhist thinkers said karmic fruition resulted from the act itself (as the word karma, literally “action”, itself implies) – irrespective of mental states attached to the act. The Buddha of the early suttas instead identified karma with intention; Jains and others understandably balked at this psychologizing innovation. These are two very different concepts of karma, but Thompson allows that they are both still concepts of karma. When the Buddha makes his drastic and dramatic innovation, Thompson does not say that that is enough of a departure from the original to be “shwarma, not karma.” (Shwarma, incidentally, is delicious.)

Thompson distinguishes between the Buddha’s innovations and mine in this way because he believes that the core of karma is “accounting for why bad things happen to good people”, or “the problem of why there is evil and an unequal distribution of happiness and suffering in the world”. If this problem is indeed at the core of karma, then an innovation that includes it remains karma, and one that does not, does not. I wrote the detailed discussions in my previous replies with the intent to show that this problem is not the core of Buddhist karma and never was, at the pre-Buddhist formation of the doctrine or anywhere else. I believe that I established that point in those posts and that it stands well enough after Thompson’s final reply, so I won’t go back to it here.

Rather, I want to keep the focus on the bigger picture, by ending with a conditional statement that I think Thompson could accept: if explaining why bad things happen to good people is not the core of the Buddhist karma doctrine, as I have argued, then my theory of eudaimonistic karma is indeed karma – a modification of traditional Buddhist karma theory, not something entirely new and different. Readers may look at the previous posts and judge for themselves whether that is in fact the case.

Cross-posted at Love of All Wisdom.

Right view vs. true statements

Sun, 13 Sep 2020 22:07:00 GMT

Paul Fuller’s The Notion of Diṭṭhi in Theravāda Buddhism, as its title might suggest, is a dry, abstract, technical monograph. It may also be one of the more spiritually beneficial books I have ever read.

I suppose maybe both of these things are appropriate to the book’s subject matter, the Pali Canon. One of the Canon’s “three baskets”, the abhidhamma, is notorious for its level of technical abstraction – and yet Theravāda tradition has consistently held it to be of great spiritual benefit. Erik Braun has demonstrated how the modern Burmese traditions of vipassanā meditation, now enormously popular around the world, have their origins in study of the abhidhamma.

As for Fuller: his book is an exploration of the concept of diṭṭhi, literally “view” or “seeing” (equivalent to the Sanskrit dṛṣṭi). It is quite important to Buddhist tradition in general: sammādiṭṭhi, right view, is the first of the components of the Noble Eightfold Path. English translations usually render diṭṭhi as “view” rather than “seeing” because it also has a connotation of “belief” or “opinion”. So the Pali suttas depict the Buddha’s opponents – Jains, Ājīvikas, and so on – as having micchādiṭṭhi, wrong view. And so scholars of Buddhism often understand micchādiṭṭhi to mean holding opinions with incorrect content, which it does often mean.

But what was powerful to me about Fuller’s account is how it shows that that is not the only thing that micchādiṭṭhi can mean. It is wrong view when one holds a belief whose content is incorrect. But, Fuller notes, it is also wrong view when one holds a belief with correct content, in the wrong way. For, he claims, the concept of diṭṭhi “has less to do with truth and falsehood, than with craving and its cessation.” (7) Fuller points to the Khemaka Sutta, in which the monk Khemaka says:

With regard to these five clinging-aggregates, there is nothing I assume to be self or belonging to self, and yet I am not an arahant. With regard to these five clinging-aggregates, ‘I am’ has not been overcome, although I don’t assume that ‘I am this.’

Like David Burton, Khemaka is not liberated even though he assents to the proposition that there is no self. Going further, Buddhaghosa in the Aṭṭhasālinī says that there is a “conceit” (māna) “based in view”, which right view abandons.

The key implication of all this textual analysis: one can be attached to truth, to true ideas, and this attachment can itself be a form of wrong view. (It would be strange to describe this attachment as “wrong opinion”, which is a reason “opinion” is likely not a good translation of diṭṭhi.)

That is Fuller’s really helpful point. He may not have been the first to make it, but he did a lot to hit it home for me. It resonated in particular with the background of my own anger. I don’t think the content of my views was incorrect when I found George W. Bush to be disastrous or thought my friends on the left were being excessive. But the content was not the most important thing! I held those views with such anger, such bile, as to make them wrong in the most important sense: they did not help me see the situation clearly. My own progress, on what I took to be the best philosophical path, was being held back by true statements.

The number of true statements that one could speak, or think, is infinite. Whatever true statements we in fact think or speak are necessarily a subset of this number. And it is quite possible to focus excessively on those true statements that most outrage us, in a way that keeps our thoughts in a loop that distracts us from other truths.

The point is not far from Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s claim that “Is his philosophy true?” would once have meant not “Does he hold a correct set of philosophical beliefs?” but “Is his love of wisdom genuine?” A true philosophy is like a right view: something less to do with the truth or falsehood of statements and more to do with ennobling and liberating insight.

I do think Fuller goes too far in his positions. He tries to claim that sammādiṭṭhi is not a diṭṭhi, that right view is not a view. I think if one is going to try to assert such an obvious paradox, it would help if one has some textual evidence that actually claims it, and I don’t think Fuller has much. (Maria Heim and Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad tried to assert a similar claim, in a way resting on a presumed distinction between diṭṭhi and dassana, for which I do not think they found evidence.) Fuller wants to claim that classical Theravādins do not have a correspondence view of truth, and I think this is also going too far: they regularly insist on the idea of yathābhūtadassana, seeing according to what exists. (Not “according to what has arisen”.) But, it is crucial that, as in Augustine, this correspondence is not primarily a matter of statements, propositions. Rather, it is the act of seeing that must correspond to reality – and one does not see according to reality if one’s view is clouded by attachment and anger, even if one is assenting to true statements.

Cross-posted on Love of All Wisdom.

Three Debts and Five Sacrifices

Tue, 01 Sep 2020 19:14:45 GMT

My last two posts focused on some of the considerations that the dharmasūtra authors cite in support of the householder āśrama. As I mentioned, the householder’s payment of the three debts is central to these considerations. In this post, I consider some of the differences between the householder’s payment of the three debts and his performance of the five great sacrifices, with a focus on the Mānavadharmaśāstra.

The first three beneficiaries of the five great sacrifices are the same as those to whom the three debts are paid – namely, the ṛṣis, ancestors, and gods. Some of the sacrifices parallel the actions that constitute payment of the corresponding debts. By reciting the Vedas, the householder both pays the debt to ṛṣis and performs the sacrifice for ṛṣis. By offering oblations to the gods, the householder both pays the debt to gods and performs the sacrifice for gods.

This might be taken to imply that the first three of the great sacrifices reference the same set of obligations as the three debts; the two lists differ only insofar as the five sacrifices add people and living beings more generally to the explicit list of beneficiaries.[1] This interpretation might seem further supported by similarities between the five sacrifices and the early formulation of four debts in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa (ŚB 1.7.2.1-6). To the standard list of three debts that later texts adopt from the Taittirīya Saṃhitā (TS 6.3.10.5), the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa adds the debt of hospitality to people. This debt seems to correspond to the fourth sacrifice – the sacrifice of food to people. Olivelle suggests that the fifth sacrifice – to all living beings – might have been an extension – and then division – of this fourth debt (Olivelle 1993: 54). In the Mahābhārata, Paṇḍu cites the same four debts (MBh 1.111.12).[2]

This interpretation of the two lists of obligations in Manu, however, is implausible for a number of reasons. First, Manu never equates the five sacrifices and the three debts. Second, Medhātithi, who otherwise shows an eagerness to read the five sacrifices into passages that do not mention them (Me 3.77-78), does not equate or connect the five sacrifices with the three debts either.

A third reason to think the two lists of obligations are distinct is that a person might fulfill one set of obligations without fulfilling the other. Most obviously, a person might pay the three debts without offering hospitality to guests, and without offering sustenance to living beings more generally. Additionally, a person might perform the śrāddha ceremony for ancestors – and thereby perform the sacrifice to ancestors – but not fulfill his debt to ancestors by having a son, or vice versa.[3]

Fourth, Manu claims that the five sacrifices and the three debts serve to eliminate different forms of demerit. Twice he describes the performance of the five sacrifices as a means to avoid the demerit that accrues to a person as a natural result of worldly life. Having ascribed the five sacrifices to the householder at MDh 3.67, Manu explains that

the householder has five slaughterhouses, the use [of] which binds [him]: fireplace, grindstone, broom, mortar bowl, and water bowl. With the goal of the undoing of all of these, the five great sacrifices were arranged by the great ṛṣis for the householder [to perform] daily (MDh 3.68-69).[4]

Here Manu says that the five sacrifices allow the householder to avoid the negative, personal consequences of the harm that he inevitably causes as a householder. In warming his home, preparing food, consuming food and water, and so on, the householder causes a wide range of harms to living beings. In performing the five sacrifices, he removes any demerit that he has accrued as a result, and hence, avoids the eventual suffering that would otherwise result from perpetrating these harms.[5]

A later verse explains that even especially egregious wrongs might be undone by performing the five sacrifices. “The daily recitation of the Vedas, the performance of the five great sacrifices according to one’s ability and patience quickly destroy wrongs, even those that arise from great wrongs” (MDh 11.246).[6] Among the great wrongs are the murder of a brāhmaṇa, and sleeping with the wife of one’s guru, which normally result in the loss of varṇa (MDh 9.235, 11.55).

As Olivelle argues, fulfillment of the three debts also eliminates guilt (1993: 48-49). This guilt, however, is not a result of past harms. While Manu never says this explicitly, other seminal texts standardly attribute the three debts to a person simply in virtue of being born.[7] So while there might be some overlap between the actions that constitute the performance of the five sacrifices and those that constitute payment of the three debts, the difference in the intentions of these obligations is significant. The five sacrifices aim to remove blame for actions that a person has personally performed in the past. The three debts, in contrast, aim to remove an innate blame that is independent of past actions.

Another apparent difference is that a person remains under the obligation to perform the five sacrifices even after leaving the householder āśrama. Verses 6.4-5, again, state that the forest dweller, too, performs the five sacrifices. Manu states no such requirement, however, with regard to the three debts. On the contrary, it counts the three debts as paid in full by the time the householder becomes a forest dweller. All of this suggests that the three debts and the five sacrifices are importantly distinct from one another.

Works Cited:

Primary Texts

Mahābhārata. V. S. Sukthankar, et. al. (eds). 1927-1959. Mahābhārata (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute).

Mānava Dharmaśāstra. Patrick Olivelle (ed.). 2005. Manu’s Code of Law: A Critical Edition and Translation of the Mānava-Dharmaśāstra (Oxford: OUP).

Manubhāṣya, Medhātithi. Jayantakrishna H. Dave (ed.). 1972-1985. Manu-smṛti with Nine Commentaries by Medhātithi, Sarvajñanārāyaṇa, Kullūka, Rāghavānanda, Nandana, Rāmachandra, Manirāma, Govindarāja and Bhāruci, volume II (Adhyāyas 3-4) (Mumbai: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan).

Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa. Albrecht Weber (ed.). 1997. The Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa in the Mādhyandina-Śākhā, with extracts from the commentaries of Sāyana, Harisvāmin and Dvivedaganga (Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series).

Taittirīya Saṃhitā. Bhaṭṭabhāskaramiśra, et. al. (eds.) 1986. Taittirīyasaṃhitā (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass).

Vasiṭḥa Dharmasūtra. Patrick Olivelle (ed.). 2000. Dharmasūtras: The Law Codes of Āpastamba, Gautama, Baudhāyana, and Vasiṣṭha (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass).

Secondary Material

Davis, Donald R. Jr. 2010. The Spirit of Hindu Law (Cambridge: CUP).

Lubin, Timonty. 2018a. “The Vedic Student” in P. Olivelle (ed.) The Oxford History of Hinduism: Hindu Law: A New History of Dharmaśāstra (Oxford: OUP).

__________. 2018b. “Daily Duties: āhnika” in P. Olivelle (ed.) The Oxford History of Hinduism: Hindu Law: A New History of Dharmaśāstra (Oxford: OUP).

Madan, T. N. 2003. “The Householder Tradition in Hindu Society” in Gavin Flood (ed.) The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism (Oxford: Blackwell).

Malamoud, Charles 1996. “The Theology of Debt in Brahmanism” in David White (trans.) Cooking the World: Ritual and Thought in Ancient India (Delhi: OUP).

Olivelle, Patrick. 1993. The Āśrama System: The History and Hermeneutics of a Religious Institution (Oxford: OUP).

[1] T. N. Madan seems to equate the debts and sacrifices when he says,

The scope of sacrifice was vast with cosmo-moral significance and included the three (or five) daily obligations of the householder in redemption of the “debts” mentioned in vedic literature. These number three in some texts and five in others: the debts to gods, seers, and fathers, and additionally to all men and nonhuman creatures (292).

Also see Timothy Lubin (2018b: 185).

[2] In two other passages, the Mahābhārata cites five debts (12.281.9-11, 13.37.18). In neither passage, however, do the debts align precisely with the five sacrifices. The first passage lists gods, guests, servants, ancestors, and the self. The second lists gods, ṛṣis, ancestors, brāhmaṇas, and guests.

[3] This might be true even if the most basic reason to have a son is the continuation of the śrāddha ceremony after the death of the father.

[4] pañca sūnā gṛhasthasya cullī peṣaṇy upaskaraḥ / kaṇḍanī codakumbhaś ca badhyate yāstu vāhayan // tāsāṃ krameṇa sarvāsāṃ niṣkṛty arthaṃ maharṣibhiḥ / pañca klṛptā mahāyajñāḥ pratyahaṃ gṛhamedhinām //

[5] Manu outlines a practice that accomplishes the same goal for the ascetic, and elaborates some of the unintentional harms caused simply by drinking, walking, and breathing (6.68-72).

[6] vedābhāso ‘nvahaṃ śaktyā mahāyajñakriyā kṣamā / nāśayanty āśu pāpāni mahāpātakajāny api //

[7] The claim from the Taittirīya Saṃhitā that “just being born, a brāhmaṇa is born with three debts (jāyamāno vai brāhmaṇas tribhir ṛṇavā jāyate brahmacaryeṇarṣibhyo yajñena devebhyaḥ prajayā pitṛbhya /)” (6.3.10.5) is repeated at Baudhāyana Dharmasūtra 2.11.33, Vasiṣṭha Dharmasūtra 11.48, and elsewhere. Donald R. Davis Jr. (2010: 71) and Timothy Lubin (2018a: 110), following Charles Malamoud (1996: 100), refer to these debts as “congenital debts” (2018a: 110).

Perennial nondualism

Sun, 30 Aug 2020 21:55:00 GMT

I have spent a good deal of time criticizing the idea of a “perennial philosophy”, the idea (expressed by Ken Wilber and others before him) that the great sages of the world have always basically agreed on the really important things. In the past I had said there were perennial questions but with different answers; now I’m not even sure whether that is the case.

And yet I am struck by a particular phenomenon from which the perennialists draw a great deal of inspiration – and that is the pervasive influence of nondualism. “Nondual” is a literal English translation of the Sanskrit a-dvaita, the name of Śaṅkara’s school of Vedānta philosophy. But the core idea of nondualism has been asserted by a very wide range of philosophers around the world – from people who could never have heard of Śaṅkara, to Śaṅkara’s enemies.

That core idea is that the truest, most ultimate reality should not be identified with the many plural distinct things we typically observe and the distinctions between them. Rather the true reality is ultimately one, or at least (a literal translation again) not two, and not more than two either. That ultimate is often (not always) spoken of as ineffable, beyond words, so that to the extent that one can speak of it at all one must speak of what it is not (the famous neti neti of the Bṛhadāranyaka Upaniṣad. But the most important thing that the ultimate is not, is dual or plural. It might not be one exactly, but it is closer to being one (or perhaps zero!) than it is to being two or more.

And the two that it really isn’t, is the distinction of subject and object. Nondualists tell us that we are misled by that core grammatical distinction of the Indo-European languages (languages which many, but not all, of those nondualists speak). Ultimately “you are that”: the distinction between our supposed individual consciousness on one hand, and reality on the other, must collapse.

That is nondualism in a nutshell. And while Śaṅkara was perhaps nondualism’s purest and most famous exponent, it was taken up by many others in various ways – including by very different enemies of Śaṅkara. The later theistic thinker Rāmānuja wanted to assert against Śaṅkara that the plurality of things in the world is real, and yet he accepted Śaṅkara’s basic nondualism: his philosophical system was called Viśiṣṭādvaita, differentiated or qualified nondualism. He aimed to produce a harmonious synthesis: the plurality of the world is not an illusion, as Śaṅkara would have it, but the parts of the divine One.

Now while Rāmānuja could be harshly critical of Śaṅkara himself, he remained in Śaṅkara’s basic camp of loyalty to the Vedas and especially the Upaniṣads. Śaṅkara had much greater hostility to the Buddhists, who rejected the entirety of the Vedas and Upaniṣads. And yet – here is the striking thing – a very large number of Buddhists themselves accepted nondualism. The Yogācāra school had been taking up some form of nondualism since before Śaṅkara’s time, enough that to other Vedāntic thinkers Śaṅkara’s school just looked like the Buddhism they were familiar with; for that reason they even called him a “crypto-Buddhist” (pracchanna bauddha). By Śaṅkara’s time a great deal of Indian Buddhism had itself become nondual – and that Buddhism in turn reached its full flower in East Asia, where it became the dominant form of Buddhism. Thus John Dunne uses the term nondual to refer to the present-centred, nonjudgemental meditation traditions created by these newer sorts of Buddhisms, Yogācāra and beyond. (Ron Purser rightly pointed out, though, that it is harder to see anything “nondual” about the modern mindfulness practices that take up those meditation traditions.)

I often find reading East Asian Buddhism weird because it looks to me so much like the Advaita Vedānta that arose in opposition to Buddhism. But opposed or no, these nominally opposed sides – Buddhists and Vedāntins – could agree on a basic nondual worldview. By the 20th century, the Japanese Buddhist philosopher Nishida Kitarō could proclaim constructively, in his own voice, that “Ātman and Brahman are identical.” (An Inquiry into the Good p. 80) For Nishida it made sense to have a Buddhism that actually took up the Upaniṣads’ worldview.

Centuries before Śaṅkara, in Rome and in Alexandria – the West – a Greek-speaking follower of Plato, named Plotinus, had proclaimed that everything is an emanation from what he called “the One”. Now that’s not quite nondualism per se, because everything comes from the One; it is not identical to it. Centuries later, the pious Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindī would insist on that distinction as crucial (“not ‘all is Him’, but ‘all is from Him’.”)

But in between Plotinus and Sirhindī, a significant number of Sufi Muslim thinkers, influenced by Plato and Plotinus, had indeed proclaimed the oneness of everything – while having relatively little contact with the South or East Asian worlds. For them, it’s not just that we come from God, but at some level we indeed are God. Perhaps most notorious of these was al-Hallaj, executed for proclaiming the nondifference between God and a self fully understood. Later ibn ‘Arabī became perhaps the most influential Muslim philosopher in the world by proclaiming the unity of all existence (wahdat al-wujūd). Ibn ‘Arabī’s thought found a natural home in India, and indeed the Mughal philosopher-prince Dara Shukoh sought to create a merged philosophy that blended ibn ‘Ārabī with the Upaniṣads. (It was that very Muslim nondualism that Dara’s contemporary Sirhindī felt the need to write against.)

Nondualism may well be the single most popular philosophical theory in human history. I’m not sure I can think of any other major philosophical idea that flowered so much in so many different places, more or less independently. I think that gives us prima facie reason to think the nondualists were on to something important. In that, at least, I am cautiously with the perennialists. But the perennialists typically take this too far, in that they tend to assume that this nondualism must have come out of mystical experiences. It’s not an unreasonable assumption, in that mystical experience often involves a perceived transcendence of subject-object distinction. But it is crucial that most of the thinkers I’ve named here do not cite experience as the ground of their claims. Wilhelm Halbfass in India and Europe reminds us that Śaṅkara never refers to any experiences of his own; Chinese nondualists like Zhiyi didn’t either, according to John McRae and Robert Sharf. But if anything, I think that nondualism’s non-experiential provenance gives it more plausibility. That is, nondualism’s exponents did not merely see it in an altered state of consciousness, but viewed it as somehow a logical necessity.

Cross-posted at Love of All Wisdom.

Why do people respond to commands?

Sat, 29 Aug 2020 02:36:58 GMT

Why do people obey to commands? Because they are immediately inclined, in a behaviourist way, to obey? Or because they realise that the action commanded is an instrument to the realisation of a coveted goal? Or are there further explanations?

This question has been debated at length in Sanskrit philosophy, oscillating especially among three main positions. I discussed these positions with some accuracy in previous posts, but this time I would like to try a bird-eye view about what is at stake.

On the one side, Maṇḍana claimed that the only motivator for undertaking actions is the awareness of the fact that the action to be undertaken is the means to obtain a desired goal. On the other, Prabhākara’s followers claimed that we immediately obey to commands because we feel enjoined, and only later analyse what is being asked and why. The role of the mention of the listener’s desire in commands such as “If you want to lose weight, try this shake!” is not meant to say that the enjoined action is an instrument to realise the desired output. Rather, the mention of the desire is meant for the listener to understand that they are the person addressed by the prescription. It picks up the person, who immediately relates with their own desires, but does not describe the existence of an instrumental relation between enjoined action and result. The last position can be connected to Bhartṛhari’s pratibhā theory. As depicted by Maṇḍana, this is a general theory about meaning, which includes both commands and descriptive sentence. According to it, human as well as non-human animals have innate inclinations which make it possible for them to perform activities they could have never learnt but are still able to perform, such as swimming or breastfeeding in the case of a baby. The pratibhā theory can be extended to commands which one would respond to because of an innate inclination.

Maṇḍana’s theory has the clear advantage of being a reductionist theory. By following it, one does no longer need an ad hoc semantic theory for commands, which can be reduced to descriptive sentences explaining the relation between the action enjoined and the expected output. Similarly, Maṇḍana provides a single theory covering all aspects of motivation to act, both in the case of commands and in the case of autonomous undertakings of action. In all cases, one is motivated to act because one thinks that the action is the instrument to get to the expected result. What are the disadvantages of this theory? First of all, Prābhākaras have a point when they describe our first response to commands. We immediately feel enjoined even before starting to analyse the action we have been required to perform. Secondly, Maṇḍana’s theory might have problems when it comes to people who know what would be best for them, but still don’t act. Can this all be explained just in terms of desires and instruments?

As declared at the beginning, the above is my attempt to give a short overview of the debate. Comments are welcome!

Maṇḍana’s intellectual theory of motivation

Thu, 20 Aug 2020 15:45:00 GMT

Maṇḍana’s thesis is an answer to the problem of how to identify the core of a prescription. What makes people undertake actions? Kumārila’s śabdabhāvanā theory and Prabhākara’s kāryavāda had already offered their answers. Maṇḍana expands on Kumārila’s intuition about human behaviour being always goal-oriented by offering a radical reductionist hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, being a motivator is nothing but communicating that the action to be undertaken is an instrument to some coveted result. In this sense, prescribing X to people desiring Y is nothing but explaining that X is the means to achieve Y.

This cognitive interpretation of what motivates one to act could be accused of intellectualism. What about agents who, though understanding that X would be the appropriate course of action, do not undertake it, perhaps out of sloth?

A possible answer is that Maṇḍana’s theory describes the behaviour of ideal agents, who are able to evaluate rationally what is the best means to a coveted goal. Alternatively, one might suggest (as hinted at at the end of section 11.2) that even such irrational people would be impelled to act, even if they then do not physically undertake any act. The iṣṭasādhanatā is a motivator even for them, although they do not act correspondingly. One might think of the comparable case of someone who intensely desires an ice-cream and comes to know that great ice-creams are available in a given part of the city. They are ready to go there, but undergo an accident and are prevented from going. Although they do not practically act, the knowledge about the ice-cream shop did act as motivator for them.

Correspondingly, pravṛtti is used as a synonym of prayatna `effort’ and indicates the undertaking of an activity, not yet its realisation. Similarly, a person said to be pravṛtta is one who has already conceived the decision to undertake an action, although no movement can be seen yet.

(cross-posted on my personal blog.)

Because Time is not Self : On Ānandajñāna’s refutation of Kāla, A guest post by Satyan Sharma

Tue, 18 Aug 2020 09:30:00 GMT

Submitted to the blog by Satyan Sharma, Research scholar at the department of Sanskrit, Panjab University, (sharma.satyan@ymail.com)

Because Time is not Self : On Ānandajñāna’s refutation of Kāla

Abstract

The conversation between Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika (NV) and Advaita Vedānta (AV) philosophers attract intellects because it is somehow the ancient version of the realist versus idealist debate which is currently prevalent and relevant. Gauḍapāda in his Māṇḍūkyakārikā attempts to refute the very basis of realism, i.e., time and the law of causation^[1]. Śaṅkara in his commentary on Brahmasūtras attempts to refute other philosophies including Vaiśeṣika (V)^[2]. The method of refutation is Vitaṇḍā (Vi), where one doesn’t put forward one’s own views, but only points out logical faults in those of the opponent. Using this method, Śrīharṣa composed his Khaṇḍanakhaṇḍakhādya and Citsukha his Tattvapradīpikā, where both of them attempt to refute NV philosophies. A similar text, thought to be later than both, Tarkasaṅgraha (TS) was composed by Ānandajñāna or Ānandagiri, in 13th century CE^[3], where he attempts to refute the complete V philosophy in detail. Instead of just refuting the major categories like Dravya alone, he took up the task to refute definitions of each and every Dravya. The concept of Kāla (K) being fundamental to NV, any refutation of it is bound to affect the whole system of it. A reply to his refutation has been given by Śeṣaśārṅgadhara around 15th to 16th centuries CE^[4], in his commentary titled Nyāyamuktāvalī (NM) on Udayana’s Lakṣaṇāvalī (LA). The source of TS is the book ‘Tarkasaṅgraha of Ānandajñāna’, published under Gaekwad’s Oriental Series in the year 1917, edited by T. M. Tripathi. The source for NM is the book the ‘Lakṣaṇāvalī of Udayanācārya’, edited by Surendralāla Gosvāmin, published in 1900.

On Vitaṇḍā

It is defined in the Nyāyasūtras (NS) as a style of debate where one doesn’t establish one’s own thesis^[5]. Vātsyāyana in his commentary on the NS adds that a Vaitaṇḍika or practiser of Vi only refutes the opponent’s thesis^[6]. Hence, in Vi, the debater has to only refute the thesis of his opponent without declaring or establishing his own. However easy it may sound, Vi requires a debater to be thoroughly acquainted with the opponent’s thesis. For example, if Ānandajñāna has to refute V philosophy, he must first gain adequate acquaintance with the V philosophy. In this manner, although done for other purposes, the background preparation of Vi ensures the preservation of a certain philosophy or śāstra which may be completely refuted in the future and lose all authority. Texts like Nyāyalīlāvatī (NL) of Vallabha and Khaṇḍanoddhāra of Vācaspatimiśra II show that after being refuted, the philosophers of NV philosophies made attempts to improve their thesis in order to protect it from further refutations. In this way, the conversation between NV and AV philosophers indirectly contributed in the gradual improvement of both philosophies.

On the Vaiśeṣika concept of Kāla

In his Vaiśeṣikasūtras (VS), Kaṇāda categorises K as a Dravya^[7], which is inferable from the notions of priority with regards to posteriority, of simultaneity, of delay and of quickness^[8]. Praśastapāda says in his Padārthadharmasaṅgraha (PS) that K is inferable from the cognitions of the aforesaid types^[9]. Vallabha in his Nyāyalīlāvatī (NL) defines K as that padārtha which is the auxiliary of the relation of differences of solar movements and objects^[10].

Ānandajñāna’s (Ā) refutation of Kāla and analysis

His refutation can be divided into different stages. Stage 1 is based on the cognitions of priority and posteriority etc., stage 2 is based on the cognitions of simultaneity and non-simultaneity etc., stage 3 is based on the inferability of K from such cognitions, stage 4 is based on the solar movements, stage 5 is based on inferability from specified farness etc., stage 6 is about upādhi, and stage 7 is based on some conception of prakṛti and puruṣa.

Ā begins with a very simple definition of K and keeps adding components and attempts to show the faults. The process is as follows –

Stage 1

Nimitta of cognitions of nearness etc. > Applies to Dik (D) also.
Nimitta of cognitions different from those of D > Applies to Dharma etc., because they’ve been accepted as nimitta causes^[11].
‘Dravya’ as a specification of the nimitta > Applies to Īśvara (Ātman), which is a potent dravya.
‘Uniqueness’ as a specification > Opposes the accepted idea of K being nimitta of the origination of all those which are born or utpattimat^[12]. The word ‘all’ implies that everything which is an effect, has for its origin D and K as nimitta causes. This way both become a shared nimitta cause of all effects. It would imply that both would become nimitta causes of the cognitions of nearness etc. which are different from those of D. So being a shared cause, K couldn’t be called a unique cause for the production of such cognitions.

Stage 2

K as one out of many nimittas of cognitions of simultaneity, non-simultaneity, quickness and delay > Applies to Adṛṣṭa also, because it is one of many nimittas in every activity. The expression ‘one of many’ confirms that there are other nimittas also. And uniqueness not being compatible with the aforesaid V idea of D and K being shared nimittas for all effects, calling K as the unique nimitta for such cognitions would be impossible.
Q. Do those cognitions have one and the same object as basis (K)? If yes, it would lead to impossibility of difference between various definitions of kṣaṇa, lava, nimeṣa etc., and words like simultaneity would become synonymous. Kṣaṇa, lava, nimeṣa etc., all mean K, or point to K and not something different from K. So they’re not fundamentally different from K, and hence there own differences wouldn’t be fundamental in nature. If upādhis create differences, it has been dealt with in stage 4 refutation.
Q. Are those cognitions based on more than one entity or an entity different from K? Aforementioned definitions wouldn’t apply.

Stage 3

K is inferable from such cognitions.
Q. As a samavāyin cause? Not possible because K is not Ātman, and as cognition or buddhi is a guṇa of Ātman, so it has Ātman as its samavāyin cause^[13].
Q. As an asamavāyin cause? Not possible because K is taken to be a Dravya and something which is an asamavāyin cause cannot be a Dravya.
Q. As a nimitta cause? Q. As a viṣaya or non-viṣaya of our senses? K is nityānumeya or eternally inferable or that which cannot be directly perceived and hence always inferred. So it cannot be a viṣaya of our senses. Being a non-viṣaya, a K different from Adṛṣṭa etc. is unestablished. Because if it is a non-viṣaya, we cannot directly perceive it as being different from the other existing or inferred entities, specifically when it is neither a samavāyin cause or an asamavāyin cause. For example, we can directly perceive a pot as being different from a cloth. One could say that there are many entities like Īśvara which are eternally inferable, and so this fault is not reasonable. Īśvara and Adṛṣṭa being both eternally inferable are still being thought about as being two separate entities with two separate functions. But in the case being discussed, the V K has not been able to prove itself as any different from Adṛṣṭa etc. which are nimitta causes, and so if it too is the same, according to the parsimony principle or lāghava, we could simply explain the said cognitions by Adṛṣṭa etc. without invoking a separate entity, the separateness and uniqueness of which is not being able to be proved through the existing definitions and arguments.
If the specific cognition of simultaneity is being called the cause of specific cognition of ‘pots are simultaneously arising’, Ā says that this cognition of simultaneity is K alone, and although such cognition could cause such other cognition, it cannot cause the production of pots. If a cognition, which is internal or mental, could cause something external, it would lead to idealism, which is opposed to the realists of V philosophy.

Stage 4

K produced from the superiority and inferiority of solar movements, as it conforms to it, like a pot to its potter.
Solar movement itself has a unique cause, because it is an effect, like a pot.
Solar movement is a action, and V action does not have any attribute or quality^[14], while here superiority and inferiority (which are qualities) of solar movement are being talked about. So it goes against the V idea of attributelessness of action.
If they are defined as different from K, K being yet to be established, the definition has the fault of mutual dependence between the definer and the definable.
The idea of conformity does not apply to the example itself, where a pot and a potter can exist independently of each other after the creation of the pot.
There is no natural connection between the solar movements and old-young bodies.
No delimitorness (avacchedakatva) is present which is independent of such a connection, because it needs some connection as a prerequisite.

Stage 5

K being inferable from specified farness, etc.
Q. What is specified farness? If it is ‘not being a product of Deśa’^[15], it opposes the idea of D and K both being nimitta causes of the production of all that is born. This common attribute opposes the specification, and so both could be held responsible for cognitions of both D and K, also because cognitions are produced.
If it is ‘being a product of K’, it incurs the fault of mutual dependence as K itself is yet to be established.
K isn’t a unique cause of such cognitions, as has been said earlier.
Being only a connector of variations of solar movements with the bodies, K does not create cognitions of temporal farness etc.
Such a connection can be equally explained by the omnipresent Cetana, due to which the whole sequence of the effect (cognitions) can be explained, and so imagining another dravya named K, is unnecessary. Although Cetana (Ātman) possesses viśeṣa guṇa, it is omnipresent and because of being conscious it is different from dravyas ranging from pṛthivī to ākāśa and this difference could make it a unique cause of such cognitions.
K is also not the basis of the divisions of K from kṣaṇa to mahāpralaya, because the terms kṣaṇa etc. mean K, and hence there is the fault of self-dependence. If they mean something else, then the usage of them could not denote K.

Stage 6

The difference of past, present and future placed in K^[16].
Q. Why not take that difference as the cause of cognition of K?
Both NV and AV agree on the different movements of the sun, which could create upādhis from which usage of K could be explained, so imagining a separate K would go against the parsimony principle. Taking an already accepted existing entity to explain an existing phenomenon, is more economic than to imagine a separate entity for the same purpose.^[17]

Stage 7

K as a conjunction of Puruṣa and Prakṛti^[18].
Being a conjunction it cannot be a Dravya because conjunction is a quality.
If it is identical with either Puruṣa or Prakṛti, it can’t be conjunction.
If it is identical with Prakṛti, being of the form of illusory māyā, V K can’t be established.
If it is identical with Puruṣa, V K can’t be established as an independent entity. It could simply be either called Puruṣa or a quality or function of Puruṣa.
If another Prakṛti is accepted, same fault.

Refutation of Ā’s refutation by Śeṣaśārṅgadhara (Ś)

Stage 1

Against the vyabhicāra in Adṛṣṭa etc., he opines that K is the nimitta of not paratva and aparatva etc., but of ‘niyata’ paratva and aparatva etc.^[19]
This is due to K being a unique cause of those, and this uniqueness is that K connects (bodies with) the originator of such cognitions, which is solar movement^[20].
Against Ātman or Ākāśa being such a cause, he seems to repeat the words of Līlāvatīkāra Vallabha, that both would cause an attribute of one thing to be applied on another such thing which is far far away, just because Ātman and Ākāśa are omnipresent^[21].
Ā has already dealt with the point that even when one specifies the temporal farness etc. as different from directional farness etc., and if K is defined as a nimitta of the cognition of the former, there is still vyabhicāra in dharma etc. Ś instead picks up on the fourth point of Ā where he refutes uniqueness of K as a cause towards those cognitions. So according to Ā, even calling K as the nimitta of cognitions of ‘niyata’ paratva and aparatva doesn’t separate K from all other categories. Also, such cognitions too are utpattimat or produced, and so both D and K would become their common nimitta causes, which would lead to the superfluity of the addition of the word ‘niyata’.
It has been well recognised by the likes of Udayana and Vallabha that there is no direct relation between the variations of solar movements and the bodies on earth. The minimum requirement for a viśiṣṭa usage is the perception of a delimitor and a delimited, which can only happen if there is a relation between two entities^[22]. In stage 4, Ā deals with the issue of solar movements, and points out that the hetu of one^[23] of the anumānaprayogas is itself sādhya and so is causing the fault of sādhyāviśiṣṭatva, and that in the other^[24] prayoga, the hetu doesn’t apply to the dṛṣṭānta causing the fault of sādhanavikalatva. It is worth noting that Ś doesn’t quote and refute this passage of TS.
With regards to saying that Ātman cannot do what K can, both Udayana and Vallabha, and also Ś do not seem to consider that although Ākāśa and Ātman are both vibhu or omnipresent dravyas, Ātman unlike any other dravya is conscious. Being conscious, and having ‘cognitions’ as an attribute given to it by the V philosophers themselves, it can produce the aforementioned cognitions by direct relation. In this way the principle of parsimony or lāghava too shall be adhered to.

Stage 2

Ś takes the same point of uniqueness to prove that there is no vyabhicāra in Adṛṣṭa etc. To Ā’s argument that if the cognitions are same as K, there individual different definitions wouldn’t apply, Ś says that in vikalpas, anekārthatva or ‘having many objects as basis’ is accepted^[25], but does not explain why it is accepted. In case of K, the various divisions are imagined upon a singular K of the V philosophy. Hence, it may be a workable solution to think of those divisions as having their origins in something slightly different from the singular K. Then Ś takes to the Ā’s point that if those cognitions are different from K, their definitions again wouldn’t apply. To this Ś says that even in that case, the senior V philosophers accept such definitions^[26], but doesn’t explain as to why. To Ā’s point that those cognitions are the same as K, Ś responds that a single K has been accepted which according to different upādhis is taken to be different^[27]. The point of upādhis is connected with the solar movements.

Stage 3

On the point of inferability of K through the cognitions of nearness etc., Ś’s response can be judged from the anumānaprayoga^[28] he gives; ‘nearness etc. are effects of non-inherent cause, because of being bhāva-effects, like pot’. Here the hetu ‘because of being bhāva-effects’ or ‘bhāvakāryatvāt’ could be applied to everything other than ‘nimittakāraṇamātrajanya’ or ‘that which is produced only by an instrumental cause’, because abhāva-effects have been said to have only nimittakāraṇa^[29]. So one could also say, ‘nearness etc. are produced by water, because of being bhāva-effects, like pot’^[30]. Although the prayoga adheres to the correct format, but does not prove anything. If it does prove, then the prayoga of Ś and the latter should both be correct. The further discussion by Ś being based on this prayoga, doesn’t seem to stand on a valid ground. Also, calling K an asamavāyin cause goes against the V definitions of K calling it a nimitta cause.

Ś refutes stage 1 of Ā by refuting one of Ā’s refutations on the basis of an idea which has been refuted by Ā in stage 4. The stage 4 refutation has not been responded to by Ś. Ā’s stage 2 refutation has been refuted by Ś not by arguments but by showing what is accepted by the senior V philosophers. Ā’s stage 3 refutation has been refuted by Ś through an anumānaprayoga which seems to be faulty.

Additional remarks

The stage 4 refutation of Ā seems to be based on the concept of K and the arguments in its favour advanced by Udayana in his Kiraṇāvalī (Ki)^[31]. The stage 3 refutation seems to be based on a possible refutation mentioned by Udayana in Ki^[32], which has probably been elaborated by Ā^[33]. The Ā’s version of that refutation is mentioned by Vallabha in his Nyāyalīlāvatī (NL)^[34]. It cannot be said for sure who came up with that idea first. But it is interesting to note that while the major portion of Citsukha’s refutation of K in his Tattvapradīpikā (TP) is based on the ideas mentioned in NL^[35], Ā’s refutation of K is majorly based on Ki. In his commentary on Udayana’s LA titled NM, Ś mentions both Citsukha^[36] and Ā, which somehow shows their impact on the V system even way later than their times, that is, around 15th to 16th centuries CE. Although Ā doesn’t directly mention Udayana in his refutation in TS, he has mentioned his name in his text Tattvāloka^[37] (TL) which he had composed during his pre-saṃnyāsa life as Janārdana. In TL, the refutation of K is very small keeping in view the definitions of K. But in TS it is very detailed. Even then, the question arises, why did not Ā mention LA’s definition of K^[38] in TS? It could also be that LA came later than TS and specifically as a result of improving the NV definitions and hence protecting them from further refutations. If Udayana had already come up with the improved definition of K before TS, or simply during his authoring of Ki, he could’ve mentioned it in Ki. Like Śaṅkaramiśra mentions his definitions while commenting upon the sūtras of Kaṇāda, so could’ve been done by Udayana also. If that is true, Ā and Udayana^[39] (10th to 11th centuries CE) would be contemporaries, unlike the latter being earlier than the former. Or else, the Udayana of LA and that of Ki are two different persons.

^[1] 4.21

^[2] refutation of V ideas in sūtras 2.2.2.11 – 16

^[3] Surendranath Dasgupta in ‘A History of Indian Philosophy’ (ed. 2018), Vol. 1, p. 545, S. A. Upadhyaya in introduction of his ‘Vedānta Tattvāloka of Janārdana’ state his time to be later half of 13th century.

^[4] The Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies (ed. 1993), Vol. 6, p. 382

^[5] sa pratipakṣasthāpanāhīno vitaṇḍā (1.2.3)

^[6] parapratiṣedhenaiva pravarttate

^[7] 1.1.5

^[8] aparasmin paraṃ yugapad ayugapac ciraṃ kṣipram iti kālaliṅgāni (2.2.6)

^[9] kālaḥ parāparavyatikarayaugapadyāyaugapadyacirakṣiprapratyayaliṅgam

^[10] tapanaparispandabhedapiṇḍasaṃsargopanāyakaḥ

^[11] buddhisukhaduḥkhecchādveṣaprayatnadharmādharmabhāvanānāṃ nimittakāraṇatvam (praśastapādabhāṣya, guṇasādharmya)

^[12] dikkālayoḥ pañcaguṇatvaṃ sarvotpattimatāṃ nimittakāraṇatvam (praśastapādabhāṣya, dravyasādharmya)

^[13] tasya guṇāḥ buddhisukhaduḥkhecchādveṣaprayatnadharmādharmasaṃskārasaṅkhyāparimāṇapṛthaktvasaṃyogavibhāgāḥ – Praśastapādabhāṣya, ātmaprakaraṇam

^[14] guṇādīnāṃ pañcānāmapi nirguṇatvaniṣkriyatve – ibid, sādharmyavaidharmyaprakaraṇam

^[15] The book has dehikṛtatva which does not seem to make sense. Just after this its opposite kālakṛtatva is mentioned. So it could either be deśakṛtatva or dikkṛtatva.

^[16] This seems to match with the Viayākaraṇa view of K as mentioned in Harivṛtti on Vākyapadīya 1.3; tasya kramavadbhiḥ kartṛśaktiḥ pravibhajyamānā vikāramātrāgataṃ bhedarūpaṃ tatrādhyāropayati

^[17] This view matches with a Sāṅkhya view of K as mentioned by Vācaspatimiśra in his Sāṅkhyatattvakaumudi; kālaśca vaiśeṣikābhimata eko na anāgatādivyavahārabhedaṃ pravartayitumarhati, tasmādayaṃ yairupādhibhedairanāgatādibhedaṃ pratipadyate, santu ta evopādhayaḥ, ye’nāgatādivyavahārahetavaḥ, kṛtamatrāntargaḍunā kāleneti sāṅkhyācāryāḥ (kārikā 33)

^[18] At a first glance this seems to be a Sāṅkhya view of K as it is not accepting K as a separate entity.

^[19] niyataparatvāparatvapratyayāsādhāraṇanimittatvasya kālalakṣaṇatvāt

^[20] asādhāraṇyenaiva nirāsāt … asādhāraṇyaṃ ca tajjanakataraṇiparispandopanāyakatvam

^[21] na cāvyāpakatvamupādhiḥ … tadahetutvenaiva siddheḥ

^[22] sati sambandhe’vacchedyāvacchedakadṛśyatayaiva viśiṣṭavyavahāradarśanāt – NL (kāla)

^[23] vimataṃ tapanaparispandaprakarṣādidhījanyaṃ tadanuvidhāyitvāt, yathā kulālānuvidhāyī ghaṭaḥ tena janyate

^[24] svabhāvato’pratyāsannatve sati, tadavacchedakatvāt, paṭāvacchedakamahārajanarāgavat

^[25] vikalpeṣu cānekārthatvābhyupagamāt

^[26] vṛddhairabhyupagamāt

^[27] sopādhisamayālambanatvasvīkārāt

^[28] paratvādayo’samavāyikāraṇajanyā, bhāvakāryatvād, ghaṭavat

^[29] tadetad bhāvānāmeva trividhaṃ kāraṇam, abhāvasya tu nimittamātraṃ tasya kvacidapyasamavāyāt – Tarkabhāṣā of Keśavamiśra

^[30] paratvādayo jalajanyā bhāvakāryatvād ghaṭavat

^[31] Example; ‘sā ca pratyāsattir dravyakṛtā prakārāntarāsambhave sati pratyāsattitvādeva paṭe mahārajanapratyāsattivat’ in Ki, ‘sā ca dravyakṛtā prakārāntarāsambhave sati pratyāsattitvāt paṭādau mahārajanapratyāsattivat’ in TS

^[32] nanu pratyayāḥ kāraṇatayā viṣayatayā vā kālaṃ vyavasthāpayeyuḥ. na prathamaḥ ātmendriyādīnāṃ tatkāraṇatvāt. na dvitīyaḥ tasyātīndriyatayā aindriyakapratyayaviṣayatvavirodhāt…

^[33] kimete samavāyitvena asamavāyitvena nimittatvena vā kālaṃ anumāpayeyuḥ – TS, p. 48

^[34] parāparādiṣaṭkaṃ liṅgamiti cet, na, parāparatve tatsamavāyitayā vā liṅgaṃ tadasamavāyitayā tannimittatayā vā …

^[35] Citsukha directly mentions Līlāvatīkāra after quoting NL’s passage about solar movements. TP’s K-refutation also begins like the discussion on K in NL; ‘na tāvatkāle pratyakṣaṃ pramāṇam…’ in TP, ‘nanu kālasattve kiṃ pramāṇam pratyakṣamanumānaṃ vā…’ in NL.

^[36] Example ; yadapi tattvapradīpikākārair…, etc.

^[37] yaccāparamudayano’cūcudat jñānakāraṇamātrādhīnaṃ cet prāmāṇyamapramāpi syāt…

^[38] aniyatapratvāsamavāyisamavāyitvarahitaparatvāsamavāyisamavāyimūrtatvarahitaḥ kālaḥ

^[39] The Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, (ed. 1977), Vol. 2, p. 523.

The Householder Debates in the Dharmasūtras: Another Solution

Mon, 17 Aug 2020 19:46:44 GMT

In a post here last week, I argued for an initial puzzle in the dharmasūtras of Āpastamba and Vasiṣṭha. Both authors argue that the four āśramas are equally legitimate. Their arguments for the importance of the householder, however, seem to imply that the householder is actually superior to the other three āśramas. This apparent contradiction is especially pronounced in Vasiṣṭha, who says explicitly that the householder is the best of the four āśramas (VaDh 8.14), despite endorsing the view that all four āśramas are equally legitimate (VaDh 7.1-3).

I initially reviewed two possible solutions to this problem, and argued that they are implausible. In my replies to comments, I elaborated on what Olivelle says about this passage, and addressed a separate suggestion from Amod. In this post, I argue for the interpretation that I (currently!) take to be the most plausible.

In both Baudhāyana and Āpastamba, the debates over the status of the householder appear in the context of their replies to the purvapakṣin. In Baudhāyana, the passage begins with the opponent arguing that all four āśramas lead to the same goal of unending prosperity (ajyānim ajītim) (BDh 2.11-12). This, again, contradicts Baudhāyana’s own view, since he claims that only the householder is legitimate. In Āpastamba, the relevant passage begins with the opponent’s claim that the celibate āśramas attain immortality at death, while the householder only attains rebirth (ĀpDh 2.23.4-5). The opponent also claims that members of the other three āśramas might develop supernatural abilities, including the ability to manifest objects by mere thought (saṃkalpasiddhi), telepathy (dūre darśana), and so on (ĀpDh 2.23.8). These considerations imply that the householder is inferior to the other āśramas, contrary to Āpastamba’s view that they are equal.

The replies of both Baudhāyana and Āpastamba cite many of the arguments I mentioned in my last post. Baudhāyana defends the view that only the householder is legitimate by noting that the householder has children (BDh 2.11.27, 33, 34), performs sacrifices (BDh 2.11.34), and pays the three debts to ṛṣis, ancestors, and gods (BDh 2.11.33). Āpastamba makes many of the same points. Only the householder has offspring (BDh 2.24.1) and performs sacrifices (BDh 2.23.10). Only the son of the householder benefits ancestors in heaven by performing the śrāddha ceremony(BDh 2.24.3), and so on.

Again, these arguments might seem to imply that the dharmasūtra authors derive the householder’s legitimacy from his fulfillment of obligations to others, and his contributions to the prosperity of family and community. Within these discussions, however, both authors repeatedly emphasize that the householder himself prospers from fulfilling his obligations. Baudhāyana explains that the householder “wins worlds with a son, attains immortality by a grandson, and then, with the grandson of a son, rises above even heaven” (BDh 2.16.6). He notes that the seven generations of ancestors that the father benefits by having a son include the father himself. “The person who attains a good son saves seven subsequent [generations] and seven antecedent [generations] from fault and fear – six others and the seventh, himself” (BDh 2.16.9). His point is that having a son benefits the ancestors and the householder alike. Other verses state that a person becomes free (vimukto) only by paying the three debts to ṛṣis, ancestors, and gods (BDh 2.16.4-5). Since only the householder pays the three debts, only the householder might attain freedom. Āpastamba’s reply to the opponent notes that the prosperity and immortality that the renunciate seeks are attainable by having children. “Immortality consists of offspring (prajātimamṛtam)” (2.24.1-2), and the father prospers both from performing sacrifices himself (2.16.1) and from the sacrifices that his son, grandson, and so on perform (2.24.3-6). The result, for the householder, is “the highest, unending fruit called heaven (paramanantyaṃ phalaṃ svargyaśabdaṃ)” (2.23.12).

When these broader arguments are seen in the context of a response to the pūrvapakṣin, the claims about the householder’s own prosperity should seem central. The fact that the householder benefits ṛṣis, gods, ancestors, and others does not, by itself, constitute a reply to the opponent’s claim that the prosperity of the other āśramas exceeds that of the householder. After all, it might be that the householder contributes greatly to the well-being of others, but only by sacrificing his own welfare. Indeed, this, presumably, is just the opponent’s point. The householder forsakes optimal prosperity by dedicating his life to the fulfillment of his obligations to others, rather than his own.

Baudhāyana and Āpastamba refute this view, but only by outlining the great benefits that accrue to the householder himself as a result of fulfilling his obligations. Since Baudhāyana counts only the householder as legitimate, his point is that the householder attains optimal prosperity – by means of fulfilling his obligations – but the other three āśramas do not. Āpastamba, in contrast, counts all four āśramas as equally legitimate, because all four attain the highest level of personal prosperity. The householder’s path to prosperity essentially involves his fulfillment of obligations to others; the paths of the other āśramas do not.

If this is Āpastamba’s position, then his references to the benefits that the householder provides to ṛṣis, ancestors, gods, and others make good sense, even in the context of a reply to the opponent’s claim that the householder does not attain optimal personal prosperity. His primary point in citing the householder’s fulfillment of obligations is to explain how the householder personally prospers in doing what he does. In the context of his direct reply to the opponent, references to the welfare of others is secondary.

At the same time, the householder is presumably praiseworthy for the prosperity that he produces for others. Vasiṣṭha explicitly says that the householder is the best of the āśramas in the context of a concise review of the benefits that the householder provides to others.

“The householder alone sacrifices. The householder performs austerities. Of the four āśramas, certainly the householder is best. As all rivers end up in the ocean, thus all [people] end up in the householder. As all living beings live having depended on their mothers, thus all renuciates live having depended on the householder” (VaDh 8.14-16).

The householder performs sacrifices and austerities. Members of all four āśramas return to the householder (as their father) in rebirth, and when they are born, their householder father supports them. The other āśramas provide no equivalent benefits. The householder is superior to the other āśramas in this sense. As a further result of benefitting others, the householder attains the same great prosperity that the other āśramas might attain. The householder is equal – but not superior – to the other āśramas in this second sense.

Works Cited

Primary Sanskrit Texts

Dharmasūtra of Āpastamba in Olivelle 2003.

Dharmasūtra of Baudhāyana in Olivelle 2003.

Dharmasūtra of Vasiṣṭha in Olivelle 2003.

Edited Volume

Olivelle, Patrick (ed.). 2003. Dharmasūtras: The Law Codes of Āpastamba, Gautama,

Baudhāyana, and Vasiṣṭha (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass).

A book on how virtue helps us flourish

Sun, 16 Aug 2020 22:00:00 GMT

I’d like to now envision the book I am working on. This post is something like a proposal for the book, both to clarify my thoughts on it and (more importantly) to hear yours. As I write it I keep in mind the wise advice of my dissertation advisor, Parimal Patil, that fundamentally a dissertation proposal is telling a lie. You don’t actually know what the final result is going to be, or you would have already written it; the act of researching it will necessarily make it something different from the proposal. You just don’t know how it will be different. With that in mind, let me attempt to say some more, in a nutshell, about what the book will be.

One of the reasons I’ve put so much attention into my debate with Evan Thompson is that it has helped me sharpen my view of what I intend my book to be arguing. Fundamentally, I intend the book to articulate a Buddhist eudaimonism: to make the claim that being good, generally and probabilistically, makes our lives better. Before Thompson started criticizing that view so hard, I hadn’t been as clear to myself that it was the view I wanted to articulate. Now, I see it as the core philosophical position I want to put forward and defend.

I want to open the book (possibly following a discussion of method) with what I take to be the bare foundations of ethics. For me this is to point out that we always begin ethical inquiry with a set of preexisting ends, cares and aims, and I think these must be the starting points for such inquiry. I accept Bernard Williams’s argument that we cannot really be said to have reason to do something unless a new motivation to do it “could be in some way rationally arrived at, granted the earlier motivations”. I also think that human ends do generally fall within a predictable range, and that many of our preexisting ends – such as the desire to punish wrongdoing – are bad ones, and can be judged as such with reference to reflection deriving rationally from our other motivations together with the nature of the world.

I intend to take up this line of reasoning to articulate a concept of human flourishing which includes multiple categories of intrinsic ends and goods. I think that traditional Indian Buddhist philosophy allows only two such ends – seeing correctly (yathābhūtadassana) and the removal of suffering (dukkhanirodha) – which it takes to be almost identical. I argue, for reasons I brought up in conversation with Thompson, that a good human life does include ends beyond this, and in that I depart from traditional Buddhist philosophy (though not necessarily practice). I don’t attempt an exhaustive account of what these ends could be, but I think they at least include love, justice and self-respect, defined in particular ways, and likely some form of achievement or self-actualization. I also depart from contemporary qualitative individualists like Martin Hägglund who give the removal of suffering basically no role. (I intend to say more about Hägglund soon.)

With such a conception of flourishing in mind, I argue virtue conduces to this flourishing: it makes our life better. Virtue does so in multiple ways. First, virtue partially constitutes some of our ends: the virtue of kindness is itself a constitutive part of the end of love; the virtue of our being just is part of the justice and self-respect we seek in life; the virtues of serenity and patient endurance partially constitute the contentment that follows the removal of suffering. Second, virtue does indeed tend to help us achieve those ends: our being kind and just tend to make others more likely to be kind and just to us, our being self-disciplined and mindful helps us achieve success at our projects. All of this is how I understand the nature of karma, as the Thompson debate has discussed in detail.

Possibly the most important reason that virtue leads to flourishing is that external goods are less important to our flourishing than we human beings, across cultures, tend to think they are. It is this statement that I see at the core of a genuine synthesis between the views of Śāntideva and Nussbaum as I discussed them in the dissertation. It is a middle ground very different from the one proposed by Mark Berkson based on other texts outside these traditions, where one performs worldly acts on the outside but is a renouncer on the inside. Rather, against Śāntideva and with Nussbaum, external goods do matter for our well-being, because goods other than the removal of suffering matter. But the removal of suffering matters too, and against Nussbaum and with Śāntideva, the causes of suffering are primarily mental, for reasons that I think are indeed confirmed by contemporary psychology. To the extent that that is the case, external goods matter less for our flourishing, and virtue matters more.

I intend to spell the case out further with a detailed discussion of four particular virtues: four habits we can build that both make us better people and make our lives better. The first is a serenity which sees clearly how many external goods are external, and is willing to accept the things it cannot change – a virtue that perhaps reaches its hypothetical peak in Śāntideva’s claim that a bodhisattva can be happy even while tortured. The second is patient endurance, kṣānti – the reduction (not repression) of anger in all cases outside of what Nussbaum calls “Transition-Anger”, given the damaging effects that anger has on ourselves and others. (This is one point on which Nussbaum and Śāntideva have already come closer to agreement without my help!)

The final two virtues are kindness and justice. I think it is important to examine such other-regarding virtues because they are typically foremost in the minds of opponents of eudaimonism: we all know kind and just people who do not seem to be flourishing, and vice versa. Again it’s important here that the eudaimonism is probabilistic: kindness and justice don’t guarantee good lives, they just make our lives better than they would be without them. Kindness (composed especially of generosity and gentleness) not only partially constitutes the love we seek, it is itself a pleasure. As far as justice (a virtue generally less informed by Buddhism): we need other people for most of our ends, so in order to live well we must rely on them – and that requires filling roles and reciprocal obligations, which can fall apart quickly if we do not live up to our end of them. Essential to living well amid such a web of expectations is a good conscience, which also requires living up to one’s genuine obligations, the legitimate expectations that others can have.

There’s a lot more to say about all of this, of course. And that is another reason it’s going to be not just a blog post but a book.

Cross-posted on Love of All Wisdom.

A preliminary understanding of Maṇḍana’s pratibhā

Fri, 14 Aug 2020 15:37:00 GMT

Within chapter 11 of his masterpiece, the Vidhiviveka `Discernment about prescription’, Maṇḍana identifies the core element which causes people to undertake actions. Maṇḍana expands on Kumārila’s intuition about human behaviour being always goal-oriented by offering a radical reductionist hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, being a motivator is nothing but communicating that the action to be undertaken is an instrument to some coveted result. In this sense, prescribing X to people desiring Y is nothing but explaining that X is the means to achieve Y.

At this point, Maṇḍana introduces some opponents, mainly one upholding pratibhā.

The term pratibhā is found in Bhartṛhari, whom Maṇḍana extensively quotes in chapter 11 of his Vidhiviveka. It is clear that Maṇḍana suggests the pratibhā as an alternative way of making sense of what motivates people to act. In this sense, pratibhā is a pravartaka `motivator’, something causing one to act. It is the key alternative to Maṇḍana’s own proposal that the knowledge that the enjoined action will lead to a desired result is what causes people to act. The pratibhā theory radically opposes this one.

In fact, Maṇḍana’s theory is primarily cognitive (you act with regard to X because you know something relevant about X), whereas the pratibhā theory is almost behaviourist (you act with regard to X because of the pratibhā inducing you to act).

The Prābhākara opponent within Maṇḍana will later appropriate this theory and join it with their own deontological understanding, according to which we act primarily because we are enjoined to do so, thus adding a deontological nuance which was absent in Bhartṛhari’s view of pratibhā.

But what is pratibhā before its Prābhākara reinterpretation? A key passage for the understanding of the pratibhā theory in Maṇḍana before its Prābhākara appropriation is the very sentence introducing it, at the beginning of section 11.3. There, the opponent suggests pratibhā as the thing causing one to undertake an action. An uttarapakṣin asks which kind of artha this is and the answer is at first sight surprising: It is no artha at all (na kaścit). What is it then? It is a cognitive event (prajñā) leading to action.

The point seems to be that there is no mental content, but only the urge towards acting. The pratibhā is a mental state without intentional content.

A further hint is found at the beginning of 11.5, where Maṇḍana responds to the paradox that the pratibhā cognition has no object, but it causes activity. This results, says Maṇḍana, in an undesirable consequence. In fact, if in the case of pratibhā the cognition of the connection between word and meaning plays no role, because the pratibhā has no intentional content, a person hearing a prescription should act independently of any cognition of the meaning.

But can we have purely agentive mental states? Can there be incitement to action without any content?

I am grateful to Hugo David for an inspiring talk on pratibhā back in 2018. This interpretation should, however, not be blamed on him. Similarly, I am always grateful to Elliot Stern for his edition of the Vidhiviveka and for the work we shared in the last 12 months.

Cross-posted on my personal blog.

Losing the Thread: A Response to Lele (Guest Post by Evan Thompson)

Tue, 11 Aug 2020 14:17:27 GMT

(In the last months, the IPhblog has hosted a long discussion on Evan Thompson’s last book, Why I am not a Buddhist. We are grateful to the participants, namely Amod Lele and Evan Thompson himself for their patience and accuracy in discussing so many details of the book and its written and unwritten assumptions and consequences. We aim at hosting further similar discussions in the future…although perhaps not that long! This also the reason for publishing this reply as a single post, although it in fact consists of an overall answer and of detailed points.–EF)

I had hoped to give Lele the last word in our exchange after my previous post, “Cherry Picking the Bodhi Tree.” This seemed only fitting, since he had begun the conversation by giving attention to my book at his Love of All Wisdom blog and had been willing to engage in a further exchange about it here at The Indian Philosophy Blog.

In his latest, seven-part follow-up reply, however, he declares that “[t]here is a great deal of conceptual confusion” in what I wrote and that “the goalposts may have been moved.” He also says that I’m “entirely wrong” about Śāntideva, and that I “disrespect” the text of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad.

In this post, which will be my last one in our exchange, I will reply to these statements. But first I will explain why I think Lele has lost the thread of the argument and hasn’t squarely faced the fundamental issues that have arisen in the course of our exchange.

The fundamental issues are about karma, but they also encapsulate larger issues about Buddhist modernism. I say that the concept of karma is inherently eschatological-theodicean (I’ll say more about these Greek words below); Lele denies this, and says that the concept is inherently only eudaimonistic (another Greek word). Note that I don’t deny that the concept of karma has a eudaimonistic element. Rather, I say that this element by itself isn’t sufficient for what karma means, because the concept of karma necessarily includes eschatology and theodicy. So, the crucial issue is whether can you remove the eschatology-theodicy from the concept of karma and still legitimately claim to be talking about karma. Lele thinks you can, whereas I think you can’t.

What Lele does is to invent a new concept. He deletes the idea that karma operates across former and future lives. This immediately raises the problem of how karma can possibly work, given that many people act in good ways and experience bad results, and act in bad ways and experience good results. Lele’s answer is that karma works probabilistically: good actions are more likely to produce experienced good results in this life, and bad actions are more likely to produce bad experienced results in this life. Karma is “probabilistic this-world karma.”

I’d call this shwarma, not karma.

If you think I’m being tendentious, here’s an evolutionary analogy. Under certain selective pressures (modernity), adaptive genetic mutations occur (the deletion of the eschatology and soteriology gene-complexes and the addition of the naturalism gene-complex), and a new species is formed. “Probabilistic this-world karma” may descend historically and conceptually from karma, but it’s a new species of concept.

Let me make clear that I have no objection to conceptual evolution or invention. I’m also not arguing for ethicized rebirth—the existence of former and future lives determined by good and bad karma. (I’ll come back to this point later.) What I object to is saying that you’re preserving the core of the traditional concept when you’re actually engaging in radical, modernist, conceptual invention. This is what Buddhist modernists say and do. This is what Lele says and does. He invents a new concept while claiming that he’s also preserving the core of the traditional concept. It’s an example of what I mean when I say Buddhist modernists want to have their cake and eat it too.

Suppose Lele were to say the following (he does say many of these things but not all of them): “I consider myself to be a Buddhist, because the Buddha, his teaching , and his community are what I trust and rely on to guide me in life, especially in the face of impermanence and death. I’m a philosopher and want my thinking to be informed by the deep tradition of classical Indian Buddhist philosophy, especially Śāntideva. I’m inspired by his writing, and his understanding of good and bad mental states and their effects. But I find myself unable to accept rebirth, I don’t want to reject worldly life, I don’t think the removal of suffering should be our only ultimate goal, and I’m doubtful about nirvāṇa, at least if it’s understood in strictly otherworldly terms. This puts me in a difficult position with regard to traditional concepts, such as karma. Since my convictions rule out traditionalism, I’m going to have to pick and choose (and traditionalists pick and choose anyway). One way to do this, if you’re a philosopher, is conceptual engineering. This means you don’t just ask what concepts mean; you ask what they should mean. So, I’m going to ask, ‘Which concepts should I as a modern Buddhist embrace, and what do I think they should mean for us today’? In working out my answers, I’m going to radically alter some traditional concepts and thereby invent new ones. I’m going to cherry pick traditional sources. I’m going to combine what I cherry pick from Buddhist philosophy with what I cherry pick from other traditions and philosophers, such as Aristotle. This kind of cherry picking is unavoidable, given what I’m trying to do, which isn’t to give a faithful interpretation or reconstruction of classical Buddhist sources, but rather to use them as resources for my new, conceptually engineered inventions. Although these inventions aren’t going to be able to correspond to traditional Buddhist concepts, they’ll be descended from them and they’ll be part of an evolving Buddhist intellectual tradition with which I identify.”

If Lele were to say something like this, I’d have no objection (at least not yet). This is what philosophers do, in contrast to historians and philologists. He’d be owning up to cherry picking, and so wouldn’t be trying to have his cake and eat it too (to mix metaphors). He’d be thinking as a Buddhist and as a cosmopolitanist (in the philosophical sense of cosmopolitanism I advocate in Why I Am Not a Buddhist). I’d say, “I sympathize with your situation, more power to you, let’s see what you can do, and let’s see how others inside and outside the tradition respond.” For me, the proof would be in the pudding (to add another metaphor).

In the case at hand, the pudding is “probabilistic this-world karma.” This is the conceptual engineering we’re being offered. I don’t think it works.

“Probabilistic” properly speaking applies to a scientific causal model. When we have a causal model consisting of a set of variables, we can define a probability measure over propositions about the variables and their values. But what is the model in the case of eudaimonistic karma? What are the variables and parameters? Unless we can specify these, we don’t really know what we’re talking about. Are we supposed to use game theory and decision theory to answer these questions? But these theories typically abstract away from individual moral virtue, which is the key concept of eudaimonistic thought. These theories and the concept of karma don’t seem to fit together very well.

I worry that we’re dealing with the same kind of scientism that infects much of Buddhist modernism. By “scientism” I mean using scientific concepts where they’re not appropriate. “Eudaimonistic karma” is a normative concept. It refers to good and bad individual mental intentions and actions. Normative concepts operate in the logical space of reasons—the logical space of being able to justify what you say in relation to norms and values. The concept of probability, however, is a descriptive one that operates in the logical space of causes. When you say “probabilistic karma” you just code switch between the normative and descriptive languages without helping us to think about their relation.

There are other problems. As I wrote before, the proposition that good and bad actions are more likely to produce experienced good results, and bad actions are more likely to produce bad experienced results isn’t obviously true as a general empirical proposition about the world. Maybe it’s true, and maybe it’s false. Maybe it’s true for some people in some contexts, but not for others. So, appealing to it as the principal reason for being good doesn’t look very compelling (at least to me).

Suppose, however, the proposition is true. Why is it true? Is it true because of some inherent causal power on the part of good and bad intentions, as traditional Buddhists believe? (Mādhyamikas are an exception, because they deny that anything has inherent causal powers.) Or is it true because of social and political structures that regulate human behaviour? If the latter factors carry more of the causal weight, then eudaimonistic karma loses causal relevance in proportion.

Here’s another problem. Traditionally, karma is operative in this life from conception and continues until the moment of death (and then into the next life). But eudaimonistic karma, as Lele conceives of it, can operate only when we have virtuous agents. We don’t think of babies and very young children as virtuous agents. (Aristotle believed children couldn’t be virtuous agents.) So, exactly when does karma start? And does it end if we lose mental competence?

These questions about karma don’t make sense from a traditional Buddhist perspective. They do make sense, of course, if we substitute the Aristotelian idea of a virtuous agent or the Lockean idea of a person for “karma.” This is more evidence that we’re not really dealing with the concept of karma anymore but rather with an ersatz concept. We’re dealing with Greek and European ideas in Buddhist terminological wrapping. That’s a typical Buddhist modernist kind of package.

One more problem and then I’ll end this line of thought. If non-human animals aren’t capable of being virtuous agents (as is generally believed), then eudaimonistic karma can’t apply to them. This conflicts with the traditional Buddhist idea of the diversity of karma (karma in all the diverse realms of sentient beings, including animals). So, the concept Lele is offering is actually “probabilistic this-world human-only karma.” This is still more evidence that the meaning of karma has changed so fundamentally from what it traditionally means in Buddhism that we’re really talking about something else.

Given these problems, the idea of “probabilistic, this-world, human-only eudaimonistic karma” seems useless to me. It’s bizarre from the perspective of traditional Buddhism, and it raises more questions than it answers from the perspective of contemporary cross-cultural philosophy. In my estimation, it doesn’t work as conceptual engineering. It looks to me like another case of philosophically unsound Buddhist modernist thinking.

Let’s turn to Lele’s charges that I’m conceptually confused and I’ve been moving the goal posts.

In using the term “eschatology,” I was following Obeyesekere. Eschatos means “last” and eschatology is the part of theology concerned with “end things”—what happens to the soul at death, the afterlife, the final events of history, and so on. Lele says Obeyesekere is misusing the term, but this isn’t the case. Obeyesekere uses “eschatology” to refer to that part of a cosmology that describes what happens to the soul at death. This is a perfectly legitimate usage.

Here’s a quick summary of Obeyesekere’s theory. In some eschatologies, the soul goes to another world at death and stays in that world. In a “rebirth eschatology,” however, by definition the soul’s stay in the otherworld is temporary because the soul must eventually be reborn in the human world. The crucial factor that transforms a rebirth eschatology into a “karmic eschatology” is “ethicization.” The ethicization of religion involves the following interrelated things: understanding actions that are morally good or bad, according to societal norms, as also religiously good (merit) or bad (sin); the presence of priests (Vedic religion), prophets (the biblical tradition), or ascetics (Buddhism, Jainism) who enforce that understanding; the transformation of the otherworld into a world of reward and retribution; and, in the specific case of a rebirth eschatology, the idea of rebirth into the already ethicized human world according to “the principle of the contingency of reward,” whereby good and bad rebirths are based on the quality of the person’s actions during their previous lifetime, and where “good rebirth” means health, wealth, and high social status. In this way, given ethicization, a rebirth eschatology turns into a karmic eschatology.

By the way, the question “Why do bad things happen to good people?” is shorthand for the problem of why there is evil and an unequal distribution of happiness and suffering in the world. Why do bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people, now, in the past, and in the future? Why are some people born into low and impoverished stations, and why are some born into high and privileged stations? Why are some people born sick and weak, and others are born healthy and robust? And so on. It seems to me that Lele is being literal-minded in how he understands the question.

Although Obeyesekere doesn’t state explicitly (to my knowledge) that a karmic eschatology explains why bad things happen to good people and vice-versa, it’s pretty obvious from everything he does say that this is one of the big explanatory upshots of a karmic eschatology. Indeed, the Buddha makes this kind of explanation explicit in the Cūḷa-kammavibhaṅga-sutta (“The Shorter Exposition of Karma,” Majjhima Nikāya 135).

Lele says Obeyesekere confuses eschatology with soteriology, but this charge is also incorrect. On the contrary, Obeyesekere carefully distinguishes between the two. He explicitly argues that the concept of salvation or nirvāṇa can’t be derived from just a karmic eschatology. Rather, salvation or liberation is an additional religious element, which, when joined to a karmic eschatology, must be conceived of as happening outside of the cycle of rebirths (saṃsāra) and as resulting in the cessation of rebirth and karma. Thus, nirvāṇa necessarily is otherworldly. (This is one reason why Nāgārjuna’s famous statement that there’s no difference between nirvāṇa and saṃsāra is radical and paradoxical.)

Lele says I confuse eschatology with theodicy. In fact, in my first post, I wrote: “The idea of karma functions analogously to a theodicy; it answers to question of the problem of evil.” Eschatology and theodicy are closely interrelated concepts: eschatology explains what happens at the end; theodicy deals with the problem of evil and suffering. Accounts of what happens at the end can help to give an answer to the problem of evil and suffering. This is precisely what a karmic eschatology does, among other things: it gives an answer to the problem of evil and suffering.

So, there’s no conceptual confusion on my part. I’m using “theodicy” and “eschatology” to talk about various aspects of one and the same package. For this reason, Lele’s remarks about eschatology being concerned with the future, theodicy with the present, and karmic theodicy with the present in light of the past are beside the point (namely, that karma is inherently eschatological-theodicean).

Lele says I “disrespect” the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad by treating it as concerned with eschatology and theodicy. He may disagree with my reading but the claim of disrespect is without merit. I refer Lele to Obeyesekere’s analysis of the emergence of karmic eschatology in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and Chāndogya Upaniṣads. Again, although Obeyesekere doesn’t state explicitly that the Upanishadic karmic eschatology explains why bad things happen to good people and vice-versa, it’s pretty obvious from what he does say that this explanation is a significant upshot of the karmic-eschatological framework.

Some readers may be getting frustrated by all these Greek terms—eschatology, theodicy, soteriology, and eudaimonia. Why are we using Greek terms with their sedimented Aristotelian, Hellenistic, and Christian meanings to talk about Indian philosophy and religion? I agree this is unfortunate. If you want to propose better Sanskrit terms, I’m all ears.

One last point about karmic eschatology. As I said earlier, I’m not arguing for the existence of rebirth. Lele refers to psychiatrist Ian Stevenson’s research on purported memories of past lives, especially in young children. Stevenson claimed that these purported memories were strongly “suggestive” of reincarnation. Lele mentions them as a “potential anomaly” for the current scientific consensus that there’s no evidence to support the survival of consciousness after bodily death. Even if we took the Stevenson cases in the way Stevenson suggests, however, they wouldn’t necessarily be evidence that rebirth happens according to a moral principle. In other words, they wouldn’t necessarily be evidence for a karmic eschatology (ethicized rebirth).

Without getting into metaphysical issues about consciousness, I don’t think there is scientific evidence for the survival of personal consciousness after bodily death. In Waking, Dreaming, Being, I examined the Stevenson cases and near-death experiences as possible evidence for survival but concluded that they don’t warrant this conclusion. Here’s what I wrote about Stevenson:

Although Stevenson’s presentation of these cases often makes for compelling reading, all the evidence is anecdotal and derived from interviews where there is a large amount of room for false memory and after-the-fact reconstruction. The interviews weren’t conducted directly with the children when they first reported the memory, but only some time later, so there had been plenty of time for the child to assimilate information gotten from family members and to repeat it as if it were his or her experience. And sometimes the children weren’t interviewed at all; only family members were. Finally, it’s hard to know how to assess whether a memory report about a past life exceeds chance probability, and critics have pointed to a number of serious flaws in Stevenson’s statistical reasoning. For these reasons, I don’t find Stevenson’s evidence convincing, though it does seem possible in principle to investigate claims of past life memories using scientific methods (p. 290, with endnote references deleted).

On to goalpost moving.

Lele suggests I’m moving the goalposts when I say that exegesis of philosophical texts isn’t the right method for determining the core of the concept of karma. But my assumption was never that our discussion should be confined to Buddhist ideas as they’re presented in Buddhist philosophical texts. Our whole exchange started with Lele’s posts about my book, which is a philosophical discussion of Buddhist ideas as they’re embodied and expressed in many kinds of texts, communities, and meditation practices. A philosophical discussion need not be about just philosophical texts. In addition, a philosophical analysis of a philosophical text can make use of methods and data from other disciplines, such as anthropology (hence my use of Obeyesekere’s work), and history and cognitive science (which I use in Why I Am Not a Buddhist).

Of course, I’m not saying that philosophical analysis of philosophical texts isn’t important; I’m saying it’s not sufficient. (I think this is clear from the wider context of my whole post.) Karma isn’t like apoha (exclusion) or svasaṃvedana (reflexive awareness); it’s not a technical philosophical concept invented by philosophers. Philosophers can refine a concept like karma or God, and they can use it for their own ends. They can give us insight into what it means but they’re neither the creators nor final arbiters of its meaning. That meaning comes from the larger religious and cultural tradition. To get at that meaning we need other disciplines and methods besides philosophy.

This is the main reason why I linked to the social-psychology and cognitive-science-of-religion studies about how people think about karma. I think this kind of research provides important and philosophically relevant information about the cultural and religious significance of the concept of karma. I don’t have the space to talk about these studies here, so I will let readers come to their own judgements about their relevance. But I do want to take back one thing I said. I said that these studies “indicate” the concept of karma is fundamentally a way to handle the problem of evil. This is an overstatement. Rather, they support this claim, especially when taken in tandem with Obeyesekere’s analysis of the concept’s formation and function. They provide further evidence that karma is an eschatological-theodicean concept, so that if you remove eschatology and theodicy from karma, you’re no longer talking about the same thing.

The last three paragraphs have been about methodological issues, but there’s also a substantive issue in the vicinity. Lele thinks that Buddhist philosophers are to Buddhism, and Christian philosophers are to Christianity, as scientists are to science. I don’t share this viewpoint. Scientists are the ultimate arbiters of science, but Buddhist and Christian philosophers aren’t the ultimate arbiters of Buddhism and Christianity respectively (nor should they be simply by virtue of being philosophers). Of course, we read philosophers to learn about karma or God (nothing I wrote implies otherwise), but they’re just one voice in a much larger conversation that includes artists, counselors, social workers, meditation teachers, ritual masters, activists, politicians, and so on. Concepts such as “karma” or “God” span and interconnect these many areas of human life in ways that technical philosophical concepts typically don’t. I agree with Lele that we should learn from traditions “at their best,” but in the case of Buddhism and Christianity (and Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, etc.) there are more ways to be “best” than there are in science (even allowing for all the ways to be excellent in science). Philosophy is just one of them. Buddhism has Buddhaghosa and Basho; Christianity has Boethius and Bach.

Time now for Śāntideva. Lele says I’m “entirely wrong” that the eudaimonistic aspect of karma has no warrant and motivation for Śāntideva without the karmic eschatology. I discern two reasons in Lele’s counterargument, though he presents them as one.

First, Śāntideva states that good actions bring about good results, and bad actions bring about bad results, in this life. This is eudaimonistic karma in this life, and it doesn’t depend on rebirth.

We know, however, that sometimes good actions bring about bad experienced consequences instead of good ones, and bad actions bring about good experienced consequences instead of bad ones. So, we’re right back to the problem of evil and the unequal distribution of suffering and happiness in the world. As far as I can see, Śāntideva doesn’t have an answer to this problem without the karmic eschatology. Lele’s answer is probabilistic (this-world, human-only) karma, which I’ve already discussed.

Second, Śāntideva states that good actions generate pleasant mental states, and bad actions generate unpleasant mental states, in this life. This is eudaimonistic karma in this life, and it doesn’t depend on rebirth.

But can’t bad actions also generate pleasant mental states? Suppose someone were to say, “I like tormenting and killing small animals (or worse, young children) because of the thrillingly pleasing mental states it gives me.” What can Śāntideva say in response without relying on the karmic eschatology?

One response would be to say that the person is deeply deluded, because the mental states aren’t pleasant; they’re actually unpleasant. I’ve heard modern mindfulness teachers say this kind of thing: You only think anger is pleasant; you’d see it’s unpleasant if you were truly mindful. You only think smoking is pleasurable; you’d see the sensations are intrinsically unpleasant if you were truly attentive to them, and that would motivate you to quit smoking. It’s possible this idea is true, but I’m doubtful. To show it’s true you’d have to rule out the possibility that the sensations become unpleasant as a result of subjecting them to metacognitive attention and cognitive reappraisal according to the conceptual framework of mindfulness practice. I also find it hard to believe the Buddhist statement that all sentient beings fundamentally seek to be happy. I suggest Buddhists go read Freud on the death drive. In any case, what’s to stop our imaginary person from saying, “So what if I’m deluded by your lights? To deludedly take myself to be experiencing pleasure means that it seems to me that I’m experiencing pleasure, and that’s all I care about.”

Again, as far as I can see, Śāntideva doesn’t have a compelling response to this line of thought unless he invokes the karmic eschatology. It’s the karmic eschatology that enables him to say that the evil things you’re doing now will come back to you and make you absolutely miserable, far more miserable than the misery you’re inflicting on others, if not in this life, then in the long succession of lives to come.

Lele says that Bodhicaryāvatāra 6:42 on previous harm to sentient beings doesn’t depend on rebirth: “In the past, I too have inflicted such pain on sentient beings; therefore, I, who have caused harm to sentient beings, deserve that in return.” “In the past” includes this present life, so the statement doesn’t have to depend on rebirth.

But if we restrict the statement’s scope to just this present life, what grounds the “therefore”? In other words, how does it follow that I deserve to be harmed because I’ve harmed others? Of course, I know that, as a matter of empirical fact, if I harm others, it’s likely I’ll be harmed in return, but I can always take steps to try to prevent that. This is a prudential matter, not a moral one. The question is what grounds the ethical principle that I deserve to be harmed in return? Not much, for Śāntideva, it seems to me, without the karmic eschatology. It’s the karmic eschatology that enables me to see my actions—indeed, my very being—as inseparably interwoven with yours all the way back across the beginningless succession of lives and all the way forward until all sentient beings are liberated. From this perspective, not only must every harm I inflict come back to me, but also the very distinction between your suffering versus mine falls away, and there’s just suffering and the need to remove it.

Lele points out that what I call the mind-expanding Mahāyāna narrative in which every sentient being has been your mother doesn’t appear in Śāntideva but only in later Tibetan commentaries. He says that’s one way to interpret Śāntideva but it’s no less an innovative interpretation than naturalized Buddhism is.

I disagree, and think there’s a huge difference between the two interpretations. Śāntideva is a Mahāyānist. In the Mahāyāna universe, karma and former lives are beginningless, and we’ve all been related to each other in innumerable ways. If the Tibetans are innovating, they’re doing so by making explicit straightforward implications of what Śāntideva thinks. Naturalistic Buddhists, by contrast, are innovating by asserting things that are straightforwardly inconsistent with what Śāntideva thinks (no former and future lives, no consciousness that survives bodily death), and are adding things that don’t follow logically from what he says (probabilistic karma).

Lele asks us to imagine Śāntideva being presented with compelling evidence that there’s no rebirth, and hence no basis for a karmic eschatology. Do we really think he’d abandon Buddhism and either adopt another tradition or become a libertine? No, probably not. (Although a lot would depend on his personality, of which we know nothing.) But that question is easy and isn’t the relevant one. The relevant question is harder: What exactly would Śāntideva think? Would he embrace Lele’s version of apolitical eudaimonistic Buddhism? Or would he combine eudaimonistic Buddhism with socially and politically engaged Buddhism (as Seth Zuihō Segall does)? Would he reject eudaimonism and opt instead for consequentialism, as Charles Goodman and Mark Siderits do in their reconstructions of his thought? Or would he try to defuse the whole problem through Madhyamaka anti-realism or quietism? (Let’s not forget he’s a Mādhyamika.)

I have no idea what the answers are to these questions, and I dare say neither does Lele. I share Stephen Harris’ doubts about our being able to ascribe any ethical theory to Śāntideva using our familiar Western philosophical categories. As Harris points out, Bodhicaryāvatāra is best read as first and foremost a meditation manual, not as a constructive philosophical text like Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.

Indeed, it seems to me that Lele misses the import of his own question. This is that there is such a profound incommensurability between the concept of karma and Śāntideva’s practice, on the one hand, and modern philosophical sensibilities and practice, on the other, that building philosophical bridges between the traditions is much harder than Buddhist modernists realize. Śāntideva would indeed be in a tough spot, and which way he’d choose to go forward is impossible to say.

Resolving cliffhangers in a book

Sun, 09 Aug 2020 21:56:00 GMT

For some time now I have realized: it is time for me to write a book. It’s time to take ideas that I have circulated in blog-post form and develop them into a more systematic, coherent constructive argument. It has now been about seventeen years since Robert Gimello told me that the project that I had wanted to do for my dissertation was a twenty-year project, and as it turns out, I have spent much of those ensuing years working toward exactly that.

The questions that drove my dissertation – the ethics of emotion around attachment, anger and external goods – have continued to drive my thoughts over the thirteen years since I finished it, through twists and turns like declaring myself Buddhist. The dissertation could not resolve them; it ended on a cliffhanger. Śāntideva had good reasons for his views; Martha Nussbaum had good reasons for hers; where do we go from here? By 2013 I’d been thinking here about ways to resolve that cliffhanger, but I now think the approach I took at that time was exactly the wrong one: I had tried to generalize Śāntideva’s and Nussbaum’s views, viewing them as exemplars of integrity ascent and intimacy descent worldviews respectively. As I said at the time, that approach helped me spell out my problématique – but it still didn’t bring me any closer to resolving it.

It was Alasdair MacIntyre who pointed me to a surer path, as I started to write a paper on MacIntyre’s methodology. At the heart of deep ethical disagreements like those between Śāntideva and Nussbaum are different standards of practical rationality) – standards by which we judge whether actions or feelings or habits are good or bad. The dissertation had explicitly restricted itself to endorsing only a thin standard of rationality (in which contradictions are bad), one on which Śāntideva and Nussbaum could agree. But that’s not enough. Śāntideva’s and Nussbaum’s views don’t make sense without their thicker standards of rationality, their first principles and foundations of ethics, which can each only be developed with the resources provided by their traditions.

I wrote that paper on MacIntyrean method and presented it at the Metaphysical Society of America in 2017, but I never published it. I did circulate it online at the Prosblogion blog; it appears that the Prosblogion no longer exists and the link to the paper no longer works. (Such is often the way of online writing – itself a big reason to write something that will exist in physical paper copies in libraries.) The reason I never tried to publish that paper is that, as written, it was still relatively close to MacIntyre’s view that traditions are incommensurable with each other. Since then, following Imre Lakatos, I’ve become more skeptical of that view of MacIntyre’s. I do expect to eventually revise and publish that paper in some form – which might turn out to be a methodological chapter in the book itself.

Key to that revision is this. In an excellent 1991 debate in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, J.B. Schneewind had criticized MacIntyre’s tradition-centred view of ethical inquiry as follows:

MacIntyre allows that traditions have beginnings. Aristotle and Augustine and Aquinas, he holds, were founders of traditions. Why then might there not be among us today those who are originating new lines of thought? Their views may some day come to be seen as having started a tradition; but even if this occurs, it will not be right to describe an initiator as working within the traditions he starts. (166)

MacIntyre responded that “innovation in enquiry almost always involves drawing upon the materials afforded by traditions and self-definition in terms of those traditions. So it was with Descartes, in spite of his protestations to the contrary, as Gilson showed; so it was with Marx, as he himself would willingly have agreed.” (176) But the implication of this response, which MacIntyre doesn’t take up, is that “tradition-centred inquiry” is not as tradition-centred as it looks: one can start a new line of inquiry by means of a synthesis of the old, as long as one recognizes it as such, as Marx did and Descartes did not. MacIntyre’s own discussions of Aquinas’s method in Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry show Aquinas doing exactly this. The problem is that when MacIntyre puts out his methodological injunctions for people who are not Aquinas or Marx, he tends to urge far more caution, advising us to be followers rather than leaders. We should be doing not as MacIntyre says, but as MacIntyre’s Aquinas does.

What does all of this mean for my book? Against the earlier approach that turned to general categories like ascent/descent and intimacy/integrity, I agree with MacIntyre that the book’s inquiry needs to be tradition-centred. Specifically, I need to acknowledge that the work is drawing above all on Buddhist and Aristotelian traditions – the latter including the works of both Nussbaum and MacIntyre himself, with some degree of qualitative individualist spin. The justification of its arguments needs to be in the context of Buddhism, Aristotelianism and qualitative individualism; I can’t expect to justify myself in terms that would be accepted by Muslims or Kantians or Vedāntins, who are beyond the book’s scope. By taking that approach, it’s much easier to come to a dialectical synthesis of the views I do draw on. And what I need to do now is explicitly build that synthesis, of an Aristotelian Buddhism. It needs to be a synthesis, as I think Damien Keown’s work is not; it needs to resolve the differences between the two traditions rather than pretending they’re already saying the same thing when they aren’t. It needs to get down to the very foundations of ethics, in order to say something true that is definite – not provisional, not a cliffhanger.

How to do that? More next time.

Cross-posted at Love of All Wisdom.

Natural and Artificial Intelligence, and Consciousness, Part II

Sun, 09 Aug 2020 16:25:00 GMT

The Indian tradition is replete with modeling of human experience. In the previous post I discussed how Sāṃkhya’s model of mind, body, and consciousness might be used to rethink the conceptualization of evolutionary theory and neuroscience. I argued that the ontology of Sāṃkhya would suggest that the interactions between mind and body are entirely within the scope of “nature” and that “consciousness” is outside this natural system, yet it gives the appearance of consciousness within nature. How might this ontology look at AI?

There are two forms of AI that exist right now of which I am familiar; this discussion excludes the types of AI one might envision we shall develop in the future. The first is neuralinks that would connect the human brain to external computers, phones, machines, bodily limbs, etc.; and the second is independent robots that can execute complex actions and use machine learning. Will we ever see the types of robots in science fiction movies? I do not have a strong view on that, but I do believe that various forms of AI will be used for travel, sales, agriculture, and human services will be used more and more in the near future.

From the perspective of Sāṃkhya, all forms of AI would be considered “natural” in the sense that they part of nature or prakṛti; even human artifacts are still natural in the broad and general sense that Sāṃkhya might be thought about in English. The word “artificial” as it is used in AI often seems to be used in the sense of a human creation that is distinct from the biological structures created by “natural” processes like natural selection.

But I have two specific thoughts on AI. The first is that Sāṃkhya has a robust concept of “intelligence” and in their view the intelligence functions as an entirely natural and yet unconscious manner. The intellect (e.g. buddhi) requires the consciousness to function, but consciousness exists independently from the intellect (the innate features of the consciousness is a matter of discussion among different scholars). Generally speaking, intellect in Sāṃkhya does not imply an independent or self-directed will; its being is activated if and when it is connected to a particular consciousness, but the consciousness is the being that provides intellect with the ability to function in the various ways that it can function. The intellect could not develop a self-reflexive state of awareness, since that portion of cognition is provided by the consciousness which uses or observes the functions of intellect when it is in connection with a natural mind-body complex.

The notion that intelligence functions when in connection with a consciousness brings me to the second thought I have on Sāṃkhya. The ego is what connects the nonphysical and eternal being of the consciousness to the natural and ever changing mind-body complex. The birth of a human or animal in Sāṃkhya is essentially the attachment of a particular consciousness to a particular mind-body complex through the power of the ego. Thus, for Sāṃkhya, the creation of a robot that has AI would require the ego to attach to said robot. The question, then, for Sāṃkhya is: is it possible for humans to create a machine to which a consciousness can attach via the ego?

Readers of this blog, however, must also be familiar with the Buddhist theory of pratītyasaṃutpāda, or the co-dependent origination; the Nyāya theory of the padārtha, or that reality is composed of distinct categories that correspond to specific words; the Vaiśeṣika atomic theory; and there are other theories in Jainism and a wide range of distinctions within those mentioned. Would these conceptual schemes look at AI differently? Would they raise different problems? My goal here was not to go into these theories in any depth, but ask a more general question about the term “artificial” and how that would be thought of in a conceptual scheme that see all forms of intellect as natural; and to think about the problem of the ego as it pertains to the creation of AI machines or robots.

The Householder Debates in the Dharmasūtras: An Initial Puzzle

Sat, 08 Aug 2020 22:27:55 GMT

The Householder Debates in the Dharmasūtras: An Initial Puzzle

The dharmasūtras of Gautama and Baudhāyana argue that only the householder is legitimate. Āpastamba and Vasiṣṭha, in contrast, argue against the claim that the householder is less legitimate than the other āśramas. For Gautama and Baudhāyana, the householder is the best of the āśramas. For Āpastamba and Vasiṣṭha, the householder is just as good as the other āśramas.

Despite this difference, the dharmasūtra authors advance many of the same arguments in favor of the householder. One argument cites the householder’s performance of sacrifices (ĀpDh 2.23.10, BDh 1.10.26, 2.11.33, VaDh 8.14). A second praises the householder for having children (GDh 3.3, ĀpDh 2.24.3, BDh 2.11.27, 33, 2.16.5, 9, VaDh 8.11, 8.15). A third argument notes that the householder provides material subsistence to those who depend on him – including the student, forest dweller, and renunciate (VaDh 8.16).

According to Patrick Olivelle, these texts count payment of the three debts as the central consideration in favor of the householder. The three debts include the debt of vedic study to the ṛṣis, a son to ancestors, and the performance of sacrifices to the gods. In discussing Baudhāyana, Olivelle says,

Baudhāyana’s argument would go something like this. There are express vedic injunctions requiring every man to beget offspring. Baudhāyana himself says that there are an innumerable number of such texts, and cites two… The second is the Taittirīya Saṃhita (6.3.10.5) passage on the three debts. One of these debts, of course, is that of a son, a debt that one owes to one’s ancestors. Since a person can beget offspring legitimately only as a householder, these texts implicitly enjoin everyone to become a householder (89).

Śruti enjoins payment of the three debts to ṛṣis, ancestors, and gods. Since only the householder has children, only the householder might pay the three debts. The householder is superior to the other āśramas for this reason.

Gautama might be taken to advance the same basic argument. Like Baudhāyana, he notes that only the householder has children (GBh 3.3), and that the householder is explicitly enjoined by the Vedas (GBh 3.36). His point might be that only the householder pays the three debts in accord with vedic injunctions.

While Āpastamba and Vasiṣṭha claim that all four āśramas are equally legitimate, their references to the householder having children and performing sacrifices seem central to their arguments for his status. Vasiṣṭha repeats the claim that the householder is “the best of the four āśramas” (VaDh 8.14) – even though it contradicts his official position (VaDh 7.1-2) – in the context of praising the householder for performing sacrifices and having children (VaDh 8.14-15).

These arguments might seem to imply that the dharmasūtra authors derive the householder’s legitimacy from his fulfillment of obligations to others, and his contributions to the prosperity of family and community. In paying the debt to ancestors, the householder has a son who will perform the śrāddha ceremony after he is no longer able to do so. The performance of the śrāddha ceremony, in turn, guarantees that seven generations of ancestors greatly enjoy heaven (BDh 2.16.9, ĀpDh 2.24.3). The householder satisfies the gods by performing sacrifices. The gods, in turn, satisfied by these sacrifices, ensure the general prosperity.

If the householder’s legitimacy derives from his contributions to the welfare of others, then the position of Gautama and Baudhāyana should seems well-justified. Since the householder benefits others in a wide range of ways that the other āśramas do not, only the householder is legitimate.[1] The position of Āpastamba and Vasiṣṭha, in contrast, requires an explanation. If the householder benefits others in a wide range of ways that the other āśramas do not, how can all four āśramas be equally legitimate?

I can think of a couple of answers that might seem initially promising. I’ll consider these two replies here, and raise doubts about their plausibility. In my next post, I will outline a novel suggestion.

First, it might be that Āpastamba and Vasiṣṭha take the householder to sacrifice his own well-being in securing the prosperity of others. Yes, the householder benefits others in a wide range of ways that the other āśramas do not. The other āśramas, however, attain a higher state of personal prosperity – and this personal prosperity balances the lost benefits to others. On this reading, Āpastamba and Vasiṣṭha weigh personal benefits against the benefits that accrue to others, and conclude that they are equivalent.

This reading seems contradicted, however, by passages in both texts that suggest that all four āśramas attain the highest level of well-being. Āpastamba claims that there is general agreement that any virtuous āśramin might attain “everything” (sārva) (ĀpDh 1.23.6). In another verse, he says that a person engaged in any of the four āśramas attains bliss (kṣema) (ĀpDh 2.21.2). Vasiṣṭha claims that so long as he is virtuous, the brāhmaṇa attains brahmaloka, regardless of his āśrama (VaDh 10.31, Cf. 8.17, 9.12). If the householder attains the same level of personal prosperity as the permanent student, forest dweller, and renunciate, however, then the reasons that weigh in favor of the householder clearly outweigh those that weigh in favor of the other āśramas. So Āpastamba and Vasiṣṭha should count the householder as the best of the āśramas.

A second possibility is that Āpastamba and Vasiṣṭha count the householder as superior to the other āśramas after all. Remember that Vasiṣṭha claims that the householder is the best of the four āśramas (VaDh 8.14), even though it contradicts his more explicit statement that all four are equally legitimate (VaDh 7.1-2). Perhaps the latter, rather than the former, is his true position. This reading, however, is not supported by commentaries or contemporary scholars. So some other solution is needed.

Works Cited

Āpastamba Dharmasūtra in Olivelle 2003.

Baudhāyana Dharmasūtra in Olivelle 2003.

Gautama Dharmasūtra in Olivelle 2003.

Vasiṣṭha Dharmasūtra in Olivelle 2003.

Olivelle, Patrick. 2003. Dharmasūtras: The Law Codes of Āpastamba, Gautama, Baudhāyana, and Vasiṣṭha (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass).

__________. 1993. The Āśrama System: The History and Hermeneutics of a Religions Institution (Oxford: OUP).

[1] The permanent student and forest dweller might perform certain sacrifices. Only the householder, however, performs the full range of sacrifices, including those that require the participation of a wife (ĀpDh 2.23.10).

Summary study of Karmayoga

Tue, 04 Aug 2020 17:05:24 GMT

When teaching my World Philosophy course, I try to highlight the ways that Daoist notions of wu-wei, Stoic (and in particular, Epictetus’) notion of living in accordance with nature, and the Gītā’s idea of karmayoga are three ways to approach the union of contemplation and action.

To this end, I recently made a summary analysis of karmayoga for my students, serving as an appendix to my translations of the relevant portions of the Gītā. I provide it below for your consideration. Comments are welcome.

***

With karmayoga, the Bhagavad-gītā presents the reader with a notion of acting in the world which is meant to be revolutionary. It is said to bring peace even in the tumult of life’s struggles, and help one come to true self-knowledge and realization of the ultimate reality behind all things (brahman). Unlike ordinary action, it does not generate any karmic residue or entanglement. Karmayoga is the key to the Gītā’s teachings that action and meditation can be unified. Importantly, the very word yoga when usedby itself usually simply means karmayoga, especially in the early sections of the Gītā which introduce yoga as a practice.

What makes karmayoga so different from normal activity such that it is described as “inaction within action”(4.18) and the karmayogin is said to “do nothing at all” (4.20; 5.8-9) while performing various deeds? I would suggest three major components of the discipline that underscore its difference from ordinary action:

a karmayogin is detached from the results of action,
while motivated by a combination of dharma (role ethics), the spirit of sacrifice, a concern to maintain the world, and the quest for yogic self-discovery,
and reconceptualizing reality in accord with yogic teachings.

Here, I will examine each of these in order.

1. The first major difference is that someone performing karmayoga is “detached from the results” (C.f., 2.47, 2.49, 2.51, 4.20, 5.12) and, consequentially, “free from duality” (2.45, 2.50, 2.57, 4.22, 5.3). Ordinary intentional actions are typically initiated and governed by desires or aspirations for certain outcomes thought to bring personal satisfaction. To say that the karmayogin is detached from results does not mean that she doesn’t care what happens in the manner of a sociopath. Indeed 18.25 explicitly says that it is of the nature of tamas to act with complete disregard to the outcome. What detachment means here is that such matters are out of the yogin’s control, and the value of the act is thus not derivative of her personal stakein the outcome. As 2.47 teaches, her entitlement is to work, but not to its results.

This detachment from results is what generates peace and freedom from duality. It is not that the yogin has been anesthetized such that they don’t feel anything. Rather, their motivation is no longer to squeeze the a specific result from an activity. They simply wish to surrender to doing what is right, while recognizing their lack of ownership over the outcome. Therefore whether the outcome is pleasurable/painful or brings fame/infamy or success/failure is irrelevant to them. They are not trapped in the duality of “good” and “bad” as they would be if they approached work through a pre-set attachment to a specific outcome. And because they don’t view work through such a lens, they achieve peace and even-mindedness (5.12), the very definition of yoga (sammatvaṃ yoga ucyate)(2.48).

The Gītā seems to refer to two different sorts of outcomes in the context of a karmayogin’s detachment. First of all, the immediate results of action. This is underscored by saying that a someone with steady wisdom is the same in “success or failure,” “honor or dishonor,” “pleasure or pain” and so on. A second meaning of “results” is the karmic seeds generated by actions. The Gītā accords with mainstream Indian religiosity by understanding that actions generally create the seeds of our future lives, which tend to be better if we act properly, and worse if we do not (18.12). But unlike the Vedic ritualists who are criticized in Chapter 2, a yogin is not trying to gain good karma or avoid bad karma through their actions. They are “off the karmic grid” so to speak; their actions don’t generate any karma at all (Cf. 2.38. 4.36-37. 5.7).

2. If one’s motivation is not personal attachment to specific outcomes, then why act at all? And if one is dispassionate toward the results of work, is there anything that he is concerned about? It seems clear that a concern advanced in Gītā scholarship, “how could one act if they are free from desire?” doesn’t seem that pressing when applied to karmayoga. The text explicitly presents four reasons for action that are supposed to motivate the yogin.

The first is merely to perform one’s dharma (2.47, 3.35, 18.46-48). A useful way to understand this motivation is with the notion of role ethics. We have various roles in life, like parent, child, teacher, student, citizen, community-member, etc., and doing what is right requires us to carry out the responsibilities that are entailed by these various roles, simply because they are our roles. Were one to ask, “Why are you taking care of that girl?” to answer “Because I am her father” is enough. Being a father entails various responsibilities, and if it is a role that I have, my duty is to carry out such responsibilities as well as I can. To do it for some selfish reason like “I want other people to respect me” is to be attached to the results of actions and to forsake genuine yoga. From the perspective of role ethics, surrendering to dharma is itself what constitutes success, and as seen above, not a specific personal outcome that one hopes to gain for oneself.

Another motivation is to act as a sacrifice. This is the major theme of Chapters 3 and 4. In 3.9-16, Krishna explains that sacrifice is a way to approach the world where one gratefully enjoys its bounty, within the bounds of dharma, and consciously reciprocates by giving back. To approach the world in this way is to participate in and perpetuate the cycle of sacrifice, and keep the world in balance. The culture of sacrifice includes virtues like gratitude, reciprocity, and a willing acceptance of one’s place in the larger whole.

In the Chapter 4, Krishna uses sacrifice as the crucial metaphor for the liberating insight that, when applied to dharmic action, transfigures both the action and the agent into brahman (4.23-4). Speaking of the “sacrifice of insight” as opposed to the mere sacrifice of goods (4.33), he suggests that it has the capacity give the individual a complete transformation of experience, upon which, they realize that all beings are identical with one’s self, and united in God (4.35). This transformation is underscored when Krishna says that the act of sacrifice itself transfigures “material” things, such that they go from being sources of bondage to sources of liberation (3.13, 4.31). My reading of this deeper notion of sacrifice is that it is still centered on virtues like gratitude, reciprocity, and willing acceptance of one’s place in the larger whole. But when informed by knowledge of the deep self, sacrifice takes on a fuller, existential sense, which is identical with yoga itself. Here, the yogin understands that his own self is grounded in the ultimate reality (4.35), and his sense of dependence, gratitude, and holistic participation are informed by that vision.

With this identification of yoga and sacrifice, some passages come close to bhakt-yoga (self-sacrificial, loving devotion to the personal Lord), as taught later in the Gītā (Chapters 7-12). A yogin is said to be “devoted to me (Krishna)” (2.61), to “resign all of their actions unto me (Krishna)” (3.30), and to “resign their actions unto brahman” (5.10). Culminating this line of thought is the final verse of Chapter 5, “One who recognizes that I am the enjoyer of all sacrifices and penances, the Great Lord of all people, the dear friend of all beings—that person attains peace” (5.29).

With this understanding of sacrifice, we can see why the Gītā is so critical of those who practice Vedic sacrifices only from a desire to gain some good result for themselves by means of ritual (2.42-46). While such people do participate in sacrificial culture and their acts are consistent with dharma, their motivation is nevertheless self-centered and they are utterly attached to the results of action. Therefore, their sacrifices can never blossom into genuine karmayoga.

The notions of sacrifice and reciprocity blend into to a third motivation, to maintain the world. Krishna notes that even someone utterly self-realized, with no selfish interests, still has a reason to act: they seek to maintain or preserve the world (3.20, 3.22). Engaging in one’s dharma and perpetuating the reciprocal relations which support the social (and cosmic) balance of things prevents the world from collapsing. A yogin is motivated to act in order to prevent such a collapse. This is a world-affirming reason to act in yoga. One should care about the world although they recognize that they have have no control over the success of their actions, and therefore, they are dispassionate toward the results. To underscore that a yogin is not merely fixated on their own personal liberation, the Gītā stresses that even after someone is enlightened, they are still “devoted to the welfare of all beings” (5.25).

A fourth, and final motivation to act is to achieve yogic self-discovery. One acts in karmayoga for the same reason that an inactive yogin sits and meditates: to purify their mind and to discover the deep self. The earliest verses on karmayoga claim that holding fast to one’s duty while tolerating the various troubles that arise as one does so leads one to liberation (2.14-15). The core insight here is that performance of one’s duties in life forces them to inevitably confront hardships and challenges. If one refuses to run away from such challenges and hardships, but rather trains one’s mind not to be disturbed by them, they overcome the pull that the external world has on them. The Gītā provides a vision of yogawhere this quest for purification animates one’s actions. “With the body, the mind, the intellect, and even with the senses, yogins engage in action, without attachment, in order to purify their hearts (5.11).” The desire for self-realization, and even for the peace and joy that come with it (5.23-24) are not mundane attachments to the outcomes of action, so long as one approaches them without a false sense of control over the process.

What all of the four possible motivations above (dharma, sacrifice, maintaining the world, and yogic self-discovery) have in common is that in each case, the yogin is not motivated by a personal desire to appropriate the results of action. Each of the four possible motivations lead one to perform their roles in life, with vigor, commitment, and purpose, but without selfishness. In all four cases, one’s actions are fit to be transfigured into yoga.

3. While the first two elements of karmayoga are largely about motivations and affective states, the third is about cognition. Karmayoga involves a reconceptualization of reality in accord with yogic teachings. Early on, the Gītā suggests that a sage experiences a different world from the mass of people: “What is night for ordinary people is the time of awakening for the self-controlled, and the time of awakening for ordinary people is night for the sage who truly sees” (2.69). This radical shift has two major aspects: a re-seeing of oneself, and a re-seeing of the world.

Those who aren’t yogins, who are not practicing karma-yoga, tend to see themselves as crucially and fundamentally enmeshed in the fluctuations of the world. Changes in the world produce changes in them. Because of this, their happiness is dependent on the luck of having favorable fluctuations, and they mistakenly try to assert control over fluctuations that are beyond their influence (3.27-8). They are trapped in the duality discussed above. Yogins, on the other hand, understand that their deepest essence, the true self, is buoyant and above the fray. Action arises by the confluence of many factors, and only one of which is an individual self (18.15). In ignorance, someone only focuses on themselves, their desires, and their agency, as centrally important within action. But someone who is wise recognizes that there are many other forces operative, and their personal agency is derivative and partial (18.14-16). Much of the changes that occur in the world are carried on through the fluctuations of matter operating independently of the individual’s influence (5.8-10; 5.13, 14.19, 14.23). They also recognize that each person’s essence is the deep self, standing aloof from its current conditions of embodiment. This is why yogins have “equal vision” toward various beings in various states of embodiment (5.18).

At its roots, the self is grounded in brahman or God (4.35) and a yogin acts as informed by that deep connection (5.10, 5.19, 3.30). The Gītā underscores that such a transformation of vision is not something that is merely believed or hoped for in a future life. When self-knowledge is internalized through lived karma-yoga, it is said to be realized as direct experience. “Those whose minds are settled in equanimity have conquered the material creation while still in it. As brahman itself is balanced and faultless, they are situated in brahman” (5.19).