The Bracing Rush of the Source

The Bracing Rush of the Source

Buddhavacana: A Pali Reader

Modern-day North American Buddhist discourse is filled with bewildering renderings of classical Buddhist terminology. Ask most Buddhists what the goal of practice is and you’ll probably get “enlightenment.” Explain that there is absolutely no such counterpart in Pali, the language of classical Buddhism, and you will get blank stares. The word “enlightenment” is so tightly woven into our way of thinking about Buddhism that it would almost be pedantic to insist on another word. The same goes for “four noble truths,” “suffering,”“loving kindness,” and even “meditation.” All of these terms, and many more besides, not only miss the mark: they recklessly veer toward ideas that were foreign, even contrary, to Gotama’s (i.e., the Buddha’s) thought. The irony here, of course, is the fact that the misfiring terms are loosed in the very name of, as instances of, Gotama’s teachings.

(An aside, worthy to be expanded into a dissertation, or at least a future blog post: As bewildering as terms like “enlightenment” are, I know of none more vexing than “mindfulness.” That this term should be problematic may seem surprising to the modern-day consumer of Buddhist books, magazines, websites, blogs, teachings, and dharma talks. For, based on its sheer volume and weight in contemporary Buddhist usage, “mindfulness” appears to be a slam dunk, unambiguous, one-to-one equivalent of some original Pali term. It isn’t even close. Like “loving-kindness,” I suspect that it is the invention of the pious, crypto-Christian Rhys-Davidses at the Pali Text Society in the late nineteenth century. Stay tuned—more fun to come! In the meantime, can we  please put a moratorium on “mindfulness”?)

Now, when you consider that our understanding of Buddhism derives from the terms given in the classical Buddhist sources, this business of translation becomes paramount. Most practitioners leave the task of translation to the “experts:” scholars, academics, teachers, sangha leaders, and so on. After all, who has the time to learn Pali, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, and other canonical languages? Well, it happens that I did take the time to learn Sanskrit, Pali, and classical Tibetan. Thus, I am an expert! As such an “expert,” I warn you: We experts are really not so sure. We don’t have the secret formula to the “meaning” of a term or text. We, like you, are biased. Like our readers, the most honest among us change our views over time. Our translations, alas, remain fixed in our clever books. One of the factors that motivated me to learn Buddhist canonical languages, in fact, was the equivocal, even multivocal, nature of the translations I was relying on form my understanding of Gotama’s teachings. Frustrated by the variations and differences that I encountered in the books, I decided to plunge headfirst into the dark waters of “original language.”

My understanding of classic Buddhist teachings was deeply affected by reading them in Pali. It’s a long story. But what I would like to impress on you here is that it is much too early to have settled the matter of how these teachings are made to speak English. Whether I am flipping through one of the Buddhist glossy magazines, browsing in the local bookstore, studying a scholarly article, or conversing with a Buddhist, I come away with the same queasy feeling. I can’t say that I have really identified the source of this feeling, but I think that it stems from the language itself that I am encountering. A mere century or so into their dissemination through American letters, and Gotama’s teachings—wild and revolutionary at heart—have been badgered into a linguistic straight-jacket. (A different state of affairs from what I first encountered, thirty-five years ago.) The binds of the jacket?—language that is more often than not mind-numbingly uniform, conformist, moralistic, flaccid, formulaic, cliché. The American/British Gotama has been made to speak like a sanctimonius prig, an anal fussbudget, an overwrought namby-pamby, or worst of all—like the Dalai Lama!

Or is he, in fact, all of that?

With the hope that we Americans will give more thought to what we make Gotama say in our language, I offer you my new book Buddhavacana: A Pali Reader. It was published by Pariyatti Press. You can order the book directly from them, here. First, you may want to preview the preface.

PREFACE
This Reader has three related goals. First, it aims to encourage the study of Buddhist canonical literature in Pali (pāḷi). While there are, of course, several canonical languages–Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, and Sanskrit–the Pali canon is exceptional. It is the repository of what I would like to call Classical Buddhism: the basic teachings, as far as we can determine, of Siddhattha Gotama (c. 480–400 BCE), the man we call the Buddha. As such, the Pali canon constitutes the shared heritage of Buddhists everywhere and at all times. Buddhism, like everything else, has changed throughout history, is changing now, and will continue to change in the future. It is therefore all the more important that we, as students of Buddhism, not lose sight of the basic teachings of Siddhattha Gotama as recorded in the Pali canon. For, if the term Buddhism is to mean anything at all, surely it must, at a minimum, be consonant with the teachings of Gotama. That Buddhism changes is inevitable. It would be irresponsible of us not to adapt, update, clarify, and modify ancient and ascetic teachings to fit the needs of our time and place. But it would be equally irresponsible for us to do so without a genuine understanding of what it is we are changing. I hope this Reader will contribute to such an understanding.

Second, the sixteen texts that comprise the Reader were chosen to provide the student with a reliable overview of Siddhattha Gotama’s teachings. I make an argument for why these texts are particularly suited to that task in my Basic Teachings of the Buddha (New York: Random House, 2007). That book may be seen as a companion to the present one in that it contains in-depth commentaries on the texts given here in Pali. As I mentioned there, the texts that I have selected are just one of numerous possible combinations of “basic teachings of the Buddha.” Just to be clear about what I am claiming for these texts, I will repeat what I wrote in the Basic Teachings:

Given the countless idiosyncratic possibilities behind any particular selection of texts, it is unlikely that any two authors would select the exact same sixteen suttas as necessarily basic. But I think it is also unlikely that many Buddhists or Buddhist scholars would have serious qualms with the present selection of suttas. In any case, knowing the contents of the suttas presented here, you will have a good grasp of the most vital Buddhist principles for living a fulfilled life. And perhaps that grasp is, after all, the decisive test of what constitutes a reliable selection of “basic teachings.” …

[T]he Buddhist canon contains well over 5000 suttas. What, then, is my rationale for selecting the sixteen that I have? My selection is based on two criteria: rate of recurrence and relevance. The first criterion takes into account the frequency with which a theme occurs in the dialogues. There are certain issues that the Buddha raises repeatedly in his discourses. On this principle, I have selected several suttas dealing with the Buddha’s ideas concerning the world, the person, the mind, and perception; and with his prescriptions for cultivating meditative concentration, mental and emotional calm, present-moment awareness, and the unbinding from tendencies detrimental to human happiness. There are other suttas, however, that contain material on issues in which the Buddha and his interlocutors placed little importance (again, using rate of recurrence as a yardstick). I have, nonetheless, selected some of these texts because they address issues that the contemporary reader does (I assume) consider important. I am not making this assumption on the basis of any complex sociological data analysis, but rather on my own discussions with others throughout my life. These issues include the problematic nature of the idea of a creator deity, or “God”; the manner of conducting a meaningful conversation; methods for countering depression, anxiety, and despair; cultivation of meaningful relationships; healthy reflection on illness and death; and the very nature of a question. Using these two criteria for the selection of texts, this book should at the very least prove to be a vibrant guide for studying Buddhism and, if the reader so wishes, for applying its principles to life (pp. xli–xlii).

Finally, in including the texts that it does, the Reader aims to help create critics of Buddhism as it begins to take root in the West. Our word “critic” comes from the Greek term for someone who discerns and judges with care. So, it is hoped that modern-day Buddhist practitioners would carefully dissect, probe, and question tradition, and not simply accept the views of believers and teachers past and present. Being such a practitioner—a critical one—takes effort. It requires us to know the facts about our shared tradition—i.e., the principles of the Buddha’s basic teachings—and to distinguish these teachings from the countless changes—additions, subtractions, compressions, expansions, innovations, and, yes, manipulations, mutations, distortions, and reversals– that history has brought to these teachings.

Only then are we fit to judge.

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