Aaa
Buddhist Studies Review 13, 1 (1996)
that in the M sutta the Buddha’s original defence of his position either never existed or has been lost. There is no evidence that a monk ever defended this aspect of the Teaching in a debate, but then the suttas are primarily about the Buddha and only oc¬ casionally about individual monks.
The right to utter a lion’s roar is not limited to the Tatha- gata, or to those situations where the Buddha permits his monks to proclaim certain subjects in this way. A monk may also utter a lions roar’ on his own initiative. In the Nikayas this monk is always Sariputta.
In an upsurge of faith, Sariputta proclaims to the Buddha,
- Lord, such is the faith l have in the Exalted One — Dhagava,
that (I know) there has not been, will not be and is not found today any samana or brahmana who is better than the Exalted One, or has more higher knowledge with respect to the Highest Enlightenment’ 73 . The Buddha acknowledges Sariputta’s remark, “This speech you have uttered, Sariputta, is noble, bull-like. A lion’s roar, seized with certainty, is uttered’ 74 . Thus the Buddha himself categorises this utterance as a ‘lion’s roar’. The Buddha immediately challenges Sariputta on his capacity to make such a remark, forcing hint to admit that he has not known all past Buddhas, does not know all future Buddhas, and does not even know the present Buddha to the required extent to be able to
- support his claim. Sariputta, however, is not daunted. He asserts
that he can support his claim, which he has made because he has
73 D ^S. Ill 99. Cf. D II 82f = S V 159. both of which only include (14)
below. S V 159 includes the Buddha's final injunction (see below) that this text
should regularly be recited to converts (monks, nuns and lay-followers).
74 D iii 95; tr. T.W. and C/VF. Rhys Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha (DB) 111 95
Manne — The Lion’s Koar
seen in accordance with Dhamma 75 , arguing through the use of a simile that he has seen what is important.
The content of Sariputta’s defence of his lion’s roar is a lengthy itemisation of what all the Buddhas, past, present and future, have achieved. The details, in as brief a form as possible, are:
(14) i. ‘That all Buddhas, "after they have abandoned the five hin¬ drances and after they have weakened corruptions of the mind by means of wisdom, being possessed (then) of hearts well established in the four exercises for setting up mindfulness and having thoroughly developed the seven constituents of knowledge, have wholly awakened (or will wholly awaken) to tne uttermost awakening" 76 .
ii. ‘That on one occasion when he came to the Buddha to hear Dhamma, the Buddha taught it in such a way that Sariputta attained perfection in one particular dhamma,
namely, faith in the Teacher 77 .
iii. ‘That the Buddha’s teaching with regard to the skilful dhammas is unsurpassable by any samana or brahmana, these skilful dhammas being the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, the Four Right Exertions, the Four Bases of Psychic Power, the Five Controlling Principles, the Five Powers, the Seven Constituents of Knowledge, and the Noble Eightfold Path. In this connection, a bhikkhu, having destroyed the intoxicants, lives in the attainment of having experienced for himself through his own higher Knowledge in this very life the release of the mind, the
75 dhammanvayo vidiio. D III 100.
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release through wisdom that is free from intoxicants 78 .
iv. 'That the Buddha’s teaching with regard to the description of the sphere of perception 79 is unsurpassable.
v. ‘That the Buddha’s teaching with regard to conception 80 (gestation and birth) is unsurpassable. (The text here shows that conception, gestation and the quality of the birth of the foetus arc meant.)
vi. ‘That the Buddha’s teaching with regard to the ability of mind-reading 81 is unsurpassable.
vii. That the Buddha’s teaching with regard to the attainment of seeing 82 is unsurpassable. (The text here describes four le¬ vels of attainment with regard to meditation on the body.)
viii. ‘That the Buddha’s teaching with regard to the typology of people 82 is unsurpassable. (The text here describes seven characteristic ways of attaining release, vimutti).
ix. ‘That the Buddha’s teaching with regard to the (qualities of) concentration of the mind 84 is unsurpassable. (The text here describes the seven constituents of knowledge, satta bojjhanga).
x. ‘That the Buddha’s teaching with’regard to modes of progress 82 is unsurpassable.
xi. ‘That the Buddha’s teaching with regard to conduct in conversation 86 is unsurpassable.
xii. That the Buddha’s teaching with regard to the ethical conduct of man 87 is unsurpassable.
xiii. - That the Buddha’s teaching with regard to the .variety (of
the results) of instruction 88 is unsurpassable. (The text here describes the Buddha’s knowledge with regard to the stage an individual will reach on receiving a particular (form of) instruction.)
xiv. That the Buddha’s teaching with regard to knowledge concerning the tstage of) release of other people 89 is unsurpassable.
xv. That the Buddha’s teaching with regard to eternalism 90 is unsurpassable
xvi. That the.Buddha’s teaching with regard to the knowledge
that enables {he remembrance of former life-times’* is unsurpassable
xvii. That the Buddha’s teaching with regard to the knowledge
regarding the decease and rebirth of beings 92 is unsur¬ passable
xviii. That the Buddha’s teaching with regard to varieties of supernormal power 93 (i.e. the noble and the ignoble) is unsurpassable.
xix. That with regard to the varieties of supernormal power 94
78 Ibid.
79 cyatana-pa/'inaui. D HI 102.
80 gabbavakkanti. ibid.
81 udesana vidha. L) 111 103.
82 Jassana-samapalli. D III 104.
83 puggala-pahhalti. D III 105.
84 padhana. D III *106.
85 patipadu. ibid.
86 bhassa-samacara. ibid,
87 purisa-sila-samacara, ibid.
88 anusasana-vidha. D 111 107.
89 para-pug gal ;a-vunutti-hdna. D 111 108.
90 sassaia-vddesu. ibid.
91 , pubbe-nivasanussati-nanp. D HI 110.
92 ; sattanam cutupapala-hdna. D 111 111.
93 iddhi-vidha. D III 112.
94 iddhi-vidha. D III 1!3.
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Buddhist Studies Review 13, 1 (1996)
ihe Buddha is unsurpassable. There is nothing hie does not know”, and no other samana or brahmana knows it better, xx. That the Buddha has achieved whatever can be achieved by a faithful clansman who is steadfast and has aroused . his energies, by a man’s capacity to hear burdens, (his) ' endeavour, energy and steadfastness’ 96 — The text here specifies that the Buddha is not attached to what is low nor to asceticism, and that he can attain the four jhanas at will.
Sariputta concludes his argument by saying that he has, heard from the Buddha himself that there have been equal Buddhas in former times and that there will again be Buddhas equal to him¬ self, but that is is impossible for two equal Buddhas to exist at the same time.
The qualities attributed to the Buddha as Dliagava in Sari- putta’s lion’s roar bear remarkably little resemblance to the points claimed by the Buddha, in the name of Tathagata, to be his powers and confidences. Only in points (xiv), (xvi) and (xvii) of quote (14) is there any correspondance and this is with the list of quote (8) above, regarding points (vii), (viii) and (ix) respectively.
I have argued 97 that the collection of suttas now known as Dlgha Nikaya was originally a collection of suttas grouped together through their effectiveness in gaining converts and lay support (and that for that reason it is entertaining). The ending of this sutta shows clearly its propaganda purposes. After Sariputta has finished, a monk, Udayin, remarks that the Tathagata will not proclaim himself, although any other ascetic who had even one of those qualities would boast about it. The Buddha, also speaking
95 asesatn abhijiiniili. ibid.
96 Ibid.
97 Mar.nc (1990): 4.
about himself as Tathagata, agrees with this rather emphatically,
and then instructs Sariputta to give this discourse frequently to
those among the followers, monks, nuns, lay-men and -women,
who feel doubt and hesitation concerning the Tathagata 98 . In this
way the Buddha specifically approved this as a list of his qualities
which may be taught to followers. I think it is significant that he
imposes this limit, i.e. that he docs not acknowledge this as a list
which is to be defended before a general public 99 .
There is another occasion when Sariputta roars his lion’s roar 100 , Here a monk goes to the Buddha and accuses Sariputta of an offence. The Buddha sends for Sariputta. Ananda and Maha Moggalana immediately call all the monks, telling them to come because ‘Sariputta is about to roar his lion’s roar in the presence of the Buddha’ 101 . Clearly they expect a theatrical occasion. Sariputta defends himself against the accusation. He agrees that someone who is not mindful of the body’s action 107 might have done such a thing, but as for himself, ‘his heart is like the earth, abundant, .extensive, boundless, without hatred, doing no harm’ 101 and, moreover, he is ‘filled with horror, loathing and disgust at his foul body 106 , and he carries it around like a dripping bowl of fat 105 . The accusing monk immediately begs Sariputta’s pardon. The Buddha reprimands him, and then says to Sariputta, ‘Forgive this IV 377; U. Woodward, GS IV 251.
Duddhist Studies Review 13, 1 (1996)
foolish man, before his head splits into seven pieces’ 106 .
A further lion’s roar is attributed to Sariputta in the Sarp- yutta Nikaya 107 . Here a monk reports to the Buddha.that Sari¬ putta has claimed arahantship. The Buddha summons Sariputta and challenges him. Sariputta is able to answer all the Buddha’s questions satisfactorily and the Buddha leaves the scene. Sariputta then proclaims to the bhikkhu that, although it took him a while to find his answer to the Buddha’s first challenge, once he had found his wits, he could have gone on answering for several nigh:s loS . Tins proclamation is reported to the Buddha by one of the monks, Kajarakkhartiya, who as his name" shows is a noble ( khaitiya ), and who may therefore have had some knowledge of debate conventions. It is this monk who gives the utterance the designation ‘Sariputta’s lion’s roar’ 109 although the expression ‘lion’s roar’ itself docs not appear in Sariputta’s utterance. The Buddha supports Sariputta’r claim, using the same terms as Sariputta did in his proclamation: ‘If I were to question Sariputta on this matter differently, with different words (or) differently according to a different method, Sariputta would explain this matter to me, differently, with different words (or) differently according to a different method’ 110 . . .
This so-called ‘lion’s roar' is qualitively different from Sari- •
106 U.ama Siiripulla imassa inoghapurisassa. purassa tatth' eva sattadhd
muddhd phulissali'ti. A IV 378. Sec Witte), op. tit* regarding this threat. The
threat ib surprising here as the accusing monk was neither questioning nor being
questioned by Sariputta although he may be taken to have challenged him,
albeit behind his back.
107 S II 50-5.
108 S II 54.
109 S Ji 55. 5 46.
no s i: so.
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putta’s previous one in .several important ways. In the. first place it is not a proclamation of the Buddha’s qualities: it is Siiriputta’s demonstration of his own understanding of the Teaching. Second¬ ly, and most importantly, this utterance is not termed a ‘lion’s roar’ by the Buddha, but only by a monk. The monk uses this terminology in his report to the Buddha and the latter uses different terminology in his answer. On the previous occasion it was the Buddha who gave the name ‘lion’s roar’ to Sariputta’s utterance. Here the text specifically attributes different termino¬ logy to him. In this literature prone to repetition, the absence of repetition where it could be expected must be regarded as significant. Instead of the repetition, the Buddha describes Sarifiutta as someone* who has ‘well-mastered the sphere of religion’ 111 .
Sariputta is attributed with three different types of lions’ roar. Two of these can be regarded as genuine, the criterion for genuineness being that the texts have the Buddha himself so designate the utterance. These are (i) when the ‘lion’s roar* took place in debate circumstances in praise of the Buddha (D 28X and ' (ii) when the ‘lion’s roar’ took place in defence of, and asserting the quality of his own mental state (A IV 238). The third, Le. the final example in this section cannot be accepted as a true ‘lion’s roar’ as, according to the text, the Buddha did not give it this title. In none of these is the location a public assembly, but rather these are private lion’s roars made only before the Sangha of monks.
There js one occasion in each of the Thera- and Theri-gatha when a monk utters his ‘lion’s roar’,
Buddhist Studies Review 13, 1 (1996)
(15) 175. 'Come, Nandaka, let us go into the presence of the
preceptor. We shall roar the lion’s roar face to face with the best of the Buddhas.
176. We have now attained that goal for which, with compassion for us, the sage made us go forth — the annihilation of all fetters’ 112 . •
(16) 331. *... The Buddha’s teaching has been done.
332. Allow me, noble lady, 1 wish to go to Savatthi: I shall roar a lion’s roar in the presence of the excellent Buddha’" 1 .
The reason for these ‘lion’s roars’, as the texts she./, is that the disciple has attained the final goal and wishes to announce this to, and perhaps have it confirmed by, the Buddha. This may be evidence of a custom or a tendency to proclaim this degree of personal attainment publicly in the presence of the Buddha. As, however, only two examples arc attested, one in Theragatha, one in Thcrigatha, it is impossible to be certain of this. These instances could be also be cases of poetic licence
A monk might also be described as a ‘lion’s roarer’. In a list that gives the highest qualities of various monks, the monk Plndola Bharadvaja is called chief of the disciples who are lion’s roarers' u . There is no sutta passage which tells us what he roared" 5 .
Whereas the Buddha’slion’s roar is a public event governed by what we may imagine were the debate rules of the time, the monk's lion’s roars, insofar as we can tell from the small number
112 Tr. K.R. Norman. Elders Verses (EV) \X
113 Tr. Norman; F.V U.34.
114 A l 23.
115 C.P. Malalusekcra. Dictionary of Pali Proper Names t x.v. Pindola-Bharadvaja.
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that remain to us in this literature, were private events, assertions in front of the Teacher and the Sangha and not open to public challenge.
3. Suttas with sihanada in their titles.
There are three suttas with sihanada in their title, i.e. sihanada suttas, in D; Kassapa-sihaniida Sutta (No.8), Udum- barika-sihanada Sutta (No.25), and Cakkavatti-sihanada Sutta (No.26); two in M: Cuja-slhanada Sutta (No.ll) and Maha-sihanida Sutta (No.12), which gives this name to the vagga" 6 , and a Siha¬ nada Vagga in A IV 373-96.
The M sihanada suttas arc both suttas with debate elements. The Cula-sihanada Sutta is a sermon in which the Buddha teaches his monks debate techniques; in the Mahi-slhanada Sutta he re¬ futes a challenge Sunakkhatta is reported to have made against him. The D'sihunida suttas are more diverse. Two concern challenges-^ - .n the Kassapa-sihaniida Sutta, Kassapa challenges the Buddha on the theme of asceticism, and the Buddha refutes this challenge, while the Udumbarikarslhanada Sutta concerns a challenge made against the Buddha by Nigrodha in Queen Udumbarika’s Park. It is, however, hard to see what the common element is in the shared name regarding the third, the Cakka¬ vatti-sihanada Sutta, which is a tale about good rulership. The Sihanada Vagga of the A gets its name'from its first sutta, which is the lion’s roar by Sariputta in which he proclaims his own attainments.
In their diversity the relationship between the names of slhan&da suttas and their content reflects that ol the contents of the various sihunadas. Both challenges and proclamations of
116 See l.B. Horner. Middle Length Sayings (MLS) 1 xiv.
Mannc — The Lion’s Roar
own understanding of his Teaching, telling what one had seen,
Buddhist Studies Review 13, 1 (1996)
attainments arc found. Probably the Cakkavatti-slhanada Sutta should be regarded as falling into the latter category. It is the proclamation of the attainments and qualities of the best ruler.
4. The ‘lion's roar' and ihe debate tradition
In the Pali Nikayas the. term sihanada — ‘the lion’s roar’ — is used for various types of expressions. When the Tathagata’s lion’s roar is referred to we are close to the Vedic religious speech contest or Debate which Witzel has described in his article. When the 'lion’s roar’ is attributed to a disciple, we find that it is his own claim to attainments. Both the Tathagata’s ‘lion’s roar’ and that of a disciple are utterances which the speaker is willing to defend in public, the former in front of a large public of the world, the latter in front of the smaller public of the monks. It seems then that the Buddhists have adapted the Vedic tradition of challenges in debate to their own purposes, using their own terminology — sihandda — and generalising it to include a monk’s public assertion of his achievements. Suttas wit^ sihanada in their title generally confirm this usage. As we*do not usually know how and when a sutta got its title, only limited weight can be attached to this last point %
5. Conclusions.
I said in the introduction that a study of the notion of the ‘lion’s roar’ showed the inventive and creative way the reciters conveyed the Buddha’s message, relating its content to the cus¬ toms and traditions of their society. In fact it provides a variety of examples of their way of going about their task.
First a word about the reciters.
Recounting those aspects of daily life one had shared with the Buddha to one’s fellow practitioners, passing on to them the content of the discourses one had heard — that is to say, one’s
certainly began as early as Buddhism itself did. The first converts and earliest monks would obviously talk to each other about the Buddha and the Teaching, and keep each other informed about what had happened during, for example, an absence due to an almsround or a meditation retreat. What had happened would include what had been taught, who the Buddha had talked to in particular, who came to see him, what advice he gave, and so forth. As the community grew and spread this was essentially its way to keep in touch and up to date. Some people love to re¬ count, to narrate stories, to share their experiences, to tell. Probably those who tpld about the Buddha and the Teaching especially well were invited to do so again and again and became known as good reciters. Telling skilfully requires invention and the texts are indeed full of literary inventions created by very skilful raconteurs.
The early reciters told about true events, events in which they had participated as observers and witnesses. Although we cannot know whether the accounts of the debates in D contain any actual words that the Buddha spoke, the style of debating they attribute to him is consistent and differentiated from that attributed to other debaters, and they are true to the Vedic debate tradition 157 . The early reciters also passed on the experiences of others that had been told to them. In telling a tale there are always modifications depending on the character and interests of the teller.
The early reciters created similes. A simile that compares the Buddha to a lion is hardly surprising. The comparison between a
117 See Manne (1990) and (1992).
Buddhist Studies Review 13, 1 (19 96)
(15) 175. 'Come, Nandaka, let us go into the presence of the
preceptor. We shall roar the lion’s roar face to face with the best of the Buddhas.
176. We have now attained that goal for which, with compassion for us, the sage made us go forth — the annihilation of all fetters’ 11J . •
(16) 331. '... The Buddha’s teaching has been done.
332. Allow me, noble lady; 1 wish to go to Savatthi: I shall roar a lion’s roar in the presence of the excellent Buddha’ 113 .
The reason for these ‘lion’s roars’, as the texts she./, is that the disciple has attained the final goal and wishes to announce this to, and perhaps have it confirmed by, the Buddha. This may be evidence of a custom or a tendency to proclaim this degree of personal attainment publicly in the presence of the Buddha. As, however, only two examples arc attested, one in Theragatha, one in Thcrigatha, it is impossible to be certain of this. These instances could be also be cases of poetic licence
A monk might also be described as a ‘lion’s roarer’. In a list that gives the highest qualities of various monks, the monk Plndola Bharadvftja is called chief of the disciples who are lion’s roarers 114 . There is no sutta passage which tells us what he roared 113 .
Whereas the Buddha’slion’s roar is a public event governed by what we may imagine were the debate rules of the time, the monk's lion’s roars, insofar as we can tell from the small number
112 Tr. K.R. Norman. Elders Verses (EV) 1 2.
113 Tr. Norman; EV 11,34.
114 A 1 23.
115 C.P. Malalasckcra, Dictionary of Pali Proper Names , x.v. Pindola-Dharadvaja.
Manne — The Lion’s Roar
that remain to us in this literature, were private events, assertions in front of the Teacher and the Sangha and not open to public challenge.
3. Suttas with sihanada in their titles.
There are three suttas with sihanada in their title, i.e. sihanada suttas, in D; Kassapa-slhanada Sutta (No.8), Udum* barika-slhanada Sutta (No.25), and Cakkavatti-sihanada Sutta (No.26); two in M: Cuta-sihanada Sutta (Noll) and Maha-slhan5da Sutta (No.12), which gives this name to the vagga 116 , and a Siha¬ nada Vagga in A IV 373-96.
The M sihanada suttas are both suttas with debate elements. The Cuja-sihanada Sutta is a sermon in which the Buddha teaches his monks debate techniques; in the Maha-slhanada Sutta he re¬ futes a challenge Sunakkhatta is reported to have made against him. The D'sihan&da suttas arc more diverse. Two concern challenges:"in the Kassapa-slhanada Sutta, Kassapa challenges the Buddha on the theme of asceticism, and the Buddha refutes this challenge, while the Udumbariktl-sihanada Sutta concerns a challenge made against the Buddha by Nigrodha in Queen Udumbarikii’s Park. It is, however, hard to see what the common element is in the shared name regarding the third, the Cakka¬ vatti-sihanada Sutta, which is a tale about good rulership. The Sihanida Vagga of the A gets its name'from its first sutta, which is the lion’s roar by Sariputta in which he proclaims his own attainments.
In their diversity the relationship between the names of sihanada suttas and their content reflects that of the contents of the various sihanadas. Both challenges and proclamations of
116 See l.B. Horner, Middle Length Sayings (MLS) l xiv.
Buddhist Studies Review 13, 1 (1996)
attainments arc found. Probably the Cakkavatti-sJhanada Sutta
should be regarded as falling into the latter category. It is the
proclamation of the attainments and qualities of the best ruler.
4. The ‘lion's roar' and the debate tradition
In the Pali Nikayas the term sihanada — ‘the lion’s roar’ — is used for various types of expressions. When the Tathagata’s lion’s roar is referred to we are close to the Vedic religious speech contest or Debate which Witzel has described in his article. When the ‘lion’s roar’ is attributed to a disciple, we find that it is his own claim to attainments. Both the Tathagata’s ‘lion’s roar’ and that of a disciple are utterances which the speaker is willing to defend in public, the former in front of a large public of the world, the latter in front of the smaller public of the monks. It seems then that the Buddhists have adapted the Vedic tradition of challenges in debate to their own purposes, using their own terminology — sihanada — and generalising it to include a monk’s public assertion of his achievements. Suttas witjt sihanada in their title generally confirm this usage. As we*do not usually know how and when a sutta got its title, only limited weight can be attached to this last point.
5. Conclusions.
I said in the introduction that a study of the notion of the ‘lion’s roar’ showed the inventive and creative way the reciters conveyed the Buddha’s message, relating its content to the cus¬ toms and traditions of their society. In fact it provides a variety of examples of their way of going about their task.
First a word about the reciters.
Recounting those aspects of daily life one had shared with the Buddha to one’s fellow practitioners, passing on to them the content of the discourses one had heard — that is to say, one’s
own understanding of his Teaching, telling what one had seen,
heard and experienced while one was with the Teacher, all that
certainly began as early as Buddhism itself did. The first converts
and earliest monks would obviously talk to each other about the
Buddha and the Teaching, and keep each other informed about
what had happened during, for example, an absence due to an
almsround or a meditation retreat. What had happened would
include what had been taught, who the Buddha had talked to in
particular, who came to see him, what advice he gave, and so
forth. As the community grew and spread this was essentially its
way to keep in touch and up to date. Some people love to re¬
count, to narrate stories, to share their experiences, to tell.
Probably those who tpld about the Buddha and the Teaching
especially well were invited to do so again and again and became
- known as good reciters. Telling skilfully requires invention and
the texts are indeed full of literary inventions created by very skilful raconteurs.
The early reciters told about true events, events in which they had participated as observers and witnesses. Although we cannot know whether the accounts of the debates in D contain any actual words that the Buddha spoke, the style of debating they attribute to him is consistent and differentiated from that attributed to other debaters, and they are true to the Vedic debate tradition 117 . The early reciters also passed on the experiences of others that had been told to them. In telling a tale there are always modifications depending on the character and interests of the teller.
The early reciters created similes. A simile that compares the Buddha to a lion is hardly surprising. The comparison between a
117 See Manne (1990) and (1992),
Buddhist Studies Review 13, 1 (1996)
great man and a lion exists in other Indian texts" 8 . It exists too in
our language" 9 , and doubtless in many other languages which
have inherited the idea that the lion is the king of the beasts.
Lions roar, so the Buddha roars too. The early reciters attributed
the epithet ‘lion’ to the Buddha, expanded the comparison to
describe the likenesses and included the detail of \he (lion’s) ‘roar’.
The evidence (to be considered in detail below) suggests that it
was the existence of this simile which inspired the reciters to
attribute a content to, or to invent a content for the Buddha’s
lion’s roar.
Having set the scene, so to speak, with regard to the early reciters, we can now show how our investigation of the texts about the lion’s roar supports these ideas.
First of all there is the invention of situating the Buddha’s lion’s roar within a tradition of debate. The term ‘lion’s roar’ is not connected with the Vedic debate tradition. It occurs neither in the Upanisads nor in the Brahmanas. As the Buddhist texts can be so faithful and so accurate in their representation of the Vedic tradition 120 , we can conclude from this that the term ‘lion’s roar’ for a challenge is an invention of the Buddhist reciters. We can further conclude that it was part, of this invention fictitiously to situate the lion’s roar challenge within the debate tradition. Some details placed within the Buddha’s lion’s roar probably authen¬ tically belong to the Vedic debate tradition: the Buddha’s re¬ futation of a potential challenge to his capacities as a debater may be among these 121 , though 1 specify that I mean that these
118 Sec Monier-WiUiams, s.v. si/nfui for many examples.
119 We have ihc expressions ‘a lion among men, ‘the strength of a lion', etc.
120 See Witxel. op. citz Manne (1990). (1992).
121 Formula (4). Sec also Manne (1992).
Manne — The Lion’s Roar
represent the demands of the tradition on a debater and not that
the Buddha himself uttered these very phrases. There is no way
we can establish as a fact which phrases the Buddha ever uttered.
Other details have to be accounted for differently.
I have argued that the early reciters spontaneously created similes, and with them, in this example of the lion’s roar, frameworks within which they could present their accounts. With regard to the aspects of the Teaching that come within the ‘lion’s roar’ and the powers and confidences of the Tathiigata, l think that here we see redactors usihg such a framework inventively. The framework is that of the simile that compares the Buddha to a lion and attributes content to his roar. The existence of this framework, and the illogicality (why these particular aspects?) of the examples that remain to us of the Teachings placed within it, suggest the likelihood that many other aspects of the Teaching were also placed within it but those cited here aje the only ones that have' come down to us in these texts. With regard to the qualities of the Tathagata that are placed within this framework, these are not particularly coherent, those in quote (8) comprising adaptations of other formulas, especially that of paras. 40-94 of the Samannaphala Sutta, those in quote (11) perhaps based upon a challenge that was once made against the Buddha and of which no record remains in these texts.
Having invented the attribution of a lions roar to the Buddha, the redactors generalised this invention to include trunks as well. With regard to the monk’s lion’s roars, the permission to the monks to make a ‘lion’s roar’ about the four types of samairu is an example of textual muddle 122 . Probably Sariputta’s great irn-
122 See Manne (1990): 4.1
Buddhist Studies Review 13, .1 (1996)
poriance attracted to him a ho the attribution of various lion’s
roars. One of Sari putta’s lion’s roars is a piece of pure propaganda,
while the other two form part of dramatic stories' The anomaly
between these lion’s roars, two being designated as such by the
Buddha while the third docs nut possess such purported authori¬
sation may reflect the different tendencies on the part of the
reciters regarding what they would or would not put into a lion’s roar. The examples in the Thera- and Therl-gatha are clearly
poetry, as is the attribution of the epithet ‘lion’s roarer’ to a monk.
A simile is invented, a lion’s roar is created for the Buddha, and then for the monks. The next step is to impose this invention on suuus (the inclusion of the term slhan&da in their titles may reflect late ideas in which suttas were particularly important). Thus is tradition created!
ABHIDHAMMA STUDIES
At the British Buddhist Association, London, we shall, be reading again from September Dhammasahgani, Vibhanga, Patthana and Commentaries in English translation. We welcome those wishing to study along with us. They should contact:
A Haviland-Nye 11 Biddulph Road London W9 1JA Tel/Fax: 0171 286 5575.
DEATH AS MEDITATION SUBJECT IN THE THERAVADA TRADITION
In 1986, headlines such as ‘U.S. Buddhist monk meditates on
decaying corpses’ 1 and ‘Corpses remind me of nature of Samsara’ 1
were on the front page of Sinhalese newspapers. The articles were
describing the peculiar meditation practice of an American monk
named Alokadhamma. I’hree years after his ordination, Bhikkhu
Alokadhamma had become famous throughout the island of Sri Lanka because he resided in a cave in the company of two
decomposing bodies placed in a glass cage, with four other bodies
laid outside. These reports became the impetus for the attempt to
answer the question that this paper is revolving around: what is
the place and the role of the meditation on death within the
contemporary Theravada Buddhist tradition?
Alokadhamma’s practice was most probably derived from the Satipatthana Sutta, where the Buddha describes the nine types of charnel-ground meditation. In order to clarify this unusual prac¬ tice, however, the position as put forth in Theravada literature first needs to be investigated. This will clarify the boundaries of the two major meditation practices centred on death, it. asubha- bhavaiia and maranasati. Secondly, in an attempt to conceptualise the contemporary practice, 1 will allude to eleven qualitative interviews that I conducted with Buddhist monks and with a dasa sil matavo in Sri Lanka during May 1993; it is important to em-
' 1 Dharmasiri Gamage, VS. Buddhist monks meditates on decaying corpses*. The
Sunday Observer , Colombo, 2 November 1986.
2 Id., ‘Corpses remind me of nature of Samsara’, op. cit „ 9 November 1986.
Buddhist Studies Review 13, 1 (1996)
Manue — The Lion’s Roar
grcai man and a lion exists in other Indian texts 118 . It exists too in
our language 119 , and doubtless in many other languages which
have inherited the idea that the lion is the king of the beasts.
Lions roar, so the Buddha roars too. The early reciters attributed
the epithet ‘lion’ to the Buddha, expanded the comparison to
describe the likenesses and included the detail of \he (lion’s) ‘roar’. '
The evidence (to be considered in detail below) suggests that it
was the existence of this simile which inspired the reciters to
attribute a content to, or to invent a content for the Buddha’s
lion’s roar.
Having set the scene, so to speak, with regard to the early . reciters, we can now show how our investigation of the texts about the lion’s roar supports these ideas.
First of all there is the invention of situating the Buddha’s lion’s roar within a tradition of debate. The term ‘lion’s roar’ is not connected with the Vedic debate tradition. It occurs neither in the Upanisads nor in the Brahmanas. As the Buddhist texts can be so faithful and so accurate in their representation of the Vedic tradition 120 , we can conclude from this that the term ‘lion’s roar’ for a challenge is an invention of the Buddhist reciters. We can further conclude that it was part, of this invention fictitiously to situate the lion’s roar challenge within the debate tradition. Some details placed within the Buddha’s lion’s roar probably authen¬ tically belong to the Vedic debate tradition: the Buddha’s re¬ futation of a potential challenge to his capacities as a debater may be among these 121 , though 1 specify that I mean that these
118 See Monicr-Williams. s.v, sirnhu for many examples.
119 We have ihc expressions ‘a lion among men, ‘the strength of a lion’, etc.
120 See Witzcl, op. ci/; Manne (1990). (1992).
121 Formula (4). See also Manne (1992).
represent the demands of the tradition on a debater and not that
the Buddha himself uttered these very phrases. There is no way
we can establish as a fact which phrases the Buddha ever uttered.
Other details have to be accounted for differently.
I have argued that the early reciters spontaneously created similes, and with them, in this example of the lion’s roar, frameworks within which they could present their accounts. With regard to the aspects of the Teaching that come within the lions roar’ and the powers and confidences of the Tathagata, 1 think that here we see redactors usihg such a framework inventively. The framework is that of the simile that compares the Buddha to a lion and attributes content to his roar. The existence of this framework, and the illogicality (why these particular aspects?) of the examples that remain to us of the Teachings placed within it, suggest the likelihood that many other aspects of the Teaching were also placed within it but those cited here are the only ones that have' come down to us in these texts. With regard to the qualities of the Tathagata that are placed within this framework, these are not particularly coherent, those in quote (8) comprising adaptations of other formulas, especially that of paras. 40-94 of the Samaiinaphala Sutta, those in quote (11) perhaps based upon a challenge that was once made against the Buddha and of which no record remains in these texts.
Having invented the attribution of a lion’s roar to the Buddha, the redactors generalised this invention to include ironks as well. With regard to the monk’s lion’s roars, the permission to the monks to make a ‘lion’s roar’ about the four types of sarnana is an example of textual muddle 122 . Probably Sariputta’s great inv
122 See Manne (1990>. 4.1
Buddhist Studies Review 13, .1 (1996)
portancc attracted to him al'o the attribution of various lion’s
roars. One of oariputta’s lion's roars is a piece of pure propaganda,
while the other two form part of dramatic stories. The anomaly
between these lion’s roars, two being designated as such by the
Buddha while the third docs not possess such purported authori¬
sation may reflect the different tendencies on the part of the
reciters regarding what they would or would not put into a lion’s roar. The examples in the Thera- and Therl-gatha are clearly
poetry, as is the attribution of the epithet ‘lion’s roarer’ to a monk.
A simile is invented, a lion’s roar is created for the Buddha, and then for the monks. The next step is to impose this invention on suttas (the inclusion of the term slliandda in their titles may reflect late ideas in which suttas were particularly important). Thus is tradition created!
ABHIDHAMMA STUDIES
At the British Buddhist Association, London, we shall..be reading again from September DhammasaAgani, Vibhanga, Patthana and Commentaries in English translation. We welcome those wishing to study along with us. They should contact:
A Haviland-Nye 11 Biddulph Road London W9 1JA Tel/Fax: 0171 286 5575.
DEATH AS MEDITATION SUBJECT IN THE THERAVADA TRADITION
In 1986, headlines such as ‘U.S. Buddhist monk meditates on
decaying corpses’ 1 and ‘Corpses remind me of nature of Samsara’ 1
were on the front page of Sinhalese newspapers. The articles were
describing the peculiar meditation practice of an American monk
named Alokadhamma. three years after his ordination, Bhikkhu
Alokadhamma had become famous throughout the island of Sri Lanka because he resided in a cave in the company of two
decomposing bodies placed in a glass cage, with four other bodies
laid outside. These reports became the impetus for the attempt to
answer the question that this paper is revolving around: what is
the place and the role of the meditation on death within the
contemporary Theravada Buddhist tradition?
Alokadhamma’s practice was most probably derived from the Satipatfhana Sutta, where the Buddha describes the nine types of charnel-ground meditation. In order to clarify this unusual prac¬ tice, however, the position as put forth in Theravada literature first needs to be investigated. This will clarify the boundaries-of the two major meditation practices centred on death, i a. asubha- bhavana and rnaranasati. Secondly, in an attempt to conceptualise the contemporary practice, 1 will allude to eleven qualitative interviews that I conducted with Buddhist monks and with a dasa sil matavo in Sri Lanka during May 1993; it is important to em-
- 1 Dharmasiri Gamage, VS. Buddhist monks meditates on decaying corpses'. The
Sunday Observer , Colombo. 2 November 1986.
2 Id^ ‘Corpses remind me of nature of Samsara’, op, cil^ 9 November 1986.
phasise that all the interviewees belonged to hermitages (arah- haka) where meditation is given priority. The two-fold procedure of textual and contemporary analyses will allow us further to understand the theoretical and modern expressions of these practices.
Bhikkhu Alokadhamma’s meditation on death seems to stem from the description of the nine charnel-ground meditations men¬ tioned in the Satipatthana Sutta. This discourse, traditionally considered the theoretical base for meditation practice, is divided into four main sections: meditation on the body ( kayanupassana ,), on the sensations ( vedananupassana ), on the mind {cittanu pas Sa¬ na) and on the mental contents ( dhammanupassana ). The section concerned with the body is often regarded as the most eclectic of the four since it adumbrates different types of meditation. It discusses successively l) anapanasati, mindfulness of the breath, 2) mindfulness of the four postures (walking, standing, sitting and lying down), 3) mindfulness of whatever activities one is involved in, 4) mindfulness of the repulsivcness by reviewing the thirty-one 3
3 These 31 pans of the body, along with the brain, are the 32 subjects of meditation (katnmauhdna) that Buddhughosa includes in kayagatasati. ( ,..dvat •
limsakamkammauhanam: — idam idha kayagaia sail ti adhippetam. Vism 240).
We must point to the fact, however, that kayagaiasati is not restricted to those
32 parts of the body in the Suita literature, for it includes all the practices des¬
cribed in the kayanupassana of the Satipatthana Sutta (see Kayagaiasati Sutta, M
111 89). We must also remark that although this portion of the Satipatthana is
commonly known as the meditation on asubha (the ‘not-beautiful’), the term
asubha is neither employed within the Satipatthana Sutta itself nor in commen-
tarial literature referring to this passage; in the Sumangalavilasini, Buddhaghosa
uses the term patikula (or patikkula ), meaning 'disgust*. Yet. the two practices
seem to be analogous, for the Girimananda Sutta (A V 108) defines asubha -
sahha as the awareness of these 31 parts of the body. Although a slight nuance
may be introduced between asubha and asubhasahha we will, for the sake of
Boisvert — Death as meditation subject
parts’of the body, 5) mindfulness of the four .elements and finally, the practice that interests us, 6) the nine charnel-ground medi¬ tations (nava slvathikapabbanlY. For each of these nine types of contemplation, a standard formula is used throughout. The only nuance lies in the degree of decomposition of the body (or what is left of it) from the body that died the same day, to the rotten bones that have started transforming into dust. The formula runs like this: ‘as if'a monk were to see a corpse thrown aside in the charnel-ground [either dead since only one day, or since many months depending on the type of charnel-ground meditation one is involved in], he focuses on this [meaning his) body thus: "this body has the same nature, it will become the same as that body;
simplicity, adopt the common interpretation and refer to this practice as one
belonging to asubha meditation.
4 However, these six different typos of meditation within the section on the body (kayanupassana) may not be as eclectic as it seems- if considered from a particular perspective. Since this portion of the Satipatthana deals with the body, it might be possible that the Buddha classified the six meditations related to the body temporarily, i.e in the same order as the evolution of the body. The first bodily activity to take place after birth is breathing (anapiina) and the baby re¬ mains in the position he was laid (more or less); later the child learns to sit, stand and walk (the four postures); subsequently, the child becomes aware of his own person, his separate existence and activities on which he can reflect (mind¬ fulness of whatever activities one is involved in); when the child reaches his teens, passion emerges and therefore mindfulness of the repulsiveness by review¬ ing the 31 parts of the body becomes appropriate; when the individual’s intellec¬ tual capacity is at its peak, the more introspective practice of the four elements might be more appropriate; at the very end of life, when the body returns to ashes, we find the nine charnel-ground meditations (nava sivathikapabbani). This hypothetical scheme demands further investigation and does not imply that a specific practice ought to be undertaken exclusively during a particular period of life.
Buddhist Studies Review 13, 1 (1996)
it cannot escape it'" 5 6 . The recurring aspect of this formula stresses
that the monk must establish a parallel with his own‘body by
reflecting on the fact that it possesses the same nature ( evarfi -
dhammo) and that it will eventually reach the same state as that
decaying body (evam- bliavi). V;
We may raise the question of whether this particular passage prescribes the actual contemplation of corpses, for the only expli¬ cit prescription is to reflect on the fact that one’s own body will eventually be similar to those lying in charnel-grounds. The text does not necessarily require that the practitioner observe a corpse*. According to this passage, therefore, it does not seem imperative for someone practising the nine charnel-ground contemplations actually to observe corpses at that moment; it is only said that this person must reflect on the fact that his own body is possessed of the same nature as that of the bodies at different stages of decay.
HowSver, in the sixth chapter of the Visuddhimagga ( Asubha - kamrncitthananiddesa), Buddhaghosa elaborates on the method of pursuing such a practice and describes the observation of corpses at one of the ten different stages of decomposition. In this chapter ten stages are enumerated as asubhakammaffliaha (object of meditation for the practice of the non-beautiful); the bloated, the livid, the festering, the cut up, the gnawed, the scattered, the hacked and scattered, the bleeding, the worm-infested and the skeleton. These are basically the same as those nine described in
5 puna ca param bhikkhavc bhikkhu seyyatha pi passeyya sari ram sivathikaya
chadditam ckiimatam va dvihamalam va lihamatam vit uddhumatakam vinilakam
vipubbakdjdiam. so imam eva kayam upasamharanli: ‘Ayam pi kho kayo evam-
dhammo evam-bhitvi clam li'. D 11 295.
6 The verb of ihc subordinate clause (passeyya) is in the optative tense
(sailami) and is preceded by an adverb (seyyatha) meaning ‘just as'.
Boisvert — Death as meditation subject
the SatipaUhana Sutta, the primary difference being that in the
latter, the classification is arranged according to the period of
decay, while in the former it is according to the qualitative state
of the corpses. Elaborate training and preparation are prescribed
prior to the culmination of practice — the actual contemplation
of decaying bodies 7 . The commentator also explains the different
approaches one ought to take during the actual contemplation*
and also warns the reader that one should not use the body pf tbe
opposite sex for this practice. As Kevin Truinor has remarked*,
Buddhaghosa does not seem to take into consideration the section
7 A monk must intensively prepare himself before selling forth lo the char¬
nel-ground (or a similar place). According to Buddhaghosa (Vism 180X the prac¬
titioner must first find a teacher to supervise him; one cannot undertake this
discipline without guidance. Only after having learned everything from him,
should the disciple find a proper dwelling (this ‘proper dwelling* is described ii*
C1UV of Vism, §§1-20) and abide meditating (investigating; pariyesantena) on the
subject that was given to him. Later, if he hears that a corpse is lying at the
root of a tree, a village gate, a charnel-ground, etc., he must first inform his
superior before setting forth and undertaking his contemplation, the reason being
that if he does not return due lo lions, tigers, robbers, or others t . X the su¬
perior could send some younger monk to rescue him. Then only, the text says,
can he proceed ‘as happy as a warrior longing to witness an inauguration', Bud¬
dhaghosa also says that the yogi ought to go alone (eko adutiyo gacchali ) and
should not approach the charncl-ground against the wind {pativata ), for his own
body might react to the smell and he might repent havmg undertaken this
project.
8 The yogi ought to apprehend the sign ( nimitla ) (of the bloated. . . .) by 1) its colour, 2) its mark (the three phases of life), 3) its shape, 4) its direction, 5) its location, 6) its limitations, (Vism 184), 7) its joints, 8) its openings, 9) its concavities, 10) its convexities, and 11) all round (Vism 185). The last five 4 approaches are only recommended if the practitioner has not grasped the sign. i 9 Trainor, Kevin. ‘In the Eye of the Beholder; NonaUachment and the Body in Subha‘s Verse (Therigatha 71)*, JAAR LXJ/l, note 35. pp.68-9. The verses referred to are Theragalha 393-8.
Buddhist Studies Review 13, 1 (1996)
of the rheragithi where an arahant is portrayed as contemplating
a woman’s corpse in a charnel-ground.
In this chapter, although the objects of meditation are cadavers, the concept of death itself is totally absent. The chief aim of this practice is to develop asubha towards our own body , and that of others, in order to eradicate any kind of lust or passion that may arise 10 . The purpose of this meditation was not to develop an awareness of death itself, but rather to stimulate some sense of repulsion. Buddhaghosa further characterises these ten meditations as belonging to asubhabhdvand, and he perceives them as distinct from the meditation on death ( marandnussaii ),
- for he devotes a full chapter to this type of meditation, to which
wc will soon return. Buddhaghosa explains that the meditation on asubha particularly fits the greedy temperament ( ragacarita ), and he further elaborates by correlating each of the ten degrees of decay to a specific greed".
Although this correlation with the ten expressions of greed is probably the construct of the commentator, the Sutta literature —
10 ’This filthy body stinks outright / Like ordure, like a privy’s site / This
body men that have insight / Condemn, is object of a fools delight / A tumour
where nine holes abide / Wrapped in a coat of clammy hide / And trickling
filth on every side / Polluting the air with stenches far and wide / If it per¬
chance should come about / That what is inside came out / Surely a man
wo’ild need u knout / With which to put the crows 'tend dogs to rout*. (Vism VI
93, translation taken from The Path of Purification , p.203). It is interesting to
note that in the Vism, the meaning of the term asubha is very similar to that
of patikkula , i.e. rcpulsivcncss.
11 Vism, p.193 ff; Abhidiiamma and commeniarial literature classifies personalities into six types of temperament (carita): greedy ( rega ), hating ( dosa), deluded (moha), faithful {s add hi i), intelligent ( bud d hi ) and speculative (vitakka). On these, see Vism, p.101 ff.
Boisvert — Death os meditation subject
and especially the older sections — establishes an explicit link between the practice of asubha meditation and the greedy temperament. The Theragathii, for example, depicts the story of Singalapita who got rid of greed towards sensual desire through the contemplation of a skeleton (or at least the idea, sahhd, of a skeleton) 12 . However, the two most explicit passages correlating the awareness of asubha with the diminution of lust arc found in the Samyutta Nikaya and Anguttara Nikaya where it is clearly stated that asubha should be developed in order to rid oneself of lust 13 . Moreover, the various classifications of the qualities neces¬ sary for the eradication of lust always include asubha .or asubha- sahhd 1 *. Other passages in the Sutta literature indicate that these qualities do not eradicate lust, but lead to the deathless, a term often equated with Nibbana 15 . More precisely, the Samyutta Nikaya indicates that properly cultivating the recognition (sahhd) of any of five types of cadavers (the skeleton, the worm-eaten, the discoloured, the fissured and the inflated corpse) 14 can induce .arahanthood or the state of non-return 11 . From what wc have
12 Thag. p.4 (18).
13 Asubhaya cittam bhavehi. A 1 11K; asubha bhaveiabbii ragassa puhimaya. A IV 358.
14 In a list of 10. see A V 309-10; in a list of 9, A IV 465; in a list of 7. A
IV 148; in a list of 5. A IV 276.
15 In a list of 9, at A IV 3B7; in a list of 7, A IV 46.
16 Aff/iiJtd, pulavaka, vinilaka . vicehiddaka. uddumutuka. These 5 are members
of Budtlhaghosa’s ten-fold list of axubhakkatnmauhana referred to previously.
17 S V 129-31. The Vism exemplifies this statement by presenting the story of Mahatissa Thera: upon seeing the teeth (danUttlfuktc the lames of the teeth. The author stresses that is it the bones \atthika\ that Mahatissa perceives, for they are part of the skeleton and fall into the asubhakammaithana) of a woman running uway from her husband, Mahatissa acquired asubhasahha and attained Nibbana. When her husband, seeking his wife, asked him whether lie had seen a woman C*yBD*>UOraLi^- :V17*54 VsIMKjn: V> i"W* f. • . "9WWiM*^f ~ * V-*~.- V
Buddhist Studies Review 13, 1 (1996)
seen so far, the place ascribed to asubha within canonical Pali literature is unequivocal: its cultivation car. lead to Nibbana, or at least to great benefits such as the eradication of passion 18 .
This type of meditation is dependent, to a certain extent, up¬ on death, for in many instances it uses death as an object. We use the term object in the sense that there is something visible or tangible that can be observed. In these cases, the practitioner con¬ templates cadavers. Although death as an object is not necessary to practise asubha meditation, as with the contemplation of the thirty-one parts of the body, it is often considered a crucial re¬ quirement. It has already been noted that Buddhaghosa’s ten objects of meditation for the cultivation of asubha arc corpses at different stages of decay. Although Buddhaghosa’s emphasis on contemplation of corpses is not accentuated in the Sutta literature, 1 have found passages referring to it. There is, however, another type of meditation on death, known as maratyasati , which is
pass by, Mahiiiissa replied wilh \hc verses which later became famotis*in the
Thcravada tradition: Whether it was a man or a woman / That went by \
noticed not / But only that on this high road / There goes a group of bones.
(Vism, p.2L Translation quoted from The Path of Purification, p22\
18 However, this practice has to be undertaken with extreme care. A passage of the Vinaya (Vin. Ill iSultavibhahga), p.68 fO reports that monks who have been instructed by the Buddha to cultivate asubha asked a samana named Miga- landaka to deprive them of life, for their bodies had become an inconvenience to them. U is said that Migalandaka killed 60 monks in one day. The Buddha, noticing that the number of monks had decreased, requested Ananda to assemble all the monks. To counteract ihe effect of this practice of asubha, the Buddha taught anapanasati meditation, the meditation on respiration. Although it is not explicit in the text, it seems that anapanasati is used to counterbalance the negative effects that may arise from the practice of asubha, Thh incident is used in the Vinaya to explain the rule ( parajika III) that a monk should not intention illy kill anyone or be the instrument in the killing of anyone.
Boisvert — Death as meditation subject
radically different from asubha meditation, for it docs not use
death as an object, but rather as a subject. Death becomes the
theme of the meditation, and the practitioner is not required to
contemplate corpses. *
Very few allusions to maranasati are made in the canonical literature 19 , yet this practice seems central to the tradition. Most Buddhist traditions share the myth that before Gotama decided to leave the householder’s life to become a reduse, he came in con¬ tact with four sights: sickness, old age, death and asceticism. It is these four sights that triggered Gotama’s desire to go forth. It is interesting to note that the middle two sights are elements | belonging to the paficcasamuppada, a doctrine central to the
j tradition. Old age and death cannot be avoided and, on account of
j them, a whole mass of suffering arises in the future 20 . Facing the
continuous presence of suffering, as well as the inevitability of I death which may be sensed through ageing and old age, Gotama
sought release from this ongoing cycle of life and death. Quests j triggered by a similar realisation were also undertaken by other
I . characters in the Canon, especially in the Jataka literature 21 . All
19 Actually, the term maranasati appears rarely in canonical literature. Jp my
knowledge, only 4 discourses of the Angultara Nikaya (A III 303-8; A IV
316-22) arc centred around the them. 1 have not found occurrences elsewhere in .
the Sutta literature.
20 E\>am ctassa dukJJtakkhandhassa satnudaya hoti. S II 5.
21 For example, the Bodhisatta, in one of his previous lives, is reported to have said: 'Our life as living beings is similar U) dew drops on the grass; having asked my mother and father, l ought to go forth in order to subjugate sickness, old age and death’ (J IV 121). One of the elders of the Theragitha uttered a comparable verse: 'Having seen an aged person, someone afflicted by sickness and someone whose life faculties have vanished, I became a wandering renun- date, abandoning all enticing pleasures' (Thag, pjl). Many other passages from the Jataka literature show that desire to renounce worldly life arose from the
Buddhist Studies Review 13, 1 (1996)
of the ITheragatha where an arahant is portrayed as contemplating
a woman’s corpse in a charnel-ground.
In this chapter, although the objects of meditation are cadavers, the concept of death itself is totally absent. The chief aim of this practice is to develop asubha towards our own body and that of others, in order to eradicate any kind of lust or passion that may arise 10 . The purpose of this meditation was not to develop an awareness of death itself, but rather to stimulate some sense of repulsion. Buddhaghosa further characterises these ten meditations as belonging to asubhabhavana, and he perceives them as distinct from the meditation on death ( marananussati ), « for he devotes a full chapter to this type of meditation, to which we will soon return. Buddhaghosa explains that the meditation on asubha particularly fits the greedy temperament ( ragacarita ), and he further elaborates by correlating each of the ten degrees of decay to a specific greed".
Although this correlation with the ten expressions of greed is probably the construct of the commentator, the Sutta literature —
10 'This filthy body slinks outright / Like ordure, like a privy's site / This
body men that have insight / Condemn, is object of a fool's delight / A tumour
where nine holes abide / Wrapped in a coal of clammy hide / And trickling
filth on every side / Polluting the air with stenches far and wide / If it per¬
chance should come about / That what is inside came out / Surely a man
would need a knout / With which to put the crows 'and dogs to rout'. (Vism VI
93, translation taken from The Path of Purification , p.203). It is interesting to
note that in the Vism, the meaning of the term asubha is very similar to that
of patikkula, i.e. rcpul&ivcncss.
U Vism. p.193 ff: Abhidiiamma and commentarial literature classifies 0 personalities into six types of temperament ( carita): greedy (rega), hating {dosa\ deluded (tnoha). faithful {saddha), intelligent {buddhi) and speculative (vitakka). On these, see Vism. p.101 ff.
Boisvert — Death as meditation subject
and especially the older sections — establishes an explicit link
between the practice of asubha meditation and the greedy
temperament. The Theragatha, for example, depicts the story of
Singalapita who got rid of greed towards sensual desire through
the contemplation of a skeleton (or at least the idea, sahha, of a
skeleton) 15 . However, the two most explicit passages correlating
the awareness of asubha with the diminution of lust are found in
the Samyutta Nikaya and Anguttara Nikaya where it is clearly
stated that asul)ha should be developed in order to rid oneself of
lust 13 . Moreover, the various classifications of the qualities neces¬
sary for the eradication of lust always include asubha pr asubha-
sahha'*. Other passages in the Sutta literature indicate that these
qualities do- not eradicate lust, but load to the deathless, a term
often equated with Nibbana 15 . More precisely, the Samyutta Nikaya indicates that properly cultivating the recognition (sanhS)
of any of five types of cadavers (the skeleton, the worm-eaten,
the discoloured, the fissured and the inflated corpse) 16 can induce
.arahanthood or the state of non-return 17 . From what wc have
12 Thag. p.4 (181
13 As ub hay a citlarn bhavchi. A \ UK. asubha bhavelabha rdgassa pahdndya. A IV 358.
\4 a list of 10. see A V 309-10; in a list of 9, A IV 4(>5; in a list of 7. A
IV 148; in a list of 5. A IV 276.
15 In a list of 9, at A IV 387; in a list of 7. A IV 4b.
16 Atthika, pulavaka , vinilaJuu vice hi dd aka. uddumiiluka. These 5 are members of Buddhaghosa s len-foid list of asubhakkatntnatihdna referred to previously.
17 S V 129-3L The Vism exemplifies this statement by presenting the story of Mahatissa Thera: upon seeing the teeth (dant atthika: the hones of the teeth. The author stresses that is it the bones \atlhika\ that Mahatissa perceives, for they are part of the skeleton and fall into the asubhakammatthdna) of a woman running away from her husband. Mahatissa acquired asubhasanfta and attained Nibbana. When her husband, seeking his wife, asked him whether he had seen a woman
Buddhist Studies Review 13, 1 (1996)
seen so far, the place ascribed to asubha within canonical Pali literature is unequivocal: its cultivation can lead to N-ibbana, or at least to great benefits such as the eradication of passion 18 .
This type of meditation is dependent, to a certain extent, up¬ on death, for in many instances it uses death as an object. We use the term object in the sense that there is something visible or tangible that can be observed. In these cases, the practitioner con¬ templates cadavers. Although death as an object is not necessary to practise asubha meditation, as with the contemplation of the thirty-one parts of the body, it is often considered a crucial re¬ quirement. It has already been noted that Buddhaghosa’s ten objects of meditation for the cultivation of asubha are corpses at different stages of decay. Although Buddhaghosa’s emphasis on contemplation of corpses is not accentuated in the Sutta literature, 1 have found passages referring to it. There is, however, another type of meditation on death, known as maravasati, which is
pass by. Mahutissa replied with "the verses which later became'famous*in the
Theravada tradition: Whether it was a man or a woman / That went by 1
noticed not / But only that on this high road / There goes a group of bones.
(Vism, p.21. Translation quoted from The Path of Purification, p22).
18 However, (his practice has to be undertaken with extreme care. A passage of the Vinaya (Vin. Ill iSuttavibhahga), p.68 fO reports that monks who have been instructed by the Buddha to cultivate asubha asked a samana named Miga- landaka to deprive them of life, for their bodies had become an inconvenience to them. U is said that Migalandaka killed 60 monks in one day. The Buddha, noticing that the number of monks had decreased, requested Ananda to assemble all the monks. To counteract the effect of this practice of asubha, the Buddha taught anapanasati meditation, the meditation on respiration. Although it is not explicit in (he text, it seems that anapanasati is used to counterbalance the negative effects that may arise from the practice of asubha. Thh incident is used in the Vinaya to explain the rule ( parajika 111) that a monk should not intention illy kill anyone or to the instrument in the killing of anyone.
Boisvert — Death as meditation subject
radically different from asubha meditation, for it does not use death as an object, but rather as a subject. Death becomes the theme of the meditation, and the practitioner is not required to contemplate corpses. *
Very few allusions to mara^asati are made in the canonical literature 19 , yet this practice seems central to the tradition. Most Buddhist traditions share the myth that before Gotama decided to leave the householder’s life to become a recluse, he came in con¬ tact with four sights: sickness, old age, death and asceticism. It is these four sights that triggered Gotama’s desire to go forth. It is interesting to note that the middle two sights are elements belonging to the paficcasamuppada, a doctrine central to the tradition. Old age and death cannot be avoided and, on account of them, a whole mass of suffering arises in the future 80 . Facing the continuous presence of suffering, as well as the inevitability of death which may be sensed through ageing and old age, Gotama' sought release from this ongoing cycle of life and death. Quests triggered by a similar realisation were also undertaken by other characters in the Canon, especially in the Jataka literature 81 . All
19 Actually, the term maranasali appears rarely in canonical literature. X<> tty
knowledge, only 4 discourses of the Anguttara Nikaya (A Ill 303-8; A IV
316*22) arc centred around the them. I have not found occurrences elsewhere in,
the Sutta literature.
20 E\>am ctassa dukUiakkhandhassa samudaya hoti, S II 5.
21 For example, the Bodhisatta, in one of his previous lives, is reported to have said: ‘Our life as living beings is similar U> dew drops on the grass; having asked my mother and father, I ought to go forth in order to subjugate sickness, old age and death* 0 IV 121). One of the elders of the Thera gal ha uttered a comparable verse: ‘Having seen an aged person, someone afflicted by sickness and someone whose life faculties have vanished, I became a wandering renun- ciate, abandoning all enticing pleasures* (Thag, p.11). Many other passages from the Jataka literature show that desire to renounce worldly life arose from the
Buddhist Studies Review 13, 1 (1996)
Boisvert — Death as meditation subject
these passages underscore the urgency ( samvega ) that is felt when • death approaches.
Buddhaghosa, however, places considerable emphasis on the practice of maranasati 22 . He first introduces the subject by cir¬ cumscribing what is meant by marana in this particular context. ^
Death is simply the termination of one’s life.faculty, '.e. the en<j 1
of one’s life span. He then proceeds to define marananussati itself { and what is entailed in this practice:
So mindfulness of death is the remembering of death, in other words, of the interruption of the life faculty. One who wants to develop this should go into solitary retreat and exercise attention wisely in this way: ‘Death will take place; the life faculty will be interrupted’ or ‘Death, death' 23 .
According to the commentator, this exercise ought to generate mindfulness {sati\ the sense of urgency {samvega) and knowledge (nana¥\ If it is not successful, the practitioner should recollect death in eight different ways: 1) as a murderer (who appears sud-
mere fact of realising that we are not immune to old age. King Makhadeva, for
example, uttered the following verse upon noticing one single grey hair on his
head: ‘These grey hairs that appear on my head are deaths own messengers that
come to rob my life. Now ix the time that I renounce the worldly life* (J I 138.
The Susima Jataka (J III 237J, Cullasutasoma Jataka [J V 91) and Nimi Jataka [J
VI 53] are of the same character).
22 U is interesting to note that Buddhaghosa does not use the term marana¬ sati but rather marananussati. Though one wouUJ lend to think that the com¬ mentator used a different terminology than the one used in the Sutta in order to underline a nuance between two practices, Buddhaghosa himself wrote that sati itself \\ an anussaii and the main distinction is that the latter ‘occurs only in those instances where it should occur* {The Path of Purification , p.204).
23 The Path of Purification . p.248.
24 Ibid .
denly and takes away life), 2) as the ruin of success (for death is the ruining of life’s success), 3) by comparison ((i.e. by comparing onself to others who have died), 4) as to the sharing of the body with many (kinds of worms and creatures), 5) as to the fragility of life, 6) as signless (in the sense of unpredictable), 7) as to the limit of the extent, and 8) as to the brevity of the moment (in the sense that one is alive only for the duration of one’s conscious* ness). This last perspective on death contradicts the definition that the commentator himself had set at the beginning of the chapter. Death, in this context, ought to be seen as the termination of the life faculty and does not include the constant dissolution of the aggregates — what is technically termed momentary death ( Ichanikamaranain ). Yet, having excluded momentary death at the outset, Buddhaghosa reintegrates it with the eighth perspective.
In modern Sri Lanka, whore Buddhaghosa lived some 1,500 years ago, -charnel-grounds arc basically non-existent. Bodies are either- burned, when the finanical situation of a family allows it, or our ted. Monks wishing to practise asubhabhavana, as described ... by Buddhaghosa, have to find alternatives. Since one of the ten stages of decomposition of corpses is known as ‘cut up’ ( [vicchid - dakam) a possible option for monks wishing to follow Buddha- ghosa’s prescription is to attend sessions where bodies are actually cut up: postmortem examinations are the ideal modern alternative. Although Buddhaghosa originally suggested locations such as • battlefields, forests infested with robbers or charnel-grounds where
« kings have theives cut up”, the autopsy room seems a viable
compromise.
25 Vicchiddakam yaddhamandalc vd cardtaviyam vd susdne vd , yaitha rdjano core chindapenti, arannd vd pana sthavyagghchi chinnapurisat thane labbhati. Vism 190.
Buddhist Studies Review 13, 1 (1996)
iTMn’mii'iMMlarrri' - m -
Boisvert — Death as meditation subject
During my research, I had the opportunity to observe one
monk who attended an autopsy at the Colombo General Hospital 26 *
I interviewed a monk of British origin who mentioned that he was planning to attend an autopsy a few days later. He invited me to accompany him. On that day, 1 met him at the hospital temple around 9.30 am and proceeded directly to the room where postmortems were performed. When we entered, two cadavers were already being autopsied, with a third one laid on the ground waiting its turn. All were males. Since the monk had not enquired \ as to the sex of the bodies, it did not seem that Buddhaghosa’s
restriction carried much weight.
The smell was paradoxically vivid. The monk approached one j of the bodies. Two men were working on the abdomen, emptying
i it of its contents. The monk remained beside the body for ap-
) proximately five minutes, then walked around, keeping his eyes
on the object of his meditation. He asked me how 1 was coping with the situation three times. The two technicians were now working on the head, cutting it open with a saw. The monk £ approached to have a closer view of the process. Two minutes
later, he moved to the other body, whose autopsy was already
completed. He looked at all the internal organs (lungs, heart, liver, ly* n S on the table, took the hand of the dead man in his, and asked me: ‘you can feci death, do you want to touch?* 7 . I politely
26 We were supposed to attend a second one at the Kandy General Hospital,
with 2 other monks. The morning of the autopsy, we all went to the hospital as
planned with the medical authorities, and wailed in vain for 2 hours for the
judicial medical officer. At 11.00 am. we had to return to the monastery since
monks have to eat before noon.
27 Buddhaghosa. when describing the practice of asubha in reference to the cut up. continue, by stressing that the yogi should never tctuch the body; the dismembc.ed P arls should be reassembled by a monastery attendant, someone
reminded him that my task was simply to observe him and his practice, nothing else. He then proceeded to the body of the elderly man lying on the floor, after which we left. We had spent approximately twenty minutes in the autopsy room before heading back to the hospital temple where 1 interviewed him.
Immediately following the autopsies, when asked how he felt, the monk answered that he still had a feeling of unease and that disgust was still pre-eminent in his mind. By witnessing an au¬ topsy, he continued, one is able to investigate at a deeper level the nature of the body, that'is, the foulness inherent in the body we often perceive as attractive. It is also crucial, he stressed, to couple this particular practice with vipassana meditation. The emotions, sensations and images that arise when one witnesses an autopsy need to be dealt with. In order to transform this ex¬ perience into a meditative process, one has to develop constant and objective awareness of these sensations and emotions. This enables the practitioner to cultivate an understanding of the reality as it is, without generating hatred or disgust towards individuals themselves.
After reflecting on the extreme nature of this particular practice, I questioned the monk as to its relation to one of the central teachings of the Buddha — what is known as the middle- path 0 majjhimapatipada). He explained that what is meant by ‘middle-path’ is not moderation, but rather the capacity to develop a stable state of mind, a sort of indifference — or rather equa¬ nimity — regardless of the situation. The middle-path is avoiding
studying to become an ascetic, or by the yogi himself with the help of a stick.
The reason given is that**he would come to handle it without disgust as a
corpse-burner would’ (Paramatthamanjusa 176; translation taken from The Path
of Purification , p.197, n.ll).
Buddhist Studies Review 13, 1 (1996)
Boisvert — Death as meditation subject
these passages underscore the urgency ( samvega ) that is felt when
death approaches.
" Buddhaghosa, however, places considerable emphasis on the practice of maranasati 22 . He first introduces the subject by cir¬ cumscribing what is meant by marana in this particular context. Death is simply the termination of one’s life faculty, '.e. the en<j of one’s life span. He then proceeds to define marananussati itself and what is entailed in this practice:
So mindfulness of death is the remembering of death, in other words, of the interruption of the life faculty. One who wants to develop this should go into solitary retreat and exercise attention wisely in this way: ‘Death will take place; the life faculty will be interrupted’ or ‘Death, death’ 23 .
According to the commentator, this exercise ought to generate mindfulness (sati), the sense of urgency (samvega) and knowledge (nana) 2 \ If it is not successful, the practitioner should recollect death in eight different ways: 1) as a murderer (who appears sud-
mere fact of realising that we are not immune to old age. King Makhadeva, for
example, uttered the following verse upon noticing one single grey hair on his
head: 'These grey hairs that appear on my head are death’s own messengers that
come to rob my life. Now is the time that I renounce the worldly life* (J I 138.
The Susirnu Jataka (J III 237), Cullasutasoma Jataka (J V 91) and Nimi Jataka [J
VI 53) are of the same character).
22 It is interesting to note that Buddhaghosa does not use the term marana - sati but rather marananussati Though one wouhj lend to think that the com¬ mentator used a different lenninology than the one used in the Sutta in order to underline a nuance between two practices, Buddhaghosa himself wrote that sati itself is an anussaii and the main distinction is that the latter 'occurs only in those instances where it should occur (The Path of Purification , p204).
23 The Path of Purification . p.248.
24 Ibid .
denly and takes away life), 2) as the ruin of success (for death is the ruining of life’s success), 3) by comparison ((i.e. by comparing onself to others who have died), 4) as to the sharing of the body with many (kinds of worms and creatures), 5) as to the fragility of life, 6) as signless (in the sense of unpredictable), 7) as to the I limit of the extent, and 8) as to the brevity of the moment (in the
j sense that one is alive only for the duration of one’s conscious¬
ness). This last perspective on death contradicts the definition that the commentator himself had set at the beginning of the chapter. Death, in this context, ought to be seen as the termination of the life faculty and does not include the constant dissolution of the aggregates — what is technically termed momentary death (khariikamaranam). Yet, having excluded momentary death at the outset, Buddhaghosa reintegrates it with the eighth perspective.
In modern Sri Lanka, where Buddhaghosa lived some 1,500 years ago, -charnel-grounds arc basically non-existent. Bodies are either- burned, when the finanical situation of a family allows it, or ouried. Monks wishing to practise asubhabhavana, as described by Buddhaghosa, have to find alternatives. Since one of the ten stages of decomposition of corpses is known as ‘cut up’ (vicchid- dakam) a possible option for monks wishing to follow Buddha- ghosa’s prescription is to attend sessions where bodies arc actually cut up: postmortem examinations are the ideal modern alternative. Although Buddhaghosa originally suggested locations such as battlefields, forests infested with robbers or charnel-grounds where kings have theives cut up 25 , the autopsy room seems a viable compromise.
25 Vicchiddakam yaddhamandalc vd carat aviyam vd suscinc vd, yattha rajano
core chinddpenti, arafxhd vd pana sthavyaxghchi chinnapuri sal thane labbhati.
Visin 190.
Uuddlilst Studies Review 13, 1 (1996)
During my research, 1 had the opportunity to observe one
monk who attended an autopsy at the Colombo General Hospital 26 .
I interviewed a monk of British origin who mentioned that he was planning to attend an autopsy a few days later. He invited me to accompany him. On that day, I met him at the hospital temple around 9.30 am and proceeded directly to the room where postmortems were performed. When we entered, two cadavers were already being autopsied, with a third one laid on the ground waiting its turn. All were males. Since the monk had not enquired as to the sex of tne bodies, it did not seem that Buddhaghosa’s restriction carried much weight.
The smell was paradoxically vivid. The monk approached one of the bodies. Two men were working on the abdomen, emptying it of its contents. The monk remained beside the body for ap¬ proximately five minutes, then walked around, keeping his eyes on the object of his meditation. He asked me how I was coping with the situation three times. The two technicians were now working on the head, cutting it open with a saw. The monk approached to have a closer view of the process. Two minutes later, he moved to the other body, whose autopsy was already completed. He looked at all the internal organs (lungs, heart, liver, •..) lying on the table, took the hand of the dead man in his, and asked me: ‘you can feel death, do you want to touch?’ 27 .1 politely
26 We were supposed lo allend a second one al the Kandy General Hospiul,
with 2 other monks. The morning of the autopsy, we all went to the hospital as
planned with the medical authorities, and wailed in vain for 2 hours for the
judicial medical officer. At 11.00 am. we had to return to the monastery since
monks have to eat before noon.
27 Buddhaghosa, when describing the practice of asubha in reference to the cut up, continue* by stressing that the yogi should never much the body; the dismembe.ed parts should be reassembled by a monastery attendant, someone
Boisvert — Death as meditation subject
reminded him that my task was simply to observe him and his
practice, nothing else. He then proceeded to the body of the
elderly man lying on the floor, after which we left. We had spent
approximately twenty minutes in the autopsy room before
heading back to the hospital temple where I interviewed him.
Immediately following the autopsies, when asked how he felt, the monk answered that he still had a feeling of unease and that disgust was still pre-eminent in his mind. By witnessing an au¬ topsy, he continued, one is able to investigate at a deeper level the nature of the body, lhat'is, the foulness inherent in the body we often perceive as attractive. It is also crucial, he stressed, to couple this particular practice with vipassana meditation. The emotions, sensations and images that arise when one witnesses an autopsy need to be dealt with. In order to transform this ex- perience into a meditative process, one has to develop constant and objective awareness of these sensations and emotions. This enables the practitioner to cultivate an understanding of the reality as it is, without generating hatred or disgust towards individuals themselves.
After reflecting on the extreme nature of this particular practice, I questioned the monk as to its relation to one of the central teachings of the Buddha - what is known as the middle- path ( majjhimapatipada ). He explained that what is meant by ‘middle-path’ is not moderation, but rather the capacity to develop a stable state of mind, a sort of indifference - or rather equa¬ nimity — regardless of the situation. The middle-path is avoiding
studying to become an ascetic, or by the yogi himself with the help of a stick.
The reason given is ihal,*he would come lo handle it without disgust as a
corpse-burner would’ (Paramatthamanjusa 176; translation taken from The Path
of Purification , p.197, n.ll).
Buddhist Studies Review 13, 1 (1996)
extremes in the sense that the mind remains aloof from pleasure and pain; the mind simply becomes a detached observer of the situations being experienced. However, he admitted that this was an extreme and occasional situation that he decided to place himself into in order to observe the reactions that would arise. During the seven years that he has been a monk, this was only the second time he witnessed an autopsy. His own specific practice is grounded in an interest in understanding how the mind manufactures emotions and how these are related to thoughts. To achieve this comprehension, he practises the more traditionally accepted form of meditation, i.e. vipassana.
I also interviewed ten other members of the Sangha 28 , most of whom had practised this postmortem-meditation at least once. When asked to explain how they understood maranasati, all agreed with Buddhaghosa’s interpretation that maranasati re¬ quires the practitioners to remind themselves constantly of the proximity of death. From the subsequent analyses of the inter¬ views, I noticed that two other practices had also been classified as maranasati. Without ever challenging Buddhaghosa’s definition, eight of the eleven interviewees suggested that maranasati was broader than this mere awareness of the potentiality of death. First, they considered meditation on asubha, as described by Buddhaghosa (i.e. the ten types of charnel-ground contemplations or their modern expression in the autopsy room) as belonging to maranasati as long as the yogis perceived and constantly con¬ templated the fragility of life. This falls in-line with the Sati-
, 28 The of ihe dasa sil matavo is ihe object of a controversy among the
Sinhalese monastic community. IFor more information on the subject, see Tessa Barlholomcus/. Womdn under the Do Tree. Buddhist Nuns in Sri Lanka. Cambridge 1994]
Boisvert — Death as meditation subject
i patthana’s suggestion that practitioners must reflect on the fact
| that their body possesses the same nature. In fact, many monks in
Sri Lanka have witnessed autopsies in order to cultivate
! asubha and/or maranasati. Moreover, photographs of autopsies
j are broadly available for the Thai monastic community and these
. are widely circulated in Sri Lanka. Most of the hermitages where
the interviews were conducted had at least a few of these photo- | graphs and/or partial or complete skeletons used for meditation purposes. All the monks using these tools, however, strongly emphasised that without reflecting on their own body, the charnel-ground contemplations (or the contemplation of the photographs or the skeletons) remain solely at the asubha level.
These same eight monastics perceived maranasati as the natural result of their daily riieditatidn. As the abbot in charge of a major meditatibn centre in Colombo remarked, -death itself is merely a concept which is totally devoid of substance For this reason, it is impossible to focus on it’. He further explained that what we conventionally call death does not exist, for the simple reason that in order for something/someone to die, it needs to possess an independent existence which Buddhist doctrine denies with the theories of anicca, anatta and paticcasamuppada. A person docs not merely die at the end of one’s existence for, at the deepest level, this person never existed. What we normally term 'person’ is an amalgam of five aggregates which arc con¬ stantly changing. Every moment, each of these aggregates arises and passes away ( upajjhitva , nirujjhanti). Therefore, maranasati, viewed from this angle, cannot be separated from the normal practice of vipassana meditation which aims, as the tradition claims, at seeing things as they really are. Practitioners of vi¬ passana who simply observe their own mind and body soon notice the transitory character of existence. Eventually, they become aware that birth and death happen at every single mo-
Buddhist Studies Review 13, 1 (1996)
Boisvert — Death as meditation subject
ment. Material particles arise and vanish: death is present through¬
out the life-process. Such an awareness helps, on the one hand, to
cope with what we conventionally call death. By becoming
increasingly aware of the presence of death, at the experiential
level, practitioners are no more intimidated when the final mo¬
ment comes. Death is nothing but the culmination of successive
deaths which one had gradually learned to deal with. On the other
hand, this same process helps them live a less egocentric,.more
detached, cquanimous and compassionate life, for they have come
to understand that nothing is worth clinging to, and that human
suffering is directly related to the cultivation of the awareness of
impermanence, the core of Theravada Buddhist meditation. In
fact, when one practises one of these two thoroughly, the other is
also automatically practised, whether consciously or not.
The view that maranasati is intimately linked with vipas- sand is also corroborated by the fact that the former is one of the four protections ( caturarakklia ). Members of the Sangha as well as lay-meditators in intensive training are encouraged to recite daily the verses of protections. By recollecting the qualities of the Buddha, promoting loving-kindness, restraining sexual desires through asubha and promoting the awareness of death, the practitioners’ ability to deepen their meditation is supposed to in¬ crease. It is also noteworthy that lay people going to the temple in order to pay respect to the Buddha often recite a standard verse similar to those found in the four protections: I pay respect to the Buddha; may I obtain some merit This body [of mine] will be destroyed just as these flowers will fade”. This indicates that
29 Pujcmi buddham kusumena nena I Punncna me te fabhami mukham /
Puppham milayati yatha idam me / Kayo tatha yali vinasa bhavam II A simitar
verse stressing that all are subject to Uealh is also frequently used by lay follow¬
the practice of maranasati as such is not only followed by medi¬
tators but, to a certain extent, by most devout Buddhists as well.
When asked how a monk should practise marariasati, the abbot suggested two methods, the second being much more effec¬ tive than the first. One may start by the simple recital of the four protections discussed above. When meditators are more advanced in their practice of vipassana, they can embark on a radically different practice. They should lie like a corpse, preferably at night and, as suggested by Buddhaghosa, recall that Buddhas, kings, neighbours and parents have died. They then remind them¬ selves that death is inevitable. It is at this stage that they must ‘feel life go out from every part of the body, from the toes upwards. If this practice is accomplished properly, one actually dies’. The- abbot himself refused to answer when 1 asked if he practises this sort of meditation, for members of the Sangha are not supposed to brag about their accomplishments. Neither did he clarify whether he meant that the body technically dies and is r.eanimatcd, or that one symbolically dies by becoming aware of the ever presence of death throughout the body, a presence manifesting itself through the constant process of impermanence. This second interpretation would be in line with the traditional practice of vipassana.
It is clear from these eight interviews that the practice of maranasati not only includes a. constant remembrance of the finitude of life, but also incorporates asubhabhavana and the awarness of anicca. This perception of maranasati differs radi¬ cally from Buddhaghosa’s, for the latter only considered the aware-
ers: Namami buddham gunasdgaram lam l Sail ha saddha honiu sukhi avira /
Kayo jigujjo sakalo dugandho / Gacchanti sabbe maranam aham ca ll
Boisvert — Death as meditation subject
Buddhist Studies Review 13, 1 (1996)
extremes in the sense that the mind remains aloof from pleasure and pain; the mind simply becomes a detached observer of the situations being experienced. However, he admitted that this was an extreme and occasional situation that he decided to place himself into in order to observe the reactions that would arise. During the seven years that he has been a monk, this was only the second time he witnessed an autopsy. His own specific practice is grounded in an interest in understanding how the mind manufactures emotions and how these are related to thoughts. To achieve this comprehension, he practises the more traditionally accepted form of meditation, i.e. vipassana.
I also interviewed ten other members of the Sangha 28 , most of whom had practised this postmortem-meditation at least once. When asked to explain how they understood maranasati, all agreed with Buddhaghosa’s interpretation that maranasati re¬ quires the practitioners to remind themselves constantly of the proximity of death. From the subsequent analyses of the inter¬ views, I noticed that two other practices had also been classified as maranasati. Without ever challenging Buddhaghosa’s definition, eight of the eleven interviewees suggested that maranasati was broader than this mere awareness of the potentiality of death. First, they considered meditation on asubha, as described by Buddhaghosa (i.e. the ten types of charnel-ground contemplations or their modern expression in the autopsy room) as belonging to maranasati as long as the yogis perceived and constantly con¬ templated the fragility of life. This falls in-line with the Sati-
28 The stilus of ihe dasa sit malavo is the object of a controversy among the
Sinhalese monastic community. [For more information on the subject, sec Tessa
Barihoiomcusz. Women under the Do Tree. Buddhist Nuns in Sri Lanka.
Cambridge 1994]
i patthana’s suggestion that practitioners must reflect on the fact
that their body possesses the same nature. In fact, many monks in
Sri Lanka have witnessed autopsies in order to cultivate
asubha and/or maranasati. Moreover, photographs of autopsies
j are broadly available for the Thai monastic community and these
i are widely circulated in Sri Lanka. Most of the hermitages where
! the interviews were conducted had at least a few of these photo-
| graphs and/or partial or complete skeletons used for meditation
purposes. All the monks using these tools, however, strongly emphasised that without reflecting on their own body, the charnel-ground contemplations (or the contemplation of the photographs or the skeletons) remain solely at the asubha level.
These same eight monastics perceived maranasati as the natural result of their daily riieditatidn. As the abbot in charge of a major meditatibn centre in Colombo remarked, -death itself is merely a concept which is totally devoid of substance. For this reason, it is impossible to focus on it’. He further explained that what we conventionally call death does not exist, for the simple reason that in order for something/someone to die, it needs to possess an independent existence which Buddhist doctrine denies with the theories of anicca , anatta and paticcasamuppada. A person docs not merely die at the end of one’s existence for, at the deepest level, this person never existed. What we normally term ‘person’ is an amalgam of five aggregates which arc con¬ stantly changing. Every moment, each of these aggregates arises and passes away ( upajjhitva, nirujjhanti). Therefore, maranasati, viewed from this angle, cannot be separated from the normal practice of vipassana meditation which aims, as the tradition claims, at seeing things as they really are. Practitioners of vi¬ passana who simply observe their own mind and body soon notice the transitory character of existence. Eventually, they become aware that birth and death happen at every single mo-
Buddhist Studies Review 13, 1 (1996)
ment. Mater-al particles arise and vanish: death is present through¬
out the life-process. Such an awareness helps, on the one hand, to
cope with what we conventionally call death. By becoming
increasingly aware of the presence of death, at the experiential
level, practitioners are no more intimidated when the final mo¬
ment comes. Death is nothing but the culmination of successive
deaths which one had gradually learned to deal with. On the other
hand, this same process helps them live a less egocentric,.more
detached, cquanimous and compassionate life, for they have come
to understand that nothing is worth clinging to, and that human
suffering is directly related to the cultivation of the awareness of
impermanence, the core of Theravada Buddhist meditation. In
fact, when one practises one of these two thoroughly, the other is
also automatically practised, whether consciously or not
The view that maranasati is intimately linked with vipas¬ sana is also corroborated by the fact that the former is one of the four protections ( caiurarakkha ). Members of the Sangha as well as lay-meditators in intensive training are encouraged to recite daily the verses of protections. By recollecting the qualities of the Buddha, promoting loving-kindness, restraining sexual desires through asubha and promoting the awareness of death, the practitioners’ ability to deepen their meditation is supposed to in¬ crease. It is also noteworthy that lay people going to the temple in order to pay respect to the Buddha often recite a standard verse similar to those found in the four protections: I pay respect to the Buddha; may I obtain some merit This body [of mine] will be destroyed just as these flowers will fade”. This indicates that
Boisvert — Death as meditation subject
! the practice of maranasati as such is not only followed by medi-
! tators but, to a certain extent, by most devout Buddhists as well.
When asked how a monk should practise maranasati, the I abbot suggested two methods, the second being much more effec- • j tive than the first. One may start by the simple recital of the four I protections discussed above. When meditators are more advanced in their practice of vipassana , they can embark on a radically different practice. They should lie like a corpse, preferably at ' night and, as suggested by Buddhaghosa, recall that Buddhas,
1 kings, neighbours and parents have died. They then remind them¬ selves that death is inevitable. It is at this stage that they must ‘feel life go out from every part of the body, from the toes upwards. If this practice is accomplished properly, one actually 1 dies’. The- abbot himself refused to answer when 1 asked if he practises this sort of meditation, for members of the Sangha are not supposed to brag about their accomplishments. Neither did he v clarify whether he meant that the body technically dies and is reanimated, or that one symbolically dies by becoming aware of the ever presence of death throughout the body, a presence manifesting itself through the constant process of impermanence. This second interpretation would be in line with the traditional practice of vipassana.
It is clear from these eight interviews that the practice of
- maranasati not only includes a_ constant remembrance of the
1 finitude of life, but also incorporates asubhabhavana and the
awarness of anicca. This perception of maranasati differs radi¬ cally from Buddhaghosa’s, for the latter only considered the aware-
29 Pujcmi buddham Lusumena nena / Puhncna me te tabhami mukham /
Puppham mitayali yalha idam me / Kayo latha yali vinasa bhavam II A simitar
verse stressing thal all are subject to death is also frequently used by lay follow-
ers: Namami buddham gunasagaram lam f Salt ha saddhd hortiu sukhi avira / Kayo jigujjo sakalo dugandho / Gacchanti sabbe maranam aham ca //
Buddhist Studies Review 13, 1 (1996)
ness of dcaih as the essence of this practice. I must stress, how- j ever, that three other monastics categorically stated that maranasati was solely the awareness of death, and that the nine charnel-ground meditations belonged exclusively to the realm of asubhabhavana.
I would like to conclude by summarising the divergences of {
interpretation that have been alluded to in this paper — that is, |
divergences between canonical literature, the Visuddhimagga and contemporary practice. The description of maranasati in canoni¬ cal literature is sparse and limited to the awareness of ageing and the proximity of death. Two simple methods for developing this awareness are described in the Ahguttara 30 , while many passages of, the Jiitakas and Thera- Thcrigatha praise this awareness by offering numerous examples of persons who, having realised the inexorability of their fate, cither decided to renounce worldly life or attained enlightenment. Buddhaghosa, however, built an eight¬ fold method for developing this awareness, a systematised method that is absent in earlier Pali literature. Yet contemporary practice shows a much wider interpretation which, according to the ma¬ jority of the monastics interviewed, includes asubhabhavana and the awareness of anicca.
copyrighted © Mathieu Boisvert (Director of graduate studies dep. des sciences religieuses Universite du Quebec a Montreal)
30 The fir^i thing is constantly to remind oneself that death could happen at
any moment: after one day, one night, a meal, a single bite [A 111 303 and also
at A IV 3161. The other being the different reasons for dying such as being
bitten by a centipede, a snake or a scorpion, or falling, choking ... [A HI 307,
5nd also at A IV 3201
EKOTTARAGAMA (XX)
Translated from the Chinese Version by Thich Huycn-Vi and Bhikkhu Piisadika in collaboration with Sara Boin-Webb
Ninth Fascicle Part 18
(Shame and Remorse)
6. ‘‘Thus have I heard. At one time the Buddha was staying in SravastI, at the Jeta Grove, in Anathapipdada’s Park. Then Venerable Nanda donned exquisite robes, and with eye-shadow he brightened up his eye[lids],« wearing slippers ornamented with gold. Again, he rubbed 2 the cosmetic off his eye[lids] and, holding in his hands jiisutlms-bowl, he was about to enter the city of SravastI.
From afar many bhik$us saw Venerable Nanda [on the point of] entering the city to beg for alms-food, while he was wearing exquisite robes. New those bhiksus went to the whereabouts of the Exalted One, bowing down their heads at his feet, and sat down at one side. Hardly had [they taken their seats) when they stood up [again], saying to the Exalted One: As far as Bhiksu Nanda is concerned, he has donned exquisite robes and brightened up his eyetlids] with eye-shadow and is [thus] entering the city of
1 See T 2, 591a8 ff; Hayashi. p.153 ff.
2 For & Hayashi reads & (to compare; to criticise; to oppose), which does not seem appropriate.
NOTES
1 • ^ or details of these developments, see D. D. Kosambi, The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India (London, 1905), pp. 103 ff.; a more recent devel- opment of this theme is offered by Jaimal Rai in his The Rural-Urban Economy and Social Changes in Ancient India (Delhi, 1974), pp. 165 ff.
2. On the chronology of these texts, sec M. Wintemitz, A History of tfj
Indian Literature (New York 1971), 11, pp. 17 IT.; for the dates of the Buddha I and Asoka, sec B. G. Gokhalc, Asoka A laurya (New York, 1971), pp. 35, 63; y also sec B. G. Gokhalc, Buddhism in Maharashtra , (Bombay, 1976), pp. 23 ff.; :| on these “elite * groups, see B. G. Gokhalc, “The Early Buddhist Elite "Jour- nal of Indian History, XL1 ll/ll (August 1965), pp. 391-402. '
3. J. Kashyap (cd.). The Cullavagga (Nalanda, 1956), pp. 406—409-
4. See G. P. Malalasckera, Dictionary of Tali Proper Names (London,
- I960), 11, pp. 1126—1127; hereafter referred to as DPPN .
5. DPPN , 11, pp. 1126-1127; B. N. Chaudhury, Buddhist Centres in > Ancient India (Calcutta, 1969), pp. 71-74 (hereafter abbreviated as BCAl)', Halram Srivastavii, Trade and Commerce in Ancient India (Varanasi, 1968), pp. 75-76.
6. BCAL pp. 99-105; DPPN, 11. pp. 721-724.
7. BCAl , pp. 43-45; DPPN , l, pp. 516-520; B. G. Gokhalc, Asoka Maurya (New York, I960), pp. 75, 164.
8. BCAL pp. 56-60; DPPN, II, p. 940-943; J. Kashyap (cd.). The Digha Nikdya (Nalanda, 1958), II, pp. 92-93.
9. BCAL pi). 85-87; DPPN, l, pp. 692-695; Gokhale, op. cit., p. 163.
10. BCAl, pp. 182-184; DPPN, I, pp. 344-345; also see B. C. Law, Ujjay ini in Ancient India (Gwalior, 1944), pp. 2-4, 13-15, 32-33; J. Kashyap * (cd.). The Malta vagga (Nalanda, 1956), pp. 214-217; T. W. Rhys Davids and H. Oldenberg (traus.), Vi nay a Texts (Delhi, 1965), pp. 32-40.
11. BCAL pp. 122-123: DPPN, I, pp. 855-856; J. Kashyap (cd.). The Mahdiwgga, pp. 327 ff.
12. For the term nigama, see Jaimal Rai, op. cit. , pp. 160-161.
13. For the Brdhmanagamas, sec B. G. Gokhale, “Brahmanas in Early Buddhist Literature, M in Journal of Indian History , XLV11I/1, pp. 51-61.
14. See C.S.J\ Misra, The Age of Vinaya (New Delhi, 1972), pp. 249-260; also see Balratn Srivastava, op. cit. f pp. 268-283.
15. For the rccmergcncc of “villagism” sec D. D. Kosambi, op. cit., pp.
103 ff. v
16. For the Buddha and the “caste** system of his times see B. G. Gok- b . Buddhism in Maharashtra, pp. 26 ff.
17. DPPN. II, p. 27.
18. See I* »*.. Gokhale, op., cit.. ' 162; for inscripuoual evidence of the
Sunga-Kan *‘»d. see H. Ludc; \frpendix to Epigraphia Indica (Calcutta, 1912). X,N 248,299.867
Pilgrimage and the Structure
of Sinhalese Buddhism *
by John C. Holt oa JbS]l
Throughout the history of Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia, Buddhists have undertaken religious pilgrimages to sa¬ cred place's where, according to tradition, bodily relics of the Buddha are enshrined. This ‘‘cult of traces”’ has been so wide¬ spread and powerful that at least one scholar has suggested that in the formative period of Thcravada Buddhism in Sri Lanka, it provided the primary focal point of spiritual orientation for jnuch of the lay tradition.* As the monastic community focused its cultic 'activities upon the study, recitation and interpretation of the Buddha’s teachings ( dhammukdyu ), the laity propitiated the Buddha through venerating the remains of his physical body (rupakaya). These two orientations represent the means by which the monastic and lay segments of the early Buddhist community sustained the legacy of the Buddha’s life and teach*
in texts that are as ancient as the Mahaparinibbdna Sulla of the Dlgha Nikdya, articulated perhaps within one hundred years of the death of the Buddha.
However, pilgrimage to sacred places where relies of the k Buddha are enshrined is more than a matter of commemorat- l : ing the great master. The Buddha’s relics were popularly be- lieved to be latent manifestations of miraculous power. Pious [• political rulers assumed that possession of the Buddha’s relics it legitimated and strengthened their abilities to rule.* From the | time of the Indian emperor Asoka in the third century B.C., | relics were closely associated with temporal power.
. in modern Sri Lanka, kingship is now a matter of past his-
f, tory. Yet pilgrimage to sacred places associated with the Bud-
(Ilia’s relics continues to be a widespread religious practice. One-|
of tiie holiest shrines in Sri Lanka is the Da|ada Maligawa-f
(I emple of the Tooth) in Kandy. At all times during the yeaiy||
especially during the annual Asa|a Perahara festival in July-*!
August, thousands of traditional-minded Buddhists make a
grimage in order to honor the Buddha’s relic. This is a brief j
study of pilgrimage to Kandy and its wider significance within *
the structure of Sinhalese Buddhism. i
I he Symbolism uj the Relic and its Ritual Importance $jjH
Of the several reasons lor the da(add's (tooth-relic’s) contin- <1$ ous charismatic appeal for traditional Buddhists, one of the most important is its past association with the power of Sinha* 1 ^ lese Buddhist kings.
The Dalhavattisa —written by Dhammakitti in the twelfth^ century A.D. and purportedly based upon an ancient Sinhalese:^ poem, the Daladdvatiisa —contains a mythic account 1 of how the)|B relic remained in Dantapura r> under the patronage of a longiffij line of righteous kings. According to this account, in the fouith|ra century A.D. an Indian king, Guhaslva, converted to Bud^S dhism, thereby angering the brahmapical priests of his cour^lB War followed when the priests complained to the Papcju klngaJB Pataliputra. lo insure the continued safety of the'relic, Cu rfgj haslva gave it to his daughter and son-in-law and told them to|fi| take it to Ceylon. When they arrived with the relic, the Sinha^fl lese king paid it great homage and placed it in a shrine known^S as the Dhammacakha . From that time, Buddhist kings protectedJK the tooth-relic as if its well-being constituted one of their pri^H mary responsibilities.
The Da(havavisa's account contains a number of significant^B motifs familiar to the traditional chronicles of Sri Lanka. In dbugM first instance, off-spring of a converted Indian Buddhist mon ^M arch are sent on a royal mission to take relics to Sri Lanka. Th isa B parallels the Mahdvayisa's account of how the alms-bowl ReMcM and scion of the Bodhi Tree were brought to Sri Lankaj,b y||| Mahinda and Sahghamitta during Asoka’s kingship. 6 Second^B its placement by the Sinhalese king in the Dhamma-cakka shrine M explicitly identifies the relic with the king’s duty to “rule by iS
righteousness.” 7 Third, the legend helps to sustain a national
belief that the future well-being of the Buddha’s religion is in
the hands of the Sinhalese people.”
An earlier account of the relic’s importance is given by the Chinese pilgrim Fa-Hien, who traveled in Ceylon during the 5lh century. By the time of Fa-Hien’s account, venerating the tooth-relic had become an auspicious means lor the king and the laity to “amass merit for themselves.” 11 Ten days bclore the king sponsored a grand procession of the relic from his palace to the Abhyagiri monastery in Anuradhapura, a royal an¬ nouncement containing a description ot the Buddha’s career as a bodhisattva was issued. The description, reminiscent of the Vessantara Jdtaka , cmphasiy.es hOw the Buddha sacrificed his entire kingdom out of compassion lor the well-being ol the world and implies that the bodhisattva career ot the Buddha had already become an ideal model for Buddhist kings to emu- | late. Thus, by the fifth century, the tooth relic seems already to
- have become the king's own personal talisman and “palladium
| of the Sinhalese people.” 10
S ' Bardwell Smith writes that the tooth relic continued lo Ik* of immense symbolic importance to Buddhist kings during the | early medieval Polonnaruva period: “The regalia needed by j monarchs to authenticate their sovereignty included the Tooth Relic and the Alms-Bowl Relic. 'Flic suspicion or dubious lin- 1 cage that their absence implied s|K*lled the promise of dire. | consequences. When taken, they were to be retrieved at any r cost.” 11 The symbolic importance of the tooth relic for the le¬ ft gitimacy of Buddhist kingship was not lost upon the people of ft the kingdom. The king's close association with the relic under- | scored the popular belief that the king was actually a “Buddha- | ;in-the-making,” the most pious religious layman of the realm. 12 | His possession of the relic gave him access to sacral power | which, ideally, he would use for the general well-being and security of his people. In this way, “royal power was regarded |-ias ap instrument of cosmic power.'* 15
'The king's relationship to this cosmic power was graphical- ily illustrated in the ritual life of the city, a ritual life in which the H tooth relic played an important role. The capital seems to have H functioned as a sacred center, an axis mundi , from which righ- &| teous power through ritual performance was thought to be
magically radiated to the outlying provinces to insure stability
and order. The king, thus, occupied a mediating position be¬
tween cosmic power and his people. Rituals and relics were
magical conduits of power enabling the king to meet his pre¬
scribed royal duties.
During the Kandyan period, the king’s relationships to cos¬ mic power and to his people were brought into unparalleled high relief with the inauguration of the annual AVaja Pcrahara procession. In the middle of the eighteenth century, King Klrti Sri Rajasiipha initiated sweeping religious and political reforms that he hoped would legitimate his South Indian Nayakkar dynasty in the eyes of the Sinhalese people." Early in his reign, he reestablished orthodox lines of monastic ordination for the Asgiriya and Malwalta nikdyas (monastic chapters) in Kandy.
, Since the sahgha was also a traditional source of legitimation for Buddhist kings, the importation of Siamese monks to con¬ fer ufmumjHidd (ordination) upon aspiring Sinhalese aristo¬ cratic monks constituted a calculated move to strengthen his rule. But the move almost backfired. The Siamese became grievously offended when they witnessed the king promoting a pcrahara (procession) in which Hindu gods wre publically ven¬ erated and dignified to the exclusion of the Buddha. 15 Klrti Sri reacted to the monks' condemnation with discretion: “A new daladd (tooth relic) pcrahara was introduced into the general
• ritual'complex and was given primacy over all other perahdras. The pcrahara in this form reestablished the primacy of Bud¬ dhism within the Sinhalese religious system." 1 ®
In so doing, the king wittingly or unwittingly fused to-
• gether two powerful and ancient ritual traditions. Before the inclusion of the tooth relic into the ritual proceedings of the Asa|a Pcrahara, the ceremony consisted chiefly in the propitia¬ tion of deities who were petitioned by Hindu priests to insure the fertility and prosperity of the tealin. Although the inclusion of the daladd in the ritual proceedings may have reestablished the primacy of Buddhism, the gods were by no means banished
- from the annual rites. Today, one of the major events of the
Asa|a festival is a ritual circumambulation of four wooden kapa (poles), which symbolizes the king’s former petitions to the gods for the kingdom’s fertility and prosperity. 17 This ritual tradi¬ tion complements the second rite of circumambulation, which
was introduced to accommodate the importance of the daladd.
In that second circumambulation, the king, with the daladd ca¬ parisoned on a royal elephant,* led a procession around the— boundaries of Kandy in a symbolic “capture” or “righteous con¬ quest.” Together, the two circumambulation rites represent a dramatic theatrical enactment of what numerous scholars refer to as “the doctrine of the exemplary center.’’"* More specilkal- ly, these rites represent an ontogeny of the king’s power, which was rooted in ritually currying favor with the gods aiul invok¬ ing the power of the Buddha. The former insured prosperity, the latter righteous political order.
When the British seized the relic during their takeover of Kandy in 1815, some Buddhists openly worried about the fu¬ ture of Buddhism, while others (including tiie British)"'.be¬ lieved that possession of the daladd would guarantee colonial hegemony. But since 1847 (when the British, under severe pressure from Christian groups in Britain as well as in Ceylon, turned over custody of the relic to the Asgiriya and Malwalta monasteries), th q^dalada has officially been regarded as a reli¬ gious object only. Thus, Wilhelm Geiger has written:
E owcr, but is the revered centre of worship for all pious >uddhists living in Ceylon and for many thousands of pilgrims who come from abroad'cach year to profess their veneration and devotion for that holy relic of the Great Master of the World. 2 "
Although Geiger’s statement is formally correct, it cannot be denied that the relic’s continued popularity is due in part to a resurgence in “civil religion” among Sinhalese Buddhists in the 19th and 20th centuries. 21 That is, the relic continues *o sym¬ bolize the traditional cultural and social values of Sinhalese culture. Government tourism officials actively promote the Asaja Pcrahara at home and abroad as a national holiday cele¬ brating indigenous customs and cultural ideality. The relic’s continued political symbolism is recognized by modern-day Sinhalese politicians, who find it expedient to participate in the da(add 's ritual procession or conspicuously to visit the Dajada Maligava. 22 It is also evident that the Asaja Pcrahara procession continues to depict symbolically the social structure ol Kandyan
society.*' What these social and political facts reF.ect is that|
du[ada is a public symbol which expresses the continuing d
association between religion and politics in this ccntempoi
Asian society.-' -4
Therefore, pilgrimage to Kandy constitutes both a religi and political act, especially in these times when Tamil sepajjii ism appears to be regaining some momentum in Sri Lanl While it is clear that many traditional Buddhists undertake.^ pilgrimage to Kandy for purely religious reasons, and thattb religious behavior exhibits a personal devotion to the Bud< resembling that of Hindu bhakti, the entire pilgrimage coq9 plex retains something of its medieval ethos. From its partici^g pants, it commands a reverential “civitas.” Even the three dad; prayers offered by officiating bhikkhus at the Dalada M&lig§\; repcsent petitions to the Buddha for the continued moral qi^ der and prosperity of the realm.* 5 H. L. Seneviratne, wfo ’ studies of ritual life in Kandy are especially definitive, has i^ ferred to the public Asala l’erahiira performances and ritua^ life in the temple as part of a “creative and selective process”^ which a traditional culture is asserting its indigenous systems pf value and power in response to changes brought abotU modernity.* 1 That is, while significant numbers of traditiot Sinhalese have remained separated from new forms of cultut^j and social, economic and political power, pilgrimage td^Kahd remains a means to assert and maintain beliefs in iridigenou| concepts of power aiid cultural legitimation. Or, pilgrimage Kandy is a religious act affirming traditional modes of powajj used to maintain order and prosperity.
II. Pilgrimage to Kandy and the Structure of Sinhalese Buddhism
The comparative study of pilgrimage has much in con with the comparative study of religion in general. Pilgrimage! patterns arc cross-cultural, historically archaic, and persistently popular. Within these patterns both cognitive and affective fop mutations of spiritual piety may be significant for both the per? sonal and social orientations of existence. Also, while pilgrii age, like religion, can be defined in relatively simplistic termsS there is no single body of critical theory that can serve as aj
wholly adequate framework for its definitive interpretation.-
ike religion in general, pilgrimage seems to resist facile reduc¬ tions. It is no doubt true that the pilgrimage process ill general, pecially from an existential perspective, manifests a uniform ructure. Turner is largely correct in identifying that process in terms of separation, liminality and re-aggregation.* 7 More¬ over, it is equally clear that, pilgrimage, as a devotional act, can Result in a transformation or regenertion of social and religious identities. However, differing types of religious behavior ob¬ servable at various sacred places of pilgrimage also indicate that pilgrimage may not necessarily climax in “exterior mysticism,” pr in an anti-structural, convivial,' egalitarian “communitas.” 28 Rather, a comparative study of religious behavior at various pilgrimage sites indicates that certain sacred places are settings for specific types of religious behaviors, not all of which con¬ form to Turner’s notion. In the case of Kandy, 1 have charac¬ terized this behavior as reverential “civitas.” 1 will now deter¬ mine the significance of pilgrimage to Kandy first within the context of Sinhalese Buddhist religion and then within a cross* ^cultural comparative context.
While pilgrimage to Kandy sustains the ethos of the public d.’il religion formerly administered and symbolized by the presence of the king, other sacred places in Sri Lanka and India express other dominant spiritual orientations of great impor¬ tance to the Sinhalese. Bodh Gaya in India, the seal of Golama’s |enlightenment, and Sarnath, the place of the Buddha's first sermon, have been for centuries the destinations of pious Bud¬ dhist pilgrims, especially Thcravada bhikkhus. Gunawardana has pointed out that pilgrimage to sacred places in India associ¬ ated with the most important events in the life of Gotama con¬ tinuously resulted in the cross-fertilization of Thcravada Bud¬ dhist traditions during the medieval periods of Sinhalese history . 2U Then, as now, Sarnath and, especially, Bodh Gaya, are centers of Buddhist cultural integration, t More importantly, howpver, observable religious behavior at Bodh'Gaya and Sarnath has very little in common with the ritual life carried out in Kandy. At Bodh Gaya, except for the T. remnants of an Asokan gateway, signs of kingship and civil ^religion arc totally absent. There are no public pageants or ^processions celebrating ethnicity or nationalism. Here, the fo-
cus is upon the mythic events surrounding the enlightenment
of the Buddha. Buddhist pilgrims, escorted either by Tibetan,
Japanese, Burmese, Thai or Sinhalese monks, visit seven holy
sites within the boundaries of the Mahiibodhi shrine that com¬
memorate the Buddha’s activities before, during and after his
enlightenment. The emphasis, in all forms of ritual behavior at
Bodh Gaya, is upon the paradigmatic spirituality of the Bud¬
dha, a spirituality which can be and has been emulated for
centuries by Buddhist religious virtuosos. In each of the na¬
tional temples representing the various strands of Buddhist
tradition, the lile of the Buddha is depicted cither in mural
paintings or in a series of framed pictures. Thus, at Bodh Gaya,
what is venerated is not the “this-worldly” power of the Buddha
and the means by which that power can be utilized to sustain
the moral order and prosperity of a nation, realm of kingdom.
Rather, what is quietly celebrated, in meditation and com¬
memoration, is the path to nibbana through enlightenment, of
which the lile'of the Buddha is a model. Therefore, in refer¬
ence to a frequently employed metaphor for describing the
structure ol Thcravada Buddhism (the “two wheels of
Dhamma" M> ), pilgrimage to Bodh Gaya constitutes a cultic affir¬
mation of the religious quest for an “other-worldly” nibbana.
That is, in contrast to Kandy, where “this-worldly” Buddhaic
power is symbolized by the tooth-relic and its association with
. Sinhalese Buddhist ethnicity or nationhood, Bodh Gaya is a
place of pilgrimage celebrating spiritual transcendence of the
social and temporal world, the path which leads beyond condi¬
tioned, saipsaric existence. To pul it another way, Kandy is an
axis muiuti for the establishment of orderly power in this world
while Bodh Gaya symbolizes the Buddhist quest for liberation
beyond all forms of order. Unlike pilgrims to Kandy, most
pilgrims to Bodh Gaya, at least until modern times, have been
bhikkhus. In the life of the Buddha and in the Bodhi Tree that
symbolizes the Buddha's enlightenment, bhikkhus envisaged
the possibility of their own spiritual emancipations. In the Bud¬
dha’s lile they find a personal model which inspires emulation.
Here, the pilgrimage experience is one of commemorating the
spiritual paradigm of the master.
But the social “this-worldly" and personal “other-worldly” orientations represented by pilgrimage to Kandy on the one
hand and pilgrimage to Bodh Gaya on the other do not exhaust all dimensions of Sinhalese Buddhist spirituality. Neither the Buddha nor the power symbolized by his relics can come to the . direct aid of those faithful experiencing an immediate personal crisis. In times of physical affliction or mental anxiety, many Buddhist laity undertake pilgrimages to the shrines of deities who, although occupying subordinate positions in relation to the Buddha, within the Sinhalese hierarchical pantheon, arc believed to have the power and disposition to respond to the fervent pleas of their faithful. In modern-day Sri Lanka, in¬ creasing numbers of Sinhalese Buddhists make pilgrimages to the shrine of Skanda, the son of Siva, also known as Murugan, or more popularly, as Kataragama. Although Kataragama is the god par excellence of the Ceylon Tamils ol the Jallnn pen¬ insula, many Sinhalese Buddhists participate in Kataragama’s annual, peralidra festival, which recalls the god’s mythic love affair with a Vedda maiden and his establishment of a shrine where he responds'to the needs of his devotees. Here, religious experience and religious behavior cannot be characterized in. terms of reverential “civitas” or commemoration of the Bud¬ dha’S 1 paradigmatic spirituality. Ralhef, the cult ol Kataragama involves an astonishing array of ascetic and exotic forms of ritual behavior, all engaged in out of either intense emotional gratitude to Kataragama for healing various afflictions, or as a means of persuading him to intervene on the devotee’s behalf. The cultic ambience at Kataragama is utterly bhakti. That is, it is decidedly emotional and devotional in tone and Ircquently culminates in states of intense ecstasy. :u Furthermore, worship here is highly personal, emphasizing the intimacy between the devotee and his god.
While Bodh Gaya represents the nibbanic orientation or model of spiritual quest ideally emulated by the Thcravada bhikkhu, and while Kandy represents the public civil religion legitimated by the presence of the tooth-relic and its past associ¬ ation with traditional power, Kataragama is a sacred place where individuals can appeal to perceived active divine power to intercede on their behalf. Kataragama is not a Buddha who has transcended saipsara, nor is he a protector ol the nation¬ state. He represents a form of sacral power that is immediately accessible to the common person in times of great personal
need. Ecstatic and petitionary devotionalism at Kataragama is
thus quite different from the spirituality of the bhikkhus, ■
whose religious quests are based upon rigorous self-ellort or <
spiritual discipline. Kataragama represents “other-power”
manifest in “this-world.” Although the power of the tooth-relic
in Kandy might also be described in this way, its power was (and
is) traditionally appropriated for the general well-being of the
king and thus the nation, while the power of the god Katara¬
gama is enlisted for the benefit of any individual devotee who is
willing to undertake austerities of self-mortification to express
deep faith.
By comparing pilgrimage to Bodh Gay& and Kataragama with pilgrimage to Kandy, we see beginning to emerge a struc¬ ture reflective of Sinhalese Buddhist religion in general, a reli¬ gion replete with varying modalities of religious experience and religious expression. That is, none of the pilgrimages can be singled out as embodying a root metaphor characteristic of the general spiritual quest of all Sinhalese Buddhists. Rather, what this comparison suggests is that there are at least three major orientations within Sinhalese religion: 1) Bodh Gaya, a pilgrimage site commemorating the enlightenment experience of the paradigmatic Gotama, represents the spiritual orienta¬ tion of the Theravada bhikkhu quest for nibb&na through- en- lightenmem; 2) Kataragama, a pilgrimage site where-access to transformative “this-worldly" sacral power is sought, represents the orientation of the faithful lay devotee for whom the enlight¬ enment quest of the bhikkhu is but a distant future possibility; and 3) Kandy, a pilgrimage site where religion legitimates a people’s religious, cultural and political past and present through civil ceremony, represents an orientation shared by bhikkhu and layman alike: a national quest to preserve and promote the religion of the Buddha and consequently to main¬ tain prosperity and moral order in society as a whole.
These three religious orientations, which are evident from this consideration of types of pilgrimage within Sinhalese reli¬ gion, arc not, however, entirely unrelated. What all three pil¬ grimages have in common is functional in nature: the need to cope with various manifestations of dukkha (suffering, unsatis- factoriness), the basic problem of human existence as perceived from within the Buddhist world view. 3 * Thus, Sinhalese rcli-
gious beliefs and practices, as they can be ascertained through a study of pilgrimages, represent complementary modes of re¬ sponse to specific aspects of the human condition. While dukkha is specified in particular fashion by individuals on the basis of their own personal experiences, types of response are in part determined by religious role (lay or monastic). From this per¬ spective, pilgrimage to Kandy is ritual participation in public ceremonies traditionally designed to avert civil, ethnic, or na¬ tional disintegration. That is, within the total field ol Sinhalese religion, mass pilgrimage to Kandy represents continued affir¬ mation of the sacralizing power of the Buddha to meet the collective material and social'needs of the people. The “emo¬ tional response” 33 of thousands of peasants to the tooth-relic’s annual procession attests to its continuing perceived efficacy as sacral power. Or finally, to phrase this another way, pilgrimage to Kandy is ari act of collective allegiance to the traditional religious way of life upon which the indigenous order of social and economic existence has been based.
III. Cross-cultural Comparisons to the Kandyan Pilgrimage
In his recent book on pilgrimage and Christian culture, Victor Turner has identified Kandy as a “prototypical" pilgrimage. By “prototypical," he means “those pilgrimages which, on the au¬ thority of documentary or widespread traditional evidence, were established by the founder of a historical religion, by his first disciples, or by important national evangelists....’’ He continues: “Such pilgrimages, though sometimes founded on ancient sites, dramatically manifest—in their symbolism, charter narratives, ecclesiastical structure, and general interna¬ tional repute—the orthodoxy of the faith from which they have sprung, and remain consistent with root paradigms.” He goes, on to cite as examples Jerusalem and Rome for Christianity, Me£ca for Islam, Benares and Ml. Kailas for Hinduism and Kandy for Buddhism. Syncretic or arcliaic pilgrimages, which constitute his second type, are distinguished from “prototypi¬ cal” pilgrimages in that they manifest “quite evident traces of syncretism with older religious beliefs and symbols.” Finally, limiting the third and fourth types of pilgrimages to examples
taken only from the Christian tradition, he distinguishes be--|8| tween “medieval” pilgrimages “which take their tone from the. theological and philosophical emphasis of that epoch,” and 's|jj “modern” pilgrimages which “are characterized by a highlyfjgK devotional tone and the fervent personal piety of their adher- ? ^J ents.” With further regard to modern pilgrimages, he stales 9 that they “form an important part of the system df apologetics Jp| deployed against the advancing secularization of the post-Dar-SaS winian world.”-' 1 -
'the great strength of Turner’s interpretive model and htsiH typological schema is that it attempts to ascertain the intimate'|B nature of relations which might exist between metaphor andJra ritual, belief and practice, or spiritual and social experiences.^^ By appealing to cognitive structures (myth, beliefs and their)3g metaphorical expressions) on the one hand, and their idiomatici^ ritual expression within historical and social contexts on thecal other, Turner has advanced a theoretical tour de force that is||j especially relevant to diachronic frames of-reference. r|j|
Yet, it does not necessarily follow that his classification3p schema, developed to interpret the significance of pilgrimage^ in Christian culture, is easily portable. .
In attempting to confirm Turncr*s*classification of Kandy,j8 as a “prototypical" pilgrimage, I have encountered a variety ofaB problems. For instance, Kandy scents to meet all of the criteria'll Turner cites as indicative of his last three types of pilgrimage: it9 is highly syncretic (veneration of Hindu gods forms an impor-ii tant part of the ritual proceedings), it is late medieval (havingJ| been established by Klrti Sri in the middle of the eighteenth]? century), and, as Scncviratne argues, it is an indigenous cul^l tural response to modernity. With reference to its being “protons typical,” while it is true that Kandy is regarded, especially with-1 in Sri Lanka, as a center of orthodoxy (given the presence ofl two prestigious monastic chapters), one wonders about lhe| orthodoxy of the “root paradigm" to which it is “faithful.” Whai| ritual life at Kandy does depict is the intimate relationship estab-y lished in Sri Lanka between spiritual and temporal power, or# between religion and politics and the structure of society. Pci-*§ haps this may be regarded as a “root paradigm” for a tradi|| lional public structure, but it does not really reflect a spiritual^ paradigm to be emulated personally by individual Buddhist^
Bodh Gaya bn the other hand, does, and Kataragama and oth¬
er shrines provide a complementary personal orientation for
the laity. I do not mean to ignore the private orientation of
pilgrimage to Kandy; but even when one takes into account
that individual pilgrims petition the power of the relic for their
own personal reasons, one is still left with the problem of recon¬
ciling this kind of religious behavior to the "root paradigm” of
the Buddha's quest of enlightenment through self-effort.
These considerations lead me to call into question the compari¬
son of Kandy to other such “prototypiad” pilgrimages.
Kandy is not a “Mecca” of the Buddhist world. While An- garika Dharmnpala once referred to Bodh Gaya as “the Bud¬ dhist Jersusalem”* 5 during his fight to return Buddhist sacred places in India to Buddhist hands, nowhere docs one find re¬ ferences within the tradition that make such grandiose claims about Kandy. More accurately, Kandy represents simulta¬ neously a sacred palce of pilgrimage anil the traditional-center of Sinhalese highland ethnicity. Kandy is not a “center out 'r there,” in the peripheral sense in which Turner coined the phrase. Rather, it has more in common with regional cultural r ccntefS in India that are also accorded sacralily due the promi- [ nent presence of a ritual symbol that evokes recurrent send- I ments of religio-cthnic heritage and autonomy legitimated by I- sacral power. In considering comparable sacrcu places, Kandy | has more in common with the Sikh center of Amritsar in the '/ Punjab with its Golden Temple, within which is housed the Guru Granlh Sahib, a symbol of God’s continuing providence. | Or again, Kandy is somewhat similar to Santa Fe, New Mexico, s; and the associated symbol of Our Lacly of Conquest.™ In both f of these examples, ritual proceedings, cither in the form of jf annual processions or in individual acts of devotion which take l place at specific shrines within the precincts of a sacred center, f celebrate the special past relationship enjoyed between a people i and the divine, however the divine is perceived. That is, sacred
( places like Kandy arc sustained in popularity because they af¬ firm the unique religio-cultural identity of a given people. Thus, the attnictive power of Kandy as a sacred place of pil- • grimage is due less to pan-Buddhist associations than to a par- . ticular people’s understanding of its special, historical relation-
collective legitimated existence in the face of the ambiguities of
life, understood traditionally by them as dukkha.
