A few days ago I received from you a letter containing Mr. G.'s comments on the Notes on Dhamma. I have been through it with some care (though unfortunately I do not read Sanskrit), and it is obvious that he has taken considerable trouble about preparing them. He clearly has a considerable wealth of learning at his command, and seems to be quite familiar with the Pali texts, from which he quotes freely. At the same time, however, it is evident to me that the differences between his point of view and mine go too deep to be removed simply by a discussion of the various points he has raised. In order to explain my meaning I should have to make use of arguments that he would probably feel inclined to dispute, and the difficulties would thus merely be shifted from one place to another. But I have the impression that he is well satisfied that his position is the right one, and I do not think it would serve any useful purpose for me to call it in question.

In his letter he remarks that I explain too inductively, that I tend to look for my ideas in the Canon instead of deducing from the passages what they mean. This criticism, however, supposes that we are, in fact, able to approach the Canon with a perfectly virgin mind, equipped only with a knowledge of Pali and a sound training in logic. But this is precisely what we cannot do. Each of us, at every moment, has the whole of his past behind him; and it is in the light of his past (or his background or his presuppositions) that he interprets what is now presented to him and gives it its meaning. Without such a background nothing would ever appear to us with any meaning at all -- a spoken or written word would remain a pure presentation, a bare sound or mark without significance. But, unfortunately, each of us has a different past; and, in consequence, each of us approaches the Canon with a set of presuppositions that is different in various ways from everybody else's. And the further consequence is that each of us understands the Canon in a different sense. We try to discover our personal ideas in the Canon because there is nothing else we can do. It is the only way we have, in the first place, of understanding the Canon. Later, of course, our understanding of the Canon comes to modify our ideas; and thus, by a circular process, our later understanding of the Canon is better than, or at least different from, our earlier understanding, and there is the possibility of eventually arriving at the right understanding of the ariyapuggala. Certainly we can, to some extent, deduce from the Canon its meaning; but unless we first introduced our own ideas we should never find that the Canon had any meaning to be deduced.

For each person, then, the Canon means something different according to his different background. And this applies not only to our understanding of particular passages, but also to what we understand by the Buddhadhamma as a whole.

(i) We may all agree that certain passages were spoken by the Buddha himself and that they represent the true Teaching. But when we come to ask one another what we understand by these passages and by the words they contain we often find a profound disagreement that is by no means settled simply by reference to other Sutta passages. (He and I are evidently agreed -- to take a case in point -- that the Sívaka Sutta[1] represents the Teaching of the Buddha. But whereas I understand it as indicating that only one out of eight kinds of feeling is kammavipáka, he brings forward an argument to justify its interpretation in a quite contrary sense -- that all eight kinds are kammavipáka. And though I entirely disagree with his interpretation, I very much doubt whether I should be able to produce a Sutta passage to convince him of -- as I see it -- his mistake. And this for the simple reason that he will inevitably interpret whatever passage I may produce according to his ideas. We may agree on the text, but we shall disagree on the interpretation.)

(ii) Since everybody already has his own ideas (vague or precise) of what constitutes happiness, he will naturally look to the Buddha (that is, if he has placed his saddhá in the Buddha) to supply that happiness, and he will interpret the Dhamma as a whole in just that sense. Later, of course, he may find that the Dhamma cannot be taken in the sense that he wishes, and he will then either change his ideas or else abandon the Dhamma for some other teaching. But, in any case, there is no reason at all for supposing that two people (unless they have both ceased to be puthujjana) will be agreed on what it is, precisely, that the Buddha teaches. (So, in the present case, I do not find that Mr. G.'s view of the Dhamma -- so far as I can grasp it -- has any very great resemblance to mine; and that difference evidently reflects the difference in our respective backgrounds against which we interpret the Dhamma. He may (perhaps) say that he reads and understands the Suttas without any reference to a background, and (if so) I have no wish to argue the point; but I know that, for my part, I never come without a background (in a sense I am my background) when I consider the texts, even though that background is now very different from what it was when I first looked at a Sutta. And if he disagrees with what I am saying, that disagreement will itself be reflected in the way each of us understands the nature of the Dhamma.)

Probably he is not much concerned to understand the mode of thinking that refuses a horizontal (or temporal) interpretation of paticcasamuppáda and requires instead a vertical (or simultaneous) view; but if it should so happen that he is interested, then he could read -- if his studies leave him time -- either Heidegger's Sein und Zeit or Sartre's L'Être et le Néant. It must be made clear, however, that these works are in no way a substitute for the Canon and, further, that the philosophies of these thinkers, when considered in detail, are open to criticism in several respects. It is their manner of thinking that is instructive. (In this connexion, Mr. G. might note that by the term 'reflexion' I mean paccavekkhana, not pariyatti.)[2]




[L. 108]   14 December 1964

I have been busy these last two or three weeks with rather lengthy correspondence. First there was Mr. G. to deal with. Then I wrote a letter, just as long, to Mr. Brady on the question of God.[1] He spent a week in a Hindu ashram at Rishikesh (in the Himalayas). He was originally a Catholic, but gave it up at the age of twenty, but he is one of those people who rather naturally incline towards a mystical view, and he rather likes the idea of God, without altogether being satisfied of his existence. So he finds the Hindu teachings much more sympathetic than the cold Teaching of the Buddha. And it seems likely that the Swamis at Rishikesh have been saying that all religions are One, and that the Buddha, being a Hindu, taught a form of Hinduism. So I set out to correct these ideas. He tells me that he reads my letters repeatedly, so he is worth the trouble of a little effort on my part.

Those Barren Leaves is (or was) probably the one of Huxley's novels that I read more than any other. This perhaps due to the Italian setting, with which I am familiar; but also to the aniromantic attitude of Francis Chelifer, a character from whom I learned a great deal (and much less painfully than by finding out for myself).




[L. 109]   30 December 1964

I am glad to see that you have found some passages of interest in Those Barren Leaves. I myself started thinking about the unpleasant business of dying, perhaps three or four years ago. Up to then, like most people, I had not given it much thought. But I was struck by the statements of two doctors on the subject. The first said that if we overeat we tend to die earlier than if we take less; and that since death is more painful when one is still young (because the body has stronger resistance) than when one is old and decrepit, it is advisable to eat less and live as long as possible. The other doctor was commenting (in a medical journal) on a proposal to institute voluntary euthanasia for people who had reached the age of sixty. He was in favour of the proposal because, he said, as a doctor he was well aware of the horrible diseases that are liable to attack us in the seventh and eighth decades of our lives. So there you are; if you die young you probably have a difficult death because your body is strong and if you keep alive into old age you run the risk of dying unpleasantly from some frightful affliction. And, after that, I was struck by the obsessive thought of death that runs right through Dr. Axel Munthe's book, The Story of San Michele. In the Suttas, whenever the Buddha speaks of severe pain, it is always 'pain like that of dying'.

The question of the 'lovely young temptation' is, of course, the difficult one. But one has to make up one's mind about it if one is to live as a recluse. The Buddha is reported to have said (though I have never come across the passage) that if there were another thing such as sex (káma) -- i.e. if there were two such things -- then it would not be possible to live the brahmacariya and put an end to suffering.

Although the Suttas give several ways of dealing with the 'lovely young temptation' when she comes toddling down the road, there is one (a kind of pincer movement) that I have sometimes found very useful. It is based on the episode of the Buddha and the Ven. Nanda Thera (which you can read at Udána iii,2: 20-4). When the 'lovely young temptation' comes in sight, you say to yourself: 'Well, if I really must have sex, and cannot do without it altogether, the best plan is to restrain myself now and thereby to gain merit that, in my next life, will bring me much bigger and better sex than I can get here.' By the time you have considered this aspect of the question, the temptation has perhaps gone past and is out of sight round the next corner, and it is now too late to do anything about it. But you still have this unsatisfactory desire for sex. In order to get rid of this, you set to work to see that sex never lasts; that, in the long run, the misery involved outweighs the pleasure; and that final peace can only be obtained when all thought of sex has vanished. This procedure is often quite enough to put the question out of one's mind -- until, of course, the next temptation comes along balancing her haunches! But, each time, there is a little progress, and it gradually becomes easier to keep one's peace of mind, even when a temptation actually appears.

Mr. Brady has contacted L'Alliance Française (the French British Council, if you will allow me to be Irish), and has obtained for me a number of French books on loan (nearly all on existentialism). One of these is Camus's long novel La Peste ('The Plague'). This has a character who declares 'The only concrete problem that I know of today is whether it is possible to be a saint without God'. In the Christian tradition, of course, one is good, one becomes a saint, in order to please God or to fulfil his will. But when (as is largely the case in Europe today) people no longer believe in the existence of God, is there any reason (apart from the police) for continuing to behave well or for aspiring to sainthood? This character in La Peste has seen human suffering, and has seen that much of this suffering is due to the cruelty or thoughtlessness of human beings themselves; and the question that he asks himself is whether a belief in God is necessary before one can live a good life, or whether a concern for other people's welfare is enough, and whether this will give a man final peace.

Actually, in one of the Suttas, the Buddha more or less answers this question by saying (in effect) that so long as one believes in God it is not possible to become a saint. And the reason is quite simple: if God exists, he is responsible -- since he created us -- for all our actions, good or bad; and so, if I believe in God, I shall not myself feel responsible for my actions, and so I shall have no motive for behaving well rather than badly. (The question of God's responsibility for evil is one that perpetually torments Christian theologians, and they have never found an adequate answer.)

One of the conclusions that this character of Camus's arrives at is that if one is going to live well, one can never afford to be distracted. In other words, one must always be mindful. And one of the striking things in the book is the contrast between the deaths of the ordinary victims of the plague, who are indeed no more than, in Huxley's expression, 'moaning animals', tossing about on their beds 'with no more thoughts, but only pain and vomiting and stupor', -- between these and the death of this one character who aspires to sainthood and practises mindfulness. Like the others, he dies of plague; but the whole time he is dying (according to Camus's description) he gives the impression of being intelligent and retaining his lucidity right up to the last. He knows that he is dying, and he is determined to have 'a good death'. Naturally, this is only a death in a novel, and we can't take it as necessarily true of real life (did Camus, I wonder, ever see a man trying to die mindfully?); but I myself am rather of the opinion that, if one is really determined to make an effort, a great deal can be done towards remaining intelligent at the time of one's death. But I do not suppose that it is very easy unless one has already made a long habit of mindfulness.

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Editorial notes:

[107.1] Sívaka Sutta: The text is at L. 149. A reference is to be found in A NOTE ON PATICCASAMUPPÁDA §3. [Back to text]

[107.2] There follows a postscript to this letter which has been omitted here because it consists of a long quotation from Sartre -- B&N, p. 477 -- and passages added to the Notes after the book was first published (which additions have all been included in the present edition of Notes), including a comment on viññánam anidassanam (non-indicative consciousness: cf. A NOTE ON PATICCASAMUPPÁDA §22) which resulted in the following letter to Mr. G. himself:

[L. 107a]   8 December 1964

I recently received from Mr. Samaratunga your carefully prepared comments on my Notes on Dhamma. I read them with great interest and sent a reply to Mr. Samaratunga. I now hear from him that he has sent it on to you, so no doubt it will reach you in due course. Unfortunately, I find that I have made a slip that needs correcting. In my discussion of viññánam anidassanam anantam sabbatopaham, I said (as I remember) that 'the arahat's consciousness neither indicates nor originates a "self" or "subject".' This should be: 'neither indicates a "self" or a "subject" nor originates from a "self" or "subject"'. Actually, the meaning of anidassanam and sabbato-apaham is the same: it is simply that, since there is no more Ahan ti vá Maman ti vá Asmi ti vá[1] with the arahat, consciousness is no longer 'mine'. And anantam may be taken in the same sense -- for the arahat consciousness is no longer limited by being 'my' consciousness (a determination is always a limiting, being a negation; and consciousness is now, in this respect, asankhata or non-determined). In the Asankhata Samyutta (iv,359-73) you will see that asankhata, anidassana, and nibbána are all synonyms, and are all defined as rágakkhaya dosakkhaya mohakkhaya, which, in the Itivuttaka (v,5: 38) is said to be saupádisesá nibbánadhátu.[2]

Edward Conze's translation as 'invisible infinite consciousness which shines everywhere' is quite wild (no doubt he has taken it without considering the Pali at all), and one is tempted to ask how consciousness can be 'invisible' if it 'shines everywhere'. But what, precisely, it is that Maháyánists understand by nibbána is very difficult to make out. [Back to text]

[107a.1] '"I" or "mine" or "am"'. [Back]

[107a.2] Cf. L. 36. [Back]