[Buddha-l] Monk/nun or lay person, again (or, still)

[at43naug at tds.net]

    Oh dear. I didn't really want to get into this, but in view of the expressed interest on the part of some other worthies on this list, and in view of the ongoing samadhi of our more prolific contributors, here are some more comments along these lines, dealing with the concept of omniscience in early Buddhist texts, and the development that I see in regard to this idea. 
    What I would claim to be the earliest reference to omniscience in Pali sources comes in the Maha Parinibbana Sutta, where Sariputta praises the Buddha by comparing him favorably to the other teachers of the day, saying that the Buddha's insight and attainment are much more wonderful, etc. Buddha responds to this in a way that I would characterize as idiosyncratic, asking Sariputta what his basis is for such exalted praise. Has he, Sariputta, in fact studied with these other teachers, duplicated their attainment, and thus making this comparison on the basis of his own direct experience? Well of course Sariputta has done no such thing, and this is why the Buddha is critical of his encomiums (encomia?), because Sariputta is speaking beyond his experience, a tendency which the Buddha regards as bound to lead to trouble of one sort or another. 
    In another passage, Buddha responds to another questioner, who says that he has heard that another teacher of the time claims to be omniscient (this probably refers to Mahavira, but it seems he was not the only contemporary to make this claim). Can the Buddha match this? Buddha is critical of the whole idea of omniscience, pointing out that other teachers display a typically human confusion with regard to getting lost, not getting enough alms, being attacked by dogs, and so forth, which renders their claims to omniscience suspect. Buddha also specifies that basing a religion on such claims is unsatisfactory. So this is the early attitude, regarding claims to omniscience as either fraudulent or at least practically impossible to prove, and therefore philosophically uninteresting. 

    So, in another passage, we find the following. Here is a passage from the Kannakatthala Sutta,  which is worth quoting in extenso : 

"Then King Pasenadi spoke thus to the Lord: 'I have heard this about you, revered sir: "The recluse Gotama speaks thus: There is neither a recluse nor a brahmin who, all-knowing, all-seeing, can claim all-embracing knowledge-and-vision- this situation does not exist." Revered sir, those who speak thus...  I hope that these, revered sir, speak what was spoken by the Lord, that they do not misrepresent the Lord by what is not fact, that they explain dhamma according to dhamma, and that no reasoned thesis gives occasion for contempt?'
     'Those, sire, who speak thus... do not speak as I spoke but are misrepresenting me with what is not true, with what is not fact.'....
     Then King Pasenadi spoke thus to the Lord: 'Could it be, revered sir, that people might have transferred to quite another topic something (originally) said by the Lord in reference to something else? In regard to what, revered sir, does the Lord claim to have spoken the words?'
     'I, sire, claim to have spoken the words thus: There is neither a recluse not a brahman who at one and the same time can know all, can see all- this situation does not exist.'"

    Here we find the Buddha making a distinction between various types of omniscience, rejecting one type in favor of another. I suspect this is the result of the ongoing competition that developed between the Buddhist community and their rivals, primarily the Jains. We know from both Jain and Buddhist sources that the Jains made a big deal out of the supposed omniscience of their own teacher, and after the Buddha was no longer around to discount such claims, his followers felt that they had to have a different strategy for dealing with this perceived doctrinal inadequacy. And finally in the Milinda, we have Milinda claiming a specific sort of omniscience for the Buddha. 

    References for all this stuff are in the article I wrote a while back, "Buddhist Omniscience" in The Eastern Buddhist, Vol. XXIV, No. 1, Spring 1991, pp. 28-51. Maybe now you can see why I didn't want to get into it. 

    And just to make more use of this virtual soapbox while I'm occupying it, here's a quote I found from that wonderful Buddhist Maxim Gorky:
A belief which is based on force of habit is one of the saddest and most harmful phenomena of our time – as in the shade of a stone wall everything new grows slowly, becoming stunted, lacking the sap of life.   Maxim Gorky, My Apprenticeship, first published 1915

    I think that will do it for now. 

              All the best,    Alex Naughton