[Buddha-l] mogha, moha, mughda

[Dan Lusthaus]

Richard wrote:

>  I have read (oddly enough, only from Brahmin
> writers) that the only people humiliated in public by the Buddha were
> men of low caste. The favorite example of this public humiliation is the
> Mahatanhasakhaya sutta, where the unhappy recipient of the Buddha's
> humiliation was a fisherman's son. But that sutta is my prime example of
> the Buddha correcting someone for misunderstanding him, and not calling
> them anything like a jerk or an idiot. The phrase used was
> "moghapurisa," which just means "mistaken man" or "confused person."

Not so simple. First, it is not surprising that Brahmans would notice this,
since they are perhaps more attuned than contemporary Buddhists to the
idiomatic implications of mogha from its vedic, etc., usages (see below).

Second, while one can read the story of the Mahatanhasankhaya s. as a
"correction" to Sati for misunderstanding and misrepresenting Buddha's
teaching -- that is an important part of the frame -- the pedagogy of
shaming is the issue. The plot -- for those who haven't read it recently -- 
has Sati thinking that Buddha's teaching is that everything is consciousness
(an precursor of how contemporary scholars misunderstand Yogacara, but we'll
leave that aside for now). The other monks try to disabuse him of that view,
but he stubbornly insists he has the right interpretation. So the monks
report him to the Buddha, who tells them to bring Sati to him. When Sati
arrives, Buddha asks him if he does indeed think that is Buddha's teaching,
to which Sati replies he does. Then Buddha calls him a moghapurisa, and
turns to the other monks, explaining TO THEM, not to Sati himself, that Sati
has gotten it wrong. And in chorus, they all affirm that Sati is clueless.
Then Sati becomes despondent (I quoted that passage in a previous post -- 
telltale signs of being shamed). Buddha then briefly turns back to Sati,
says: "Moghapurisa, you will be recognized by your own pernicious view. I
shall question the bhikkhus on this matter," and then ignores Sati for the
remainder of a very long discourse directed to the other bhikkhus on
pratitya-samutpada and related matters (on the destruction of craving -
tanhasankhaya), only mentioning Sati again at the very end -- to tell the
bhikkhus, not Sati directly, that Sati is entangled in the nets of craving.

Sati thus serves as the negative example, not the recipient of direct
teachings. He chastises Sati.

Now, going with the drama of the sutta, one could say that doing so is part
of the lesson, since Sati has claimed that his theory is the Buddha's own
teaching, and Buddha asks him at the beginning "To whom have you ever heard
me say that?" So by making him sit there and observe an ACTUAL teaching
situation, he is provided with a more accurate model. And one could even
argue that such chastisement is an effective, or even necessary antidote to
Sati's clinging to his interpretation. Whether such pedagogy is infallible
or sometimes counterproductive is a legitimate question, but even putting
that aside, it still remains hard to deny that Buddha is using chastisement
and a form of name-calling (moghapurisa) to make his point. (As I mentioned
to Joy, I don't take "son of a fisherman" as a put-down).

Now returning to the term mogha-purisa, Buddhists commentators seem to have
neutralized the problem by conflating mogha with moha (they derive from the
same root -- muh) and so treating it as Richard or Nanamoli/Bodhi treat it:
misguided person, mistaken man, confused person, and so on, arguably netural
terms.

But we have to decide whether we want to approach this as defensive
hermeneuts or dispassionate philologists.

For example, in late Bibilical Hebrew the term ben-adam, which literally
means "son of Adam" evolved in meaning. Initially it simply meant a "human"
since all humans are sons (or children -- ben in this context is gender
inclusive) of Adam. It came to have a negative, pejorative sense, someone
too close to the earth, a peasant farmer, someone crude and uncivilized. To
call someone a ben-adam, in other words, was to call him an uncouth idiot.
This tended to be used of people from the Galilee region which at the time
was considered more backward than urbane Judea. However, based on some
curious readings of the Book of Daniel, Christian theologians turned "Son of
Man" into an entirely new theological category -- probably early on
realizing that they were actively converting an epithet used of Jesus that
indicated he was a Galilean hillbilly (a ben-adam) into something much more
positive and glorious; but they were so successful that most subsequent
theologians were oblivious to the origins of the term or why/how it
developed as it did. And they were certainly unaware of what it actually
meant in Jesus' day.

It's worth observing in this context that the English word "fool" -- which
today is taken by most people as a synonym for "idiot" -- used to mean (and
still does for some) someone who is heedless of good advice or lacks common
sense, who walks clueless into disaster despite the fact he should know
better. In that sense, translating mogha-purisa as "foolish man" is
perfectly apt. Since no one wants to be called a fool, and fools, almost by
definition, will resent and reject that categorization (that's what makes
them fools!), it is usually an ineffective corrective, uttered more to set
up a later "I told you so" than to actually change the fool's thinking. So
the old PTS translation has its merits.

Dan Lusthaus
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