[Buddha-l] Sabba Sutta

[Richard Hayes]

On Tue, 2008-11-25 at 10:29 -0800, Jayarava wrote:

> Richard, I'm exploring the use to which the Sabba Sutta has been put
> and our friend Kalupahana has made much of it. I've found your "Gotama
> Buddha and Religious Pluralism", J. of Religious Pluralism 1:65-96
> (1991), in which you critique the view that he justifies using the
> Sabba Sutta.

I have forgotten what I wrote in 1991. But just recently I forced my
students to read a few chapters from Kalupahana's book on Buddhist
causality. I'm teaching an upper-level undergraduate course on Indian
Buddhism, and this year decided to make the central topic dependent
arising as it is discussed in the suttas, in adhidhamma, in Sanskrit
abhidharma and by Nāgārjuna. We also ploughed through a fair amount of
secondary literature, hence the Kalupahana readings. 

> In his 1976 book - Buddhist Philosophy - Kalupahana includes an
> appendix on epistemology in which he makes the case that the Buddha's
> empiricism was similar to the Positivist rejection of metaphysics. You
> argue that other views expressed by the Buddha - largely value
> judgements - run counter to the spirit of Positivism.

Yes, I think a Positivist, or even empiricist, reading of the Buddha is
quite untenable. What I find intriguing about Kalupahana's treatment of
causality is that as an empiricist Kalupahana wants to agree with Hume
that no one actually ever observes a causal event; all we observe is
things taking place, and on these events we imagine patterns of
similarity by ignoring differences. On the other hand, Kalupahana also
wants to say that the Buddha had profound insights into karma and its
ripening, which of course is an example of precisely the sort of
causality that a Humean empiricist would say is impossible. To resolve
this tension, Kalupahana invokes---quite emphatically---the Buddha's
paranormal powers. So for ordinary blokes like us (and Hume), observing
causality actually happening is impossible. But for a Buddha, who can
see the past and the future as clearly as the present and who can
observe features that ordinary beings cannot observe, the workings of
karma and its consequences are perfectly observable. In other words, the
Buddha was a strict empiricist in his observation of the sorts of things
that would be metaphysical claims if anyone else made them. 

Kalupahana's attempt to preserve the Buddha's reputation as an
empiricist is crafty, but I suspect it would not be terribly convincing
to a real empiricist. Any self-proclaimed empiricist who privileges the
observational capacities of a special being, such as God or an
omniscient buddha, hardly qualifies as an empiricist of the likes of
Locke or Hume, and is certainly unlike any Positivist I have ever
encountered. On the other hand, Kalupahana's position is perhaps not
much more bizarre that Bishop Berkeley's.

> I read Kalupahana as including the mind sense in his empiricism.
> Surely discrimination is a function of, and wisdom is acquired
> through, the mind sense? Doesn't this contradict what you are saying?

No, I don't think so. The function of manas is to observe states that
are internal. Manas observes the aggregates: vedanā, samjñā and
sanskāra. Wisdom is one of the sanskāras, so it is an object that manas
observes. But wisdom itself is a form of judgement that operates in ways
that cannot possibly be described in a perfectly empirical manner,
because one cannot directly observe, even with manas, whether an action
is going to be productive or counterproductive of expected results. So
at the time of acting, one is in no position to know whether an action
is going to be karmically successful. To do that requires rather more
than any empiricist epistemology can provide. 

> Kalupahana has of course rewritten that book - A History of Buddhist
> Philosophy, 1992 -  and has dropped that appendix and the reference to
> Positivism. However he retains the view that the physical senses and
> the mind are the only possible sources of knowledge (here of course he
> cites the Sabba Sutta). He insists that Insight/Wisdom cannot be
> completely divorced from the senses (he again includes the mind I
> think). (p.112)
> 
> Have you an opinion on Kalupahana's newer version of the Buddha's empiricism?  

I still think he is trying to have his empiricism and eat it too. That
he has given up on using the Positivist label is a good sign, but I
think a better sign would be abandon the absurd claim that the Buddha
was an empiricist. He was clearly a dogmatist (in a Kantian sense).
There is just no way to make canonical Buddhism (which is the only kind
that Kalupahana seems to accept as legitimate Buddhism) into a way of
acqiring knowledge that is consistent with scientific method. Canonical
Buddhism is very much a pre-modern kind of dogmatism. 

> Do we, from an early Buddhist point of view, have sources of knowledge
> other than the physical senses and the mind? 

According to Kalupahana, we have the authority of the omniscient Buddha
whose capacities to know things are unlike those of any ordinary mortal.
So if you like the idea of an omniscient God, you'll love Kalupahana's
Buddha. 

I personally do not much like either the idea of an omniscient God or of
a buddha who has paranormal powers. Of course this means I have to be
very selective (some would say much TOO selective) in which parts of the
canon I take seriously as a source of personal inspiration. I pretty
much have to skip over all the narratives of the Buddha manifesting his
abhinormal powers and write them off as the gross exaggerations of later
devotees whose critical faculties have been undermined by a saturation
with fawning piety. I'm afraid the Buddhist canon in my hands would look
a bit like Thomas Jefferson's ferociously edited Bible; not much would
remain but some pretty good advice of the sort that would can find
pretty much everywhere in the sayings of thoughtful and reflective
people. Oddly enough, that is still plenty for me. In fact it is more
than enough for me, in that I am a miserable failure at following even
the pretty good advice of the Buddha and other sages like him.

-- 
Dh. Dayāmati