[Buddha-l] 9. Attadiipaa Sutta (Joy Vriens)

[JKirkpatrick]

OK Joy, but you are addressing the idea of 'a' refuge post-Pali canon, post-Buddha. The Tibetan religious culture came along centuries after the dammapada and the Buddha, no? 
So the review of ideas about the Pali verse would, I should think, need to be considered in the context of conditions at the time of the Buddha as sources for figurative discourse.

The dammapada verse that you quoted refers to real-time flight to refuge of ordinary people, and is being contrasted to spiritual refuge:
"188. Driven only by fear, do men go for refuge to many places — to hills, woods, groves, trees and shrines.
189. Such, indeed, is no safe refuge; such is not the refuge supreme. Not by resorting to such a refuge is one released from all suffering."

The attadiipa sutta under discussion however is a figure of speech, a trope recommending that the monks --bereft of their teacher-- take themselves as refuge "as if" their hearts/minds were a dvipa.  Why dvipa, then?  To 'tropise' even a seasonal condition of a river (2-waters translation), something that anyone near a river would immediately grasp--and they all were from time to time as attested in the texts where rivers are frequently named--as a figure of speech serves to create a recognisable image in the context. But it could not have been meant to be taken literally, which is what you seem to be doing.  

Joanna
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Hi Joanna,

"Thinking this over, one can view a river as samsara because it is so often used as a metonym for samsara, as in the raft teaching. Therefore, the sandbar (to me a 'doab' is too vast to serve the purpose here), standing above the river as it flows around it instead of over it, makes sense as refuge and as solid ground (nothing solid about river/samsara, right?).
In India the rivers don't run full during the dry season, lowering in depth and producing sandbars and what could be called small islands. These are indeed viewed as solid ground by locals (even if not always solid ground), in that in dry season these grounds are cultivated. They are solid. People put up huts and live on them while cultivating crops."

There are two different aspects here for me. One the image of a river, a stream, a torrent for samsara. Which I prefer to the ocean, where one has to navigate for a long time before being able to cross it. As long as one is navigating towards the final destination, it is as if nothing has changed.
Whereas the river and its stream is more similar to our mind stream, where patches of temporary peace can be found immediately.

The second part is the island, or sandbar as such as an image of safety. We all know the phenomenon of waning and flooding of rivers. People avoid to settle on grounds that can be inundated. No building permits will be delivered for those grounds, because they are not safe. They will be used for cattle in the summer. In France many rivers have signs telling you not to bathe in the river, because it's connecte to a hydro-electrical dam and when the water is let out, the river level can raise very suddenly. The huts and the crops on the sandbars are precarious and temporary. Not a good image for refuge.

Another idea. Dhammapada 188. "Many people, out of fear, flee for refuge (
sara.na) to (sacred) hills, woods, groves, trees, and shrines." In other words, they flee to the traditional sanctuaries and places of safety. The attadipa sutta has the word refuge (sara.na) appearing a couple of times.
And sara.na and "island" are similar/synonyms. Dhammapada 189 comments : In reality this is not a safe refuge. "In reality this is not the best refuge.
Fleeing to such a refuge one is not released from all suffering." Therefore a sandbar would not be a safe refuge. As soon as the water rises again, you would have to move on.

The Tibetan equivalent for dviipa, gling, has kept the different meanings of "dviipa". The first temple built in Tibet in the 8th century with the help of the Indian acarya Śāntarakṣita was called Samye Ling (bsam yas gling). I don't know whether Śāntarakṣita was involved in the choice of the name, but here dviipa is clearly not an island or a sandbar. The architecture of Samye Ling was modeled on a Buddhist temple in India. It is current nowadays to add gling = dviipa to the names of temples and centres. It was current in the 8th century in Tibet. Perhaps it was even current in the India of Śāntarakṣita. At least there are no rapports about Śāntarakṣita having been shocked by the name "gling" / dviipa and having shouted out "Why island, there is no water here!".

Joy
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