The Buddha in Sri Lanka

Histories and Stories

Gananath Obeyesekere

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138713628
• eBook ISBN: 9781351592253
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Eastern Philosophy
• Index: Social Sciences

This book examines culture, religion and polity in the context of Buddhism. Gananath Obeyesekere, one of the foremost analytical voices from South Asia develops Freud's notion of 'dream work', the 'work of culture' and ideas of no-self ( anatta ) to understand Buddhism in contemporary Sri Lanka. This work offers a restorative interpretation of Buddhist myths in contrast to the perspective involving deconstruction. The book deals with a range of themes connected with Buddhism, including oral traditions and stories, the religious pantheon, philosophy, emotions, reform movements, questions of identity and culture, and issues of modernity.

This fascinating volume will greatly interest students, teachers and researchers of religion and philosophy, especially Buddhism, ethics, cultural studies, social and cultural anthropology, Sri Lanka and modern South Asian history.

Part I

1

The Death of the Buddha

A restorative interpretation¹

One can speak of the ‘the death of the Buddha’ in at least two senses. First, on the model of ‘the death of God’ made famous by that great anti-Christ and herald of our modernity, Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s main point is that for the late nineteenth century in which he lived the idea of god had lost its personal meaning and cultural significance irrespective of whether people continued to believe in him. So is it with contemporary Buddhism. It is not the loss of belief that is at issue but the decline of what I like to think of as the ‘spirit’ of the doctrinal tradition: its values of compassion and kindness, its universalistic vision that obliterates social distinctions, its tolerance which even extends to ‘false beliefs’, its good humour and its unique meditative askesis which can embrace in its vision all living creatures caught in the net of samsara, the world of becoming and change governed by the continuous round of births and rebirths. The values enshrined in them have not totally died out though they are being increasingly swamped by the passionate and sometimes violent nationalism that has identified Buddhism with the religion of an imagined Sinhala nation state. Though such disturbing forms of nationalism have been the fate of our times, I want to speak of the death of the Buddha in another and second sense, namely, the manner in which the textual traditions of Buddhism have been rationalized and literalized by European scholarship and now accepted as ‘truth’ by native intellectuals. In this sense Nietzsche also has noted with great insight:

For this is how religions usually die out: namely, when the mythical presuppositions of a religion are systematised as a finished sum of historical events under the strict rational eye of dogmatic conviction and when one begins to mount an anxious defense of their credulity, when therefore the feeling for myth dies out and is replaced by religion’s claim to historical foundations.

(Nietzsche 2000: 61)

Let me look at the death of the Buddha as recorded in the great Mahā Parinibbāna Sutta (Maha Parinibbana Sutta) as a counter-response to those European scholars who, spurred by the spirit of their Enlightenment, have seen Buddhism through a ‘Euro-rational’ lens that in turn tended to downplay the ‘feeling for myth’. This is not to deny the powerful ‘rational imperative’ that underlies Buddhist thought but to make the case that Buddhist doctrinal rationality ought to be counter-posed with, or framed within, the feeling for myth that Nietzsche spoke about.² And while such a feeling is found in many places in the Buddhist texts, they appear most conspicuously in the manner of the hero’s birth and death. Many scholars have noted the mythic significance of the former but have seen the death as an empirical event that occurred in history, rather than a parable or an event of a symbolical order that occurred in the construction of Buddhist history.

It does seem, on the face of it, that the death of the Buddha as recorded in the Maha Parinibbana Sutta seems an actual or empirically true event. The text clearly says that he grew old; that he ate a meal of soft, perhaps even stale, pork (or maybe mushrooms) given by Cunda, a blacksmith (kammaraputta); that he had a severe indigestion compounded by diarrhoea; and that he died soon after. This sounds real – it could happen to anyone. Here therefore, it is said, there is a trace of the empirical Buddha that other texts try to hide. A minor problem pertains to the exact translation of the Pali phrase sūkara maddava (sukara maddava), ‘the soft flesh of the pig’. A few modern-day European translators have found the idea somewhat repugnant and, following some commentarial traditions in both Theravāda and Mahāyāna, have suggested that the Buddha died by eating mushrooms in a place trodden by pigs.³ Rhys Davids, the great translator of Theravāda texts, following Neumann’s example, thought that even mushrooms from a pig trodden place was a rather distasteful way for the Buddha to die and in his translation of the Maha Parinibbana Sutta he used the word ‘truffles’ which, for the European palate, is surely the more civilized way of terminating one’s existence.⁴ And for modern bourgeois Buddhists directly or indirectly nurtured in European translations of their sacred texts, and also influenced by the new Hindu gurus in their midst, it is inconceivable that the Buddha, a pure Being and the epitome of non-violence, should die by eating pork, a substance whose foulness is further compounded by the fact that it is considered loathsome by the Muslim citizens in their midst. Therefore, it had to be mushrooms; truffles they were not acquainted with. Yet it is the case that virtually every Theravāda Buddhist commentator of old, including those given to an idealistic or docetic view of the Buddha, have insisted on the minimal interpretation of sukara maddava as ‘pork’. So did ordinary people in Theravāda societies, such as Bishop Bigandet’s monk informants in Burma and mine among Sri Lankan villagers – at least till recently (Bigandet 1912: 36).

Both the intellectualist and the contemporary bourgeois interpretations of the death of the Buddha must be taken seriously; they too are part of a historical debate on the nature of the Buddha. I shall deal with the implications of this debate later but, for the moment, I want to defend the idea that the Buddha died by eating stale pork by engaging in a symbolic analysis of that event combined with an ethical stand that I think is consonant with the spirit of Theravāda Buddhism. I suggest that the manner in which the Buddha died has little to do with the empirical Buddha of modern Buddhists. It may well have been that the empirical Buddha died of eating pork (or mushrooms for that matter) but what is important is the preservation of this event in Buddhist memory. Historical or cultural memory preserves experiences that are significant to its own tradition and is not too different from individual memory in this regard. Moreover, it is certainly possible that empirically real events could simultaneously be symbolically real ones also. Consequently, one must consider seriously the significance of Buddhist memory in wanting to preserve this tradition of his death, even though, I shall show later, it ended up as a truncated memory in the Buddhist commentarial tradition along with the countervailing tendency exacerbated in modern times of the Buddha dying, in Brahmanic fashion, by eating a vegetarian meal. And most importantly I want to suggest that the Buddha dying – irrespective of whether he ate pork or mushrooms – cannot be considered apart from the mythic persona of the Buddha as he is depicted in Buddhist texts.

The birth

The references to the miraculous birth of the Buddha is well known among ordinary folk in Buddhist societies and is depicted in a multitude of ‘texts’ such as temple frescoes, popular and classic literatures and in songs sung in village healing rituals. I shall refer only to a few ancient texts of the Pali Canon to give the reader a feel for the material. In the Accariyābhutādhamma Sutta (Accariyabhutadhamma Sutta) (‘The Discourse on Wonderful and Marvellous Qualities’) the Buddha asks Ananda, his personal attendant, cousin (father’s brother’s son) and favourite disciple, to relate to the assembled monks the miracle of the Buddha’s birth (Majjhima Nikaya, Accariyabhutadhamma Sutta 1990: 163–9). According to Ananda, the Buddha-to-be was born in the Tusita heaven, and, after his lifespan there was over, he decided to be reborn in the human world, ‘mindful and clearly conscious’. He entered the mother’s womb, mindful and clearly conscious, and when this happened the earth trembled ‘and there appeared the illimitable glorious radiance surpassing even the deva-majesty of devas’ (ibid.: 165). As he entered the womb, four gods guarded the four quarters to prevent any human or non-human from annoying the Buddha-to-be or his mother. More miracle: the mother saw the Buddha-to-be in her womb as an emerald jewel, and the child was ‘complete in all his limbs, his sense organs perfect’ (ibid.: 167). Moreover, as the Buddha is born ‘he issues quite stainless, undefiled by watery matter, undefiled by mucus, undefiled by blood, undefiled by any impurity’ (ibid.: 168). He is ‘pure and stainless’ owing to the purity of both mother and son (ibid.). The text lists other miracles also, and mentions the fact that the Bodhisattva’s mother dies seven days after he is born.⁵ The Mahāpadāna Sutta (Mahapadana Sutta) makes it clear that all Buddhas, past and future, have an identical life history and all mothers of all Buddhas must die seven days after the birth of the Redeemer.

Clearly then conception did not occur through sexual intercourse. Although Māyā (Maya), the mother of the Buddha, could not be converted into a virgin in the historical traditions of Buddhism, she does avoid sexual relations at the time of conception; and she conceives the Buddha when she was observing celibacy (i.e. the ten precepts on uposatha days one of which enjoins celibacy or brahmaccariya. Yet, what about the necessity for the mother to die in seven days? Some Theravāda commentators say that this is to preserve the purity of the mother ‘because no other child is fit to be conceived in the same womb as a Buddha’ (Malalasekara 1983: 609–10). The most interesting answer is given in the Mahāvastu (Mahavastu), the famous text of the Lokottaravadins or Transcendentalists, which says that it is due to sexual rather than childbirth pollution. ‘I will descend’, says he [the Bodhisattva], ‘into the womb of a woman who has only seven nights and 10 months of her life remaining’. And why so? ‘Because’, says he, ‘it is not fitting that she who bears a Peerless One like me should afterwards indulge in love’ (Mahavastu II 1976: 3).

In which place was the Bodhisattva born? Most popular and doctrinal texts agree that he was born in a grove of sala trees in Lumbini. Let me present one well-known version. The queen, Mahāmāyā (Mahamaya) informs Suddhodana, her husband, of her desire to visit her parents’ home at Devadaha to give birth to her child – a perfectly normal custom in both India and in other patrilineal societies.⁶ Suddhodana consents, decorates the road between Kapilavastu, his capital, and Devadaha with plantain trees, pots full of water, and banners and streamers. ‘Now between the two towns there is a pleasure grove of Sala-trees, called the Lumbini Park, belonging to the citizens of both towns. At that time all the trees were one mass of blossoming flowers from the root to the topmost branches. In between the branches and the flowers swarms of bees of five varieties and flocks of birds of many species moved about warbling in sweet tones’ (Jayawickrama 1990: 69).⁷ The Bodhisattva is born in a liminal space, neither in the home of the mother nor of the father but in between, in a space that belonged to the citizens of both towns. The implication is clear enough: the hero does not belong to his father or mother but to the people or the world in general. The sala trees under which he was born are not the trees found in Indian forests but a mythic sala blooming from the root to the topmost branches. As he is born, the infant Bodhisattva takes seven steps and from each step a lotus flower blooms, presumably to prevent dust from touching his feet; he also surveys the four quarters of the world, the locus of his transcendental and universal teaching.

The death

The Maha Parinibbana Sutta is a long text and I shall only consider those sections relevant to my theme. I will begin with the arrival of the Buddha at Vesali or Vaishali, the country of the Liccavis. He stays in the grove of Ambapali, ‘mango-keeper’, the courtesan of Vaishali. Ambapali visits the Buddha and the latter agrees to go to her house with his brethren for the morning meal. The citizens of Vaishali try to bribe Ambapali with a huge sum of money to give them the opportunity of offering alms to the Buddha, but she refuses. The life story of Ambapali is not irrelevant to the present story: she was born spontaneously and found at the foot of a mango tree in the king’s orchard. She was so beautiful that princes fought among themselves to possess her. To solve the problem of strife they all agreed to appoint her as the official courtesan of Vaishali available to them all. She is highly regarded; yet, also a bought woman.

After eating a meal of ‘sweet rice and cakes’ at Ambapali’s, the Buddha asks some of his disciples to stay in Vaishali for the rain-retreat (vassa or the rainy season) while he goes to Beluva, a village nearby with Ananda, his attendant, and some other monks. The rainy season when monks cease their wanderings and stay in one place, often preaching also brings the tropical monsoon, the harbinger of disease. ‘But when the Blessed One had entered upon the rainy season, there rose in him a severe illness, and sharp and deadly pains came upon him. And the Blessed One endured them mindfully, clearly comprehending and unperturbed’.⁸ But because he did not want to die without taking leave of the monk community, he thought: ‘Let me suppress this illness by strength of will, resolve to maintain the life process, and live on’ (Vajira and Story 1988: 72). Ananda, his faithful attendant, is anxious that the Buddha leave instructions as to the future of the order, and Buddha gently chides him. ‘What more does the community of bhikkhus expect of me, Ananda. I have set forth the Dhamma without making any distinction of esoteric and exoteric doctrine; there is nothing, Ananda, with regard to the teachings that the Tathāgatha (Tathagatha) [Buddha] holds to the last with the closed fist of a teacher who keeps some things back’ (ibid.: 32). He tells Ananda that there is no need to have the truth dependent on any person, and then, in a key sentence, refers to his own frail condition. ‘Now I am frail, Ananda, old, aged, far gone in years. This is my 80th year, and my life is spent. Even as an old cart, Ananda, is held together with much difficulty, so the body of the Tathagatha is kept going only with supports.’ And then he makes the well-known statement that crystalizes the Buddhist quest: ‘Therefore, Ananda, be lamps unto yourselves, refuges unto yourselves, seeking no external refuge; with the Dhamma as your lamp, the Dhamma as your refuge, seeking no other refuge.’⁹

The scene now shifts to Vaishali where, having robed himself, the Buddha goes on his begging rounds early in the morning. He comes back, and after eating his meal of rice, talks to Ananda nostalgically about the beauty of the city and its delightful sites (for meditation). He senses that Ananda is distressed by the prospect of his impending death and so he tells Ananda: ‘Whosoever, Ananda, has developed, practiced, employed, strengthened, maintained, scrutinised and brought to perfection the four constituents of psychic power [siddhi] could, if he so desired, remain throughout a world-period [kappa, kalpa] or until the end of it’ (ibid.: 34). With this episode we have one of the most obscure problems in the Maha Parinibbana Sutta. The text implies that Ananda missed the hint the Buddha gave, namely, he could have really gone on to live for an aeon (kappa) if only Ananda had asked. But Ananda was incapable of comprehending what the Buddha meant because his mind was possessed by Māra (Mara), the Malign One, Death himself. But more of this later.

If Ananda failed to ask the Buddha to postpone his death till the end of the aeon, not so with Mara who soon afterwards insists that the Buddha die straightaway. He reminds the Buddha of a previous event when the Buddha, soon after his bodhi (Awakening), told Mara that he will die when the faith has been proclaimed to the world and the order of nuns and monks had been established. Now Mara tells the Buddha that all that is accomplished, and it is time for him to die. The Buddha agrees; he does not fight with Mara on this occasion. ‘Do not trouble yourself, Malign One. Before long the Parinibbana of the Tathagatha will come about. Three months hence the Tathagatha will utterly pass away’ (Vajira and Story 1988: 36).¹⁰ From this point onwards the Buddha converses with Ananda at length on the signs attendant on the death of some great being, the Buddha included. Yet at the back of Ananda’s mind is the gnawing anxiety of the Buddha’s impending death and now he implores him to postpone it for an aeon. But this is too late because the Buddha has already, very deliberately made a commitment to Mara to die within three months. But the Buddha consoles Ananda with this profound Buddhist message.

Yet, Ananda, have I not taught from the very beginning that with all that is dear and beloved there must be change, separation and severance? Of that which is arisen, come into being, is compounded, and subject to decay, how can one say: ‘May it not come to dissolution!’

The Buddha says that his word has been given, and he has no will to live longer and ‘that the Tathagatha should withdraw his words for the sake of living on is an impossibility’ (ibid.: 47). He then adds the refrain that punctuates this text right along: ‘All component things are subject to decay. Therefore, strive with earnestness’ (ibid.: 49).

Since the Buddha knows that he is going to die in three months, the text could have ended in a variety of ways, for example, dying peacefully in bed! Instead the text tells us that the proximate cause of the Buddha’s death was due ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Prologue
• Introduction: tellers of stories, writers of histories: essays on the Buddhist past
• PART I
• PART II
• PART III
• Epilogue: the Buddha in the market place and the movement of edifices
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index