More on the Three ‘Turnings’

Examining the idea of three ‘turnings’ again, we may strengthen our understanding of the history of Buddhism, so let’s give it a go.

The first turning was the basic teaching of the four noble truths and whatever else was taught in the discourses (Suttas/Sutras) in the Pali Nikayas/Sanskrit agamas, initial guidelines for religious orders (in the vinayas in both languages) and the idea of non-self (the idea of the skandhas was especially developed in the abhidharma and its commentaries also initially in both Pali and Sanskrit). This can be seen as Siddhartha’s ‘turning’ towards teaching a kind of ‘Middle Way’, the melding of the best of the Bramana and the Sramana ideas of India’s major religious tendencies.

The second turning was first called and is still regarded as Vaipulya (an extension) and not a repudiation of the first (as with the third). It was not uncritical of the abhidharmas, however. It represented, in fact, a ‘turning’ away from an excessive reliance upon an intellectual understanding of them. True understanding was beyond intellectual understanding and to underscore the great incomprehensibility of it all, ‘turning’ towards the intensely strange idea of no thing-ness became central to the ‘turning’ away from the intellect. This was arguably to ultimately aid in truly understanding the abhidharmas, however, not to supplant them.

The ‘turning’ was also, concurrently, and perhaps consolingly, to the relatively pro-social and thus most likely relatively comforting Bodhisattva ideal. It also ‘turned’ towards an explanation of cosmology admittedly in negative terms, explaining, as an extension of the idea of non-self, not what the universe (including nirvana) was, but what it was not. In this sense it may also be seen as true to the reluctance of Siddhartha to fully explain what the universe actually was and at the same time as a kind of answer to the questions; in effect, then, another ‘middle way’ and another partial answer.

Was the third turning, then, the full answer? What ‘turn’ happened? The ‘turn’ was indeed towards bringing an understanding of what is in contrast to what ‘it’ isn’t within the reach of the adept and even potentially the layperson. It was a ‘turning’ back to society, then (and back to reality, perhaps, albeit a rather magical one). No thing-ness could possess qualities, it taught, such as the radiance (prabhasvara – a special technical word in Buddhism that I’ll come back to) and beauty attainable by the Bodhisattva (among other qualities). It also ‘turned’ towards teaching the potential of all of us (even the meanest devil) to achieve this radiance by virtue of our innate Buddha Natures. It was thus not only humanist but in fact everythingist. The ten bhumis were taught for the Bodhisattva path (as I mentioned in an earlier post, the Arhat, either as a hermit or in a religious community, only had to get to number six and may or may not be re-born) and one could also, as a regular or even a religiously honoured layperson, simply choose to gain merit, by leading a good life, for a later, better re-birth).

So there were four main Buddhist Siddhantas (orthodoxies) of the three turnings in India: those of the first turning, Sarvastivada, represented by the Abhidharmakosa of Vasubandhu, and Sautrantika, outright rejecters of the abhidharma; that of the second turning, represented by the Madhyamika school, stressing emptiness and scripturally represented by the Mulamadhyamakakarika; and that of the third turning, represented by the Yogacara school and scripturally represented by the treatises of Maitreya-Asanga. They all argued over which turning represented the highest teaching of Siddhartha while the Theravadans were down in Sri Lanka doing their own Sarvastivadan thing and regarding all of the Indian versions including Sarvastivada as bastardised Siddhantas.

Abhidharma Commentaries – Vasubandhu in Sanskrit on the now partially lost Sanskrit Canon

There has been a tradition of commentaries on the two earliest canons and especially their abhidharmas culminating in one great commentary each. The great commentary on the more important Sanskrit one for Indian Buddhism was written by a Peshawar scholar called Vasubandhu and is called Abhidharmakosa. Early translations were also made into Chinese and Tibetan. The great commentary on the Pali Canon was written in Pali in Sri Lanka by Buddhaghosa and is called Visuddhmagga.

Vasubandhu was a noted commenter on the abhidharma and the religious life. The stages of jhana mediation/mindfulness all have detailed levels of reality within them for him. Nirvana (or at least the ninth level of jhana) apparently could not be returned from without exercise of will before entering it that one should later exit it. Buddha apparently achieved parinirvana directly from the fourth jhana. Adepts could obtain noticeable supernatural powers. Vasubandhu apparently generally preferred the vipassana form of meditation practice. The so-called “contemplation of the horrible” is another form used that may include the use of objects such as a corpse or a piece of clay.

The Abhidharma in some more detail (and compared with work in Western Philosophy)

It was considered necessary to systematise Siddhartha’s teachings so that the educated might better judge the validity of Buddhism and this was the aim of the abhidharmas in the various canons though as I’ve written in an earlier post they were little more than lists. They do contain metaphysical ideas, psychological ideas and attempts at formulating a somewhat systematic cosmology. Theravadans have traditionally considered that prajña required this aid. Coincidentally both of the earliest canons had seven books of abhidharma.

The abhidharmas have cosmology (including discussion of world systems), psychology (in its study of mind and mind-states) and simple ontology (metaphysics – analysis of the building blocks of existence).

In the western study of ontology there are three basic positions: materialism holds that all is matter, idealism that all is consciousness and dualism that all is either matter, consciousness or some combination. The abhidharmas have a different idea that the western philosophers hadn’t considered (and that I’ll get to soon). The problem for dualists has always been where (if at all) do the supernatural mind and natural body (matter) connect? Descartes thought that for human purposes it was in the human pineal gland. Materialists say simply that mind is merely matter arranged in a particular way and idealists of course assert that matter is merely a by-product of mind.

The abhidharma ontology claims instead that everything is made up of dharmas. It also claims that anything up to 37 of them can arise and die in the click of a finger. Dharmas are a combination of thing and event (c.f. particle v wave?) They naturally arise and die in groups as they are considered interdependent things (unless they are unconditioned ones such as the dharmas of air in some conceptions or of nirvana). Are they anything like the atoms posited within materialism? Perhaps some are but likely not all. The theory is quite esoteric. In the abhidharma of the Theravadan Canon there are 82 dharmas and in the Sarvastivadan one there are 75 dharma groups (divided, of course, between the 5 skandas).

Here are some quotes from Western philosophers that also reflect this:

For my part, when I enter into myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat, cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I can never catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any ‘thing’ but the perception . . . I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in perpetual flux and movement (David Hume, “A Treatise on Human Nature”, 1739).

The notion of things that have a constitution in themselves is a dogmatic idea with which one must break absolutely (Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Will to Power” (Kaufmann trans., 1968 )).

Again, this idea is superimposed in the abhidharma on ancient Indian analogies and ‘rope-snake’ stories and the idea of ultimate truth is further elucidated. Here’s something of the argument: In our minds, if we saw a rope and thought it was a snake, we might put up some kind of a fence to protect others from the ‘snake’. The problem for us was the shadow which created an illusion and we might expect some praise but someone who knew it was a rope might disappoint us. For them it is an ‘idea (vijnapti)’ of a snake that is of course illusory and a superimposition on ultimate reality. The problem (if there is one) is thus the idea that led to our unnecessary work (fence-building) and not the ‘snake’ and this is what must be realised. Ego and self is that ‘snake’. It’s really those dharmas. The one problem with the analogy that the abhidharma recognises is that an ‘ego’ can perform the function of an ego (as a ‘table’, too, can that of a table) but a ‘rope/snake’ could never fully perform that of a snake; hence we can use conventional reality in real life. Nevertheless our ‘problems’ are not the problems we see and therefore we need also to see the ultimate reality so the ‘snake’ can be a ‘tool’ (and we also don’t need to kill it).

In real life we can see the effect of these kinds of real delusions in illnesses such as anorexia nervosa. A person living with the condition may see fat ‘snaking’ around her/his body. All illusions eventually lead to disillusion but the disillusion is better for us ultimately that the illusion.

Our normal conventional life and deemed ‘reality’ is a superimposition over all of this actual reality. Does a book have any universal quality of “bookness” to work with? If so then it is what we call a book. The Central Conception of Buddhism is a useful text that explores these questions. So abhidharma’s aim is to categorise ultimate truths. All the canons may be potentially added to if further intellectual or enlightening work is done or further material considered relevant is discovered.

The Kashmiri abhidharma now lost to us in its original Sanskrit was apparently especially notable for its theory of ontology. It also divides things between what actually exists (dravyatah) and what exists as a name. I discussed this as the idea of two truths in an earlier post with ‘person’, especially, being of the second type. The constituents of reality are examined (dharmas) for the better understanding of what it is. The five skandas are therefore further divided. Form, for example has at least five parts including fire (heat), earth (solidity), water (connectedness) and air (motion). Samskaras are also examined, classified and subdivided.

This all attempts to answer the question: can we list what we need to know about reality? The dharma of air is regarded by some Buddhist scholars as an unconditioned dharma along with the dharma of nirvana but this is disputed. Nirvana certainly is considered fully unconditioned. So ‘person’ came to be seen as an interactive stream of some 75 to 80 dharma forms. Also ‘fire’ is heat; it doesn’t possess it as an attribute as it does not have a selfhood. All of the conditioned dharmas are considered to have only a momentary existence. They don’t therefore have time to move anywhere; they simply arise and cease to exist in a moment. They can be discovered during meditation. The abhidharmic lists are generally thought to probably be expansions of lists taught directly by Siddhartha during his lifetime on earth.

The First Noble Truth (Dukkha – suffering or unsatisfactoriness)

The idea is that the cosmos we know of (as unenlightened beings) is in conditioned existence (samsara) (i.e. things follow from other things) and that this is unsatisfactory (dukkha is our very state of existence, then).

There are three categories. The first is dukkha dukkha and this means the clearly unsatisfactory things such as direct suffering, pain, trauma, loads, psychological distress and loss/bereavement. The second form is the unsatisfactoriness of the reality that we know the happinesses we may be feeling now will surely end in old age or death (viparinama (change) dukkha). Siddhartha is asking for people to consider how their lives are unsatisfactory in the here and now (are we in pain now or do we fear the pain of loss of our happiness in the future?) The third form of unsatisfactoriness is the very fact that those states we feel - good or bad - are not our independent states, they are conditioned because we are living in a conditioned world (samkhara (conditioned existence) dukkha (samskara duhkka in Pali)). Siddhartha wants followers to examine whether this conditioned state is real or must be real for all time. He also asks them to ask if any of these three states is satisfactory. It’s fairly clear that if they are our reality that our reality is not ideal.

Is knowing this, then, the beginning of the way to reach for the ideal reality that is possible? The idea is that pondering this in itself in depth is useful to us if we seek enlightenment. This is really a pondering of whether we have agency to make our own reality or not. The answer of course is too subtle for us to simply know without in-depth pondering (and pondering over many lifetimes may be required before we can know the answer). The Buddhist argues both that 'we' are dependent by nature and that imagining otherwise is an illusion that we need to try to know as the illusion it is but that knowing this is part of finding a way out of this major chain of dukkha states we call our lives.

There are within this dukkha (samsara) reality held to be five or six realms plus some meditation level realms and we’ve now entered into the metaphysics/ontology of abhidharma. Tibetan Buddhists especially have created wheels of existence that depict the realms for the benefit of the unlettered. One actually shows 31 realms because there are various sub-realms all of which humans might potentially experience in some sense in their lifetimes so human mind experiences in some sense reflect Buddhist cosmology.

The five realms that we can say Buddhists accept as at least real in some sense according to the abhidharma are the Hell realm (niraya), the Animal realm (tiracchanaroni – especially difficult to get out of), the Ghostly realm (pettivisaya – the ghosts may or may not be hungry and/or thirsty ghosts), the Human realm (mantissa) and the realm of the Gods. Some wheels depict a further realm of Titans (a demi-god (Asura) realm). Within the actual God (deva and Brahma) realms some hold that there are six lower God sub-realms and sixteen higher God sub-realms.

I’ve mentioned that only humans, egotistical though they are said to be, are able to escape to nirvana because only they are able to see both what is and what can be but is not now and four of the possible realms are realms regarded as higher than the higher God realms that can only be reached by human meditation (called formless dhyana/Samadhi/Zen) - levels five to eight of meditation - the highest of them is on the edge of nirvana but still a realm of existence and the four lower so-called pure form levels of meditation one to four permit communion with various higher gods). Humans can also arguably be reborn in these highest four realms (five to eight) as a result of having reached them in an earlier life by meditation.