Re: Article on the Uraga verses (Sn 1–17)

Many thanks to both Bhikkhu Bodhi and Bryan for your astute and helpful comments on my Uraga verses article. I did not suppose I had totally solved the problems of interpretation presented by the pada, so bhikkhu jahāti orapāraṃ, but it is good to read both your positive approval and some constructive further ideas. Ven Bodhi, the reference for my article is:

Dhivan Thomas Jones (2016), ‘That bhikkhu lets go both the near and far shores’: meaning and metaphor in the refrain from the uraga verses’, Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, 11: 71–107.

I did not know that you have been working on a translation of the Sutta-nipāta and its commentary. This is very good news. May I just mention in this context another article by me:

Dhivan Thomas Jones (2015), 'Like the Rhinoceros, or Like Its Horn? The Problem of Khaggavisāṇa Revisited’, Buddhist Studies Review, 31.2:175–78.

I expect you can guess what this article is about! I would be happy to send a copy if it would be of interest. 

In relation to Ven Bodhi’s comments, I was positively drawn by the thought that the pada so bhikkhu jahāti orapāraṃ is more equivocal than I had allowed, i.e., perhaps meaning both that the bhikkhu lets go the internal and external sense bases and also that the bhikkhu gives us this world and the next. In fact, as you yourself suggest, it is possible to explicitly link these two interpretations, in that the bhikkhu who has in this life given up the internal and external sense bases can, at the break up of the body, give up this world and the next.

However, I was not entirely convinced by the idea that that we should understand the pada so bhikkhu jahāti orapāraṃ to refer to the arahant, nor that we should read the uraga stanzas as a whole to apply only to the arahant. The commentary on them does not do so either. It would seem more likely, I would have thought, to read them as follows (to use the English translation of the first stanza for convenience):

One who controls anger when it has arisen

as if treating with remedies a snake’s spread venom –

that bhikkhu lets go both the near and far shores

like a serpent its worn-out old skin. 

This might be read to mean: ‘The practitioner who controls anger (and so on) (as an active exercise in accordance with the dharma) lets go of the near and far shores’ – by practising in accordance with the dharma there is the resulting possibility of transcending the duality of internal & external sense bases / this world and the next world’. This would surely suggest that the stanzas present exercises to be practised, in the rhetorical mode of (proleptically) invoking aspects of the non-dual experience of the arahant.

Certainly in this sense the Dārukkhandasutta presents the simile of the stream of the dharma for the sekha as you say. However, does it present an ‘injunction’ (‘an authoritative order or warning’)? Doesn’t it rather present a contemplative exercise for the sekha to practise? In this connection, I would agree that, by comparison, the stanza at Dhp 385 is much more like a way of putting the insight of an arahant, and indeed this is also how the commentary presents the intention of the stanza.

Thanks to both Ven Bodhi and Bryan for your reflections on how the uraga stanzas, and other teachings in the Pāli discourses, could be regarded as expressing a ‘non-dual’ perspective. Only after the article was published did I read Ven Bodhi’s notes on S 22:55, in which he interprets the difficult formula no c’assa no ca me siyā na bhavissati na me bhavissati as a contemplative formula inviting the disciple to reflect on how the worldling misconstrues self and world as a duality. Bryan has also pointed out various other cases in which the Buddha’s teaching invites the disciple into seeing how various dualities have been misconstrued. 

It strikes me that this topic is both difficult and important and someone should perhaps write about it more fully. I don’t doubt that it is inappropriate to apply a certain kind of popular non-dualist thinking to early Buddhism. However, just in order to begin the more subtle process of presenting an early Buddhist version of non-dualism in the appropriate context, I would like to present a line of thought again in disagreement with what Ven Bodhi has written. When Ven Bodhi writes of a ‘fundamental ontological distinction between the world of phenomenal experience and ultimate or unconditioned reality’ in his message to me, I am not entirely convinced that this is the only or even the best interpretation of early Buddhism, but is perhaps rather more of an Abhidhamma perspective (for want of a better term). For instance, in S 22:81, the appearance of ‘self’ in experience is described as a saṅkhāra. Similarly, beliefs about this self and clinging to this self are likewise saṅkhārā. It is just by not seeing things in this way that there is a world of phenomenal experience and there is dukkha, and by seeing things like this there is the ending of a world of phenomenal experience and an end of dukkha. If this is a correct interpretation of the situation, there can be no fundamental ontological distinction, in the sense of a distinction between two kinds of being. There is rather just reality, misinterpreted by unawakened people and not misinterpreted by awakened and awakening people. If there were a fundamental ontological distinction between ordinary experience and ultimate reality, it would not be possible to awaken to the true nature of things in the way indicated in S 22:81, that is, by not misinterpreting certain saṅkhārā in terms of a self that can be believed in and clung to. In the light of this kind of discourse I would suggest that the duality of saṃsāra and nibbāna is not ontological but conventional, i.e. it is a fundamental way in which the human situation is represented in the Buddha’s teaching, without which it is impossible to characterise the path, or even to conceive of a path. However, one way in which the end or goal of this path is represented in early Buddhism is in terms of the transcending of certain dualities, as is evident in the uraga verses and elsewhere, though this never includes transcending the duality of saṃsāra and nibbāna itself.

No doubt I am giving away my own leaning towards the Madhyamaka way of putting things. That aside, I am extremely grateful for Bryan’s and Bhikkhu Bodhi’s engagement with the themes of my article – it helps makes the effort seem worthwhile. 

With all good wishes,

Dhivan