Nalin Swaris

Buddhism has practically disappeared from the land of its birth. Brahminism has come to be known as the religion of India: for what is today called 'Orthodox Hinduism' is, in fact, the Brahminism revolted against by early Buddhists. Yet as early Buddhism changed from a movement of social protest to a status religion headed by monastic landlords, the lines blurred between the ideas and practices propagated by the first Buddhists and those they vigorously opposed. To appreciate early Buddhism's radicalism and to critically evaluate contemporary Buddhism, we need to understand the principal features of Brahmin theology and ethics. The theoretical and practical criticism of Brahminism remains an unfinished historical task of Buddhism.

The Brahmin Social Order

Brahminism developed around the 8th century BCE in the land between the Yamuna and Ganga Rivers, The Doab, or 'two-river land.' The Brahmins called it 'Brahmarishidesa': the land of the holy rishis, or seers. The orthodox Brahmin priests ingratiated themselves to tribal chiefs and kings by monopolising the knowledge of rituals and providing theological rationalisations to legitimise the hierarchically stratified society that emerged in The Doab. Brahmin theology aimed to provide an ideology to maintain and reproduce this historically arisen social order as if it were a divinely ordained cosmo-social scheme willed by the creator-god Brahma. The Brahmin theory of four colours, varnadhamma, was, in fact, an ingenious structural-functional explanation of society. According to the originating myth of this social order, a male called Purusha was sacrificed and his body dismembered. The body parts were reassembled and revivified such that the Brahmins (brahmana) were the mouth; the ruling warrior class (ksatriya), the shoulders; the landowning peasants (vaisya), his stomach; and the propertyless domestic slaves and land labourers (sudra), the feet. People who lost their lands to the expanding agricultural economy or resisted assimilation were 'outcastes'; regarded as the most ritually polluting humans. In the Buddha's day, they were called candala.

The myth of a resurrected male god mystically embodying the new society effectively excluded women from the public sphere, religious and secular. Brahmin polemics against women and sudras were vicious. The priest- theologians declared that women were ritually unclean and that the womb of women produced only 'an animal-like existence' doomed to decay and death. They therefore ruled that male children born to the three upper strata, the ariya, should be born again through a birth rite performed by priests. This rite made men of the ariya rank dvija, or 'twice-born.' The rebirth ritual was deemed unnecessary for women and sudras since they were regarded as intrinsically and irredeemably unclean. The repeated injunctions against women by the Brahmin God-king and Law Giver, ManuÐfor example, that they should be constantly watched over, kept in subjugation and given no freedomÐare understandable given the wholly fictional and fantastic character of the Brahmin theory on social order. The Brahmins had to denounce women as a dangerous illusion and relegate them to the impermanent corporeal realm because they were aware that life coming from the womb in practice undermined their grand scheme of 'reality.' Whatever pretensions the Brahmins conceived in their heads, a common origin undermined their theory that human beings constitute four social ranks because they emanate from four different sources and four separate species, or jati. As the Buddha pointed out to a group of Brahmin scholars, all these distinctions dissolve in the womb. Men from the four ranks could and did have intercourse with women of other ranks and had normal human offspring. If the Brahmin theory of separate jati were true, he argued, such unions should have produced strange hybrids. If a creator-god had determined this order of human society, then society at all times and in all places would display the same social structure. But this, the Buddha argued, was demonstrably false. While the Brahmins spoke about a natural division of society into four strata, among the Greeks only two divisions existed: the free and the slaves. Even there, the free-born could fall into slavery and slaves ascend to the ranks of the free. So, the Buddha asked, how could social position have been determined by an innate nature? It is not nature that prevents people from changing their life conditions, but culture. The Brahmins had naturalised culture to present social reproduction of the division of labour as a natural occurrence, like biological reproduction of different animal species. Marriage between members of two different varna would be as unnatural as copulation between two different species of animals.

Understandably, the Brahmins placed themselves at the top of the social pyramid. Their entire theory is the expression of a perverse will-to-power by the priestly class; even the gods are powerless, caught in the web of priestly power, subject to their ritual mantras and charms. When the right mantra is uttered and the proper ritual performed, effects follow irrespective of the officiating priest's morality.

The Brahmins base their teachings and priestly powers on the authority of the Rig Vedas. But the earliest hymns of the Rig Veda do not mention the doctrines which became integral parts of both orthodox Hinduism and later orthodox Buddhism, namely, belief in the separate individual and personal salvation, the fourfold varna scheme, and the theories of individual re-births and the transmigration of souls.

Individual and Absolute Self

Another view being disseminated in the Buddha's day was a form of metaphysical idealism. This speculative worldview arose outside priestly circles and was based on the mystical experiences of forest sages. These philosophers held that conscious-ness was the 'true self' and that it was something other than the physical body. They believed that in transcendental states the mystic reaches a state of pure consciousness. From this premise that the true individual self is consciousness, it was inferred that the true and ultimate reality must be a universal mind-like consciousness, itself a permanent, unconditioned and unchanging Self or atman. According to this theory, the atman is the originating or primary principle of all empirical realities. The human person is considered an empirico-transcendental doublet, made of a spiritual mind and physical body. The physical body is subject to birth, decay and death, whereas the mind, like the Cosmic Self, is permanent, unconditioned and unchanging. The atman notion corresponds to the concept of the soul in Christian theology.

The cosmos was brought into being by the creative power of the Divine Word 'Om' from the Absolute Self. All empirically perceptible things and beings are epiphenomena of the Absolute Self; they are fragments of the primary and undifferentiated 'Om.' The fragmentary exteriorisations of the Divine Word become corrupted when they are entrapped in matter and then are subject to its limitations and infirmities. The Self is in all things and beings and retains its identity. The self-identity of individual humans is permanent and immortal. In this idealistic worldview, the aim of salvation is to emancipate the little self-atman from material and corporeal existence, to reunite and dissolve it in the Absolute Self. While the little self is trapped in the body, there is incongruence between its consciousness and its existence. There is fear and anxiety because existence seems to be slipping away from the contingent self. But once the little self is united and absorbed in the Cosmic Self, there is immeasurable and everlasting bliss because there is a perfect correspondence between consciousness and (its) being. The little self-atman of the mystic in ecstasy is experiencing, though only temporarily, the bliss of union with the true Cosmic Self. The method for realising this union, yoga, refers to the 'yoking of the self to the Self.' The yogi merely waits for his physical life processes to run their due course so that at death this union will be fully consummated.

In many debates with propagators of the yogic method, the Buddha explained why the theory is fallacious and why it did not lead to true and unshakeable liberation from suffering 'in this world and in this very physical frame with its perceptions and concepts.' The bliss experienced by the yogi is conditioned and temporary. The belief in everlasting post-mortem bliss through union with the Absolute Self could not be empirically verified. Moreover, the Buddha repeatedly pointed out that given determination and perseverance anyone could become an adept in these systems of mental training, irrespective of moral character. The teachings of the forest sages who first formulated the atman theory have been collated and handed down by Brahmin scholars in the Upanishads.

Similarities of Brahmin and Western Theory

Brahminism is based on the theory that all realities and persons are hierarchically stratified according to their innate nature as determined by Brahma. This view, though couched in theological terms, is similar to the Aristotelian theory of intrinsic nature. The Greek philosopher also held that all reality is hierarchically organised according to intrinsic natures. From this premise, Aristotle deduced that the inferior status of women and slaves was in accordance with their nature.

The Upanishadic theory of the Absolute Self is similar to Plato's theory of the Absolute Spirit. Plato taught that visible realities are shadowy and partial reflections of Universal Ideas conceived by the Absolute Spirit. The Universal Ideas alone are real because they are eternal and unchanging. The empirical world is unreal. By extension he, like the Upanishadic philosophers, taught that permanence is real and that impermanence is illusory. Brahmin-Upanishadic ideas provided ideological justification for the oppressive caste system and the criminal injustice of untoucha-bility. Similarly, the political philosophies of Plato and Aristotle and their ideas about 'democracy' were applied to justify the inhuman institution of chattel slavery.

The Buddha's Revolution

Siddhartha Gotama Buddha's Teaching (Dhamma) was a radical overturning of Platonic-Upanishadic and Aristotelian-Brahmin assumptions. When the Buddha declared certain values inviolable, he did so by appealing to empirically verifiable facts. He claimed that his Teaching was founded on a Basic Law of universal validity because it transcends particular views and observances and the vagaries of time and place. This was not an a priori claim to which he demanded acquiescence solely on his teaching authority. It could, he said, be tried and have its validity tested by any intelligent person of good will. This explains why the Buddha urged his disciples not to be elated when his Teaching was praised or depressed when it was reviled. Neither his personal prestige nor desire to gather clients were at stake if his message was not heeded. The Buddha's equanimity in the face of attacks on his Teaching can be explained through a contemporary example. Creation of the X-ray machine by Madame Curie has enabled physicians to diagnose the causes of diseases inside the human organism which are not visible to the naked eye. This technique is now universally applied since its validity has stood the test of practice. Madame Curie's personal honour or scientific credentials are not affected if people refuse to make use of her discovery.

The Buddha's Way is the only Teaching to reach us from ancient times that approximates what we today call 'the scientific method.' Centuries before Karl Marx, the Buddha pointed out that debates about the truth or falsehood of propositions independent of practice are purely scholastic preoccupations. The Buddha realised human physiological processes like breathing and digestion, perception, cognition and other acts that produce external effects are all without exception practical activities. The solution to humanity's problems lies in human practice and the right understanding of human practice. This universal principle can be verified in the Saharan desert or the snow-covered Alaskan region. The Buddha's Teaching has a universal validity not because it corresponds to universal ideas conceived by a Creator God or an Absolute Spirit, but because it can be empirically verified by anyone anywhere, irrespective of gender or ethnicity. It is not an 'oriental religion.'

(This is the second in a series of 10 articles extracted from the text Buddhism, Human Rights and Social Renewal, by Dr. Nalin Swaris and published by AHRC. To obtain copies, please contact AHRC.)