• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 5845 0

has spent its force, they pass away to take rebirth elsewhere as determined by still another kamma that has found the opportunity to ripen. Hence the torments of hell as well as the bliss of heaven, no matter how long they may last, are bound to pass. For this reason the Buddha does not locate the final goal of his teaching anywhere within the conditioned world. He guides those whose spiritual faculties are still tender to aspire for a heavenly rebirth and teaches them the lines of conduct that conduce to the fulfilment of their aspirations (MN 41, MN 120). But for those whose faculties are mature and who can grasp the unsatisfactory nature of everything conditioned, he urges determined effort to put an end to wandering in saṁsāra and to reach Nibbāna, which transcends all planes of being.

THE BUDDHA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

The Middle Country of India in which the Buddha lived and taught in the fifth century B.C. teemed with a luxuriant variety of religious and philosophical beliefs propagated by teachers equally varied in their ways of life. The main division was into the brahmins and the non-brahmanic ascetics, the samaṇas or “strivers.” The brahmins were the hereditary priesthood of India, the custodians of the ancient orthodoxy. They accepted the authority of the Vedas, which they studied, chanted at countless rituals, sacrifices, and ceremonies, and turned to as the source of their philosophical speculations. Thus they are characterised in the suttas as traditionalists (anussavika), who teach their doctrines on the basis of oral tradition (MN 100.7). The Pali Canon generally depicts them as living a comfortably settled life, as marrying and begetting progeny, and in some cases as enjoying royal patronage. The more learned among them gathered a company of students—all necessarily of brahmin birth—to whom they taught the Vedic hymns.

The samaṇas, on the other hand, did not accept the authority of the Vedas, for which reason from the perspective of the brahmins they stood in the ranks of heterodoxy. They were usually celibate, lived a life of mendicancy, and acquired their status by voluntary renunciation rather than by birth. The samaṇas roamed the Indian countryside sometimes in company, sometimes as solitaries, preaching their doctrines to the populace, debating with other ascetics, engaging in their spiritual practices, which often involved severe austerities (see MN 51.8). Some teachers in the samaṇa camp taught entirely on the basis of reasoning and speculation, while others taught on the basis of their experiences in meditation. The Buddha placed himself among the latter, as one who teaches a Dhamma that he has directly known for himself (MN 100.7).

The Buddha’s encounters with brahmins were usually friendly, their conversations marked by courtesy and mutual regard. Several suttas in the Majjhima Nikāya concern the brahmins’ claim to superiority over those in other social classes. In the Buddha’s age the caste system was only beginning to take shape in northeast India and had not yet spawned the countless subdivisions and rigid regulations that were to manacle Indian society through the centuries. Society was divided into four broad social classes: the brahmins, who performed the priestly functions; the khattiyas, the nobles, warriors, and administrators; the vessas, the merchants and agriculturalists; and the suddas, the menials and serfs. From the Pali suttas it appears that the brahmins, while vested with authority in religious matters, had not yet risen to the position of unchallengeable hegemony they were to gain after the promulgation of the Laws of Manu. They had, however, already embarked on their drive for domination and did so by propagating the thesis that brahmins are the highest caste, the fairest caste, the divinely blessed offspring of Brahmā who are alone capable of purification. Anxiety that this claim of the brahmins might actually be true seems to have spread among the royalty, who must have been fearful of the threat it posed to their own power (see MN 84.4, MN 90.9–10).

Contrary