ALOKA PARASHER SEN ! 143 FRIEFRINDSHIP BEYOND PLEASURE: THE EARLY BUDDHIST INDIC CONTEXT

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! FRIENDSHIP BEYOND PLEASURE: THE EARLY BUDDHIST INDIC CONTEXT

ALOKA PARASHER-SEN Professor, Department of History

School of Social Sciences, University of Hyderabad

In early Buddhist thought friendship is understood as mettā emphasi-zing on a ‘feeling of friendliness’ highlighting on compassion or karuṇā that can be inculcated in a human being through meditative practice. This paper, in its first part, elaborates on these ideas as found in different early Buddhist texts. In the second part, both the ontological and historical understanding of reality is discussed to argue that the Buddhist notion of friendship tries to straddle spiritual experience and social experience in enabling a better relationship with the social and cultural ‘Other’. There are few existing studies on this theme. We suggest that the concept of mettā emerged out the experiential world of the times—a period when the socio-political order was ridden with war and conflict that hampered the existence of harmony and stability.

!Meaning and Context Around the mid-first millennium BCE, entwined to the basic und-erstanding of friendship in early Buddhist thought, there emerged an ethic that went beyond love, pleasure and mutual benefit to define friendship. The way this ethic evolved was deeply rooted in the larger conceptual understanding of the ‘Other’ being in a deep relationship with the ‘Self’ that characterized the larger Indic sensibility of understanding human nature around this time. In conversation with King Pasenadi, ruler of Kosala, an important mahājanapada (kingdom) of this period in northern India, the Buddha explained to the King who was seemingly obsessed

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and soaked in the power that he personified, that one needed to go beyond the ‘Self’. He concluded to say that a person who loves the self should not harm the self of others1 through the following verse:

Searching all directions with one's awareness, one finds no one dearer than oneself. In the same way, others are fiercely dear to themselves. So one should not hurt others if one loves oneself.2

The Buddha clearly encapsulated in this verse his own preference of how a person should view the ‘Other’ but, what is important for us to underline is that he does so in the context of how laypersons embedded in circumstances of power and possession need to begin to awaken a potent-ial inherent in themselves but, in relationship with the ‘Other’. His teach-ing handed down to the Theravadins considered cultivating a mettā bhāv-anā (a feeling of friendly lovingkindness) through meditative absorption or jhāna practices which were very significant in tuning and transforming the mind towards others. These early ideas also stressed on an attitude of total equanimity towards the ‘Other’ and thus, as an object of reckoning one was to be neither overtly attracted to it nor, on the other extreme, sh-ow absolute antipathy. Further, in the overall understanding of Buddha’s teachings this emphasized equally on going beyond pain and pleasure. We return to these ideas as elaborated in the Visuddhimagga, which high-lights the ‘mental’ abodes fostering friendship and discuss their relevance to nurturing the relationship of the ‘Self’ to the ‘Other’ later in the paper. We see the above conversation as a pertinent entry point to explore both the circumstance and the foundational basis on which the notion of friendship in early Buddhism was built. In the Indic context the association and the meaning of the Pali word mettā has to be seen in relation to the Sanskrit word maitrī. The Pali !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 Samyutta Nikaya, III.1.8 Pali Text Society edition Vol. I, 75. 2 Rāja Sutta: The King. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an10/1n10. 176.than.html, accessed on 23 July 2010.

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term mettā has been commonly defined to mean ‘lovingkindness’3 and seen as an integral part of the Buddhist virtue of being compassionate (karuṇā) and linked compulsively to experiencing unselfish joy (muditā), and equanimity (upekkhā). In this explanation the emphasis on mettā, being a part of the ‘four boundless states (appamañña)’ known collectiv-ely as ‘brahma-vihāra-bhāvanā’ is appropriately stressed.4 In the Buddh-ist ethic, at a conceptual level friendship is visualized as a strong sense of the happiness for others in a world otherwise full of sorrow (dukkha) with the concomitant quality of this being possible without self-interest. It has been extrapolated, based on references to the Buddhist context, as defin-ing a state of mind that rises above the particularity of a relationship.5 However, the association of mettā with mittā and the Sanskrit maitrī with mitra has significantly resulted in accruing to it the meaning of ‘friendli-ness’ and ‘active interest in others’6 more specifically. In the term maitrī (friendliness, friendship, amicableness) is implicit it’s belonging to friend as not merely being derived from the term mitra but as one defining it. Essentially, it would be reasonable to suggest that the evolution of the meaning of the Sanskrit mitra in its Vedic context was rooted much more significantly in defining pragmatic relationships between people.7 Thus, we have the simple but primary dictionary rendering of the Sanskrit word mitra to mean ‘friend’, ‘companion’, ‘associate’ based on its usage in the early Vedic literature. In later usage the meaning diversified to convey ‘the name of a God’, ‘a constellation’, ‘an ally vis-à-vis enemy’ and so on.8

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!3 Sourced from “mettā,” in Dictionary.com’s 21st Century Lexicon. Source location: Dictionary.com, LLC. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/metta, accessed on 21 July 2010. 4 Nyanatiloka 1991: 37. 5 Monier-Williams 2008: 834, http:// www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/monier/, accessed 18 July 2010. 6 Davids and Stede 1921-25: 540, http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/get object.pl?c.3:1:177.pali, accessed 23 July 2010. 7 Gonda 1973: 71-107. 8 M. Monier-Williams 2008: 816, http:// www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/ monier/, accessed 18 July 2010.

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The Discourse on Mettā We begin with what is meant by brahmavihāra-niddesa (Divine Abiding) in the Visuddhimagga9 by Buddhaghosa as it is here that we get a clearly articulated account of the various stages leading up to loving-kindness or mettā and concomitantly, an identification on the sources in the Tipiṭaka that discuss mettā practice. Of the several stages described for aspirants wanting to develop appropriate meditative techniques the two which are most aptly relevant in the present context are the first stage10 that is meant to review and understand how hate11 can be avoided and the suppression of anger12 so that pre-conditions are set for mind to develop lovingkindness. Interestingly, when initiating the mettā bhāvanā an “antipathetic person, a very dearly loved friend, a neutral person or a hostile person,” a member of the opposite sex and a dead person13 had to be avoided for various reasons14 since the best method was first and foremost to be developed towards oneself:

First of all it should be developed only towards oneself, doing it repeatedly thus: ‘May I be happy and free from suffering’ or ‘May I keep myself free from enmity, affliction and anxiety and live happily’.15

Buddhaghosa interrogates this proposition closely as the dilemma for him was that this statement should not be seen as one in conflict with what earlier texts had said. Texts like the Paṭisambhidā and the Mettā Sutta are drawn upon16 to further elaborate that if the ‘Self’ pervades all beings what the ‘Self’ desires for itself, in terms of being free from enmity, affli-

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!9 Visuddhimagga, Chapter IX, in Ñāṇamoli 1999: 288-319. 10 Ibid., IX, 1-2. 11 Quoting the Aṅguttara Nikāya, i.216, Buddhaghosa warns ‘when a man is obsessed with hate he kills living things’. 12 Visuddhimagga IX, 15 Buddhaghosa draws the attention to monks that the Tathāgata had explained monks in the Majjhima Nikāya, i.129 that even if bandits were to brutally severe their limbs, they were not to entertain hate and anger and if they did so, it meant that they were not following his teachings. 13 Ibid., IX, 3-4. 14 Ibid., IX, 5-7. 15 Ibid., IX, 8. 16 Ibid., IX, 9.


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ction and anxiety in order to become free in joy and happiness would then, by extension, apply to all beings. This leads him to conclude that the initial development of mettā towards oneself would in fact provide a good example and he substantiates this stand by quoting the Tathāgatha from the Saṃyutta Nikāya17 and the Udāna saying:

Self is likewise to every other dear; Who loves himself will never harm another”.18

Buddhaghosa sums up the brahmavihāra-niddesa to give us a coherent account of how the purification of the mind with reference to lovingkindness could be accomplished by the arhants thus:

…And in order to avoid harm to being they undertake the precepts of virtue…They practice renunciation for the purpose of perfecting their virtue. They cleanse their understanding for the purpose of non-confusion about what is good and bad for beings. They constantly arouse energy, having beings’ welfare and happiness at heart.…They are unshakably resolute upon beings’ welfare and happiness. Through unshakable loving kindness they place them first before themselves. Through equanimity they expect no reward…. (emphasis original).19

Buddhaghosa thus provides us the critical interlinking of various moral issues that are integral to characterizing mettā. Though the empha-sis on these stages is as a means to achieve meditational perfection, they had immense significance in defining the ‘person’ vis-à-vis the ‘Other’ in early Buddhist understanding of both the philosophical and social dimen-sions. The latter because many of the above ideas were illustrated to monks through Jātaka stories20 that showed the control and/or limits of hate, anger, friendship, love, kindness, joy, sorrow and so forth. We shall return to both aspects later in the paper. The conceptual basis that encouraged monks to partake medita-tion on mettā bhāvanā is elaborated in what is popularly known as the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!17 Cited by us above to begin the paper, 2. 18 Visuddhimagga, IX, 10. 19 Ibid., IX, 124. 20 Some elaborated by Buddhaghosa in Ibid. (IX, 30-32), 295-296.

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Karaṇīyamettā Sutta.21 We next turn to elaborate on the underpinnings that make this Sutta so foundational to understand the notion of friend-ship beyond pleasure in early Buddhist thought. It would be worthwhile to begin in this context with a story which in fact, becomes the raison d’être for Buddha to articulate this Sutta in the first place. The story as rendered by Acharya Buddharakkhita22 paraphrased from the Khuddaka-pātha-atthakathā23 is as follows:

It is told that five hundred monks received instructions from the Buddha… After receiving instructions they went in search of a suitable place, and in the course of their wandering, soon found a beautiful hillock at the foothills of the Himalayas…. There were a few villages nearby, and also a small market-town ideal as alms resort.… The residents there were over-joyed to see the monks,… After the monks had settled down contentedly in [the] huts, each one selected a tree to meditate under, …these great trees were inhabited by tree-deities who…out of reverence for the meditating monks, stood aside with their families.… The deities had thought that the monks would remain only for a night or two, and gladly bore the inconvenience. But when day after day passed and the monks still kept occupying the bases of the trees, the deities wondered when would they go away. They were like dispossessed villagers whose houses had been commandeered by officials of the visiting royalty and they kept watching anxiously from a distance, wondering when they would get their houses back. These dispossessed deities…decided to frighten the monks away by showing them terrifying objects, by making dreadful noises and by creating a sickening stench.…. As the deities continued to harass them,…the Elder suggested: “Let us go, brethren, to the Blessed One and place our problem before him….”

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!21 Sutta Nipāta, verses 143-52; also Khuddakapātha-atthakathā (Commentary to the Khuddakapātha) 8 ff. 22 Buddharakkhita 2001: 5-10. 23 Commentary by Buddhaghosa on the Khuddakapātha, 232 ff.


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The Buddha…told them: “Monks, go back to the same spot! It is only by striving there that you will destroy the men-tal cankers. Fear not! If you want to be free from the harass-ment caused by the deities, learn this sutta. It will be a theme for meditation as well as a formula for protection (paritta).” Then the Master recited the Karaṇīyamettā Sutta, the Hymns of Universal Love which the monks learned by heart in the presence of the Lord. As the monks neared their forest dwellings reciting the Mettā Sutta, thinking and meditating on the underlying mean-ing, the hearts of the deities became so charged with warm feelings of goodwill that they materialized themselves in hum-an form and received the monks with great piety. (emphases added).

There are several critical points in the narrative above (italicized by us) that need a closer analysis. However, the one that strikes us immediately is that the recitation of the Mettā Sutta apparently had a powerful effect on the ‘Other’. It literally transformed the ‘deities’ to be-come human and further, their behaviour vis-à-vis the monks underwent a sea change despite the fact that the conditions that had been the cause of inconvenience for them had not changed. We read this story as a sort of preface to the articulation of the Karaṇīyamettā Sutta by the Buddha. Cultivating mettā towards oneself was ostensibly and simultaneously extended towards others that so transformed the ‘deities’ into friendly beings. This assumption in the relationship between the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’ has a serious bearing on contextualizing the philosophical and temporal dimensions in which the Sutta became meaningful. But first, a closer look at the Karaṇīyamettā Sutta.24 The verses of the Sutta25 provide us a discourse that can be broadly put into three parts gradually unraveling the total intended meaning of the term mettā in its (1) essential moral foundational basis, (2) the standard pre-requisites requir-

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!24 Khuddakapātha, 9; Sutta Nipāta 1-8; Sutta Nipāta, Pali Text Society, 143-152. 25 Buddharakkhita (trans) lines 1-43. Translations vary and so the original Prakrit version has been cited in the most critical verses. Line numbers have been inserted by me for sake of convenience. The text version followed is Buddharakkhita 2001.

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ed for its practice as a meditative strategy and (3) the parameters within which it becomes an effective strategy to define relationships. The first part is best encapsulated in lines 3-10 of the Sutta and emphasizes gentle speech, humbleness, simple living and a calm tempe-rament. The second part in lines 11-21 expresses mettā to be a distinct method for the cultivation of the mind leading to a higher level of consci-ousness induced by meditative absorption that should be applicable to all living beings irrespective of differences inherent in them. Finally, the third part in lines 22-43, the most relevant for the purpose of our discu-ssion, is that part of the Sutta that underlines how individuals should have a total commitment to the philosophy of universal love in its personal, social and empirical extensions and which should be articulated through bodily, verbal and mental activities as follows:

22. Let none deceive or decry 23. His fellow anywhere; 24. Let none wish others harm 25. In resentment or in hate

26. Just as with her own life 27. A mother shields from hurt 28. Her own son, her only child, 29. Let all-embracing thoughts 30. For all beings be yours.

31. Cultivate an all-embracing mind of love 32. For all throughout the universe, 33. In all its height, depth and breadth — 34. Love that is untroubled 35. And beyond hatred or enmity

36. As you stand, walk, sit or lie, 37. So long as you are awake, 38. Pursue this awareness with your might: 39. It is deemed the Divine State here.


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40. Holding no more to wrong beliefs, 41. With virtue and vision of the ultimate, 42. And having overcome all sensual desire, 43. Never in a womb is one born again.

Before we turn to analyze the historical context in which these ethical ideas in early Buddhism found germination and elaboration, it wo-uld be appropriate to briefly dwell on why this notion of ‘lovingkind-ness’ (mettā) should be understood as defining what in its usage in the English language we mean by ‘friendliness’ and ‘friendship’. Here, it is significant that mettā be read along with the other three elements defined as brahma vihāra bhāvanā—karuṇā, muditā and upekkhā—that we have elaborated upon above. First, this notion of ‘friendship’ was built around the emotion of love with immeasurable feeling and one that clearly did not know hatred. Second, it was meant to engulf every living entity—human, animal, plant. By extension, this meant treating friends and foes alike. Third, to cultivate a disposition of friendship for every-thing and everybody one had to learn to suffer and empathize (karuṇā) with other people and things. This led one to the fourth aspect, that is, to feel ‘sym-pathetic joy’ or muditā which was difficult but necessary as it involved being delighted in the happiness of others but without envy or a sense of personal impairment. Finally, the last, which was to be immersed in friendship so that one could go beyond pain or pleasure and achieve an attitude of total equanimity (upekkhā) towards others. Here the sense of possessing or owning friends by being too attached, or rejecting, or ignoring them with antipathy were paths for nurturing friendship that were to be totally avoided. To what extent did its practice help overcome ideological, social, religious, racial, political, and economic barriers during the mid-first millennium BCE? And, more importantly, what was the historical context that necessitated the emergence of this notion of friendship in the first place? We turn to examine this in the next part of the paper.

Historical Reality (?) versus Reality In this section of the paper the discourse on mettā is set against the insights provided by earlier scholarship on questions of historical

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reality, namely, the ideological and socio-political conditions in which these ideas grew and the understanding of the ontological reality of the nature of existence and pragmatism as expressed in early Buddhist thoug-ht. A critical dimension in this regard that scholars have been engaged with from time to time is, to use Richard Gombrich’s words, ‘the relation between what the Buddha said and the texts which report his words’.26 In other words, the early Theravāda textual tradition may have been created by Buddha’s followers.27 Considering that the tenor of all of Buddha’s teachings arose out of debate, argument and discussion, it is not what the historical Buddha actually said (as that will never be known with certain-ty) but what he is reported to have discussed and explained that must be accepted as normative Theravāda Buddhism. In this sense, as Jones wri-tes, we must accept that ‘the actual historical provenance of the teaching’ must be ‘left entirely open’ as is done by him.28 The idea of ‘Buddhism’ as a ‘religion’ has been so essentialized over historical time that to raise questions about the contingencies of historical forces, the relevance of the agency of its actors and the specificity of the spatial dimensions of its early origin get compulsively entangled in debate. There have also been serious efforts made to unravel the profound nature of the ontological basis of how the Buddha defined reality. This is a deep philosophical question, and in the Buddhist cultural horizon linked with the notion of selfhood or rather, ‘not-self’ or anatta and the attenda-nt concept of anicca or impermanence. As the main analytical thread of his book, Steven Collins interrogates to explain the particularity of how ‘…Buddhism can conceive or explain experience, action, and moral resp-onsibility, without a real subject or agent;...’ and how ‘there can be any coherent Buddhist account of personal identity and continuity....’29 Writi-ngs on this subject have been versatile and substantive. However, our own limitation and that of space and time do not permit us in the present context to venture into a threadbare discussion on the cognitive basis of

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!26 Gombrich 1996: 3. 27 For an analysis of the role of the Sangha in the composition and preservation of canonical and semi-canonical texts , see Gombrich 1988: 87-88 . 28 Jones 1979: 73. 29 Collins 1982: 5.


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reality in early Buddhist thought. It is relevant, though, to take a position that all thought and new ideas emerge (a) in relationship to earlier ideolo-gical positions in agreement or in contestation with them and (b) in circu-mstances of a historical setting of space and time which provide the stage for their genesis, development and transformation. We elaborate on both these issues next. We begin with a point where we began this paper—Buddha’s gentle intervention to a conversation between King Pasanedi’s and his queen’s faulty obsession with their ‘Self’. Gombrich points out that this is startlingly reminiscent of a similar conversation between Yājñavalkya and his wife Maitreyi narrated in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad wherein the latter urges the former to teach her the ultimate truth of immortality. In doing so Yājñavalkya explains to her saying:

It is not for the love of a husband that a husband is dear, but for the love of the self (ātman) that the husband is dear. It is not for the love of a wife that a wife is dear, but for the love of the self that a wife is dear.30

The substance of this teaching is the idea that the ‘Self’ (here the essence of the Universe) is all knowing. Gombrich’s close reading of both the Sanskrit and Pali versions31 uses this example to make his overall argu-ment32 that the Buddha always reacted to the Upaniṣadic teaching by bringing in a moral agent. Thus, in this case it is apparent that Buddha, unlike Yājñavalkya, resorted to taking an ethical position that one must care for others if one cares for oneself. This cogently replaces the meta-physical position that the Upaniṣads usually take. Thus Gombrich writes: ‘The Upanishadic soteriology centered on the static self, the Buddha’s on dynamic moral agency’.33

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!30 Ibid., 63. We are informed by Gombrich that this verse occurs twice in the same text at II. 4 and VI.5. 31 Ibid., 63 on the translation of the Pali atta and Sanskrit ātman to not merely convey reflexive pronoun position but that in each case the “‘Self’ in question is understood from the context.” 32 Explicated in his Chapter on ‘Kamma as a Reaction to Brahmanism’, Ibid, 27-64. 33 Ibid., 58.

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It has been rightly said that in the case of Gautama Buddha’s own experience, in the realization that the true nature of Being was constantly changing, Gautama in his transition to becoming Buddha chose to open up his whole being to others and thus transcend the ego in compassion and lovingkindness to all other creatures.34 In the overall essence of Bud-dha’s analysis of the karmic process and teaching of paṭicca-samuppāda, the ‘Self’ was non-permanent and in constant flux, and this then meant that feelings (bhāvanā) too were transitory. He categorically denied the existence of a permanent entity or soul and therefore, of its unchangeable identity. But, it has been pertinently pointed out that he did not deny that there was ‘the continuity of an evolving consciousness’.35 The ultimate goal of all his endeavours led him to the highest level of compassionate experience called nibbāna where all boundedness came to an end.36 However, the critical question of the relation between “intellectual kind of Buddhist thought and practice to the actual thought and practice of most Buddhists”37 had to be straddled even during his lifetime.

The logical reflections put forth by Gautama Buddha emanated as a result of his own experiences and practices as a skilled yogin. Around the time that he lived, traditional meditative yoga primarily focused on being in a state of autonomy to benefit only the ‘Self’.38 Elaborated, the logic of Upaniṣadic metaphysics was to encourage individuals to with-draw from life and be isolated from society to ultimately achieve the exti-nction of individual consciousness. Unlike this focus on self-salvation, the Buddha returned to the marketplace as he had concomitantly realized that selfish withdrawal would violate the very essence of his Dhamma or showing people the path of moving away from ignorance, sorrow and the suffering (dukkha) of the world. But in coming back to the world he

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!34 Conze 1951: 102. 35 Jayatilleke 1975: 82. 36 Gombrich 1996: 60 on how texts explain that ‘kindness’ can create conditions for the ‘release of the mind’ (ceto-vimutti) “when…not bounded (i.e., finite) karma remains there.” 37 Collins 1982: 6. 38 Thapar 1978b: 65. Thapar differentiates between those who were ascetics and focused on their own salvation and those that were renouncers but returned to back society.


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created a fundamental attitudinal change, namely, that to live morally one had to live for others. Dogmatic ideas inherent in the institutional frame-work of the religious practices prevalent at the time were by their very nature controlled by a few. Buddha, on the other hand, in moving away both from speculative consciousness and the burdens of magico-sacrifi-cial practices, had endeavored to establish a path (magga) ‘for the many’ and ‘for the welfare and happiness of the people, out of compassion for the world’.39 Herein lay the basic difference with the Upaniṣadic world-view about the reality of the external world. As Gombrich puts it, ‘The common sense view of the reality of things in the external world is not denied, though also not affirmed;....’ [but] concerns itself with the proble-ms of living beings….’40 Thus, several dialogues of the Buddha empha-sized on methods to enable his followers to rise above the ‘Self’ so as to block undesirable thoughts.41 The main objective of the Eight Fold Path was so designed as to provide people a path to end the experience of suffering while at the same time, not being deluded by a personality that was rooted in sensual attachment. Taken in this sense friendship too had to be developed in a right way. Jones sees ‘these doctrines’ as ‘inimical to friendship in the personal sense’.42 However, it is our submission that embedded in this Karaṇīyamettā Sutta, was a simultaneity—one of spiritual experience (bhāvanā) and the other of extending that to a social level of experience and practice, explained within the parameters of a moral framework. Both were meant to transform the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’ without the establishment of a religion or a theology to do so. A good entry position to explore the historical contingencies that framed these ideas is to return to what became the beginning point for the preaching of the Karaṇīyamettā Sutta, namely, the story of when five hundred monks who, frightened by the “deities” in their idyllic retreat in a region of the Himalayas, were unable to meditate. They had returned to Savatthi seeking the Buddha’s intervention, who had then preached the Karaṇīyamettā Sutta to the perturbed monks and admonished them on the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!39 Vinaya Piṭaka, Mahāvagga, I.11, in Horner 1982. 40 Gombrich 1996: 33-34 . 41 Majjhima Nikāya, I.1. 42 Jones 1979: 73.

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practice of goodwill. It is my submission that here we have a case where the ethical was meeting the political. A dominant socio-political feature was the gaṇa sangha system (uncomfortably translated as ‘republics’) that thrived in the foothills of the Himalayas around the time that the Buddha was travelling through the eastern Ganges plains that had some of the most well-entrenched monarchical kingdoms with cities and villa-ges, each vying with the other for political supremacy. Historical inform-ation culled from various sources suggests that even “during the lifetime of the Buddha, the gaṇa sanghas were steadily being crushed by the growing monarchical kingdoms of Kosala and Magadha.”43 The Buddha was well aware that the hilly areas represented a different type of gover-nance and social organization as he had been born into the genealogical tradition of one of them.44 He had in fact modeled the sangha on ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity inherent in ‘tribal’ values, but as Chatto-padhyaya points out, in the reality of the social world outside the sangha, these values were being trampled upon.45 It is also pertinent to emphasize that these gaṇa sangha collectivities had ideological and ritual practices that were not necessarily those governed by brahmanical hegemonic ideas.46 In this light, reading the above story prefacing the articulation of the Karaṇīyamettā Sutta, raises some key issues that relate to these communities in the throes of an important historical ‘transition’. Thus for instance, (1) On return from Savatthi, armed with the Mettā Sutta, the monks were received by the ‘deities’ in their human form. Taking a human form strongly suggests that ‘deities’, in the narrative in a conven-tional metaphoric sense, allude to a particular people of this Himalayan region who were different from the people of the village with a market. The latter had, in fact, welcomed the monks and provided for their stay. (2) Initially, the ‘deities’ too had no objection for a temporary sojourn of the monks but got restless once they almost permanently occupied their !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!43 Chakravarti 1987: 148. 44 He belonged to the Sakya nobility. Oldenberg 1982: 156. 45 Chattopadhyaya 1973: 466-67. 46 Chakravarti 1987: 88. It is noted that social categories like the brāhmaṇas, the setthis, the gahapatis etc. largely absent in the gaṇa sangha territories and instead they were dominated by the khattiya clansmen clinging to kin-based ties.


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space under the trees and even equated them to royal officials who had dispossessed them of their houses. (3) They then resorted to disturb the monks to retrieve their space and did so by frightening them. The villa-gers who had welcomed the monks could do nothing to ease the situation. (4) The power of the Sutta, i.e., seen here as a superior new ideology, apparently convinced the ‘deities’ now in ‘human form’, transformed and befriended them, which subsequently led them to take great care of the monks. I read this acceptance, questioning, contestation and re-acceptance of the monks as reflecting a familiar social, political and ideological scenario pervading in north-east India at his time that needed to be resolved. Usually, the Buddhist messages are seen in terms of reacting to and/or being influenced by dominant Brahmanical ideas controlling the imagination of the people. However, there were segments of the populati-on espousing ideas, beliefs and practices that were a counterpoint to both the early Buddhists and the Brahmanas. In fact, it has been pointed out that both were vying for providing “the role of the ultimately legitimating and orienting religious ideology vis-à-vis the multitudinous little tradi-tions of the sub-continent…”47 Rather than looking at social reality and interactions in binary terms, we instead have a complex array of values that needed to be ironed out within an organized prism of understanding the true nature of reality. These various layers and conditions of the acceptance of the ‘Other’ and by the ‘Other’ get aptly portrayed in this narrative. The above tension was between the interests of the individual monks, each meditating for their own salvation in an area that they had only recently come to occupy, and the interests of the collectivity of ‘deities’ who had lived there for generations. It was resolved by the intervention of an ideological mechanism that intruded into the inner and idyllic vastness of a decidedly different social and physical space that had not yet been impacted by the new socio-economic changes of the plains. It was not via their destruction but via their transformation. The Buddha’s message emphasizing individual initiative and decision making was only

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!47 Collins 1982: 30-33 discusses that relevance and limits of the ‘hegemony’ of Brahmanical thought to conclude: ‘…we must recognize the existence of diversity in society and in thought at the time of the Buddha’. 40.

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gradually able to sensitize and infiltrate these collectivities.48 This as a reality is best illustrated in the meeting of the Kalamas of Kesaputta with the Buddha, which reflects on the perplexities that confronted such social groups. It is important to note that they approached him as a counselor who might help them dispel their doubts and were not yet adherents of the Dhamma. The Tathāgata spoke to them thus: ‘Kalamas, don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by pro-bability, or by the thought’, but ‘When you know for yourselves’.49 The advice given to the Kalamas by Buddha was thus contingent upon the understanding that they were not yet prepared to place faith in him and his doctrine. However, as argued by Bhikkhu Bodhi, it offered them ‘…an acid test for gaining confidence in the Dhamma as a viable doctrine of deliverance…whose validity’ could ‘be attested by anyone with the moral integrity to follow it….’50 It is perhaps pertinent to point out, as done by Collins, that there was ‘the fact of social differences in thought and practice’ and these are also ‘taken account of by Buddhist doctrine itself, and how they affect it’ (emphasis original).51 It may also be mentioned here that the first schism in the Sangha was largely the result of the unorthodox practices of the Vajjian monks and a significant portion of the Vinaya Piṭaka was composed at the Council of Vaiśāli the capital of the Vajjis, an epitome of the gaṇa sangha polity.52 Under the changed political and material circumstances, holding on to a traditional dogmatic mindset could be detrimental and potentially damaging both spiritually and socially for people who had no experience in taking individual decisions. It was also, in one sense, equipping indivi-duals to understand the ‘Other’ in unknown circumstances, beyond kin

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!48 Concomitant with the early Buddhists there was a wide range of ‘religious’ ideas confronting society from ascetic teachers who propounded a variety of doctrines purporting determinism, materialism, atomism, nihilism and so on to interrogate the validity of the individual’s present and future life. For details Thapar 1978b: 63-104. 49 Anguttara Nikāya 3.65. 50 Bodhi 1998-2010. 51 Collins 1982: 7. 52 Dutt 1984: 11.


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and within new rules of being ‘citizens’ of a novel political culture that was still soaked in hatred, envy, war and aggrandizement. The new politi-cal reality grew out of and was hinged on profound and fast moving tech-nological and economic transformations that were engulfing north-east India during the mid-first millennium BCE. This was marked by an increase in urbanization and development of trade and commercial pros-perity.53 A heightened increase in wealth generation and aggrandizement of social and political assets marked the transforming urban landscape and brought with it the attendant issues of how to deal with debt, usury, trust, competence, skill, public places, diversity, friendship, competitive-ness and the like. It has been argued that urban life energized new social relations and a social category of the gahapatis emerged with status in society marked by the wealth they owned rather than any status they may have had in the traditional caste set-up.54 What was the old system to be replaced by? How were new forms of social injustice, violence and war to be handled when no tangible agency was in place?

It is ironic that at a time of great material transformation and generation of wealth, the Buddha was preaching the transient notion of ‘Self’ and all that it owned. It is doubtful that the intellectual levels of his thought ever appealed to the laity directly55 but what impacted them was the way his dialogues, using powerful symbols, questioned the existing hierarchical order and provided avenues for a movement away from old, often dogmatic, norms nurturing inequality, ritualism, and power. But, as has been cogently argued the ‘element of social protest in Buddhism was…limited to providing the intellectual encouragement and justifica-tion for the formation of a new elite’.56 The radical import of Buddha’s message was numbed because the logic of social change was accompani-ed by an ethos that did not permit a total life-denial and renunciation model that spoke of the transitory nature of things. The reality was the opposite—it was energized by the aspirations of wealthy communities !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!53 Thapar 1978a: 41-42. 54 Chakravarti 1987: Chapter III, 65-93. 55 For this reason Collins’s interpretation, based on Weber’s separation of the ordinary practicing Buddhist from the specialist is a relevant analytical tool. Collins 1982: 14. 56 Thapar 1978a: 59.

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growing in strength and inhabiting the same landscape that the Buddha was travelling across. An analysis of the social groups that supported the early Buddhist Dhamma and Sangha indicates that the gahapatis were conspicuous by their absence in the sangha but they vehemently support-ed the Dhamma and became a significant group of the laity to do so.57 For them and others the moral content of the Buddha’s teachings became the guiding principles of their new faith. There were thus two forms of authority—the politico-economic and the moral standing at crossroads. The Buddha as the renouncer had resumed a ‘function in society’ and for that reason his influence became both ‘powerful and positive’58 by taking on the moral responsibility and authority to censor the defining moments of political power, expanding economic horizons and social crisis that marked the times he lived through.

Lovingkindness and Friendship For the laity as a whole the best strategy was to bring in an awareness of virtues that had to be central and critical to the way of life now defined by social relations not built around kinship alone. Rather aptly, the first few lines of the Karaṇīyamettā Sutta emphasize on these virtues as pre-requisites for opening up conditions that would enable true friendship and care for others. Part 1 is clearly about the general ethical characteristic which should be inculcated by monks (in this case) and laity in general. However, what is particularly innate to the Karaṇīya-mettā Sutta is Part III. First and foremost, in part III one is instructed not to “deceive or decry” fellow beings59 and further, not to “wish others harm in resentment or in hate”.60 This is followed by instructions on how this should be done, namely, giving unbounded love to all beings just as a mother showers love on her only son.61 Several lines62 are devoted to

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!57 Chakravarti 1987: 134-137; 148. 58 Thapar 1978a: 56. 59 Lines 22-23, Na paro paraṃ nikubbetha. Nātimaññetha katthacinaṃ. kañci. This, and all the Prakrit lines cited below from Buddharakkhita 2001. 60 Lines 24-25, Byārosanā paṭighasaññā. Nāññamaññassa dukkhamiccheyya. 61 Lines 26-30, Mātā yathā niyaṃ puttaṃ, Āyusā ekaputtamanurakkhe, Evampi sabbabhūtesu, Mānasaṃ bhāvaye aparimāṇam. 62 Lines 31-34.


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how this boundless love should be cultivated63 in a way that it not only pervades those around in society but throughout the universe. It is significantly stressed that one should consciously move beyond hatred and enmity.64 And lastly, the final endeavor was to give up “wrong beliefs”65 and keep intact only the “vision” and “virtue” of ultimate joy66 for which it was important to “overcome all sensual desire”,67 in order to secure that “one [is not] born again.”68 While there is concern in this part that can be used by the laity to develop and cultivate friendship within the confines of day to day social relationships, both intimate and public, by not harming and hurting others and using “lovingkindness” as a method to achieve this, in ultimate essence the overall message is to use this as a stage for achieving a friendship that does not depend on mutual benefit or, for merely experiencing the pleasure of it. One was encouraged to go beyond pleasure and grasp the goal of collapsing the ‘Self’ with the ‘Other’ in seeking a totality that ostensibly went beyond the materiality of the world that we lived in. To live in a worldly context, with these ideas was to seek liberation in moving beyond the reach of hatred, greed and anxieties about the status of one’s own survival alone. These dilemmas are graphi-cally brought out in the various anecdotes that the Buddha often used to explain his message through the many dialogues he had with the laity to convince them of the efficacy of the dhammā magga. Such conversations reached the ordinary laity as examples in the Jātaka stories now indoctri-nated with the new Buddhist ethic. Historians in the past have used the Jātaka stories69 as a counter point to the ‘official’ line of thinking. How-ever, at the same time, it is found that the new moral messages of the Buddhists in the Jātakas were limited in bringing about major radical ch-!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!63 Line 31, Mettañca sabba-lokasmiṃ. 64 Line 35, Asaṃbādhaṃ averaṃ asapattaṃ. 65 Line 40. 66 Line 41. 67 Line 42, Diṭṭhiñca anupagamma sīlavā, Dassanena sampanno, Kāmesu vineyya gedhaṃ. 68 Line 43, Na hi jātu gabbhaseyyaṃ punaretī‘ti.!69 Issues around the temporality, narrative structure and the audience of the Jātakas are complex, which have to be taken into account while using them as historical sources. For details Chakravarti 1989: 43-47.

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ange in social perceptions, though they succeeded in the intellectual arena, especially in questioning brāhmaṇa superiority. Of some signific-ance to our present discussion is the suggestion that though they dilute “the specific philosophical content of Buddhism, the stories are cast within its overarching world view.”70 This is a view that can be contrast-ed with the one put forth by Jones who has used several Jātaka stories to suggest that they in fact are the only texts that tell us about deep worldly friendship in opposition to what the Nikāyas reveal as friendship with de-tachment. He elaborates on his analysis that since the doctrine of anatta (selflessness) is so central to Buddhist teaching, “the Nikāyas say virtual-ly nothing positive about love either in the context of friendship or of marriage”.71 The latter view seems encrusted with the burdens of a contemporary mindset that cannot fathom that friendship in these stories can also be about sacrificing one’s life (a case in point is the famous Śibi Jātaka). This is possible to portray in a story only if a broader compre-hension of how the ‘Self’ vis-à-vis the ‘Other’ is perceived within the sensibilities nurtured in the Indic civilizational space is understood. The Buddhist contribution to this was to bring in an ethical dimension for society but yet be linked to its larger ideational goal of moving beyond pleasure and suffering.

Recapitulation and Conclusion So how was mettā teaching received? For those who joined the Sangha achieving mettā bhāvanā was a matter of practicing it with yogic intensity and then teaching it to others; for the laity it was an ethic to be heard with conviction and as a path to embark on for his /her own and the others’ ethical good. In other words, conveyed at a simple level, mettā was an attitude towards a friend and her/his well-being while, at the same time, enabling the protection and healing of oneself and the other. The practical method for how to go about doing so is elaborated upon in the Maṅgala Sutta.72 In this context, it is stated that one first needed to estab-lish an elevating interpersonal relationship by resorting to good com-

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!70 Ibid., 69. 71 Jones 1979: 78. 72 Khuddakapātha, 5 Maṅgala Sutta; Sutta Nipāta 2.4.


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pany.73 This had to go hand in hand with the choice of a good environ-ment so that what one had accumulated as merits from one’s past could fructify which is where the ideas emanating from mettā could be applied. Mere avoidance of wrong company and living in a good cultured enviro-nment was not enough. It was critical to cultivate the mind with the help of the insights elaborated in the mettā sutta for the fruition of the process. In conclusion one can suggest that mettā was essentially an altruistic attitude of love and friendliness that must be distinguished from mere amiability based on self-interest. In the early Buddhist context, we cannot ignore that theoretically at least, like the ‘Self’, conventions around friendship too were ultimately seen as part of a series of temporary and mutable states of existence and thus understanding it was to move beyond a static notion of it as perma-nent. Ironically, it was this tenuous and changing relationship between the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’, difficult to prove rationally and tangibly, that became the foundational basis on which the concept of friendship was to be built. Understanding it within the philosophical parameters of Thera-vāda Buddhism, we tried to suggest that mettā as a spiritual practice was meant to awaken its practitioners to a level beyond the reality of the world. However, within the complex early Buddhist arena of conceptual issues around personhood, identity, impermanence and suffering, at the social level, mettā was also meant to implicate the world of the everyday so as to enable practicing Buddhists to establish and understand new found relationships that had emerged from the cultural and historical context of the mid-first millennium BCE India. This new political and social environment of the period had necessitated engagements with issues of stability and chaos, war and peace, harmony and conflict, governance and disorder that churned out forms of discontent and conflict and hospitality and exclusion. Against this backdrop it became pertinent to evaluate the broader concept of mettā in the more specific Buddhist way of engaging with society. But without interrogating its philosophical nuances, to define a good or evil friend through the prism

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!73 The explanation is given under how one can get ‘Protection’ by living an honorable life in respect, patience and austerity and being disciplined by giving support to parents, relatives and others and doing so by avoiding evil of all kinds.

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of early Buddhism would have been a meaningless exercise. Linking the two contexts ultimately gave us the conclusion that the specificity of establishing friendship in the experiential world saw the birth of a new ethical being but one who was concomitantly also compulsively linked with overarching Buddhist notion of mettā that meant moving beyond the simplistic understanding of friendship as rooted only in worldly concerns of the exigencies of life and pleasure.

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