THE PHILOSOPHY OF DESIRE IN THE BUDDHIST PALI CANON

David Webster explores the notion of desire as found in the Buddhist Pali Canon. Beginning by addressing the idea of a ‘paradox of desire’, whereby we must desire to end desire, the varieties of desire that are articulated in the Pali texts are examined. A range of views of desire as found in Western thought are presented as well as Hindu and Jain approaches. An exploration of the concept of ditthi (view or opinion) is also provided, exploring the way in which ‘holding views’ can be seen as analogous to the process of desiring. Other subjects investigated include the mind–body relationship, the range of Pali terms for desire and desire’s positive spiritual value. A comparative exploration of the various approaches completes the work.
David Webster is lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Gloucestershire.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF DESIRE IN THE
BUDDHIST PALI CANON
Charles S. Prebish and Damien Keown
RoutledgeCurzon Critical Studies in Buddhism is a comprehensive study of the Buddhist tradition. The series explores this complex and extensive tradition from a variety of per- spectives, using a range of different methodologies.
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A SURVEY OF VINAYA LITERATURE Charles S. Prebish
THE REFLEXIVE NATURE OF AWARENESS
Paul Williams
BUDDHISM AND HUMAN RIGHTS Edited by Damien Keown,
Charles Prebish, Wayne Husted
Kathryn R. Blackstone
AMERICAN BUDDHISM Edited by Duncan Ryuken Williams and
Christopher Queen
PAIN AND ITS ENDING Carol S. Anderson
EMPTINESS APPRAISED David F. Burton
THE SOUND OF LIBERATING TRUTH Edited by Sallie B. King and
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John J. Makransky
INNOVATIVE BUDDHIST WOMEN Edited by Karma Lekshe Tsomo
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SELF, REALITY AND REASON IN TIBETAN PHILOSOPHY
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BUDDHIST PHENOMENOLOGY Dan Lusthaus
Torkel Brekke
THE BUDDHIST UNCONSCIOUS
William S. Waldron
James Duerlinger
Prebish and Damien Keown
David N. Kay
PALI CANON David Webster
Paul Fuller
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EARLY BUDDHIST METAPHYSICS Noa Ronkin
THE PHILOSOPHY OF DESIRE IN THE
BUDDHIST PALI CANON
First published 2005 by RoutledgeCurzon
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ISBN 13: 978-0-415-34652-8 (hbk)
Published 2018 by Routledge
This book is dedicated to the memory of Diana Trainor, 1941–2002.
Angels (to the memory of Diana)
History will record that among us
walked certain angels
whose songs salted
whose dance lifted us
made our lives lighter
History will record too late
our indifference to their difference: all these strange odd, eccentric ethereal angels
who once walked among us . . .
Cecil Rajendra
Acknowledgements xii List of abbreviations xiii
Introduction: desire, morality and approaches 1
Introduction: you cannot always get what you want 1 The paradox of desire 2 But what is ‘desire’? 4 Desire as problematic 7 Scope of this study 8 Approach and method 1: chapter outlines 8 Approach and method 2: key concepts 12 Approach and method 3: sources and textual issues 16 Conclusion: aspirations 16
1 Desire in Western thought 18
Introduction 18 An ancient lack 22 A striving after wind: Ecclesiastes and
Judaeo-Christian thought 25 Shakespeare: love, death and desire 27 Surveying desire: Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke and Hume 29 Schopenhauer: the will and the world 30 Nietzsche to Deleuze: desire, will and power 35 Hegel and Butler 42 Sartre – desire and nothingness 43 The purification of desire: Theosophy 44 Mind-made desires 45 Conclusion 46
ix
CONTENTS
x
2 Desire in non-Buddhist Indian religion 49
Introduction 49 Desire in the Veda Samhitas 52 Desire as the enemy of the spiritual 57 Desire in the Bhagavad Gita 70 Sex, love and desire: the Kama Sutra 76 Jainism and desire: the calm fight against karma 81 Conclusion 86
3 Buddhism and desire: the varieties of desire 90
Introduction 90 Which Buddhism? 91 The redirection of desire 91 Desire and nibbana 94 Desire and the Buddha 97 The varieties of desire 98 The three roots of unskilful action (akusalamula) 100 Terms from the lobha list at Vibhakga 361–2 105 Terms not in the lobha list at Vibhakga 361–2 112 Some minor terms illustrative of desire 127 Tajha: craving and desire 129 Conclusion: landscapes of desire 140
4 Buddhism and desire: the dynamics of desire 143
Introduction 143 The nature of paticca-samuppada 146 Desire and paticca-samuppada 151 The mind–body relationship 158 The status of views: a structural analogy? 165 The problem with views 168 No-view or right-view? 171 Samma-ditthi – the nature of ‘Right-View’ 173 A paradox of views? 179 Desire and views: craving and ignorance 180 Reason and desire revisited 182 Conclusion 184
CONTENTS
xi
5 Conclusion: desire and the transformation of living 187
Introduction 187 Western perspectives 188 Brahmanic views: desire and ontological necessity 190 Buddhism and desire: an emerging position? 191 Roads to freedom 192 Desire and reason: challenging a bi-polar distinction 193 Desire and ‘lack’ 194 Desire and goodness 198 Desire and death: seeking the end of the world? 199 Desire, passion and love 200 Desire and contingency: change and craving 202 Desire and power: the creative craver 203 Desire beyond the person: cosmic desire 204 Lust for life: desire and skilful living 204
Glossary 206 Notes 208 Bibliography 255 Index 263
xii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to acknowledge the huge and patient efforts made by Peter Harvey, Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Sunderland, to support me in the production of my PhD thesis, which formed the basis for this book. His assistance has always been prompt, useful and thought-provoking. Dr Dermot Killingley, as ever, was helpful and worryingly encyclopaedic in his knowledge of Hinduism and Sanskrit.
I would also like to thank my wife, Anna, for the shouldering of numerous burdens – domestic, financial and emotional – that the presence of this book in our home has placed on her over the last five years. Our children, Holly and Jack, have accepted my distractedness and grumpiness during this project with a cheery stoicism for which I am more grateful than I might appear.
A number of people have had a less direct influence on the content of the book – but their friendship and support has sustained me over the aeons it seems to have taken to produce it. With this in mind, my parents, Jim Brewster, Dr Paul Fuller, Matthew Green, Ted Haynes, Richard McMahon (and his Dionysian entourage), Ivan Bergquist and my Bristol quiz night/book group associates (Mike, Noel and Julian) should all consider themselves duly thanked.
Thanks, also, to Cecil Rajendra for permission to reproduce the poem ‘Angels’ in the dedication.
I also wish to acknowledge the assistance of the Theology and Religious Studies staff at the University of Gloucestershire, particularly Professor Melissa Raphael and Dr Peter Scott, who have provided support during the last two years of this project, besides listening patiently to my complaints and doubts.
xiii
ABBREVIATIONS
Works detailed here are not listed in the bibliography at the end of the book.
Pali texts
Note: Unless otherwise indicated, references are to Pali Text Society edition volume and page numbers. Pali text cited in the book is from the CSCD version – which was checked against the PTS edition. Any discrepancies between the CSCD and PTS versions of the text are noted in the book.
A Akguttara Nikaya CSCD Chattha Sakgayana CD-ROM, Version 3. The Pali Canon on CD-ROM.
Vipassana Research Institute, Dhammagiri, India. www.vri.dhamma.org D Digha Nikaya Dhp Dhammapada Dhs Dhammasakgaji It Itivuttaka; It. references are to sutta number Khp Khuddakapatha M Majjhima Nikaya Mil Milindapañha Nett Nettipakaraja Nidd Mahaniddesa Patis Patisambhidamagga Pet Petakopadesa S SaÅyutta Nikaya Sn Sutta-Nipata; Note: Sutta-Nipata references are to paragraph number,
rather than volume and page number Ud Udana Vibh Vibhakga Vin Vinaya Pitaka Vism Visudhimagga
Translations
CDB The Connected Discourses of the Buddha. Two Volumes. Bodhi, Bhikkhu (Trans.), Wisdom Publications, Massachusetts, 2000. [A translation of the SaÅyutta Nikaya.]
DP The Dhammapada. Narada, Thera (Trans.), Corporate Body of the Buddha Educational Foundation, Taiwan, 4th edition, 1993.
LDB The Long Discourses of the Buddha. Walshe, Maurice (Trans.), Wisdom Publications, Massachusetts, 1995. [A translation of the Digha Nikaya.]
MLD The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha. Ñajamoli, Bhikkhu and Bodhi, Bhikkhu (Trans.), Wisdom Publications, Massachusetts, 1995. [A translation of the Majjhima Nikaya.]
NDB Numerical Discourses of the Buddha: An Anthology of Suttas from the Akguttara Nikaya. Thera, Nyanaponika and Bodhi, Bhikkhu (Trans.), AltaMira Press, Maryland, 1999.
Pit The Pitaka Disclosure. Ñajamoli, Bhikkhu (Trans.), Pali Text Society, Oxford, 1979. [A translation of the Petakopadesa.]
PoP The Path of Purification. Ñajamoli, Bhikkhu (Trans.), Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy, 1991. [A translation of the Visudhimagga.]
QKM The Questions of King Milinda. Two Volumes. Davids, T. W. Rhys (Trans.), Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1965. [A translation of the Milindapañha.]
SNip The Sutta-Nipata. Saddhatissa, H. (Trans.), Curzon Press, Surrey, 1994. TBA The Book of Analysis. Thittila, Pathamakyaw Ashin (Trans.), Pali Text
Society, Oxford, 1995. [A translation of the Vibhakga.] TPD The Path of Discrimination. Ñajamoli, Bhikkhu (Trans.), Pali Text
Society, Oxford, 1997. [A translation of the Patisambhidamagga.] Ud-It The Udana & The Itivuttaka. Ireland, John (Trans.), Buddhist
Publication Society, Kandy, 1997.
Dictionaries and reference works
PED Pali–English Dictionary. Davids, T. W. Rhys and Stede, William (Eds), Pali Text Society, Oxford, 1995.
ADP A Dictionary of Pali. Vol. I, A-Kh. Cone, Margaret, Pali Text Society, Oxford, 2001.
SED Sanskrit–English Dictionary. Monier-Williams, M. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, Delhi, 1963. Note: In citations from the SED, slightly different diacritical marks are given, in line with the usage of the SED. This is rare, and fairly obvious, but worthy of note here.
EPD English–Pali Dictionary. Buddhadatta, Mahathera A. P. Pali Text Society, Oxford, 1995.
ABBREVIATIONS
xiv
WBR Western Buddhist Review. Available at www.westernbuddhistreview.com PTS Pali Text Society JBE Journal of Buddhist Ethics (on-line journal). Available at http://
jbe.gold.ac.uk/ JPTS Journal of the Pali Text Society
ABBREVIATIONS
xv
All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied. For what advantage has the wise man over the fool? And what does the poor man have who knows how to conduct himself before the living? Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of desire; this also is vanity and a striving after wind.1
Introduction: you cannot always get what you want
Why begin a book on, primarily, Buddhism with a quote from the Bible? While Buddhism, as found in the Pali Canon, is my prime interest, I wish to state from the outset that my horizons here are broad. I will offer the rationale for this shortly, but let me make clear that what I am interested in here is desire. The Buddhist material is here because I have come to the view that it offers one of the best ways of moving towards an understanding of desire. Anything else that I have felt may do the same has therefore come into the orbit of my concerns.
But why ‘desire’? I believe Buddhist thought – as found in the Pali Canon – offers a profundity of insight on this topic. Further to this, it is a concept we all, on some level, have daily familiarity with; while, at the same time, often giving it little or no sustained attention or reflection. Desire is both familiar and strange to us.
Buddhism offers a model of desire that is distinct from, but finds echoes in, Western philosophy (and to an extent psychology). It also is related, in various ways, to the Brahmanic traditions which existed prior to, alongside, and beyond the composition of the Pali Canon. The texts of early Buddhism offer us a way to execute radical interventions in the mechanics of our desiring. These interventions, via a self-initiated transformation of consciousness, can lead us, it is claimed, to live less harmful and more satisfying lives. Our lives can become such that our interaction with sense-objects is not invariably tainted by an impossible and damaging chase after mind-constructed ideals of permanence and substantiality.
In this introduction, I set out the concerns that I shall follow up throughout the book, and I have also felt it necessary to address a small number of themes, such as the translation of kusala as ‘skilful’, and the problems of addressing particularly ‘spiritual’2 topics in language.
INTRODUCTION
The paradox of desire
It is an oversimplification of the Buddhist position to assume that it seeks an end of all desire. Such a view, however, is not uncommon.3
Many see desire in Buddhism as a single thing – not seeing the subtle range of types of wanting which are at play in the texts (and Buddhist practice). It is worth keeping this in mind when we consider the notion of a ‘paradox of desire’:
If I desire to cease desiring then I have not ceased all desire after all; I have merely replaced one species of desiring by another. The paradox of desire points to the practical contradiction or frustration involved in the desire to stop all desiring and states simply that those who desire to stop all desiring will never be successful.4
The piece from which I take this quote, and the set of articles in the subsequent issue of Philosophy East & West that replied to it, were the starting point for my initial thoughts about the nature and status of desire in Buddhism. In the end I have come to the conclusion that these articles are, to a large extent, undermined by a misconceived view of the actual Buddhist position, but I will come to that shortly.
Initially I want to explain why this topic piqued my interest. In my student days studying Buddhism, I was aware of a general negative attitude to desire in Buddhism. Or so I thought. What I was actually cognisant of was a description of Buddhism as having such an attitude in secondary Western literature on Buddhism. Then, when I came to consider the topic for this present study, I began with an examination of the Four Noble Truths.
In reading around this topic, I became preoccupied with the second truth – that of craving (tajha) as the basis of suffering (dukkha). It soon became clear that there was a lot more to this topic than I had realised. This drew me to the Philosophy East & West articles, and in the end to the production of this book.
To return to this notion of a paradox of desire, it is most easily seen in the sense of ‘if I desire to end desire, I can never do so’. A. L. Herman’s approach, in the piece cited above, is to contrast the desire for desirelessness with the notion of ‘letting-go’. He draws on his reading of Madhyamika Buddhism to claim that the realisation that desire can never take us beyond desire, is the basis for achieving that very goal:
That is to say, seeing that there is no way out of the paradox of desire, understanding that, as Madhyamika Buddhism puts it, there is no way to nirvaja, no goal to be desired or achieved, then one ‘lets go’ of the way and the goal. And that ‘letting go’ leads to, or is, nirvaja.5
There are numerous things here that deserve comment. First, Herman goes beyond the type of Buddhism that I am interested in here, so I make no assessment of the accuracy of his portrayal of Madhyamika thought.
INTRODUCTION
2
Second, as I discuss in Chapter 3, there do seem to be types of desiring that Buddhism does not condemn as unskilful (akusala – this term is discussed later in this Introduction). The assessment of desire in his piece is too straight- forward – there is little sense of qualitative distinctions between types of desire.
Third, does he not fail within even his own terms of reference? How do we get to ‘letting go’? Do we have to desire this letting-go in order to achieve it – or is this is as doomed as desiring nibbana? He does offer a graduated path to the letting go, the key stage of which is the realisation of the paradox of desire. He sees Zen Buddhism as the final culmination of this trend – but I am not sure this is accurate. Further, the whole approach is based, on my reading, of a rejection of the Canonical injunctions regarding desire in general, and tajha in particular. If Buddhism con- sists of something other than the overcoming of at least certain types of desire, why do we find so much of the tradition recommending that we encounter and overcome our desirous nature?
In response to Herman’s piece, Wayne Alt argued that there was no paradox – as the desire to end desire evaporated once successful: hence leaving us with no desire, by means of desiring this state:
Suppose I desire16 to eliminate desire2. If I satisfy desire1, that is, if I actually manage to eliminate desire2, then desire1 will thereby be elim- inated. For the satisfaction of any desire is tantamount to its elimination. So it appears that desire1, like any other desire, can be eliminated after all. Someone might reply that desire2 cannot be eliminated, and hence desire1 can never be satisfied. But it could not be argued, as Herman suggests, that desire2 cannot be eliminated because desire1 cannot be eliminated. That would simply beg the question. Hence, we are led back to the central question of this article: Why would it be paradoxical or otherwise logically absurd to suppose that human desire can be completely eliminated?7
Is this any more satisfactory than Herman’s account? Possibly, but the problem here is that the desires here seem to be distinguished only by the nature of their object. If so, is not desire1 – once initiated – then also a component of desire2? There is still lacking a clear understanding of what desire is. Alt partly concedes this, and closes with the words:
Perhaps in the future someone will attempt to clarify the concept of ‘desire’. This would be an interesting philosophical project and an obvious contribution to Buddhist studies.8
I am not at all sure whether I have fulfilled his remit here, but it is clear that his view is based on a very simplistic understanding of the nature of desire. In a brief response to Wayne Alt, John Visvader – while in general agreement with Alt’s claim that desire can lead to the end of desire – wishes to maintain
INTRODUCTION
3
the existence of a paradox:
It is…