The Use of Money by Monks

 

Attached to Bhikkhu or homo monasticus


In modern time a great deal has been said and written about sīla (virtue, right conduct) as taught by the Buddha, and quite properly so; for the Buddha himself had much to say about sīla, and many of his discourses that have been handed down to us through twenty-five centuries are concerned primarily with sīla. The five precepts set forth for laypeople have been discussed, explained and expounded upon by contemporary writers until it would seem that by now all that can be said about them has already been said and can only be repeated, not added to. Nearly as much has been written about the eight precepts to be observed by the laity on Uposathas (lunar days); nor is there any shortage of discussion about various points of monastic discipline—the ten precepts of the sāmaṇera, the Pātimokkha (monastic code) of the bhikkhu. and the Vinaya (disciplinary and procedural rulings) generally. And yet in all this discussion about proper and improper conduct one subject is almost totally ignored by monks and laity alike: the Buddha’s advice on the use, by monks, of money.

There seem to be three general reasons for this. First, the subject is often supposed to be vastly complex and of a nature that lends itself to various interpretations, all equally defendable, and therefore beyond the range of all save Vinaya experts, who will quibble over the matter endlessly. Second, it is sometimes looked upon as a dead issue. Nowadays nearly all monks use money—so it is argued—whether or not they themselves handle it; laypeople are accustomed, for the most part, to providing monks with not only their requisites but also discretionary funds. Most people are content with the existing arrangements. Why not leave well enough alone? Third, to the extent that it is not a dead issue it is, potentially at least, a very volatile one. It is not only a matter of differences of understanding or of hard-held opinions: vested interests are involved; and when they are threatened, even remotely, it is possible that more heat would be generated than light. Indeed, the views expressed herein could become, in some quarters, the occasion for a consciousness that would be a matter of regret to their author (who therefore chooses to remain anonymous).

To all of which it must be said that first, the subject is not so formidably complex as may be supposed; nor is it, in the end, a matter of equally valid but divergent opinions. It can be discussed with comprehensibility and completeness in a short article, as will be demonstrated. Second, and third as well, there are those, both monks and laity, who do take the Dhamma in earnest. These sincere seekers may be uninformed or misinformed about this important subject. It is not our purpose here to tell others how they must behave. But it is our purpose to clarify an existing misunderstanding and to set forth what ls the Buddha’s own advice, and thereby to put these concerned individuals in a position to make a knowledgeable decision as to what conduct is most suitable for them: for monks, what can and cannot properly be made use of; for laypeople, what should and should not properly be offered. It is for these that this article is intended.

But is this question about the use of money by monks such a very important matter? Or is it just another obscure point of arcane interest to a few legalistic pedants, and none other? And if it is an important question, what makes it so?

The subject has not always been neglected. Quite the contrary, we find that in the old texts, both Vinaya and Sutta, it is taken up with a frequency that makes it clear that even then it was regarded as not merely an important matter but also a vexatious one, needing to be repeatedly set forth clearly. Indeed, it was the major point of issue which gave rise to the Second Council, held a century or so after the Buddha’s decease. An informative account of this meeting and its cause is to be found in the Twelfth Khandhaka or the Cūlavagga of the Vinaya Piṭaka. but the question is not restricted to the Vinaya Piṭaka.

At Aṅguttara Nikāya IV 50 (ii,53-4) it is said that just as there are four defilements (upakkilesā) of the moon and sun, whereby they do not shine forth—to wit, cloud, storm, smoke and dust, and eclipse—so too there are four defilements of recluses and brahmans whereby they do not shine forth: taking intoxicants, sexual involvement, accepting gold and silver (= money), and wrong livelihood.

In the Ghoṭamukha Sutta, Majjhima 94, Ven. Udena refuses an offer of money stating, as reason, that receiving money is not allowable (na kappati). Again, in the Saṁyutta Nikāya, at Gāmaṇi Saṁy. 10 (iv, 325-6) it is said that the royal retinue of Rājagaha were agreed, with the exception of the headman Maṇicūlaka, that Buddhist monks were allowed to accept gold and silver. The headman, unable to convince those others, thereupon consulted the Buddha as to the truth of the matter, and was told:

‘No indeed, headman; it is not permitted to Sakyaputta [= Buddhist] recluses to take gold and silver, to let it be offered, to accept gold and silver. They do not do so. Rejected by them are gems and gold. They have done with gold and silver. Headman, to him who is permitted to take gold and silver the five sensual delights are also permitted. Headmen, you may downright aver of him to whom the taking of gold and silver are permitted that he is not a recluse by nature, not of the nature of the Sakyaputta.

‘Headman, I do declare this. Grass, firewood, a cart, a servant are to be sought after by him who is in need of such. But, headman, in no manner whatsoever do I declare that gold or silver should be accepted or sought for.’1

At Sotāpatti Saṁy. 53 (v, 406) accepting gold and silver are included in a list of traits which distinguish the layperson from the monk. And at Brahmajāla Suttanta, Dīgha l (i, 5) the Buddha says that he himself abstains from (among other things) accepting gold and silver, while at Therīgāthā 342 it is said that silver and gold are not conducive to enlightenment: this is not the proper course for ascetics, this is not the wealth of the noble ones. Other references could be adduced; but these will serve to demonstrate that the subject is discussed not only in the Vinaya Piṭaka (where we would expect to find it) but also, and repeatedly, in the Sutta Piṭaka (where we might not). Clearly, however neglected the question may be today it was certainly regarded as an important matter in the Buddha’s time.

And what makes this issue important? We have already been given two good reasons: involvement with money is an obstacle to attaining freedom from sensuality (S. iv) and to attaining enlightenment (Th). It is bound up with involvement in sensual indulgence; and this Teaching is for freeing ourselves from addiction to sensuality. Living without money may not be an easy matter for some; but neither, apparently, is overcoming sensual attachment. And failure to achieve the former, it would seem, makes it all the more difficult to succeed in the latter.

Two further reasons can be added. First, involvement with money is an obstacle to non-attachment. Since the time of the Buddha going forth (pabbajja) from the household life has meant a complete giving up of society, renouncing the advantages as well as the disadvantages (and the perils) of worldly gatherings and choosing instead a hermetic life involved with striving towards non-attachment. It is obvious not only that as soon as one is involved with money one is necessarily involved with society—for of what use is money in the forest?—but also that non-attachment is to be purchased with a very different coinage. There is no need to expand upon this point or to debate it. To those who accept this view it will already be self-evident. Those who do not wish to accept it will never lack for arguments, rationalizations, and ‘Yes, but…’s. But those arguments will only confirm what has already been said.

The second point is that involvement with money is an obstacle to insight. It is a well-known principle that to understand anything at all, extraneous material must be excluded. To spin cotton, stray bits of twig and leaf must be removed. To analyse a chemical structure the chemical must first be purified. To write an article, irrelevant ideas must be eliminated and attention recesses on the matter at hand. And also if we wish to understand the fundamental elements and relationships of our being we will make easier the achievement of this most difficult task if we make our lives pure and simple, eliminating as much as possible all that is a complication. Perpetual dissatisfaction is the basic reality, the basic problem, of existence. If we wish to resolve this situation we must understand what is (and what is not) basic. Involvement with commerce is one of the major complicating factors in life. Complexity is already akin to confusion. If we have done with it, how much easier our primary task!

This is not to say, of course, that to live without money is not in some ways the more difficult choice. If it is comfort we are looking for we would hardly choose that way. But, of course, the Buddha’s Teaching is not for those whose primary concern is comfort. The ability to see into the innermost depths of one’s being, wherein attraction, repulsion and confusion derive their impetus from the self-blinding turbulence of conceit—this ability is gained by relinquishing everything, let alone comfort. And they who cannot let go of the comforts, the options, and the (false) sense of security obtained by holding to a few bits of paper or metal do not thereby render the possibility of insight more likely.

In this regard we might compare the Ambaṭṭha and Soṇadaṇḍa Suttantas, numbers 3 and 4 of the Dīgha Nikāya. Both Pokkharasādi (of the former Suttanta) and Soṇadaṇḍa were brahmans; both were masters of the Vedas; both were masters also of their own seigniories, granted by mahārājas; both were dependent for their incomes (in part at least) upon their reputations as masters of brahman lore; both heard discourses by the Buddha; each approved of what he heard; and each took refuge ‘for as long as life lasts’ in the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Saṅgha. The latter, fearful that by open obeisance to the Buddha—a non-brahman—he might incur blame, diminishment of reputation, and consequent loss of income, tells the Buddha that to protect his income he will show his regard for the Buddha in ways less public than those customary at the time. The former, though in exactly the same economic situation and presumably equally liable to loss of income by a public display of reverence to the Buddha, nevertheless does not quibble. Pokkharasādi attains perception into the nature of things (‘Whatever is of a nature to arise, all that is of a nature to cease’); Soṇadaṇḍa does not. And the reason for this difference is, apparently, the latter’s concern for his income: his unwillingness to relinquish.

Enough has now been said to establish the importance of the question of involvement with money. How let us turn to the Vinaya Piṭaka to learn what, exactly, has been set forth.

For the sāmaṇera the ruling is straightforward. The last of the ten precepts he lives guided by is: ‘I undertake the training-course of refraining from accepting gold and silver.”2 And it is clear enough that if the sāmaṇera does not accept money then he will be quite unable to spend it or to store it up.

In the bhikkhus‘ Pātimokkha this is spelled out in greater detail. In the third category of offences, that entailing ‘expiatlon with forfeiture’,3 we find the following three rules:

’18. Whatever monk should take gold and silver, or should get another to take it (for him) or should consent to its being kept in deposit (for him), there is an offence of expiation involving forfeiture.

’19. Whatever monk should engage in various transactions in which gold and silver is used, there is an offence of expiation involving forfeiture.

’20. Whatever monk should engage in various kinds of bartering, there is an offence of expiation involving forfeiture.’4

The term ‘expiation with forfeiture’ may need a few words. In most of the rules in this category this involves a symbolic surrender of goods and also a confession (to one monk) according to a standardized formulary. Rule 20 follows this procedure: what is obtained in barter is to be surrendered; but once surrendered it should be returned. In these matters, among those who are desirous of training themselves, this will be sufficient condition for restraint in the future. In a few cases, however, the offence is regarded with more gravity. It is instructive to consider in what way forfeiture is to be accomplished in rules 18 and 19. The procedures are the same for both. In the Sutta Vibhaṅga (that part of the Vinaya Piṭaka wherein are found both the story of the occasion that gave rise to each rule and a detailed discussion of the rules) it is explained:

‘And thus, monks, should it be forfeited: that monk, approaching the Order, arranging his upper robe over one shoulder, honoring the feet of the senior monks, sitting down on his haunches, saluting with joined palms, should speak thus: “I, honored sirs, accepted gold and silver. This is to be forfeited by me. I forfeit it to the Order.” Having forfeited it, the offence should be confessed. The offence should be acknowledged by an experienced, competent monk. If an attendant of a monastery or a lay-follower comes there, he should be told: “Sir, see to this.” If he says, “What can be got for this?” he should not be told, “Bring this or that;” oil or ghee be honey or molasses may be mentioned as allowable. If he brings what is allowable, having got it in exchange for this [i.e. with that money], it may be made use of by all except the one who accepted the gold and silver. If he can undertake to do this in this way, it is well. But if he cannot undertake to do it, he should he told, “Sir, remove this.” If he removes it, it is well. But if he does not remove it a monk endowed with five qualities should be agreed upon as silver-remover: one who would not follow a wrong course through desire, through hatred, through stupidity, through fear, and one who would know what is removed and what is not removed….’5

To complete our examination of this subject three more points remain to be discussed: briefly, a point of translation and, more fully, two exceptions.

The word sādiyati is translated here as ‘to consent to’. It is so translated by I.B. Horner, by T.W. Rhys Davids, and by Ven. Ñāṇamoli Thera. However, some take this word as meaning ‘to be glad at’ (as is to be found as an editorial alteration in later editions of the late Ven. Ñāṇamoli Thera’s Pātimokkha translation and as found too in The Entrance to the Vinaya, Ven. Vajirañāṇavarorasa’s exegesis). And, in accordance with this rendering, it is maintained by those that there is no fault in a monk consenting to the deposit of money on his behalf provided he is not glad at its receipt. And, indeed, there exists a bank which serves such monks exclusively, in non-interest-accruing accounts. If this rendering—’to be glad at’—is correct, then we have the strange case of fault being distinguished from non-fault not on the basis of cetanā (intention) but on the basis of vedanā (feeling). Is this possible?

The word sādiyati occurs elsewhere in the Vinaya. In the first pārājika (the first category of offence), concerned with sexual intercourse, it is said that should a monk be physically overpowered and compelled to engage in intercourse it is no offence for him provided he does not ‘sādiyati‘. Thus, if we understand sādiyati to mean ‘to be glad at’ we would have a strange case, wherein a monk who experiences, even against his will, some passing physical or mental pleasure is defeated as a monk, while one who consents to the act but is not gladdened by it is not. This is not possible; this case clearly demonstrates that sādiyati means ‘to consent to’; and consequently there is no justification herein for considering nissaggiya pācttiya 18 as allowing discretionary funds to be held for a monk.

There are found in the Vinaya two exceptions to this rule. The first is at nissaggiya pācittiya 10, which Ven. Ñāṇamoli Thera translates thus:

‘Should a king or a king’s officer or a divine [a brahman] or a householder send the purchase-price of a robe by a messenger specifically for a monk, “With this purchase-price of a robe purchase a robe and supply the monk named so-and-so with a robe,” and should the messenger approach that monk and say this, “Ven. sir, this purchase-price of a robe has been brought specifically for the ven. one; let the ven. one accept the purchase-price of a robe,” then the messenger should be told by the monk, “Friend, we do not accept the purchase-price of a robe, but we accept robe (material) at the (proper)6 time and (of the sort) allowable.” Should the messenger say to the monk thus, “Has the ven. one a steward?” (then), monks, a monastery attendant or a lay follower can be indicated as a steward by the monk if he needs a robe, “Friend, this is the monk’s steward.” If the messenger, after instructing the steward, should approach the monk and say thus, “Ven. sir, the steward indicated by the ven. one has been instructed by me; let the ven. one approach him for a robe at the (proper) time and he will supply it,” then the steward can be prompted and reminded two or three times by the monk if he needs a robe, “Friend, I have need of a robe.” If on being prompted or reminded two or three times the robe is forthcoming, that is good; if it should not be forthcoming (the monk) can stand in silence for the purpose four times, five times, or six times at most. If on standing in silence for that purpose four times, five times or six times at most the robe is forthcoming, that is good; if it should not be forthcoming, and if on making further efforts, it is forthcoming, then it entails expiation with forfeiture.7 If it should not be forthcoming he should go himself, or send a messenger to the place from which the purchase-price of a robe was brought, “That purchase-price of a robe that you sirs sent specifically for a monk has provided nothing at all for that monk; let those concerned send for what is theirs lest what is theirs be lost. This is the proper course here.’

It should be noted:

1) The cotton plant was unknown in ancient India. Cloth was dear. It was common for monks to have only meager shelters, wherein stored-up cloth could easily fall prey to thieves, mice or foul weather. Therefore this special allowance was made. But it is only with regard to the purchase-price of a robe that a steward is spoken of. There is no suggestion that it is proper for a steward (or a bank manager) to hold a general discretionary fund on behalf of a monk.

2) It applies only in the case of a lay-supporter who himself lives so distant from the monk that it is necessary for him (the lay-supporter) to employ intermediary.

3) A steward (veyyāvaccakara) is to be indicated only if the monk is invited to do so. The monk does not himself initiate this arrangement. All financial arrangements are made between laypeople without involving the monk. The monk’s involvement extends no further than to request a robe at the time he needs one.

4) Until the robe is purchased, the funds for it belong to the donor. The monk has no control over the money, and it would be an impropriety for his to ask that it be user for anything other than a robe. (Indeed, even his capacity to petition for the robe is strictly circumscribed.)

5) Other rulings in this category (e.g. nos. 8 and 9) disallow the monk from specifying the sort of robe to be purchased, or from combining the purchase-price of two or more robes in order to obtain one fine-quality robe, unless he is invited to do so. In other words, he is allowed no control at all over the way the money is to be spent—not even to the extent of volunteering information about his personal preferences in robes.

The second exception is known as the ‘Meṇḍaka allowance’. Meṇḍaka was a wealthy lay-follower living in Bhaddiya who undertook to feed the Buddha and all the monks in his company for as long as they resided near to Bnaddiya. When the Buddha together with the monks left for Aṅguttarāpa—apparently a frontier or wilderness settlement on the farther side of the Mahī river—Meṇḍaka followed after him with wagonloads of food and sufficient cows to provide fresh milk for all the monks. It was at this time that the Buddha declared dairy products allowable for monks. After having fed the monks on this doubtlessly difficult road Meṇḍaka said to the Buddha,8 ‘There are, lord, wilderness roads with little water, with little food; it is not easy to so along them without provisions for the journey. It were good, Lord, if the Lord allows monks provisions for the journey.’

As a result of this request the Buddha subsequently told the monks:

‘I allow you the five products of the cow: milk, curds, buttermilk, butter, ghee. There are wilderness roads with little water, with little food; it is not easy to go along them without provisions for the journey. I allow you to look about for provisions for a journey: husked rice for him who has need of husked rice; kidney-beans…; beans…; salt…; sugar…; oil…; ghee for him who has need of ghee. There are, monks, people who have faith and are believing: these deposit gold in the hands of those who make things allowable, saying, ‘By means of this give the master that which is allowable.’ I allow you, monks, thereupon to consent to that which is allowable. But this, monks, I do not say: that by any method may gold and silver be consented to, may be looked about for.’9

The context of this allowance, concerned as it is in both locality and subject with wilderness roads, strongly suggests that the allowance made here is limited to a time of travel. (Indeed, to regard it as being not thus restricted would be to remove it from its coherent setting and to set it adrift. There being then no longer any reasonable justification for its being placed where it is, there would inevitably arise the strong suspicion of its being a later interpolation whose very generality, standing out in contradiction to all else found on the subject, would make it of dubious validity.) First the monks are told what is allowable for a wilderness road and which may be looked about for. Then they are told that although money may be neither looked about for nor consented to, if a monk is travelling with a lay attendant (kappiyakāraka) who happens to hold money given to him by others for monastic needs, then it is permitted for the monk to make use of whatever is allowable that the attendant should purchase with those funds.10 Note that it is not said that the monk may request, suggest, or hint; all that is allowed herein is for him to consent to that which is allowable. For should he make a request of one who, as attendant, is in a subservient position, that request would be tantamount to an instruction. The monk would thereby be exercising control over the money and, control being taken, regardless of whose hands the money was in, the money would than come to belong to, to be accepted by, the monk.11

What is proper depends, of course, on one’s circumstances. The five precepts are proper for the circumstances of the layperson, but not for that of the monk. The precepts of the Pāṭimokkha are inappropriate for the circumstances of the layperson. So too, many of the rules of the Pāṭimokkha are relaxed in exceptional circumstances, such as illness. When there was food-shortage in Rājagaha the Buddha relaxed certain rules with regard to food; but when that shortage was ended the rules were revived. Similarly, although in the Buddha’s day the monks had no need to concern themselves with such matters as tickets for buses, trains or airplanes, there were nevertheless rivers to be crossed, and some rivers could be crossed only by ferryboat. No doubt the boatman would often take recluses and monks without charge; but not always: sometimes a fare needed to be paid. And besides this there were, no doubt, any number of other difficulties that might be made less difficult with money. Therefore in addition to allowing the monks to take food with them on a difficult journey the Buddha made it possible, in a strictly circumscribed manner, for money to be used on the monks’ behalf. However, when the journey was completed and such special circumstances no longer obtained, the ‘Meṇḍaka allowance’ was no longer to be made use of.

It is clear from the foregoing that the monks’ rules concerned with money are set forth to promote a going forth that is complete. To live in accordance with these rules is to totally forsake worldly involvement and worldly options in favor of a life devotee to changing oneself—the inner involvement, the inner option. And clearly enough only those who are concerned with renunciation and contemplation will feel a need to limit their lives externally in order to expand their lives internally. These, and those who support them with the necessary material requisites, will be appreciative of the wisdom upon which these rules are based.

‘Monks, this pure life is not to be lived to deceive people nor to prattle to them. It is not for the purpose of gain, acclaim or notoriety, nor for the purpose of loose talk nor with the idea, “Thus may the people know me.” Monks, this pure life is to be lived simply for the purpose of restraint, of abandoning, of dispassion, of cessation.’—Aṅguttara IV 25 (ii, 26)

NOTES

1 F. L. Woodward’s translation, in Kindred Sayings IV,231-2: Pali Text Society (London, 1956).

2 Jātarūpa-rajata-paṭiggahanā verāmanī sikkhāpadaṁ samādiyāmi.

3 Nissaggiya pācittiya, explained below. (The first category—pārājika, ‘defeat’—involves immediate expulsion from the Orde r; the second category—saṅghādisesa—involves confession before a full Order and loss of certain privileges for six or more days.

4 Yo pana bhikkhu jātarūpa-rajatam ugganheyya vā uggaṅhapeyya vā upanikkhittaṁ vā sādiyeyya, nissaggiyam pācittiyaṁ. Yo pana bhikkhu nānappakārakaṁ rūpiyasaṁvohāraṁ samāpajjeyya, nissaggiyam pācittiyaṁ. Yo pana bhikkhu nānappakārakaṁ kayavikkayaṁ samāpajjeyya, nissaggiyam pācittiyaṁ.

5 I.B. Horner’s translation (with emphasis added) is used for this passage and for the three ‘forfeiture’ rules above. Book of the Discipline, Vol. I, 99-109 (Pali Text Society, London, 1949). The translations by Ven. Ñāṇamoli Thera and by T.W. Rhys Davids are essentially in agreement with Miss Horner’s rendering.

6 We must disagree with this interpolation. There is no time when it is not allowed for a monk to accept robes or robe material. What is intended here is probably no more than ‘at the time when it is needed.’

7 Of the symbolic sort.

8 For the two following speeches, Meṇḍaka’s and the Buddha’s, Miss Horner’s translation is used. Book of the Discipline, Vol. IV, 335-6.

9 Santi bhikkhave manussā saddhā pasannā, te kappiyakārakānaṁ hatthe hiraññam upanikkhipanti iminā ayyassa yaṁ kappiyaṁ taṁ dethā ti. Anujānāmi bhikkhave yaṁ tato kappiyaṁ taṁ sādituṁ na tv’evāhaṁ bhikkhave kenaci pariyāyena jātarūparajataṁ sāditabbaṁ pariyesitabbanti vadāmīti. (Mahāvagga VI 34 (i, 243-4))

10 If the monk is travelling with, or meets with, someone who has his own money, and if that person offers to provide assistance, then of course that assistance too can be accepted. Indeed, in such a case the monk need not be on a journey at all, for it is a normal procedure for a layperson to invite a monk to speak of what might be needed (in which case the Layperson can circumscribe his offer in any way he chooses—e.g. as regards time, type of help, quantity, etc.) and it is allowable for the monk, once invited, to speak of whatever is proper and within the terms of the offer made, should he wish to do so. The monk exercises no control over the situation. It is up to the layperson to provide (or not to provide) what has been spoken of.

11 There is a curious (but widespread) view that provided a monk does not physically touch money he is free from fault and may blamelessly instruct an attendant either directly (‘Go to the store and buy me ten bars of chocolate.’) or, at least, through verbal legerdemain (‘A monk would find a ten bars of chocolate to be of use.’) as to its usage. This notion is not supported by the 84th rule of the fourth category, ‘expiation’ (pācittiya, requiring the some sort of confession as offences of the third category but without forfeiture, there being nothing involved to be forfeited), wherein the Buddha himself is represented as instructing a monk to pick up and lay aside certain valuables, gold jewelry among them, which had been forgotten within the monastery precinct by a lay-follower. The monk was not appropriating the valuables but setting them in a safe place until their owner could claim them. Evidently, then, it is not the physical touch which is the important factor (as it would be in both Brahmanist and Jainist circles: see Upāli Sutta, Majjhima 56 (i, 372), wherein a Jain follower, in opposition to the Buddha, asserts bodily action to be more significant than mental action), but rather whether the money is touched mentally, i.e. thought of as, or treated as, being ‘mine’. The only reasonable standard here is that of control: if a monk is able to say, ‘Let these funds be used in this way, let them be used in that way,’ then whether or not he himself touches the money he is effectively in possession of it. (The question of whether physical touch is necessary for food and medicines to be made allowable lies just outside our immediate sphere of discussion. Anyone concerned to investigate this matter should take into account the story in the Sutta Vibhaṅga of the circumstances which gave rise to nissaggiya pācittiya 5 and the taking of food by Kassapa Buddha in the Ghaṭīkāra Sutta, Majjhima 81.)

Samanera Bodhesako

Each of us must see for himself what it is that he is blind to

Preface to Change


Whatever is great in the sphere of the universally human must not be communicated as a subject for admiration but as an ethical requirement.

— Soren Kierkegaard[1]


When we first hear the Buddha’s Teaching we listen, each of us, already imbued with our own set of views and opinions. Some of these views will harmonize with this Teaching. Others, just as surely, will not. Were it otherwise the Teaching would be quite needless, for either there would be nothing for us to learn from it or else everything. And if everything then there could be no avenue of approach, no common ground upon which we might make a beginning. It is because of this partial match that it is possible for us to benefit from the Buddha’s right-view guidance if we wish to and will allow ourselves to do so. And it is because of this partial mismatch that we fail to see how to do so.

Commonly, the initial reaction is to judge the Teaching in the light of what we already accept as true. We try to understand it in terms of our own views. Some will be uninterested in doing otherwise. They will have no greater use for this Teaching than as a device for confirming to themselves what they have already decided to be the truth. To such people nothing useful can be said. Yet there are also those who genuinely desire to learn — i.e. to change themselves — but who do not see any way to proceed other than to evaluate the Teaching in the light of their own beliefs. But it can be said that in a sense the whole of this Teaching is a caution to do the opposite. Right-view guidance is offered as the standard by which we may judge our own views. By accepting that criterion we can understand those views fully, and thereby perceive the conditions upon which those views depend.

The Teaching, after all, informs us from the start that there are such things as “right view” and “wrong view.” Wrong view, the Teaching insists, is as inextricably tied up with craving and suffering as right view is with their absence. But right and wrong view, it seems, are not just a matter of a difference of opinion. They differ more fundamentally in that the former is a seeing of what the latter is blind to. And we, who are not free from craving and suffering, are not free precisely because we fail to understand what is meant by “right view.” Thus we are faced with a dilemma. For if we do not understand what is meant by “right view,” then how is it possible for us to judge our own (wrong) views by that standard, and thereby come to understand wrong view as being wrong view?

This essay is not an effort to answer such a question. It is, rather, an attempt to indicate a way in which each of us can resolve the dilemma for himself; for it cannot be resolved in any other way. Each of us must see for himself what it is that he is blind to.

That blindness — so the Buddha’s discourses repeatedly assert — is involved centrally with our failure to see, to know, the nature of impermanence. And yet in our own experience everywhere we look we see that things are indeed impermanent. If the Buddha is correct then what have we missed?

This question provides us with the basic strategy of our essay. Our procedure will be first (in sections 1, 2, and 4) to critically examine one common response to this question, “What have we missed?” This reply derives from a misconception about the Teaching which is both common and pernicious. We shall discuss not only the unsatisfactoriness of this response but also the nature of that unsatisfactoriness. Then, after taking our bearings (in section 5) by means of some relevant discourses, we will suggest an alternative understanding (already introduced in section 3 and developed more fully in section 6) and discuss its implications.

It is a feature of this alternative understanding that it is organically connected with our first question, “How is it possible to understand wrong view as being wrong view?” In order to illuminate this connection we will discuss (in sections 7 through 11) impermanence and the failure to recognize it for what it is. We shall do this using light shed by the central doctrine of this Teaching, the four noble truths. When we understand the nature of blindness, or wrong view, there is then the possibility of ending that blindness by seeing.

However, if we aim at changing ourselves in a fundamental way it would surely be ineffective to merely substitute one view (however “right” it may be) for another (however “wrong”). Such a task would be more-than-Herculean, inasmuch as Hercules was only required to clean out the Augean stables and was never required to replenish them.

Even more fundamentally, it would fail to be fundamental. To achieve a basic change we need to understand not only specific views. We must also comprehend the general mode in which we perceive the world. This mode or attitude is the context dependent upon which all specific views, right and wrong, arise. For views, like everything else, arise with condition, not independently. If therefore we can come to see the general attitude dependent upon which there arise fallacious views about impermanence, then that attitude can be relinquished. And with its abandonment all views which persist dependent upon that fallacy will be automatically abolished.

We will find, then, that this thorough discussion of impermanence, and of the failure to see it for what it is, will also be a discussion of the requisites for an examination, each for ourselves, of the human dilemma — ours. We shall then conclude our study with a consideration (in section 12) of the overview by means of which there arises a wrong view of impermanence, and we shall compare it with the overview by means of which there arises right view. In doing so we shall have set forth a method whereby one can see for oneself what is meant by “wrong view” and “right view.”

The mode of expression of this essay is essentially descriptive, analytical, and comparative. The analytical descriptions offered herein — particularly those of the structures of ignorance, of craving, and of experience-in-general — though straightforward, may strike readers variously as intriguing, exotic, alien, or even objectionable. If the objection is no more than a rigorous insistence that anything radically different from one’s already-familiar outlook must necessarily be mistaken, then (as has already been observed) nothing can be said. Nothing, that is, except that with such an attitude one will in any case never be able to make proper use of the Teaching. But others, though wishing to understand, may still find the mode of expression foreign to their own way of thinking and therefore baffling. This is the same problem as that of changing oneself: however willing, one may yet not see how to do so. In such a case the first change that is necessary is a change in the way one sees the problem.

If the mode of expression of this essay is foreign it might be possible to use that very alienness as a tool in achieving for oneself a primary change. For although the essay employs a discussion of impermanence as its base, its real concern is not just the problem of change but the problem of changing oneself, in a radical manner. Such a change is difficult to see and difficult to achieve. But if we would put an end to craving, to blindness, to suffering, and to all the unhealthy states that are involved therein, then it is utterly necessary that we see the utter necessity of such a change. Only by doing so can we make a beginning.



Reliable source material is to be found in the four major collections (Nikāyas) of the Sutta Pitaka, in its companion, the Vinaya Pitaka, and in a few other short texts: the Sutta Nipāta, the Dhammapada, the Udāna, the Itivuttaka, and the Theratherīgāthā. In this essay these texts are referred to collectively as “the Suttas.” In this essay no other texts are relied upon as representing the Buddha’s Teaching.

Footnotes:

1. Concluding Unscientific Postscript (London: Oxford University Press, 1945) tr. by D. F. Swenson, p. 320.

Sāmanera Bodhesako

The Buddha and the Catch-22

It is now twenty-five years since the publication, in 1961, of Joseph Heller’s astonishing novel, Catch-22 (New York: Simon and Schuster; London: Jonathan Cape Ltd.); yet so far, it seems, there has been no public comment on certain striking parallels between the Buddha’s Teaching and some of the content of that novel. Perhaps it would be as well to discuss those affinities now, before another quarter century elapses.

The most immediately obvious (though hardly the most profound) similarity between the Teaching and the novel is that both are deeply concerned with man’s mortality. “Old age, sickness, and death” is a phrase that occurs repeatedly in the Buddha’s Teaching, as recorded in the Pali Suttas (and, indeed, throughout the later Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan texts as well). A citation of even a small portion of such textual references[1] would be far beyond the scope of this brief discussion: the fact of man’s mortality — a constant peril in an inconstant world — is a perception absolutely fundamental to the perspective of life presented by the Buddha’s Teaching.

And in Catch-22 the protagonist, Yossarian (a bombardier in World War II), is no less deeply concerned about old age, sickness, and death. The spectre of their imminence is his constant dread. As his friend Dunbar puts it,

“Do you know how long a year takes when it’s going away? This long.” He snapped his fingers. “A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today you’re an old man.”

“Old?” asked Clevinger with surprise. “What are you talking about?”

…”You’re inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age?” — pp. 38-9

As for sickness:

Yossarian had so many ailments to be afraid of that he was sometimes tempted to turn himself in to the hospital for good and spend the rest of his life stretched out there inside an oxygen tent with a battery of specialists and nurses seated at one side of his bed twenty-four hours a day waiting for something to go wrong…. Aneurisms, for instance; how else could they ever defend him in time against an aneurism of the aorta? …He wondered often how he would ever recognise the first chill, flush, twinge, ache, belch, sneeze, stain, lethargy, vocal slip, lose of balance or lapse of memory that would signal the inevitable beginning of the inevitable end. — pp. 171-2

But even more than old age and sickness, it is the spectre of death itself that haunts both Yossarian and the novel: “At night when he was trying to sleep, Yossarian would call the roll of all the men, women and children he had ever known who were now dead. He tried to remember all the soldiers, and he resurrected images of all the elderly people he had known when a child…” — p. 339. Yossarian is enmeshed in a killing war which is (as the novel’s disclaimer makes clear) representative of a larger framework,[2] a war to which “there was no end in sight. The only end in sight was Yossarian’s own” — p. 16. Nevertheless, Yossarian “had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive” — p. 29. Yossarian feels death hovering about him — indeed, even living with him, in the form of a dead man named Mudd, who was not easy to live with.

However, old age, sickness, and death are not apprehended merely as things, as objects in a world of objects, in themselves neutral. The fact of death changes Yossarian’s world, as it does ours, radically, and Heller’s insistence upon this point is the beginning of the novel’s profundity.

In a world in which death is an unavoidable presence, “it made sense to cry out in pain every night” — p. 54. Indeed, the disorder that the awareness of death introduces into a world which, throughout our lives, we are forever trying to order, leaves us with neither simple order nor simple disorder, but rather with “a world boiling in chaos in which everything was in proper orders” — p. 143. Death, the great modifier, alters everything, so that for Yossarian “nothing warped seemed any more in his strange, distorted surroundings” — p. 402.

It is this strange distortion that is the keystone of the novel’s humour — not merely that of its many throwaway jokes but also of the tragicomic perception which circles round and round the death of Snowden (“Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?” — p. 35: what a poignant joker), drawing ever closer, while at the same time mockingly inverting that trivial sensibility which ordinary men use to deny the disorder of death: “the Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable. In three days no one could stand him” — p. 9; “Nately had a bad start. He came from a good family” — p. 12; “Yossarian couldn’t be happy, even though the Texan didn’t want him to be” — p. 16; “strangers he didn’t know shot at him with cannons every time he flew up into the air to drop bombs on them, and it wasn’t funny at all. And if that wasn’t funny, there were lots of things that weren’t even funnier” — p. 17. But it is not merely the one-liners that are inversions of everyday logic: that everyday sensibility is twisted into various shapes, so that each character is seen to exist in his own uniquely topsy-turvy world, a world whose shape hovers somewhere between a wry smile and a teardrop.

And of all the characters who live in their separate worlds of twisted logic (and the names, often as twisted as the logic, seem nearly endless: Hungry Joe, Chief White Half-oat, Doc Daneeka, Major — de Coverly, Milo Minderbinder, Major Major Major Major…) perhaps the most logically insane character of all is the soldier in white, who “was encased from head to toe in plaster and gauze. He had two useless legs and two useless arms” — p. 9.

Sewn into the bandages over the insides of both elbows were zippered lips through which he was fed clear fluid from a clear jar. A silent zinc pipe rose from the cement on his groin and was coupled to a slim rubber hose that carried waste from his kidneys and dripped it efficiently into a clear, stoppered jar on the floor. When the jar on the floor was full, the jar feeding his elbow was empty and the two were simply switched quickly so that the stuff could drip back into him. — p. 10

Changing the jars was no trouble to anyone but the men who watched them changed every hour or so and were baffled by the procedure.

“Why can’t they hook the two jars up to each other and eliminate the middleman?” — p. 168

The other patients in the ward… shrank from him with a tenderhearted aversion from the moment they set eyes on him…. They gathered in the farthest recess of the ward and gossiped about him in malicious, offended undertones, rebelling against his presence as a ghastly imposition and resenting him malevolently for the nauseating truth of which he was a bright reminder. — p. 166

Although Yossarian too is mystified by the soldier in white, yet he “would recognize him anywhere. He wondered who he was” — p. 358. And if we need an image of samsāra we would have to look far to find a better one, or one more universal. The message of the soldier in white (who keeps turning up again)[3] is as universal as that of the letters in black (p. 8) — the letters which Yossarian, as bored censoring officer, blacks out completely or nearly so (and endorses them “Washington Irving” or, sometimes, “Irving Washington,” thus unwittingly endangering the chaplain’s life), “thereby leaving a message far more universal.”

This tragicomic perception of man’s condition (in which lots of things aren’t even funnier) leads naturally to the question of the purpose of such a life, or of any life at all. (On the soldier in white: “It wasn’t much of a life, but it was all the life he had….”) Dr. Stubbs, in conversation with Dunbar, raises this point but fails to answer it:

“I used to get a big kick out of saving people’s lives. Now I wonder what the hell’s the point, since they all have to die anyway.”

…”The point is to keep them from dying for as long as you can.”

“Yeah, but what’s the point, since they all have to die anyway?”

“The trick is not to think about that.”

“Never mind the trick. What the hell’s the point?”

Dunbar pondered in silence for a few moments. “Who the hell knows?” — p. 108

But if the point of life is not known, and if life is nevertheless perceived as both tragic and comic, then from another perspective it could as well be seen as both sane and insane: and this leads naturally to the novel’s comic inversion of the notions of sanity and insanity, an inversion which is an underpinning of the book’s logic (or, as some would have it, illogic). Continuing their conversation, Dr. Stubbs and Dunbar discuss Yossarian and the dreaded approach of a particularly dangerous mission:

“That crazy bastard.”

“He’s not so crazy,” Dunbar said. “He swears he’s not going to fly to Bologna.”

“That’s just what I mean,” Dr. Stubbs answered. “That crazy bastard may be the only sane one left.” — p. 109

Indeed, in a world in which “men went mad and were rewarded with medals” — p. 16 — who is sane, save he who would escape from that world? This is Yossarian’s dilemma, the “vile, excruciating dilemma of duty and damnation” (p. 136): he doesn’t want to be in the war. He doesn’t want to die. “He thirsted for life” — p. 331. For Yossarian the enemy is not the Germans, or at least not only the Germans. “‘The enemy,’ retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, ‘is anybody who’s going to get you killed….'” And because of this “morbid aversion to dying” — p. 297 — men shrink from him and regard him as crazy. Clevinger is such a one. “You’re crazy!” Clevinger shrieks at Yossarian on p. 16; but later (p. 75) we are told that the patriotic and idealistic Clevinger was a dope “who would rather be a corpse than bury one”; and finally (p. 103): “Clevinger was dead. That was the basic flaw in his philosophy.” And yet, by the very fact of being part of such a world one cannot be completely sane; and to be not completely sane is to be not sane at all. But if one tries to escape is that not then evidence of a spark of sanity? Perhaps so; but the problem is that when we try to escape we discover that we can’t: every effort to free oneself from (in Buddhist terms) involvement with craving, aversion, and delusion or (in the novel’s terms) the war — every effort apparently brings one back to the same dilemma, and results only in making the problem more urgent (and perhaps also more evident), as will be recognized by anyone who has ever tried to extirpate the root of craving, and failed. Is it not madness, then, to try to escape?

And yet, if to do nothing is regarded as less insane, still that too does not lead to disengagement from a mad world. This is the very crux of Yossarian’s dilemma, and ours as well: a dilemma illuminated in experience by the effort to practice the Buddha’s Teaching and in fiction by Yossarian’s effort to escape from the war. Heller puts it this way:

“Can’t you ground someone who’s crazy?” [Yossarian asks the flight surgeon, Doc Daneeka.]

“Oh, sure. I have to. There’s a rule saying I have to ground anyone who’s crazy. “

“Then why don’t you ground me? I’m crazy…. Ask any of the others. They’ll tell you how crazy I am.”

“They’re crazy.”

“Then why don’t you ground them?”

“Why don’t they ask me to ground them?”

“Because they’re crazy, that’s why.”

“Of course they’re crazy,” Doc Daneeka replied. “I just told you they’re crazy, didn’t I? And you can’t let crazy people decide whether you’re crazy or not, can you?”

Yossarian looked at him soberly and tried another approach. “Is Orr crazy?”

“He sure is,” Doc Daneeka said…. “I can ground Orr. But first he has to ask me to.”

“That’s all he has to do to be grounded?”

“That’s all. Let him ask me.”

“And then you can ground him?” Yossarian asked.

“No. Then I can’t ground him.”

“You mean there’s a catch?”

“Sure there’s a catch,” Doc Daneeka replied. “Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn’t really crazy.” — p. 45

Thus Yossarian’s efforts to establish a rational basis for being grounded must fail. Logic is an inadequate tool to deal with the human situation, for whenever we apply logic there is always a catch. This is not to suggest that logic is not necessary, but rather that it is not adequate. In this computer age we could hardly manage without logic. Let alone computers, without logic we could make neither mathematics nor music nor marmalade. But whenever we try to deal with the fundamentals of existence, with the forever unanswerable question, “Who am I?” (or any other question concerned with “me”), we find that logic neither answers that question nor shows us the way to stop asking it.[4] (“‘Why me?’ was his constant lament, and the question was a good one” — p. 34.)

And the reason for this, the Buddha informs us, is because of avijjā, or ignorance. But avijjā is not a mere absence of information; it is a refusal to see what is at all times there to be seen. It is not failure to see one particular thing among other particular things, but a radical refusal to see the way all particular things are, and in this respect it is as great a modifier as death — indeed, the two are (so the Buddha tells us) inseparable. The dependent arising formulation says, in summary, “With ignorance as condition, ageing and death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair come into being.”

The deluded person, in refusing to see the nature of all things, refuses also to see the nature of his refusal to see (which is also a thing). That is, he refuses to see delusion. Thus, by denying itself delusion sustains itself. This is stated in the Suttas (e.g. Sammāditthi Sutta, M. 9) as follows:

Friends, that which is non-knowledge of suffering, non-knowledge of the arising of suffering, non-knowledge of the ceasing of suffering, non-knowledge of the way leading to the ceasing of suffering, this, friends, is called ignorance.

For after all, what is “the way leading to the ceasing of suffering”? It is (the Suttas tell us) the noble eightfold path. And what is the first factor of this path? Right view. Ignorance, then, involves non-knowledge of right view. And right view is knowledge of the arising of suffering; that is to say, knowledge of ignorance. Right view is knowledge of right view, and also knowledge of wrong view, whereas wrong view is non-knowledge of wrong view, and also non-knowledge of right view. And this structure of ignorance is, in fact, Catch-22 at its most fundamental level:

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed.

“It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed. — p. 46

Thus, with absolute simplicity, we are condemned to madness. And if this is not convincing, Heller presses his point home by telling us (on the same page) that Catch-22 is like the flies that Orr sees in Appleby’s eyes.

“Oh, they’re there, all right,” Orr had assured [Yossarian]… “although he probably doesn’t even know it. That’s why he can’t see things as they really are.”

“How come he doesn’t know it?” inquired Yossarian.

“Because he’s got flies in his eyes,” Orr with exaggerated patience. “How can he see he’s got flies in his eyes if he’s got flies in his eyes?”

It made as much sense as anything else….

Yathābhūtam na pajānāti: he does not see things as they really are: the phrase — so typical a Sutta description of the puthujjana, the unenlightened commoner — is used here by Heller to illuminate precisely the characteristic of being entrapped in a situation. Not only does the puthujjana have flies in his eyes, he does not see that he has them, and he does not see this because he has them. His dilemma is that though he must find a way to see, yet he cannot find that way precisely because he cannot see. Indeed, he cannot even see for himself that this is his problem. And this is the dilemma which, at its most fundamental level, is the specific concern of the Buddha’s Teaching. The structure of avijjā, the structure of Catch-22, the structure of “having flies in one’s eyes”: they are one and the same. Catch-22 is avijjā. The title character in both the novel and in our lives never appears and yet is omnipresent.

All of this does not oblige us to conclude that Heller is enlightened, or that he is even a Buddhist. Describing something and seeing it directly are two different things; and even in direct perception there are different levels of profundity. “At the field a heavy silence prevailed, overpowering motion like a ruthless, insensate spell holding in thrall the only beings who might break it. The chaplain was in awe” — p. 371. This, it is clear enough, is of the same nature as having flies in one’s eyes; and yet it is also clear enough that this sort of spell is of a much less fundamental grade. Not only can we on the outside see it, it is conceivable that the men at the field could be aware of the spell at the same time they were (for the time being) powerless to break it. Appleby, on the other hand, must be entirely unaware of the flies in his eyes.

On an even less fundamental level is the situation of the men while they await the dreaded mission to Bologna. The mission cannot be flown until the rain stops and the landing strips dry out. But the rain-forced delay in the mission only gives the men more time to be more terrified. “Their only hope was that it would never stop raining, and they had no hope because they all knew it would…. The more it rained, the worse they suffered. The worse they suffered, the more they prayed that it would continue raining” — p. 117. Again we have a situation of entrapment, but on a crude and manifest level of experience.

But though we would describe these various levels of Catch-22 as being only rough approximations to the subtle and pervasive deception of avijjā, as expounded by the Buddha, we must also recognize Heller’s achievement in seeing the central significance of this self-replicative structure in human existence and (though he doesn’t know what to do about it) in describing it in a form which has struck a deeply responsive chord in so many. Although he may lack the wisdom to resolve the dilemma he describes, yet he has sufficient wisdom to not let go of that perception; nor should we, for by being manifest such occurrences can serve both to remind us of the subtle central dilemma which is the template upon which those coarser experiences depend and also to provide us with a model which, applied with proper attention, can indicate what action, or what sort of action, can bring that central dilemma to an end.

In the end, perhaps due to the exigencies of the novel’s form, Heller does suggest a solution to Yossarian’s dilemma. Whether this solution works artistically is not of concern to us here. Rather, we need to understand why this suggestion of a solution is incompatible with the Buddha’s Teaching.

The Buddha’s Teaching is concerned with letting go of what can be surrendered within the sphere of the unenlightened (namely, sensuality, hatred, lethargy, agitation, and doubt — the five hindrances) in order to allow for the possibility of seeing what might be let go of beyond that sphere. This further perception can be indicated by one who has already seen for himself, and must be initially accepted by the practitioner as an act of faith, until he too comes to see it. At that point it is possible for there to be a further letting go, a giving up of what can be surrendered only outside the sphere of the unenlightened, namely, all beliefs concerned with selfhood (sakkāyaditthi, attavāda) and, eventually, the conceit “I am” (asmimāna). Thus the Buddha’s Teaching is a course of practice concerned fundamentally with renunciation. Without giving up the world to the limits of one’s ability to do so one will never be able to extend those limits: one will instead remain entrapped within the world.

Heller considers this approach, but rejects it. Yossarian certainly sees the problem: he is “unable to adjust to the idea of war” — p. 297 — and repeatedly flees the oppressiveness of the world by running to “the cloistered shelter of a hospital” — p. 177 — with a supposititious liver ailment. That this flight is meant to be seen as (at least in a sense) religious is borne out by a doctor who tells Yossarian that the family of a just-deceased soldier have

“travelled all the way from New York to see a dying soldier, and you’re the handiest one we’ve got.”

“What are you talking about?” Yossarian asked suspiciously. “I’m not dying.”

“Of course you’re dying. We’re all dying. Where the devil else do you think you’re heading?”

“They didn’t come to see me,” Yossarian objected. “They came to see their son. “

“They’ll have to take what they can get. As far as we’re concerned, one dying boy is just as good as any other, or just as bad. To a scientist, all dying boys are equal….” — p. 181

Thus the doctors, the staff of that cloistered shelter, perform the essentially religious function of reminding Yossarian (“how could he have forgotten”) of his mortality; and they also insist that he observe the celibacy normally associated with monastic institutions:

“How do you expect anyone to believe you have a liver condition if you keep squeezing the nurses’ tits every time you get a chance? You’re going to have to give up sex if you want to convince people you’ve got an ailing liver.”

“That’s a hell of a price to pay just to keep alive….” — p. 181

Precisely: giving up sensuality (to say nothing of hatred, lethargy, agitation, and doubt) is a price Yossarian is not prepared to pay. He wants the sybaritic salvation sought also by Hungry Joe, to whom women were “lovely, satisfying, maddening manifestations of the miraculous, instruments of pleasure” — p. 52 — and he dreams of being interred for the duration of the war (i.e. for all eternity) in Sweden, an earthly (and earthy) paradise where he could keep himself busy siring dozens of illegitimate little Yossarians. Yossarian wants the world’s pleasures without having to endure the world’s drawbacks, and he fails to see the essence of the world’s dangers. (Hungry Joe is more consistent than Yossarian on this point, for he goes to pieces each time he finishes flying the number of missions Headquarters requires, and recovers only when Headquarters raises the number of missions required, as it inevitably does, throwing him back on combat status. )

If any character in Catch-22 comes close to accepting the Buddha’s advice it would be Dunbar, who tries to increase his lifespan by cultivating boredom, on the grounds that when you’re bored time passes slower. His idea seems to be that if only he could achieve a state of total and absolute boredom he would be, for all intents, eternal. This sounds like a rough literary approximation to meditation (although we must remember that the Buddha, unlike many Eastern teachers, quite explicitly stated that meditation by itself is an insufficient condition for enlightenment).

Dunbar, given to cultivating boredom, to seeking eternity, lies motionless in bed: he goes so far in his efforts that at one point Yossarian, looking at him, wonders whether he is still alive. This will remind us of the story of the Ven. Sañjīva who, we are told (M. 50: i,333), was seated immersed in the highest meditative attainment when some cowherds, shepherds, and ploughmen, passing by, saw him and thought, as did Yossarian of Dunbar, that he was dead. They collected grass, wood, and cowdung, heaped it up about the Ven. Sañjīva, set his pyre alight, and went on their way. The next morning Ven. Sañjīva emerged from his meditative attainment and went wandering for almsfood. His would-be cremators were astonished at seeing him alive and gave him the name by which he became known, Sañjīva, which means “with life.” Dunbar seems to have lacked the Ven. Sañjīva’s meditative abilities, but each sought to escape death (Ven. Sañjīva, the Sutta tells us, successfully), and each came thereby to be taken as dead.

It is common, of course, for beginning meditators to be assailed by boredom (as well as the other four hindrances); however, this does not justify equating boredom and meditation: on the contrary, boredom is an enemy of meditation. Despite the story of Ven. Sañjīva, then, we must regard any effort to equate meditation with the cultivation of boredom as tenuous, and as being further weakened by the episode in which Dunbar becomes a fortiori. However, we must also note that it is immediately after Dunbar becomes convinced, upon re-encountering the soldier in white, that (p. 358) “There’s no one inside! …He’s hollow inside, like a chocolate soldier” — thereby perhaps suggesting something of the Buddha’s teaching of anattā, of not-self — that Dunbar is disappeared. We never learn the meaning of this cryptic event (“It doesn’t make sense. It isn’t even good grammar” — p. 359), but if the parallel with meditation is accepted then the further parallel that would be suggested here is with nibbāna, extinction. After being disappeared Dunbar is described (p. 360) as being “nowhere to be found”, which is exactly how the Suttas describe beings who have attained full enlightenment (arahattā).[5]

Perhaps a literary parallel of an achievement that transcends literature (let alone literature, nibbāna transcends bhava, being) could not be more closely described; but in any case we cannot allow that the parallel is more than a suggestion, and (no doubt inevitably) an inaccurate one at that. And in any case to be disappeared sounds, from Heller’s description of it, far less desirable than extinction, from the Buddha’s description of that. (Still, it would be interesting to know how much acquaintance Heller actually had, if any, with any school of Buddhism during the seven years in which he was writing Catch-22.[6])

And if any character tries, however ineffectually, to understand the real nature of his situation, it is not Yossarian but the chaplain. The chaplain (he was named Shipman in the hard-cover edition, but for some reason the name was changed in the paperback edition to Tappman — not his only identity crisis), who has an open mind, is continually

wondering what everything was all about. …There was no way of really knowing anything, he knew, not even that there was no way of really knowing anything. Was there a single true faith, or a life after death? …These were the great, complex questions of ontology that tormented him. Yet they never seemed nearly as crucial to him as the question of kindness and good manners. He was pinched perspiringly in the epistemological dilemma of the skeptic, unable to accept solutions to problems he was unwilling to dismiss as unsolvable. He was never without misery and never without hope. — pp. 262-3

In the chaplain’s tale the human dilemma is presented from a different point of view: it is not a question of sanity or insanity but, in Kafkaesque terms, one of guilt or innocence. Because it is the nature of beings that they are continually trying to establish an existence that continually eludes them[7] their existence is perpetually in doubt, and they exist, if at all, in a state of guilt. This, it would seem, is the basic perception of Kafka’s Trial: Joseph K. arrests himself by recognizing that his existence, being unjustifiable, is essentially guilty. And the chaplain (for whom the question “Who am I?” becomes acute when he is formally charged with “being Washington Irving” — p. 378) is also in this situation:

“You’ve got nothing to be afraid of if you’re not guilty. What are you so afraid of? You’re not guilty, are you?”

“Sure he’s guilty,” said the colonel. “Guilty as hell.”

“Guilty of what?” implored the chaplain, feeling more and more bewildered. …”What did I do?” — p. 373

And later the chaplain’s identity crisis and dilemma of existential guilt is expressed in the same terms that were used earlier to describe Catch-22:

“I offered it to Sergeant Whitcomb because I didn’t want it.”

“Why’d you steal it from Colonel Cathcart if you didn’t want it?”

“I didn’t steal it from Colonel Cathcart!”

“Then why are you so guilty, if you didn’t steal it?”

“I’m not guilty!”

“Then why would we be questioning you if you weren’t guilty?” — p. 377

Thus each of us faces the question of our basic unjustifiability in a purposeless world. Some, of course, flee from these questions and deny them (by indulging in sensuality, hatred, lethargy, agitation, and doubt); but the questions return for so long as their root, the conceit “I am”, exists, and the verdict is inevitable: Guilty.

“Chaplain,” he continued, looking up, “we accuse you also of the commission of crimes and infractions we don’t even know about yet. Guilty or innocent?”

“I don’t know, sir. How can I say if you don’t tell me what they are?”

“How can we tell you if we don’t know?”

“Guilty,” decided the colonel.

“Sure he’s guilty,” agreed the major. “If they’re his crimes and infractions, he must have committed them.”

“Guilty it is, then,” chanted the officer without insignia…. — p. 379

And guilty it is for all of us, if the charge is the fundamental one of being possessors, or even of simply “being”: being what?

And thus Heller repeatedly and ingeniously offers us brilliant literary expressions of the dilemma of existence. The formulations are lucid and compelling, and they fully take account of the circular and self-sustaining nature of the dilemma. For this we can praise Catch-22, and perhaps find it of use as a tool in keeping to the forefront of our awareness the nature of our problem. But it would be asking too much to expect the novel to offer the means of resolving that dilemma. For that we must turn to the Buddha’s Teaching.


Footnotes:


1. E.g.: As the herdsman drives his kine with a stick to pasture-land,
thus decay and health’s decline
drive out the life of man.   — Dh. 135

2. Perhaps it would be going too far to discover in this larger framework a reference to the Buddha’s recognition of samsāra, the round of deaths and rebirths; but it cannot be excessive to relate the facts of birth and death to the minute and Learical apocalypse achieved in the vision of Snowden’s death: “Man was matter, that was Snowden’s secret. …Ripeness was all.” — pp. 429-30

3. The circular nature of samsāra finds its parallel in Catch-22 — if circles can have parallels — not only in the re-appearance of the soldier in white, but also in the circling round the death of Snowden, going around twice over Ferrara, the soldier who saw everything twice, and many other recurrent events and phrases. Each time Yossarian gets close to having completed his missions Headquarters raises the number required: there is always another tour of duty. Like Rohitassa (see Samy. II,26 = Ang. IV,45), and like us, Yossarian cannot reach an end by going.

4. It is for this reason that the Buddha’s Teaching is said to be atakkāvacara, not in the sphere of reason or logic. (Catch-22 is not the only well-known book which asserts the insanity implicit in being in a situation. In Alice in Wonderland the Cheshire Cat tells Alice, “We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad. You must be or you wouldn’t have come.” Indeed, Catch-22 contains a number of very specific allusions to the Alice books.)

5. The phrase occurs frequently in the Suttas. See e.g. the concluding lines of the Vakkali Sutta (Samy. XXII,87). At Dh. 180 we find:

That tangle of snares by which he’d be penned isn’t found anywhere.
His range has no end, that Buddha awake.
What track can there be to trace one who’s trackless, craving-free?

6. This question was put to Mr. Heller. The reply was that he knew “not an inkling.” The range of the puthujjana, it seems, is more extensive than commonly supposed. [Back to text]

7. Thus the question “Who am I?”, whether or not it is answerable, is recognized at once to be vital and fundamental to the epistemological dilemma we each face; indeed, it is thus that there is the concept of such a dilemma at all. 

Sāmanera Bodhesako