Buddhist confessional poetry Narratives of self-conversion

[Part 10]

In my last nine columns I sought to examine the poetry of the Therigatha from diverse angles and vantage points. My declared aim was to re-contextualize these poetical works and propose newer spaces of understanding and re-imagining. To understand is to extend the discursive boundaries of the chosen literary object, and one way of achieving this aim is to situate it in newer contexts. The poems contained in the Therigatha can be described as classics, and one mark of a classic is, as literary critics as diverse as T.S. Eliot and Frank Kermode have argued, is its ability to connect to newer times and situations and radiate fresh meaning and significance. To understand the dynamics of this we need to re-contextualize the literary text that we are dealing with.

The Therigatha is included in the Khuddaka Nikaya, the fifth segment of the second basket of canonical scriptures better known as the Sutta-pitaka. It is generally believed that they were recited at the First Council held not long after the passing away of the Buddha. So it is evident that these confessional poems were written some thousands of years ago. The question that naturally arises is how do we re-contextualize them? Can we read them in the way that we read contemporary literary texts? What adjustments of approach need to be made? What are the risks we run when we seek to treat them as modern literary works? These and related questions were uppermost in my mind as I was trying to re-contextualize and re-situate the verses in the Therigatha.

When we strive to examine the literary worth of classical texts there are number of counter-productive temptations that we need to avoid so that our effort will yields the best results possible. The first is that it is all too easy to fall into a kind of cultural essentialism. The Therigatha was written in ancient India and therefore the natural inclination is to freeze it in time and lock ourselves into an unchanging temporality. It is indeed true that when examining the literary value of an ancient text we need to pay adequate attention to the historical moment and the cultural geography that gave rise to it. Ignoring these forces would be to rob the text of an important dimension of its meaning.

The Therigatha came out of a certain tradition of literary textuality. Hence it is imperative that we pay close attention to that tradition. We must first locate these texts in the tradition that nourished them; this calls for a deep historical understanding. To ignore this aspect is to minimize the power of a formative influence and in a way diminish them.

At the same time, while recognizing the determinative influence of tradition on these texts, we also need to explore how they seek to reach out to modern sensibilities, make connections with contemporary preoccupations. It is only when we approach these poetic texts with this dual vision in mind that we will be able to do full justice to them as classical literary texts that invite new and innovative modes of reading and interpreting

In this regard, the work of the distinguished German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer can be most instructive. He was the star pupil of Martin Heidegger who carried forward Heidegger’s mode of thinking and reasoning in interesting ways, his approach to tradition suggests that it involves an active conversation. This is what is meant by his phrase a fusion of horisons. When we read the Therigatha we do so as readers living in the twentieth century who are alive to and aware of numerous contemporary intellectual currents. At the same tome we as readers should recognize that these poems arise from a specific cultural and religious milieu. The recognition of these two phenomena generates the fusion of horizon that Gadamer talks about. In my analysis of the Therigatha I sought to put into play this fusion of horizons.

Hans Georg Gadamer emphasized the fact that our understanding of past texts emerge from our current location in a historical tradition and that understanding a classical text does not suggest the obliteration of our present moment, our current horizon of meaning. By placing ourselves in the textual space produced by the classical poems we set in motion a fusion of horizons. This involves the active participation of the text and the reader in a productive and discursive boundary-changing conversation. This conversation, it needs to be said, is facilitated by the common tradition shared by the text and the reader.

The traditional modes of interpretation suggest that the reader should leave behind his or her prejudices, pre-understandings and approach the given text in a neutral frame of mind. Gadamer, on the contrary, argues the reverse of this; for him, prejudices (or what he terms pre-understandings) are vital components of the act of literary interpretation.’ It is his conviction that our prejudices should not be seen as obstacles to the generation of knowledge but rather as a condition of possibility of knowledge. We need to recognize, after all, that these prejudices constitute our vital anchorage in our standing within a given literary and intellectual tradition. In Gadamer’s approach to textual interpretation, the idea of dialogue plays a crucial role. My approach to, and reading of, the confessional poems by the Buddhist nuns collected in the Therigatha have been guided by this line of thinking advanced by Gadamer.

Let me illustrate this point by considering a poem taken fro the Therigatha. This poem was written by the nun Mutta.

I am well released
Truly released from
Three crooked things-
The mortar, pestle. And
My husband.
I am released from
Birth and death.
The spinner of Rounds
and rounds of being
Has been vanquished.

Seeing in the light of traditional thinking, this is a poem that celebrates the spiritual victory of a nun who decided to turn her back on conventional household life. By unremittingly pursuing the teaching of the Buddha she was a Bible to overcome the curse of rebirth. However, when we read this poem in the light of contemporary cultural theory we begin to see a steadfast focus on the question of female agency and a critique of patriarchal values. Some of the images contained in the poem are suggestive of Freudian analysis. In other words questions of female agency, patriarchal discourse, self-positioning, controlling tropes enter into the discussion of the poem. And these are all concepts that have been forged and enlivened in the debates in contemporary cultural theory.

The question then arises, is it appropriate to make use of these concepts shaped by modern cultural theory in understanding and evaluating a classical Pali text written some thousands if years ago? My answer to this question is in the affirmative as long as we bear in mind the important desideratum that our intention is not to impose Western theories on classical Buddhist texts but to promote a dialogue between them that would result in the transformation of both entities. If we were to blindly impose Western theories and concepts on classical Asian texts we would be guilty of a form of Orientalism as so ably outlined by Edward Said.

Intention

However, if our intention is to promote a dialogue, instigate a conversation between classical Asian texts and contemporary cultural theory, the effort can result in something worthwhile although there is, of course, no guarantee of success.

When we bring modern concepts, formulations, theories into the analysis of ancient texts we are also introducing newer vocabularies of analysis. Let us, for example, consider the term agency that I used earlier. This is a word that has entered critical debates in recent times with a great sense of urgency. The word agency, along with such other words as personhood, self, subjectivity and individuality with which it is connected, does not admit of simple and clear formulations.

These words seem to inhabit intersecting positions in a semantic field and conceptual cartography that appear to generate a great measure of interest among both humanists and social scientists. Despite the problems associated with defining it unambiguously, the term agency has occupied a position of centrality in contemporary literary and cultural analysis.

The cultural analyst Paul Smith who has done some important work on this topic seems to suggest some important distinctions among individuality, subject position and agency. Following his lead I would like to characterize the self as signifying the imaginary register that comprises identification, narratives and images that work to strengthen the notion of the individual. The term individual, as its etymology points out, refers to the undivided source of meaning, action and consciousness; indeed it is an illusory whole that radiates the existence of a free and self-determining being. In contrast, the subject has to be understood as a disciplinary construct. It is formed by language, social and cultural formations, political, institutional and ideological discourses; it does not give out the sense of independence, autonomy and sovereignty that the term individual signals

Closely related to the subject is the notion of subject-position. A subject is almost always subject to some discourse and there are large numbers of them. These discourses can e variegated and antipathetic to each other. What this means is that there can be a multiplicity of subject-positions depending on the nature and the power of the discourse that the subject is subject to.0interestingly, the word subjectivity carries both these meanings of subject0.the term agent, as I employ it, signals the place from which an action can be initiated, whether it is one of affirmation or negation.

Mainly from the spaces between various subject-positions.and I prefer to use the term person to denote one who has agency, and consequent the words agency and personhood in my characterizations are synonymous. It is in this sense that I have discussed questions of individuality, subject-positions, and agency in the poems in the Therigatha. My inflections of these terms clearly bear the weight of contemporary cultural theory.

What is interesting to note is that when I discussed the significance of the confessional poems by ancient Buddhist nuns collected in the Therigatha in terms of agency, I had at the back of my mind the distinctions between individual, subject, agency and so on that I referred to earlier. These are not distinctions that are found in traditional cultural analysis and these terms have received their analytical power from the current discourses on cultural theory. It is through this special set of meanings attributed to the term agency that I sought to underline the importance of the Therigatha as a text that displays a significant engagement with feminist issues.

The celebrated American philosopher Richard Rorty once remarked that there is a way of doing philosophy without falling into a kid of historical anachronism by engaging in a conversation with what he called ‘the re-educated dead.’ What he meant by this term is updating or restating dimensions of their thinking in relation to current philosophical thinking and contemporary preoccupations.

Earlier in I discussed the importance of Gadamer’s idea of the fusion of horizons in interpreting classical texts. Richard Rorty, through has colorful locution of re-educated dead, underlines the importance of the same vector of thinking. In examining the literary value of classical texts such as the Therigatha this is indeed a mind-set that can prove to be extraordinarily productive.

Roland Barthes in an insightful essay titled From Work to Text makes what I think is an important distinction between work and text. Speaking broadly – very broadly – a work is a physical object like a book; it can be located in a shelf. Its meanings are finite and it does not invite pluralities of readings. The text, on the other hand according to Barthes, is not a physical object but a semantic field; it is open-ended and invites diversities of meaning and pluralities of interpretation. A text is a work in progress constantly engaging newer currents of meaning and transforming itself.

I think this is a useful distinction that enables us to probe into the nature of literary production and creative interpretation of literary works. In my discussions on the Therigatha I sought to treat it as text and not a work in the Barthesian sense. It is in this light that I ventured fo connect the poems in the Therigatha with various currents of modern thinking so that they become more relevant to contemporary needs and situations and agendas.

Enforcing his distinction between the work and the text, Roland Barthes makes the following assertion. ‘The text is plural. Which is not simply to say tat t has several meanings, but that it accomplishes the very plural of meaning; an irreducible (and not merely an acceptable) plural.’ As I read and re-read the poems gathered in the Therigatha I began to realize the veracity and significance of Barthes’ assertion. We can comprehend the full complexity of the verbal texture of these poems only if we are prepared to recognize their irreducible pluralities of meaning. It is this recognition that I wished to underscore throughout my discussions.

During the last three decades or so the world of literary study and literary education has been turned upside down largely due to the emergence of such newer modes of analysis as structuralism, phenomenology, post-structuralism, post-modernism, deconstruction feminism, post-colonial theory and new historicism. Most of these theories have focused their energies on contemporary writing. However, some have made an attempt to apply them to texts from the past as well. For example, in recent times, Shakespearean scholarship has undergone a major transformation as a consequence of the application of these newer styles of analysis. For example a play like The Tempest has received numerous insightful readings at the hands of post-colonial theorists. So the conjunction between modern literary theory and texts from the past is becoming increasingly common in the Western academy. These efforts – and there is much to show for their labors – should embolden us in our intentions to apply modern cultural theory in the elucidation of classical texts like the Therigatha.

One of the most insightful commentators in this regard is the eminent Dutch literary scholar and art critic Mieke Bal. Her three books, Lethal Love; Literary Feminism and Interpretations of Biblical Love Stories, Murder and Difference: Gender, Genre and Scholarship on Sisera’s death and Death and Dissymmetry: The Politics of Coherence in the Book of Judges. In these works she brings the power of modern cultural texts to bear in ancient texts and the dialogue she has been able to ignite has proved to be highly productive.

Death and Dissymetry is devoted to an analysis of the Book of Judges which constitutes the seventh book of the Hebrew Bible; it is not merely a textual analysis that deploys feminist methodologies but also a radical re-interpretation of the way it was received and understood in the West. Using modern protocols of analysis, Mieke Bal points out how the hidden political and ideological forces at work contrive to shape the lives of women. In other words, there is a contemporary ring to the domestic privations experienced by the women represented in the book of judges. The texts that Meike Bal has selected for analysis share certain features in common with the confessional poems in the Therigatha.

One central critical concept that emerges from Mieke Bal’s work is that of coherence; it is indeed a concept that, in my judgment, has yet to receive the kind of critical attention that it richly deserves. In ordinary parlance when we say a text has a coherence we are asserting is that it possesses a discernible unity; linguists, in their respective analyses, have extended this common understanding of the term coherence into more complex territories if investigation.

The point that Bal is keen to make is that the idea of coherence, contrary to normal understandings, is not a textual feature, but represents a readerly act. She maintains that the impulse to impose a coherence on a semiotic object is unavoidable, and in many ways should be welcomed, as long as we are aware of the factors which go into this dynamics she remarks, ‘it is therefore not relevant to denounce coherent readings, but to specify the kind of coherence projected, and to analyze the interests that motivate the choices. In this respect, coherence is structurally similar to the concept of ideology.’ In this age of deconstruction when the very term coherence is looked down upon with disdain it is indeed salutary that Mieke Bal has chosen to demonstrate its complex being.

In my reading of the poems in the Therigatha I sought to make use of this concept of coherence as I framed my discussion. The temporary coherence that we attribute to literary works are the result of a plurality of factors including our social vision, engagement with language, subject-positions, ideological interests. The coherence that I temporarily imposed on these poems, then, consists of not only my understandings of the Buddhist tradition ad the historical context out of which these texts emerged but also my awareness of modern cultural theories and their possible applications.

Throughout my discussion of the Therigatha, wherever relevant and suitable I tried to draw unobtrusively on some aspects of deconstructive thinking. Deconstruction is not easy to define; it is both a mode of investigation into literary texts and a cluster of assumptions about the nature and functioning of language. According to this line of thinking, the author does not have total control over his or her language, and its power eludes his or her grasp. The free play of signifiers has a way of transcending, and therefore undercutting, the authority of individual authors. Deconstructionists like Jacques Derrida believe that that the truth represented by a specific language is shaped, subverted, distorted by that language.

Hence what is expressed in language is subject to constant revision and re-imagining. Keeping this is mind, when we examine the Therigatha as a literary text an interesting contradiction – deconstructionists are fond of contradictions in literary texts – emerges. The Buddhist nuns who achieve salvation and the Buddhist nuns who are the authors of the poetic texts occupy two different representational spaces. This crucial fact is highlighted in the language, the verbal fabric of the poems.

As we saw earlier, some of the most vivid passages in the poems in the Therigatha deal with descriptions of nature, physical beauty and worldly experiences. In a poem such as that by the nun Ambapali this fact becomes unarguably evident. What is interesting to note here is that while the nuns justifiably extol the virtues of spiritual triumph over worldly life, the language of many of the poems come to life precisely in those sensuous moments inextricably linked to the kind of life that the nuns repudiated.

This is the way poetry works. This tension within the texture of the poems gives them an added vigor. The contradiction within the vividness of sensuous imagery associated with the worldly life that has been rejected and the assertions of spiritual victory at the end of the poems directs our attention to the kind of points of tension, aporias that deconstructionists like to fasten on to.

In many poems the actual triumph of spirit over flesh, self-discipline over desire, is stated straightforwardly as is evidenced in the following poem by the nun Uttara.

I was controlled
In body,
In speech,
In mind.
Having rooted out
Desire
I have achieved calmness
And stillness.

In this poem, the eventual spiritual triumph is represented in an unadorned fashion. This points to an interesting feature in these poems. The language is vigorously adequate to depict the flow of daily life in all its variegated colours. On the other hand, the language is inadequate to dramatize the actual experience of spiritual salvation.

This is an inherent problem with language. Hence statements such as ‘I have achieved stillness’ and I have vanquished desire’ that are commonly found in these poems. What this underscores is the fact that the language of the poet is inadequate to capture the full force of the spiritual triumph because is an experiences that lies outside the jurisdiction of language. Indeed, this tension is one that should be explored more fully. This is a tension that modern deconstructive thinkers have demonstrated in there interpretations and exegeses with profit.

In the lat ten columns, then, what I sought to do was to examine the importance of the Therigatha as a literary text of indubitable power by re-contextualizing it within newer academic discourses. This entailed making connections with ideas, concepts, discourses that had, to the best of my knowledge, not been made by any other commentator. This is a risky enterprise but it can, I am persuaded, become a felicitous venture. What I have aimed to stress throughout is that a text is not a passive and immutable object, but a dynamic and ever changing entity in terms of meaning-production. Meaning is generated as a consequence of the interplay between the text in question and the creative intelligence of the reader and his or her codes of analysis.

Concepts such as narrate, implied reader, ideal reader, arch-reader that are currently in wide circulation underline the importance of the reader n the decipherment and de-coding of meaning. It is important that, as I have stressed throughout, that a text be seen as a set of potentialities for sense-making and meaning-production at different levels of interpretive creativity. The literary critic Jonathan Culler, drawing on the idea of linguistic competence by Chomsky, formulated the notion of the literary competence of the reader. This literary competence implies the ability to read boldly and insightfully that literary analysis demands.

The Therigatha, in my judgment, should be treated as a classic. One way of doing so is to re-contextualize it, locate it, within newer discursive horizons, without robbing it of his distinctiveness and historical anchorage. We need to recognize that these poetic texts shine in their own lights even as we try to forge newer connections and affiliations of interest. This is precisely what I have tried to do in my wide-ranging discussions of the poems contained in the Therigatha even at the risk of offending some cherished convictions of readers. The need for theoretical re-orientation and analytical readjustment in literary studies is clear.