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| Sunday, 20 January 2002 |
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Relevance of Buddhist view of world to present global society By Ven. (Dr.) Bellanwila Wimalaratana
Though we are separate individuals we are also, at the same time, part and parcel of the larger society. Therefore, all of us are social beings. The society to which we belong could vary in size. It can be small like the family community or the village community or it can be as large as the national community. It can even be extended to cover the whole universal community or the global community. At present our society is going beyond the narrow boundaries of our country. The ever-growing developments in science and technology are fast making the whole world one global village. Therefore, we have to be conscious of the fact that though we belong to different nationalities, races and ethnic groups, we are also citizens of the world, members of this global community. This is why the world view we hold becomes important. It is this world view that provides us the guidelines to conduct our lives. If this world view we hold has universal applicability, if it is based on principles that have relevance to all in common, then it could very well be conducive to harmonious living. What do we mean by the term "world view". It means the view or the philosophy centering around ourselves and the world around us, in short, the world in which we live. So, it means the understanding of the nature of ourselves and the world around us. Our happiness and unhappiness, our harmony and conflicts, success and failures all depend on this world view we hold. All our actions could be explained and justified only on the basis of the world view we hold. Our whole behaviour, that is, our verbal, physical and mental activities, will be mostly guided, regulated and directed by this world view we uphold. Every religion presents a world view of its own. In order to understand significance, uniqueness and relevance of the Buddhist world fully, it is very necessary to understand the major aspects of the world views. Buddhism that sprang up among Indians in the 6th century BC, shares in common certain features of world views presented by some of the contemporaneous religions. Thus, it considers life as a continuous process, having links with the past and the future. Like some of the major religions of India, Buddhism believes in rebirth, the influence of the consequences of one's intentional actions kamma on deciding the happiness or unhappiness one encounters in the next state of life. It also holds that the human world is a small aspect of the vast world system; that humans are only one kind beings that inhabit this universe and so on. Similarly, Buddhism agrees with some religions that hold the view that this life in the world is unsatisfactory and one has to find emancipation from it. However, these similarities are insignificant when compared with the major differences that exist between the Buddhist world view and the world views presented by other religions of the time. This difference is primarily due to the fact that Buddhism adopts psychological and anthropological perspectives as against the mystical, superstitious, metaphysical and predominantly theological perspectives adopted by other religions of the time in forming their world views. This is clear from the definition of the world given by the Buddha. He says "the world is just the six sense faculties and the six sense objects". In a sutta called the Rohitassa Sutta in the Samyuttanikaya, He says that the whole world is found within the fathom long body of the individual! But according to Buddhism, the individual himself is a bundle of five aggregates, five groups of forces (panchakkhandha), namely, form, feeling, perception, mental formations and consciousness to which the name "person" is given. So, what we refer to as "I", "my", and "mine" are all mental constructs. This mentally constructed "I" in us, through the contract between sense faculties and sense objects "construct" a world according to our likes and dislikes. What is constructed (sankhata/sankhara) is definitely bound for destruction. So, according to the Buddhist world view, both the individual and world are marked by three characteristics. These are impermanency (anicca), Suffering or non satisfactoriness (dukkha) and soullessness (anatta). This is the true nature of the individual and the world. But this true nature is contrary to our expectation. We think that we ourselves as well as all phenomena are permanent, giving happiness and having a self or a soul that goes from life, to life maintaining our identity. So when we find that the real nature of ourselves and the world we live in are different from what we want them to be, we suffer and this suffering prevail all throughout our lives. Hence, Buddhist world view holds that the world is established on suffering (dukkha). Some who do not understand the Buddhist world view think that Buddhism emphasizes the bad, unhappy side of life and therefore, its world view is pessimistic 2. This is not so. The Buddha not only shows the true nature of ourselves and the world, but also shows the way to overcome this suffering. In this respect, the Buddhist world view is unique. It is at this point that one can really see how practical, how realistic and how helpful the Buddhist world view is in directing the followers to face the problems of life with courage and resolve in them. This difference arises from the totally new and bold perspective adopted by the Buddha. Major religious traditions of the time believed that the individual and the world are creations of a Creator God. Those religions that did not accept a Creator God, put forward the theory that some other external force or power functions as the cause of everything, the individual as well as the world. Some said that Brahman, the universal soul, is the source of everything. There were still others who maintained that fate, time and nature etc., were sources of everything 3. Some denied any cause or condition and said that everything happens by accident. The Buddhist analysis of the individual, his thorough understanding of the world, made him reject all these views as baseless, without any reason and therefore futile. He described the belief in a Creator God as a blind belief for none had ever seen such a God. All these world views put forward the theory of some "other" power, some "external" superpower as the controller of man and as the designer of the world 4. These views reduced the individual to a mere tool in the hands of the external powers. The individual was made a mere puppet who acts and does things according to the dictates of the God or some such power. In these world views, man had no role to play other than to be a helpless being, praying for the grace of god, invoking his blessing for happiness here and hereafter. Or, he was forced to resign to fate and remain inactive, humbly accepting whatever that happens to be his lot. This is why people accepted the Brahmin's world view that everything is a divine creation, the society is a divided one, and this division was done by God and therefore, man has no power to undo what the God has done. According to this Brahmanic world view, Brahmins were the most privileged and the sudras, the lowest of all, equal to animals 5. This world view reduced the status of women to the lowest level. Man was told that all his happiness and unhappiness depends on the whims and fancies of the god and therefore, it is only by invoking god's blessing and grace by praying and sacrificing, by begging for mercy and compassion that man could have his wishes fulfilled. Many of the teachers of that time held materialistic world views. They rejected the concept that there is good and bad; they denied the usefulness of moral living; they laughed at the belief in rebirth. To them, death is end of everything. Basing on this world view, those materialists said that one should engage in excessive enjoyment of sensual pleasures, for otherwise one would have to repent at the time of death, lamenting that he did not have enough of sensual pleasures 6. Then, the famous materialist of that time namely, Ajitha Kesakambali is said to have held that the practice of charity dana is a doctrine of fools. Those who say that there is an afterlife is uttering empty falsehood. With the breaking of the body, the foolish and the wise alike are annihilated. They do not exist after death. This was his world view 7. Not only their world views made them reject moral life and ethics, but also made them deny that man has any manliness, initiative, effort or striving to shape his life. This is clear from the world view presented by one of the world known teachers of the time, namely, Makkhali Gosala. He said that though one might think that by this moral discipline or observance or austerity or holy life, he will ripen the unripened kamma, that cannot be done. Pleasure and pain of an individual is measured, preplanned and predetermined. The limits of one's wandering in Samsara are clearly fixed. Just as when a twine ball is thrown, it rolls along unwinding until it comes to an end, in the same way, both the foolish and the wise roam about for a fixed length of time in samsara8. This sort of world views made man a helpless slave to all external powers, made the individual become morally inactive, made him indifferent to good and bad actions. Such world views blunted the individual's thinking, his potential to develop himself, his effort to lead moral life beneficial to himself as well as for others. It is in such a background that the Buddha came up with his novel world view. In this world view, there is no place for a Creator God, nothing is believed to be predetermined and fixed, no external forces such as fate, time and nature is considered supreme. According to the Buddha's world view, while nothing is predetermined, nothing is undetermined also and nothing happens without a cause. By examining the nature, the Buddha came to realize that everything is causally connected, causally related to each other. This is not the Buddha's view. This is what He saw in nature. This is what He discovered. That is why He very frankly declared in the samyuttanikaya that whether there are Buddhas or not, this causal relation will operate 9. So the main feature of the Buddha's world view is that everything operates and functions on the basis of this causal law. Dependant on certain causes and conditions, arise certain specific effects. This law is known as the law of dependant origination paticca-sammuppada. When it is shown that everything happens on the basis of this causal law, ie, on the law of cause and effect, then it becomes very clear that there is no place for 'God' in such a world view. The rejection of the belief in the 'all powerful, all present and omniscient Creator God' was definitely not only a bold step, but also quite a revolutionary view. While it dethroned God, it made man a free and independent being. The man was no more considered a slave, a puppet or a tool of any external power. Man came to be considered as his own master and this is very clearly stated in the Dhammapada 10. Thus it is seen that the Brahmanic God-Centered (Theo-centric) world view was rejected and instead, the Buddha presented the man-centered (Anthropo-centric) world view. Man was made responsible for himself, for his purity and impurity, for his bondage as well as for his emancipation. Thus, the Dhammapada says, "By oneself indeed is evil done, by oneself is one defiled. By oneself is evil left undone. By oneself indeed is one purified. Purity and impurity depend on oneself. No one purifies another".11 According to this world view, what the individual or his world, is depend on what the individual does through his verbal, physical and mental actions. You are nothing other than a reflection of your actions. This fact is very much emphasized. Your world is nothing other than what you yourself create according to your likes and dislikes. In this world view, the individual is considered a free and independent being possessing initiative, effort, manliness, ability, strength and above all, having freedom of thought, free will to think freely and to select freely whatever path of action one wishes to follow. In this Buddhist world view, the man has a vital role to play in moulding his own self as well as shaping the world he lives in. This world view clearly shows how the individual and the society in which he lives mutually influences each other, both for their mutual well being as well as for their ill being. While other world views attributed the creation of different social institutions to some external power, the Buddhist world view very clearly showed that all social institutions are man-made. the Agganna Sutta of the Dighanikaya shows how the individual and the environment, (that is the outside world) mutually influence each other bringing about many changes in both 12. There is no god or any external agency involved in this process. Even the evolution of the world is explained according to the law of cause and effect, thus totally refuting the divine creation view. All social institutions, for example marriage, family life, private property, state and caste, are all causally produced, they are the results of certain causes and conditions. Even crime and punishment in society arise due to causes and conditions, and not due to God. This Sutta shows that mankind is one, but came to be divided due to causes and conditions. The Brahmin world view considered that division of mankind into different caste was done by the God Agganna Sutta shows wrong this view is. It very clearly shows that certain causes and conditions that prevailed in the society made people act in certain ways and that the people came to be distinguished by their actions. 13 So, the Buddhist world view is that mankind belongs to one species. The Vasettha Sutta of the Suttanipata (also occurring in the Majjhimanikaya) brings out very clearly the Buddha's position regarding the oneness of mankind. 14 The law of dependent origination is a dynamic law. It shows how things change. This explains that the individual need not always remain same throughout his life. He can change his position by changing the causes and conditions that keep him bound to a particular position. So, no one need be ever low or ever poor; he can change his position. The Brahmanic world view held that one becomes a high or low person by birth and this birth is decided by the god. The Buddhist world view gives a totally new interpretation to this. It says, in the Vasala Sutta of the Suttanipata that it is one's action that decides one's social position, 15 thus, a person who is by tradition considered "low" can become a "high" person by changing his mode of conduct and behaviour. Similarly, a person who is considered to be of low social position because he is poor can change this by becoming rich. This new world view explained how the society really functions, how individuals change and how social changes take place due to the mutual influence between the individual and the society. For example, this novel Buddhist world view explains how poverty is created due to man's negligent and inconsiderate selfish actions. The Cakkavattisihanada Sutta 16 and the Kutadanta Sutta 17, in the Dighanikaya, explain how negligence and maladministration on the part of the rulers create poverty, how poverty leads to crime and crime to violence and violence to civil war, bringing about total destruction of the society. The god or any such external power has nothing to do with this. These are all creations of man himself by his own misdeeds. In fact, the Buddhist world view shows that even the god is a creation of man himself. Thus, it is the man that plays the vital role in this Buddhist world view. He influences his own self as well as the environment in which he lives. The Cakkavattisihanada Sutta and also the Agganna Sutta explain lucidly how man's actions affect the environment and how the environment reacts, often making man suffer for his behaviour. This is a good reminder for the man in the present day world. In a world as that of the present, where all kinds of disharmony, divisions, grouping and conflicts prevail, in a world where man is slavishly running after selfish aims, forgetting the important fact that he is just a tiny aspect of the whole universal system, where individual actions have deep and grave repercussions on people in common, it is very beneficial to understand the analysis of the individual and the world given in the Buddhist world view. Such an understanding will make us realize what we are and what our world really is. Such an understanding will make us see how much we contribute to make ourselves what we are, how much our good actions and bad actions contribute to make what the world is. We will then realize that all unhappiness is man-made, that man has the power to change unhappiness into happiness, if he really desires to do so. This will make us feel more responsible and urge us to make more positive contributions for our own good and for the good of the mankind. Notes 1. Samyutta Nikaya, Vol. I (PTS London), P. 62 2. Hiriyanna, M., Outhines of Indian Philosophy, London, 1951, p. 136 3. Jayatilleke, K.N. Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge, Indian Edition, 1963, pp.179-180 4. Brahadaranyaka Upanishad I.3 5. Majjhima Nikaya, Vol. II (PTS London), pp. 148-149 6. Encyclopaedia of Buddhism Vol. IV, see 'Charvaka' 7. Digha Nikaya, Vol I (PTS London), p.55 8. Ibid p.54 9. Samyutta Nikaya, Vol. I (PTS London), p. 136 10. Dhammapada (PTS London), Vs. 160 11. ibid Vs. 165 12. Digha Nikaya, Vol. III (PTS London), pp. 85-87 13. Ibid p. 92+ 14. Sutta-Nipata (PTS London), pp. 119-120 15. Ibid pp. 21-22 16. Digha Nikaya, Vol. III (PTS London), pp.68-69 17. Ibid Vol. I, p.136 |
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