DAVID LYNCH – TWIN
PEAKS – DEFINTIVE GOLD
BOX EDITION – 2010
It all starts the way we remember
the film, but we soon are going to be lost in translation, we are going to lose
our memory and we are bound to loosen our minds into something that sounds like
derangement. And we find out in the final “Lost and Found” that some lines were
dropped along the way that would have made the surreal aspect even deeper,
darker and bleaker.
A long bloody series of killings
one after the other brings a federal Special Agent, a certain Dale Cooper, into
the picture of this panoramic and flabbergasting mountain-scape from upland Wasington
at the very border to Canada.
And we wonder why a great film director decided to become the director – and creator
– of a TV series. And we do not know, and we cannot know, and the concerned
director could not even know himself. He felt the impulse, he needed some extra
money, or he wanted to discover some new territory. But who cares anyway.
This series produced in 1990-1991
and followed by the film “Twin Peaks, Fire
Walk With Me” in 1992 opened completely new territories and trails in TV art,
because TV can be an art. First it completely dropped the autonomous episode
syndrome and the whole series is but one story that cannot be considered as
sliced up in episodes that would be autonomous one from the other. Each episode
ends up with a strong at times melodramatic, most of the type pretty dramatic
last touch that is supposed to create fear and to call for anxiety and expectation.
And it is not simply what Stephen King recalls about the special teenage matinee
films in the old days with one serial character, with one unified episode each
week, and yet each one ending right in the most atrociously suspenseful event,
like a cliffhanger just losing his grip two thousand feet over the firm ground
at the foot of the cliff, but after concluding his business of the week just
before.
In the case of this series that
suspenseful last touch is in fact opening a new can of worms that is an
amplification of the very episode and yet forcing us to lose all our certainty
about what has happened in this episode, hence throwing our minds into
disbelief and doubt about the whole story line and what could come next. This
suspense does not require us to suspend our disbelief. It creates in our
consciousness absolute disbelief about any hypotheses or conclusion we might
have come to.
And sure enough from a simple
detective story, a banal crime story or even a lackluster serial killer story
we move to a vengeance story, a ghost story, a supernatural story, a fantastic
dark fantasy of a story that never stops going beyond the margin and limits of
natural circumstances.
This series has had many
descendants, many children and grandchildren, from “Lost” to “Supernatural” or all
the mini series produced by Stephen King or other people in the same line. As
such David Lynch has opened up a real can of real rodent bugs that are haunting
us, gnawing at our guts and munching our vitals with teeth of steel.
The present Gold Box Edition is particularly
welcome because the modern definition of our screens and the wide size of these
screens being what they are, this product that was done for low definition and
small screens becomes magical. The editor of the set goes as far as giving us,
at the very end some small scenes that were deleted, supposedly lost and
miraculously retrieved, precisely in the low definition of the time and we can remember
the fuzziness of these pictures, though at the time it was less visible because
the screens were so small that the pixels were nearly microscopic.
We thus can enjoy the rich
setting slightly overcrowded with props and detail, the encumbered movements
and actions that find all their power and force in today’s technical conditions,
all for our best enjoyment.
But does it mean anything?
I am afraid not. I can’t really
tell you the end, but let’s say it is becoming common today, especially after
the last volume of the “Dark
Tower” series by Stephen
King in which the last page of the seventh and chronologically last volume is word
for word the same as the first page of the very first volume. David Lynch is a
lot more complex than just repeating the first scene of the first episode in
the last scene of the last episode, but altogether it is the same pattern. Life
is eternal because it repeats itself. Life is deadly, fatal, lethal, because it
can start all over again just after death has struck.
The only deeper reflection you
may get out of this series is that nature is beautiful, man, (and woman) is a dirty
littering filthy polluting animal but deep deeper deepest in this world the
polluter always gets it right bang in their faces. There is always a pine
weasel that can bite your nose. Apart from that it is pure entertainment and
story telling, even if at times the story telling is kind of twisted and
farfetched.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 1:45 PM
0 comments
B.R. AMBEDKAR – THE BUDDHA AND HIS DHAMMA, A CRITICAL
EDITION – AAKASH SINGH RATHORE & AJAY VERMA, eds. – OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
– 2011-2013 – 1956
An emblematic book from an Indian
Dalit about Buddhism he converted to. The book, written in English, was published
posthumously in 1956. The author was the first justice minister of the
independent Republic
of India. He played a
role in the writing of the Indian constitution though he faced strong
opposition on all issues concerning Dalits, particularly his idea of a distinct
representation. Gandhi was one of the main opponents to that suggestion. We
actually can wonder today why this solution was ever suggested since it would
have reinforced the segregation against Dalits with a system comparable to
apartheid in South Africa.
It would have ossified the segregation the Dalits are the victims of. The
subject of the book, Buddhism, is not a surprise since for an Indian Dalit the
only possibilities in the field of religion were Buddhism and Christianity,
particularly the Anglican or Catholic churches. Those were the only religious
organizations that refused to reject Dalits in the name of the Hindu caste
system against which they were. As we are going to see this is Ambedkar’s
vision of Buddhism and some of his opinions are original.
The Buddha in the Making
The first chapters are about the
younth of the future Buddha, that is to say the period of his life when he was
Siddarth Gautama. Born in a royal family, rich indeed, married the way he was supposed
to be and having given life to a son, he appears from the start very sensitive
to the world the way it is, particularly poverty and misery in all their forms.
But what makes him take the road he is known for is the decision of the council
of his kingdom to go at war against their neighbors for a ridiculous, though
important, dispute about the use of the water of the common river between the
two kingdoms. He refuses to take part in the war as a conscientious objector
and as such may be sentenced to death for treason, but it would have to be
accepted by the superior king on whom this small kingdom depends, and they do
not want that. The alternative is that he could be banished and his family’s
estate seized. To avoid the misery that would befall his family he suggests he
could leave the country right away as a mendicant ascetic, a Pavrijavaka. This
compromise is accepted and that is how Siddarth Gautama became the character
the whole world knows.
This version of this conversion
is a lot more credible than the traditional tale about his night time visits to
the poor neighborhoods of his city and the shock seeing poverty, misery and
diseases would have caused in him. He decided to become what he is known for to
protect his family from the consequences of his own decisions, and to save his
life in a way by making it useful to himself and maybe other people, for sure
by getting on the road of self quest and self improvement. That gives Siddarth
Gautama some depth from the very start. And once a Parivraja, always a Parivraja.
Then Ambedkar follows him in his
quest and in his various encounters. I will not enter detail there but the
Buddha tries and is confronted to all possible solutions from being redeemed by
some king as a member of his household to asceticism, via all possible
philosophies and spiritual schools of his time, all identified as being
advocated by particular spiritual leaders. None of them satisfies his project,
ambition, desire. He keeps from them various elements and decides to build his
own theory, his own spiritual vision centered on dukkha, the rise of dukkha
and the extinction of dukkha. This
can only be done by the concerned individual who uses his mind to reach that
objective of getting rid of dukkha
and protecting oneself against it. I will regret here the book uses the
translation suffering systematically,
though the author knows it is reductive, hence partly false. But that’s a point
that is not fully explored by the book. Then Ambedkar speaks of the turning
point in Siddarth Gautama’s life, when he finally finds enlightenment under a
bodhi tree. Then he loses his name and becomes the Exalted One, or the Master,
or the Buddha.
The Emergence of the Buddha
To become a Buddha, a Bodhisatta
has to go through ten stages. Ambedkar calls them ten lives and it is
interesting to quote them here, though the source mentioned by the author is
declared unverifiable by the editors.
“First life: Mudita (joy) . . . Second
life: Vimala (purity) . . . Third life: Prabhakaru (brightness) .
. . Fourth life: Arcishmati (Intelligence of Fire) . . . Fifth life: Sudurjaya
(difficult to conquer) . . . Sixth life: Abhimukhi (great wisdom) . . . Seventh
life: Durangama (going far off) . . . Eighth life: Acala
(immovable) . . . Ninth life: Sadhumati (vanquished or penetrated
all dharmas or systems) . . . Tenth Life: Dharmamegha (infinite divine eye of
Buddha). . .” (page 51-52)
We have to note the fact that Ambedkar uses the Sanskrit names that are
normally used in Mahayana (and Tibetan) Buddhism (the Great Vehicle) essentially
developed in China
and around. This makes it difficult because, first of all the Buddha never
preached in Sanskrit though he knew and read it since he criticizes and rejects
the Vedas and the Upanishads, and second in the Theravada (Small Vehicle)
canonical approach the language is Pali and, in this canonical approach, this
process is seen as the acquisition of ten qualities, for example in the Buddhist Dictionary, Manual of Buddhist
Terms and Doctrines, by Nyanatiloka Mahathera (http://www.budsas.org/ebud/bud-dict/dic3_p.htm)
this process is presented as the acquisition of the ten “paramī” = “pāramitā”: (perfection) ten
qualities leading to Buddhahood:
“(1) perfection
in giving (or liberality; dāna-pāramī), (2) morality (sīla-pāramī), (3) renunciation (nekkhamma-pāramī), (4) wisdom (paññā-pāramī), (5) energy (viriya-pāramī), (6) patience (or forbearance; khanti-pāramī), (7) truthfulness (sacca-pāramī), (8) resolution (adhiṭṭhāna-pāramī), (9) loving-kindness (mettā-pāramī) (10) equanimity (upekkhā-pāramī).”
What is surprising in this approach is the use of the term “lives”
instead of “qualities” because this seems to imply that the bhodisatta has to
be reborn ten times before becoming a Buddha. Ambedkar is clear about this: he
rejects the concept of reincarnation of any type. Rebirth is for him of a
totally virtual nature. To define it he gives three examples: the light of a
candle used to light another candle, the mango stone used to grow a mango tree
that gives new mangoes and the poem a student learns from his/her teacher. The
use of “lives” is in line with the Tibetan approach of Buddhism but not with
the Theravada canonical approach nor with what Ambedkar himself says about
reincarnation. He explains what he considers the Buddha’s own view on the
subject and he both acknowledges the fact that since the soul is rejected by
the Buddha there cannot be any reincarnation of that soul. Then he asserts that
the Buddha believed the four elements that compose the body return back to the
universe but as these elements and not in the process of a reincarnation of the
individual whose body these elements composed.
“Did the Buddha believe in rebirth? The answer is in the affirmative.
It is better to split the question further into two parts: ‘i) Rebirth of What;
and (ii) Rebirth of Whom. . . according to the Buddha there are four elements
of Existence which go to compose the body. They are (i) Prithvi [pathavi dhatu in Pali, solid earth]; (ii) Apo [apo
dhatu in Pali, liquid water]; (iii) Tej
[tejo dhatu in Pali, heat fire]; and (iv) Vayu [vayo dhatu in Pali, motion wind]. . . Do they also die
along with dead body? . . . The Buddha said no: they join the mass of similar
elements floating in (Akash) space. When the four elements of this
floating mass join together, a new birth takes place . . . The body dies. But
the elements are ever-living . . . What happens when the body dies? is: the
body ceases to produce energy . . . death also means that whatever energy that
had escaped from the body joins the general mass of energy playing about the
Universe . . . The Buddha . . . believed in the regeneration of matter and not
in the rebirth of the soul . . . Energy is never lost . . . “ (page 174-176)
In the same way he considers karma [kamma in Pali, merit]
cannot transmigrate to another individual after death because otherwise that
would bring the concept of soul back into the picture and the Buddha has
rejected the concept of soul.
The conclusion here is that the elements that merge into the mass of similar
elements in the Universe, and the energy produced by the body does the same
when the body dies, can reassemble into a new birth but without the
transmigration of neither a soul that does not exist or the karma of the
dead person since the concept of soul is rejected. There cannot thus be any
rebirth of any individual after death.
Buddhism and the mind
But what is essential here is the fact that this process of the
emergence of a Buddha is entirely governed by the mind of the bodhisatta. Note
here this last word is Pali and not Sanskrit. In other words Ambedkar is mixing
Pali and Sanskrit and this makes the book difficult. In fact the editors should
have unified the Buddhist language, and Pali would have been a good choice, and/or
systematically offered notes with the Pali words when Ambedkar used Sanskrit
words, and vice versa. But it is important to check what is said by Ambedkar on
this mind, and he never uses Sanskrit or Pali words for it, which would have been
difficult since the Buddha differentiates the mind as the sixth sense (mana)
from the mental states developed by the mind in various situations (citta).
But here is what Ambedkar says:
“. . . The recognition of the mind as the centre of everything. Mind
precedes things, dominates them, creates them. If mind is comprehended, all
things are comprehended. Mind is the leader of all its faculties. Mind is the
chief of all its faculties. The very mind is made up of those faculties. The
first thing to attend to is the culture of the mind. The second distinguishing
feature of his teachings is that mind is the fount of all the good and evil
that arises within, and befalls us from without. . . The cleaning of the mind
is therefore the essence of religion. The third distinguishing feature of his
teachings is the avoidance of all sinful acts. The fourth distinguishing
feature of his teaching is that real religion lies not in the books of
religion, but in the observance of the tenets of the religion.” (page 62-63)
We can see here that the mind is
not defined as the sixth sense that processes the sensory signals from the five
other senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, without forgetting that the
whole body is a network of sensors that are assimilated to touch though they
are most of them inside the body and they all manage the body’s behavior and
equilibrium, both inside and outside) and abstract sensory signals from ideas,
language, concepts, etc. The world can only exist in our consciousness through
the senses and the mind, for sure, but the mind does not precede objects nor the
world. It precedes the consciousness we have of the world, and this concept of
consciousness is absent in Ambedkar’s book. In this quotation he seems to be a
full idealist for whom the world has no existence outside the consciousness we
have of it.
In fact the mind is given some
kind of autonomy and precedence, which is surprising because Ambedkar insists
on the rejection of anything resembling what most religions call the soul, that
supposedly divine part of man. Yet this mind is not seen as part of the
sensorial architecture of the body. In fact the shortcoming comes from the fact
that this mind is not seen as a construct built by the brain in its processing
of all sensorial stimuli within the circumstantial, existential, experiential,
situational and phenomenological environment of the individual who uses his/her
brain to make out some meaningful pattern or set of patterns in this reality,
and what comes out of this confrontation is the mind, whose very first
invention is a language to give names to the various codified entities and
patterns, more or less static and/or more or less dynamic, that coalesce into
some kind of permanent, though transient, conceptualized items or actions.
This leads him to an ethical
approach of man’s behavior: man has to abide by some rules, has to cleanse his
mind of all sinful ideas, has to avoid all sinful acts or ideas. The concept of
sin is not Buddhist. It is borrowed from the Christian tradition. The Buddha
condemns actions of any sort that produce dukkha
in oneself or in others. Most of the time this dukkha is translated as suffering
though it is in fact the dissatisfaction one experiences or one inflicts on
some other person when an inner or outer balance is broken, when a justified
vital need is disrupted, when one intend to privilege one’s interest and
frustrate the others’ interest instead of sharing what is at stake. In a way
Ambedkar reintroduces the soul that he had excluded before and yet this mind
that precedes the existence of the world cannot transmigrate to another
individual after the death of the body that contains it. And yet his negation
of the soul should imply the world preexists the mind. That is a deep
contradiction in Ambedkar’s approach of Buddhism that becomes a moralistic
discourse afterwards.
Buddhism and the Extinction of Dukkha
Though the Buddha is not a
Savior, is not a Moksha Data [mokkha datar in Pali, salvation giver],
but a Marga Data [magga datar in Pali, way giver], he
identifies salvation to Nibbana (note
he uses the Pali word) and that salvation is the result of the implementation
of the Dhamma (note he uses the Pali
word) and this Dhamma is a set of
objectives the mind is supposed to fulfill:
i-
Three
forms of purity, in body, in speech and in mind;
ii-
Five
weaknesses: taking life; taking what is not given; lustful, evil practices;
lying; indulging in spirituous liquors, which cause idleness.
iii-
Four
arisings of mindfulness: contemplating the body as body, the feelings as
feelings, the mind as mind, ideas as ideas
iv-
Three
failures: in morals, in mind, in view.
v-
Three
perfections: in morals, in mind, in view.
vi-
Three
ideas underlying Nibbana: the
happiness of a sentient being as distinct from the salvation of the soul; the
happiness of the sentient being in Samsara
while he is alive; the exercise of control over the flames of the passions
which are always on fire.
vii-
Three
groups of passions: craving/attachment (lust, infatuation, greed, lobha), antipathy (hatred, anger,
vexation, repugnance, dosa),
ignorance (delusion, dullness, stupidity, moha/avidya).
viii-
The
Middle Way, the Noble Eightfold Path,
the eight “right”: right outlook, right aims, right speech, right action, right
means of livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.
(page 123-128). It is also identified as the Path of Righteousness and its
eight constituents page 70: Ashtangamarga
[atthangika magga in Pali, the path leading to the extinction of Dukkha]: Samma Ditri (Right
Views); Samma Sankappo (free mind and free thought); Samma
Vacca (Right Speech); Samma Kamanto (Right Behavior); Samma
Ajivo (earning one’s livelihood without causing injury or injustice to
others); Samma Vyayamo (Right Endeavor); Samma Satti (calls for
mindfulness and thoughtfulness, constant wakefulness of the mind); Samma
Samadhi (positive, concentrate
and think of Good Deeds and Thoughts during concentration)
ix-
The path
of Virtue and the ten virtues or Paramitas
(States of Perfection): (i) Sila (moral temperament); (ii) Dana
(the giving of one’s possessions, blood and limbs and even one’s life for the
good of others); (iii) Uppekha (datachment; (iv) Nekkama
(renunciation of the pleasures of the world), (v) Virya right endeavor);
(vi) Khanti
(forbearance); (vii) Succa (truth); (viii) Adhitana
(resolute determination to reach the goal); (ix) Karuna (loving kindness
to human beings); (x) Maitri (extending fellow feeling to
all beings). (page 72-73)
“magga: 'path'. 1. For the 4
supermundane paths (lokuttara-magga), s. ariya-puggala - 2. The Eightfold Path (aṭṭhaṅgika-magga) is the path leading to the extinction
of suffering, i.e. the last of the 4 Noble Truths (sacca, q.v.), namely:
III- Wisdom (paññā)
1. Right view (sammā-diṭṭhi)
2. Right thought (sammā-saṅkappa)
I- Morality (sīla)
3. Right speech (sammā-vācā)
4. Right bodily action (sammā-kammanta)
5. Right livelihood (sammā-ājīva)
II- Concentration (samādhi)
6. Right effort (sammā-vāyāma)
7. Right mindfulness (sammā-sati)
8. Right concentration (sammā-samādhi)
1. Right view or right understanding (sammā-diṭṭhi) is the understanding of the 4
Noble Truths about the universality of suffering (unsatisfactoriness), of its
origin, its cessation, and the path leading to that cessation. . .
2. Right thought (sammā-saṅkappa): thoughts free from sensuous desire,
from ill-will, and cruelty.
3. Right speech (sammā-vācā): abstaining from lying, tale-bearing,
harsh language, and foolish babble.
4 Right bodily action (sammā-kammanta): abstaining from killing, stealing,
and unlawful sexual intercourse.
5. Right livelihood (sammā-ājīva): abstaining from a livelihood that
brings harm to other beings, such as trading in arms, in living beings,
intoxicating drinks, poison; slaughtering, fishing, soldiering, deceit, treachery
soothsaying, trickery, usury, etc.
6. Right effort (sammā-vāyāma): the effort of avoiding or overcoming
evil and unwholesome things, and of developing and maintaining wholesome things
(s. padhāna).
7. Right mindfulness (sammā-sati): mindfulness and awareness in
contemplating body, feelings, mind, and mind-objects (s. sati, Satipaṭṭhāna).
8. Right concentration (sammā-samādhi): concentration of mind associated with wholesome (kusala consciousness, which eventually may
reach the absorptions (jhāna, q.v.). Cf. samādhi. There are to be
distinguished 2 kinds of concentration, mundane (lokiya) and supermundane (lokuttara) concentration. The latter is
associated with those states of consciousness known as the 4 supermundane paths
and fruitions (s. ariya-puggala).”
Ambedkar misses the second level
hierarchy that is not from beginning to end since it is III-I-II and he only
keeps the first degree hierarchy from 1 to 8, thus flattening the hierarchy
itself. We also must note this Noble Eightfold Path is split into two
presentations in Embedkar’s book, hence cutting the path of Righteousness from
the Noble Eightfold Path. In many ways this increases the moralistic and
rule-giving approach that is entirely set under the sole responsibility of the
individual’s mind:
“Mind is the
only instrument through which light can come to us.” (page 70)
Here we can wonder what is first
in this vision, the world or the mind, the world or the representations of it
the mind constructs, and to reduce the mind to a tool is to miss the fact that
this tool does not preexist the individual, does not preexist the world but is
a construct produced by the brain through the circumstantial, existential,
experiential, situational and phenomenological confrontation of the individual
with his/her environment.
Buddhism, anicca, dukkha, anatta
These three concepts are the
central concepts of Buddhism, but together and not in separate order. It is
because of anicca that states every
material, mental, spiritual or virtual thing is impermanent, transient,
constantly changing that dukkha
arises constantly since nothing is permanent. But here dukkha cannot be understood without its antagonistic double sukha. The latter is the satisfaction of
any desire, want, need, wish or whatever man can have. But this satisfaction is
absolutely normal in man, and the Buddha condemns any asceticism that aims at
making the body and the mind suffer in order to become pure, to win their (the
body’s and the mind’s that becomes the soul’s in this perspective) salvation. This
satisfaction will necessarily end and bring forward the former because man is
naturally getting attached to what brings sukha.
This concept of attachment is not sufficiently insisted upon by Embedkar. It is
tanha. It is necessary to insist here
on the excessiveness of this attachment. Love for other people and for all
living beings is set as fundamental in a Buddhist, but without tanha, without excessive attachment.
In the same way anicca makes believing in any permanent
part of our being totally delusive and illusionary. We do not have a soul seen
as permanent and as godlike since the concept of god is refused by the Buddha
and since anything in us is seen as impermanent. In the same way then we do not
have a self because at every single instant of our life we are changing, we are
different. In the same way no idea is permanent and that should have been
emphasized by Embedkar but he could not because of his inspiration coming from
the Tibetan Great Vehicle Buddhism that has in many ways ossified the concepts.
This concept of anatta is absolutely
central to Buddhism. It is vain and useless to pretend even the most powerful
concepts of Buddhism are permanent. They cannot be eternal since they were
“invented” by the Buddha, but they have no permanence in them because the world
is changing and the basic concept about the world is that it is a constantly
evolving and transforming reality. I say basic not permanent, since we could
even come to the contradiction of stating that this basic principle of ever-changing
reality is itself changing and could become ever-lasting, permanent, at least
in our own eyes.
Here we need the concept of samsara without which dukkha cannot even be conceived.
"
saṃsāra : 'round of rebirth', lit. perpetual wandering', is a name by
which is designated the sca of life ever restlessly heaving up and down, the
symbol of this continuous process of ever again and again being born, growing
old, suffering and dying. More precisely put,
saṃsāra is the unbroken chain of
the five-fold
khandha-combinations,
which, constantly changing from moment to moment follow continuously one upon
the other through inconceivable periods of time. Of this
saṃsāra , a single lifetime constitutes only a
tiny and fleeting fraction; hence to be able to comprehend the first noble
truth of universal suffering, one must let one's gaze rest upon the
saṃsāra , upon this frightful chain of rebirths,
and not merely upon one single life-time, which, of course, may be sometimes
less painful.” (
Buddhist
Dictionary, Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines, by Nyanatiloka
Mahathera
http://www.budsas.org/ebud/bud-dict/dic3_p.htm)
Note even in this canonical
dictionary they use the word rebirth but it is clear that for them it is the
rebirth of the fruit in the seed that will produce a new tree and new fruit.
The world is an extremely complex unlimited and non-finite set of material,
spiritual, mental or virtual entities and items that all have a beginning, a
life and a death leading to a new beginning in a different way with a different
definition. We are living in a maelstrom of constantly moving and transforming jungles
of all kinds of beings that are all living but that are not all flesh and bone
and blood but may be composed of none of the four basic elements we have seen, and
thus may be virtual, spiritual, mental.
This should lead us to thinking
that our thoughts, as soon as they find some material medium (speech, writing,
images, or whatever) base their material dimension in the possible transmission
from one person to another. Communication, education, transmission is the very
materiality of all “non-material” beings. But as soon as one idea is captured
in a way or another, produced, received or transmitted, by a mind supported by
a brain supported by a body it becomes material, though virtual in nature
(meaning not composed of the four basic material elements).
This reflection is constantly
behind what Embedkar says but it is not entirely expressed, formulated. He
keeps some contradictions at the level of the materiality of our existence and
thinking, which makes him adopt an ethical, moralistic discourse of what we
have to do to get rid of our sins, to purify our mind, to get on the path of
righteousness and virtue. Embedkar remains an idealist at heart instead of
seeing that there cannot be either survival or development if we do not accept
the ever changing concepts of samsara,
anicca, dukkha and anatta as the material reality in which we
have to survive and develop.
This leads us to a final concept
Embedkar does not use enough because he states that the cause-effect reasoning
is fundamental in Buddhism. This is partially false. The cause-effect
affiliation of things does not correspond to the concept of samsara that implies another affiliation
of things: dependent origination, paticcasamuppada.
“paṭiccasamuppāda: 'dependent origination', is the doctrine
of the conditionality of all physical and psychical phenomena, a doctrine
which, together with that of impersonality (anattā),
forms the indispensable condition for the real understanding and realization of
the teaching of the Buddha. It shows the conditionality and dependent nature of
that uninterrupted flux of manifold physical and psychical phenomena of
existence conventionally called the ego, or man, or animal, etc.
Whereas
the doctrine of impersonality, or anattā, proceeds analytically, by splitting
existence up into the ultimate constituent parts, into mere empty,
unsubstantial phenomena or elements, the doctrine of dependent origination, or paṭiccasamuppāda, on the other hand,
proceeds synthetically, by showing that all these phenomena are, in some way or
other, conditionally related with each other.”
If we consider the whole samsara the world is, any phenomenon
develops when the surrounding samsara
in which it is situated enables this very phenomenon to emerge. It is not a
causation but the fulfillment of an emergence from a surrounding nurturing
environment. It is subductive in nature, neither inductive or deductive.
Buddhism and the Dalits
This is the last idea I would
like to insist on. The basic principle in this field is the refusal of castes
and hence the refusal of segregation against the Dalits:
“The Sangh [Buddhist religious
monastic order] was open to all. There was no bar of caste. There was no bar of
sex. There was no bar of status.” (page 222)
This is clear when he considers Sadhamma (true dhamma). It is the Dhamma brought to perfection in one’s
life by the implementation of several practical stances. One has to do with
equality among human beings.
“Dhamma to be Sadhamma Must Break
Down Barriers between Man and Man.
(page 161) . . . Dhamma to be Sadhamma Must Teach that Worth and Not Birth is
the Measure of Man. (page 164) . . . Dhamma to be Sadhamma Must Promote Equality
between Man and Man. Men are born unequal. Some are robust, others are
weaklings. Some have more intelligence, others have less or none. Some have
more capacity, others have less. Some are well-to-do, others are poor. All have
to enter into what is called the struggle for existence. In the struggle of
existence, if inequality be recognized as the rule of the game, the weakest
will always go to the wall. . . What society wants is the best, and not the
fittest. It is, therefore, the primary reason why religion upholds equality. .
. A religion which does not preach equality is not worth having. . . The
religion of the Buddha is perfect justice, springing from a man’s own
meritorious disposition.” (page 165-166)
The dichotomy of best versus
fittest justifies all questioning and rejection of any social order that
becomes in any way ossified and that considers human beings must fit this ossified
order. This approach advocates the opposed point of view that social order is
part of samsara and has to change
constantly just the same way all human beings in their realistic differences but
righteous equality in rights and duties are part of this samsara. Human beings constantly change and they must try to govern
that change in the right direction, just the same way as society constantly
changes and must try to govern this change in the right direction, and that
right direction is equality in rights and duties for everyone to produce the
best and not the fittest.
Anyone can see such principles
are fundamental but at the same time change has to come on its own energy and
not imposed by any decision from any one or ant body that has or takes the
authority to do so. That’s the worst part of democracy: change has to come all
by itself and not be forced onto any one individual or any none society.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 7:12 AM
0 comments