The Ancient Buddhist Worldview: Reading the Pali Suttas - 1. The Brahmajala Sutta

This series of posts is intended to be a compendium of certain topics of interest to me in the Pali suttas. They do not intend to be complete summaries of the suttas, nor are they concerned specifically with the "teachings" (eg. ethical, meditative, psychological, etc.) found in them. It is not hard to find this information elsewhere. My interest is in anything to do with mythology, cosmology, metaphysics, supernatural and spiritual beings, and abstract philosophical concepts of the ancient Buddhist worldview. I will also briefly consider each sutta as a literary work, looking at them as narratives and not only as "sermons". Finally, I will note anything relating to ethical teaching that stands out as strange or apparently contrary to a modern ethical worldview.

Section and paragraph references are to The Long Discourses of the Buddha, translated by Maurice Walshe. All quotations are from this translation unless otherwise stated.


An introductory note on cosmology:
Buddhist cosmology presents a hierarchy of planes of existence or worlds (31 in the Theravada system, but there are minor variations elsewhere). They are divided into 3 levels, which are also referred to as worlds. The first is the world of sense-desires, and consists of 11 planes, including the human world. The second is the Form, or Fine Material, world (16 planes), while the third is the Formless world (4 planes).

The names of these last two divisions indicates a connection with the so-called form (or rupa) jhanas and the formless (arupa) jhanas respectively, and indeed being reborn into these worlds is said to be dependent on having experienced the corresponding jhanic state in a previous existence. This connection between psychology and cosmology raises some questions of interpretation.

1. Are the various planes of existence simply metaphors for mental states, or real realms of existence? 
Both. The doctrine of rebirth certainly treats the various worlds as genuine destinations for someone after death, but the description of jhanic states of consciousness also describe the experiences that are said to be had by the beings that inhabit the corresponding world.

2. So should we think of meditators as temporarily "visiting" these worlds during the experience of jhana, or are they experiencing a kind of simulacrum or foretaste of the true experience to be had in these realms?
I don't know whether any sources address this question specifically, but I suspect it's a moot point. The important thing about these worlds is not their physical description or location, but the mental states available to those within them. If you are experiencing, say, the first jhana during meditation, then you are experiencing the kind of mental states and experiences that are characteristic of beings in the worlds that correspond to the first jhana. The experience is what matters, whatever your view of where the mind goes during meditation or the physical reality of the heavenly planes of existence.

3. What came first, the cosmology or the psychology? That is, did early Buddhists invent heavenly realms to correspond to their meditative experiences, or did they apply the description of those experiences to a pre-existing cosmological scheme? 
Presumably the final description of the 31 planes of existence and the systematising of Buddhist meditation developed alongside one another over time, but it would be interesting to be able to piece together the precise course of this development insofar as this is possible with the evidence available to us.

4. Why was the experience of jhana chosen as the major organising principle of the cosmological hierarchy? Why not other meditative, spiritual, intellectual, or ethical attainments?
Once again I can't give a detailed historical answer to this question, but again we can see the importance of the possibilities of mental experience in this cosmological picture. One does not get to the two higher worlds of existence by increasing wisdom or ethical conduct alone, for wisdom and morality are both compatible with lives of great joy or of great suffering, and everything in between. The point of the hierarchy of Buddhist worlds is that as one moves up through its various levels, one's experience becomes more and more joyful and peaceful - the possibility of suffering becomes more and more attenuated - until one escapes the cycle of rebirth and eliminates the possibility of suffering entirely.

Since my interest in these notes is in mythology and ancient cosmology, I will be referencing passages that talk about the Buddhist world system in those terms. I will not be considering passages that explicitly deal with Buddhist psychology or meditation techniques, and I will be taking mythological and cosmological descriptions at face value without trying to give them a psychological or spiritual interpretation. 

LITERARY CONTEXT:

This sutta is introduced with the wanderer Supiyya, and his disciple Brahmadatta, following along the same road as the Buddha and his disciples. Although they are not deliberately accompanying the Buddha but simply taking the same road, Brahmadatta has apparently been impressed by the Buddha, his teachings and his followers, and praises and defends them against Supiyya's attacks. The effect of this opening is to stress the harmony of the Buddhist sangha, in comparison to the dissension between Supiyya and his pupil. It also subtly highlights the superiority of the Buddha's teachings, as Brahmadatta, in the presence of his own teacher, is won over by them simply by spending some time  in the Buddha's vicinity during his travels. 

The praise and censure that the Buddha receives from Brahmadatta and Supiyya lead into the teaching section of the sutta. The Buddha begins by discussing the correct response one should have towards praise and criticism, and goes on to discuss why the Dharma is appropriately deserving of praise by contrasting it with 62 incorrect views that it refutes and corrects. 

The discourse then continues on to the end of the sutta, with no closing narrative.

COSMOLOGY & SUPERNATURAL BEINGS:

The Abhassara World; the Brahma Palace; Contraction and Expansion of the Cosmos:

When the universe begins to contract, beings are mostly reborn in the Abhassara Brahma world (2.2). After expansion begins, an empty "palace of Brahma" (meaning the Mahabrahma world that had been destroyed in the contraction phase) appears. Beings are described as falling from the Abhassara world to the Brahma palace, and some of them then falling to our world (2.3-6).

Inhabitants of Abhassara World:

They are described as "mind-made", and as "feeding on delight" (piti) (2.2).

The Great Brahma:

He arises in a newly arisen Brahma world during the expansion of the cosmos, having fallen from the Abhassara world. After more beings arise in the Brahma world, he is deluded into thinking that he has created them. He comes to believe that he is the all-powerful Creator god (2.2-5).

Devas:

The devas known as "Corrupted by Pleasure" fall from their state "by the dissipation of mindfulness" (2.7). The devas known as "Corrupted in Mind" fall through becoming "weary in body and mind" (2.10). The devas known as "Unconscious" fall from their state as soon as perception arises in them (2.31).

World-systems:

At the close of the buddha's sermon, the "ten-thousand world-system" is said to have shaken (3.74).

The (In)finitude of the Cosmos:

The Buddha declares as wrong views (1) that the world is finite, (2) that the world is infinite, (3) that the world is both finite and infinite, and (4) that the world is neither finite nor infinite (22.16-21). The first 3 of these views are said to be reached through the experience of different levels of jhana meditation.

METAPHYSICS:

Recalling past lives:

Up to many hundreds of thousands of past lives can be recalled (1.31).

Examples given of gaining the ability to recall one's immediate past life, but no previous lives (2.6, 2.8, 2.11)

Causes of Rebirth:

The devas known as "Corrupted by Pleasure" fall from their state "by the dissipation of mindfulness" (2.7). The devas known as "Corrupted in Mind" fall through becoming "weary in body and mind" (2.10). The devas known as "Unconscious" fall from their state as soon as perception arises in them (2.31).

Beings are described as falling from the Abhassara world to the Brahma palace "from  exhaustion of [their] life-span or of [their] merits" (2.3).

The Eternality of the Self and the Cosmos:

This incorrect view can be reached by having knowledge of past lives, and subsequently inferring that the self persists eternally through all its transmigrations (1.31). It may also be reached by achieving knowledge of past periods of contraction and expansion of the cosmos, and inferring that the cosmos therefore persists eternally (1.32, 1.33). Or it may be reached by spurious logical reasoning (1.34).

Another incorrect view holds that Brahma is eternal, but that the self is not eternal (2.6), or that some devas are eternal but the self is not eternal (2.9, 2.12), or that the senses and the body are not eternal, but that there is an eternal self that consists of the mind or consciousness (2.13).

The Arising of the Self and the Cosmos:

The Buddha denounces as wrong the view that the self and the world arise by chance (2.31-32).

The Self After Death:

The Buddha declares as wrong views various conceptions of the self as having a conscious existence after death (2.38), of the self as having an unconscious existence after death (3.2), and of the self as having a neither-conscious-nor-unconscious existence after death (3.6).

Annihilationism:
The Buddha declares as wrong views various conceptions of annihilationism, ie. that the self is completely destroyed at death. The first version of this view holds that the self is identical to the physical body that is destroyed at death (3.10), while the rest hold to some version of a spiritual self, each of which is associated with different meditative experiences (3.11-16).

Nibbana:

The Buddha declares as wrong views various conceptions of nibbana here-and-now; namely, that nibbana is to be identified with sensual pleasure, or with one of the four jhanas (3.19.25).

ETHICS:

The Buddha is said to refrain from "damaging seeds and crops" (1.10). The next paragraph elaborates: the Buddha refrains from the destruction of plants that are "propagated from roots, from stems, from joints, from cuttings, from seeds" (1.11). This would seem to distinguish them from food plants that grow wild, and so do not require human cultivation, but what the ethical significance of this is I am not sure. The following paragraph also notes the Buddha's abstention from food and drink that has been "stored up" (1.12), so again the point may be that monks should subsist on unneeded leftovers rather than goods requiring special resources.

The Buddha refrains from watching or performing dance, music, singing, or shows. The context is a passage that also disparages practices that involve greed or luxury (1.10, 1.13).

The Buddha exhorts monks and ascetics against metaphysical and philosophical speculation (eg. "talk about being and non-being"), and against debate and disputation (1.17-18).

The Buddha exhorts monks and ascetics against all kinds of magic and divinatory arts (1.21-27). Poetry and philosophising are condemned alongside divinatory arts (1.25), and many medical practices are also condemned (1.27). The point would seem to be that these practices do not constitute right livelihood, and are not to be practiced for gain or reward, not that they are wrong in and of themselves.

A Case Study in the History of Fantasy Literature: "The King of Elfland's Daughter"

Modern fantasy has its roots in Victorian fairy tales and various medieval genres, but it did not really constitute a distinct genre in itself until the success of Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings in the middle of the 20th century. The path that led to Tolkien has been largely overshadowed by his enormous presence, but we can see the trends and influences he drew on by looking at some of his predecessors. One such predecessor is Lord Dunsany’s 1924 novel The King of Elfland’s Daughter. It tells the story of Alveric, prince of Erl, who journeys into Elfland and brings back the Princess Lirazel as his bride, his quest to find her again after she returns to Elfland, and the consequences of the contact between their two kingdoms. Dunsany was popular in his time, greatly influencing writers like H.P. Lovecraft and Tolkien, and this book illustrates several of the trends that characterise this period of fantasy literature.

Magic:

The defining feature of fantasy literature is that it contains some element of the supernatural. Whether it be through deities, monsters, magic, or some other impossibility made real, fantasy presents us with a world that is in some way enchanted. Therefore the history of fantasy can be told through the changing conceptions of and attitudes towards the supernatural, through the shifting boundaries between the real and the unreal, between the material and the spiritual, between magic and science.

The magical note is struck immediately in The King of Elfland’s Daughter, by establishing that the everyday world of the story exists alongside the “lands of faerie”, or Elfland. Before Tolkien, there were very few examples of stories taking place in “secondary worlds” that existed completely autonomously from the real world. Instead, the setting was recognisably the real world with supernatural elements added, or there was a clear distinction within the story between the everyday world and the domain of magic that existed alongside it. Dunsany follows this tradition by making a clear distinction between the human world and the magic Elfland. His characters can move between the everyday world and the lands of faery, but the connection between the two is not one of geography. Rather, the symbolic nature of Elfland is impressed on the reader in several ways. 

First, it is frequently referred to as a place that is only told of in song. It cannot be found on a map, but can only be entered at the border of night and day, ie. in the period of twilight (throughout history magic has often been associated with liminal or “threshold” times and places, where the usual boundaries between categories are blurred and dissolved). Within its borders, time does not flow as it does in our world, its inhabitants do not age, and it suffers no decay or destruction. We are told that the magic of Elfland can be encountered in our world, but that it has no place in the language or concepts of science. Most never visit Elfland, but it is said to be occasionally glimpsed by poets and other visionaries, and reflected in the songs that this vision inspires in them. From all these descriptions, it is clear that “magic” in this story has a metaphorical meaning, inviting interpretation as a spiritual dimension of human life, existing not in the here and now but in a mythic time and space that is only accessible to people in certain special circumstances. 

This spiritual meaning is exemplified by the elfin princess Lirazel when she is brought to our world from her home in Elfland. She worships the stars, praying to their images and reflections, and her worship is characterised by the spontaneous, unselfconscious expression of joy and gratitude, especially in communing with the natural world. This closeness to nature is also signified by Dunsany, in another age-old staple of myth and fairy tale, with the magical ability to converse with animals (exhibited, for example, by the troll who enters our world from Elfland in an attempt to find Lirazel and bring her home). 

This picture of nature worship and living in harmony with our natural surroundings is commonly associated with “primitive” or pagan religion, as opposed to the more “civilized” forms of organised religion. But organised religion also exists in this story, in the form of Christianity. It is portrayed as less relevant and authentic than Lirazel’s simple acts of devotion, and is unable to accommodate the conception of spirituality that her magic represents. The priest who represents the Christian church in the story cannot sanction the marriage of Alveric and Lirazel because, as a native of Elfland, she is beyond salvation; Elfland, and the dimension of life it represents, is not recognised by the constricting forms of established religion.

Elfland is also characterised as a place accessible principally to the young; Alveric finds it easily at the beginning of the story, when he is a young man caught up in the quest for adventure and romantic love, but cannot repeat the accomplishment as an older man. Dunsany is illustrating the stultifying effects that age and the passage of time can have on spiritual and artistic vitality, which he links thematically with the eternal, unchanging perfection of Elfland.

Narrative Elements:

Folk and fairy tales are the immediate ancestors of modern fantasy, and The King of Elfland’s Daughter in many ways feels like a traditional fairy tale. This is principally attributable to the language and style Dunsany employs (see below), but the plot also borrows several common fairy tale tropes, such as the quest of the prince to win his bride and ascend to the title of his kingship, and the fairies that appear auspiciously at the christening of the new heir to the throne. As ever with fantasy literature, we are not being asked to read this as we would a realistic historical account. The unreality is the point. Markers of fairy tale tell us that we are dealing with archetypal characters and mythic themes.

Medievalism:

Modern fantasy literature was heavily influenced by medieval sagas and romances (where “romance” refers to a popular genre of prose and verse that featured tales of knights, warfare, adventure, and chivalry). Authors like William Morris (The Well at the World’s End, The Wood Beyond the World), and later Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, borrowed elements of the setting, themes and style of these genres to create a sense of history and to revive a tradition that had died out with the rise of realism and the modern novel. The King of Elfland’s Daughter reveals this influence in its medieval setting, complete with feudal political structure, Christian population, and pre-industrial level of technology. More specifically, and again like Tolkien after him, Dunsany uses elements from Norse/Anglo-Saxon/Scandinavian culture, including trolls, runes, and the Anglo-Saxon root of the word for “elf” in the name of his protagonist (Alveric).

Style:

The medieval and fairy tale ancestry of this story is discernible in several elements of Dunsany’s style. In addition to a certain archaic flavour to the language, we find storytelling conventions and techniques common to fairy tales, such as:

• A sentence structure based on independent clauses strung together linearly, like beads on a string, by simple conjunctions (usually “and”), rather than utilising dependent clauses embedded one within the other. The result is a momentum from one clause to the next that propels the reader along from start to finish. This simple technique is firmly associated with an archaizing style, which I suspect has a lot to do with the distinctive rhythms of the King James Bible which has had such a pervasive influence on English literature (“...and the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and God said…” etc). Therefore, and especially when combined with the other stylistic features described below, this technique establishes an exotic, fairy tale atmosphere very effectively. (When combined with different subject matter and the right diction, it is also instrumental in the “high heroic” style that mimics the medieval romances, and which Tolkien was later to so effectively deploy, as in this passage from the end of The Two Towers, Book V, chapter 5: “For morning came, morning and a wind from the sea; and darkness was removed, and the hosts of Mordor wailed, and terror took them, and they fled, and died, and the hoofs of wrath rode over them. And then all the host of Rohan burst into song, and they sang as they slew, for the joy of battle was on them, and the sound of their singing that was fair and terrible came even to the City.”)
• The frequent repetition of certain phrases and descriptions (such as the recurring designation of Elfland as the “place that is only told of in song”, or of our world as “the fields we know”). Such oft-repeated phrases act like incantations, imbuing the things so described with a mysterious quality and power. 
• Thinly drawn characters, with very little description given of their inner lives. Again, the effect is to present them as archetypal or mythic characters, rather than real people. This is also achieved by a relative scarcity of dialogue; it is as if we are being distanced from the story to see its symbolic nature, rather than being caught up in it as participants. 
• An ornate, poetic use of language and imagery. This further draws the focus away from realism, heightening the dreamlike, fantastic atmosphere of the story.

The combination of poetic language, incantatory phrasing, and fairy tale atmosphere has the effect of casting a spell over the reader, creating a sense of the mystic and the mysterious. Literary spell-casting can be effective, but it is hard to sustain over long stretches of prose. Beautiful as the writing often is, the effect does tend to wear off after a while, and the simple sentence structure, in addition to the long passages of description unalleviated by dialogue, can gradually shift from enchanting to wearying. 

The King of Elfland’s Daughter is an extended, poetic fairy tale that uses the element of magic to represent the entrance into our earthly lives of a spiritual dimension of experience. In its medieval setting and deliberately archaic style it illustrates some of the major trends in the development of fantasy literature.