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Vetter - Explanations of dukkha (1984)

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Explanations of dukkha

Tilmann Vetter

JIABS Vol 21 Issue 2 pp. 383-387

The present contribution presents some philological observations and a historical assumption concerning the First Noble Truth.

It is well-known to most buddhologists and many Buddhists that the explanations of the First Noble Truth in the First Sermon as found in the Mahāvagga of the Vinayapitaka and in some other places conclude with a remark on the five upādānakkhandhā, literally: ‘branches of appropriation’. This remark is commonly understood as a summary.

Practically unknown is the fact that in Hermann OLDENBERG’s edition of the Mahāvagga 1 (= Vin I) this concluding remark contains the particle pi, like most of the preceding explanations of dukkha. The preceding explanations are: jāti pi dukkhā, jarā pi dukkhā, vyādhi pi dukkhā, maranaṃ pi dukkhaṃ, appiyehi sampayogo dukkho, piyehi vippayogo dukkho, yaṃ p’icchaṃ na labhati tam 2 pi dukkhaṃ (Vin I 10.26). Wherever pi here appears it obviously has the function of coordinating examples of events or processes that cause pain (not: are pain 3 ): birth is causing pain, as well as decay, etc. 4

At Vin I 10.29 , the concluding remark runs as follows: samkhittena pañc’ upādānakkhandhā pi 5 dukkhā. No note on this pi is found in OLDENBERG’s generally trustworthy apparatus criticus. So we may infer that the manuscripts consulted by OLDENBERG all contained this pi.

In the Dhammakāya CD-ROM [1.0, 1996], which, with some errors, represents the PTS editions, this pi is also found in other places where the concluding remark on dukkha appears, namely, DN II 305.5; 307. 17-20; SN V 421.23; Patis I 37.28; II 147.26; Vibh 99.10; 101.15. 20. However in the Nālandā-Devanāgarī-Pāli-Series (=NDP) [1958, etc.] it is missing in all these places (including Vin I 10.29), while it is found in AN I 177.2, where it is lacking in the Dhammakāya CD-ROM. In MN I 48.34 and 185.6 it is found neither in the PTS edition [ed. V. Trenckner, 1888] nor in NDP6. But TRENCKNER remarks on p. 532 with regard to 48.34: “-kkhandhā pi M and all the Burmese authorities known to me, also Vin. 1.c. [=Vin I 10.29].” The CD-ROMs BudsirIV of Mahidol University [1994] and Chattha Sangāyana from Dhammagiri [1.1,1997] consistently omit pi in these places.

We can therefore state: 1) TRENCKNER, whose edition of MN I normally excells the average PTS editions, has chosen a reading against all Burmese manuscripts; 2) NDP and the CD-ROMs mentioned above, all depending on the Sixth Council, do not accept this pi6; 3) other editions show there was a manuscript tradition of employing pi in the concluding remark in the Mahāvagga as well as in Sutta and Abhidhamma texts.

How should we deal with these observations from a historical point of view? That TRENCKNER has made his choice against nearly all his witnesses is easily explained. On the third page of the Preface of his MN I edition he says: “Buddhaghosa’s commentary has been of very great service. Whenever his readings, from his comments upon them, are unmistakable, they must, in my opinion, be adopted in spite of other authorities. His MSS. were at least fifteen centuries older than ours, and in a first edition we certainly cannot aim at anything higher than reproducing his text as far as possible (here he adds a footnote: ‘Even if his readings may seem questionable, as […]’)”.

What does the commentary to MN I 48.34 say? It refers to the discussion of the four noble truths in [chapter XVI] of the Visuddhimagga. There (§ 57-60 ed. H.C. Warren and Dh. Kosambi, Cambridge Mass., 1950) we read sañkhittena pañcupādānakkhandhā dukkhā, without pi. The Sixth Council (perhaps influenced by TRENCKNER’s view) may have had a similar motive for leaving out pi at all places where the concluding remark on dukkha appears, but I have no information about this and can therefore only deal with TRECKNER’s statement.

In the main, I am in favour of considering the oldest commentaries as very likely preserving old readings. But such a reading, especially when the commentator himself lives centuries after the composition of a text, cannot be preferred to another, if he employs ideas that cannot be found in the old texts, whereas the other reading can be defended by referring to their contents. This is precisely the case in Buddhaghosa’s explanation of the reading without pi.

At Visuddhimagga XVI § 57-60 we get the impression that Buddhaghosa (or a predecessor) had a text without pi before him (readings are not discussed) and made the best of it by explaining sañkhittena as indicating a summary of the preceding statements 7 and declaring that the remark on the five ‘branches’ of appropriation implies all other statements about pain, because actual pain does not occur without them. 8

But to my knowledge, there is no single place in the Pāli Vinaya- and Suttapitaka where the often occurring statement that the five upādānakkhandhā are dukkha is understood in this way, while there are many places where their being dukkha is understood as derived from their impermanence, which implies that in this context dukkha does not mean ‘causing actual pain’, but ‘eventually disappointing’ or ‘unsatisfactory’. Moreover, there is, as far as I know, at best one place in the Vinaya- and Suttapitaka where sankhittena seems to summarize what precedes: at the end of MN no. 38 (I 270.37); and this place is doubtful, because it could be an inadequate copy of what happens in MN no. 37, where sankhittena appears at the start and at the end of the sutta. In all other cases I have checked, about 300, sañkhittena announces an item that afterwards is, or should be, explained.

Given this state of things it seems unlikely that pi in the last remark on dukkha is an error of uncontrolled repetition of the pi in the preceding sentences, now fortunately removed by TRENCKNER and the Sixth Council. It is much more probable that Buddhaghosa (or a predecessor) had a text where pi in the last remark had, accidentally or with some intention, been lost, and that he made the best of it, a nice interpretation that succeeds fairly well in maintaining an unequivocal meaning of dukkha, but is not important for the historian of early buddhism. For this historical purpose we have to accept the reading with pi, and to understand the last remark as another example of the usage of the adjective dukkha, though in a slightly different meaning, which points to an addition. Sankhittena means nothing than: this is a short remark that has to be explained to the neophyte who does not know what the five upādānakkhandhas are and/or why they are are called dukkha, though they do not always actually cause pain. The translation then is: “Also the five branches of appropriation, briefly said (sankhittena), are causing pain.”

Let us, finally, return to OlDENBERG. In his famous Buddha, sein Leben, seine Lehre, seine Gemeinde 9 we find a translation of the concluding remark on dukkha that also seems to depend on the Visuddhimagga, not on the Mahāvagga, the source OLdenBERG mentions in this connection: “kurz die fünferlei Objekte des Ergreifens sind Leiden 10 ”. Perhaps he was inspired by TRENCKNER. But then one would expect a note referring to the reading established by himself in his edition of Vin I. I found no such note. Instead a note is attached to ‘Objekte des Ergreifens’ that gives German translations of the names of these five objects as they occur elsewhere, and moreover rejects, without any arguing, an assumption by KOEPPEN 11 said to be given without any arguing, namely that the concluding remark on dukkha might be “ein metaphysischer Zusatz” 12.

Exit KOEPPEN, at least in this question, on the basis of an ex cathedra judgement. A questionable tradition of translating this remark in books that pretend to deal with the Buddha’s teaching has been established here and is still flourishing. To arrive at his judgement against KOEPPEN, OLDENBERG had to forget (or to ignore) his own edition of the Mahāvagga. He showed moreover, that he had not the slightest inkling of the problem that vedanā, the second of these ‘Objekte des Ergreifens’, is often explained as consisting of pleasant, unpleasant and neutral feeling and that pleasant and neutral feeling cannot be characterized as ‘Leiden’ and only in a slightly different sense as ‘leidvoll’. 13

Footnotes

  1. The Vinaya Pitakaṃ. Vol. 1, The Mahāvagga. London-Edinburgh 1879. ↩

  2. OLDENBERG’s edition seems to reflect inconsistency of the manuscripts in sometimes considering combinations of -ṃ with the particle pi as a real sandhi and writing -m pi. ↩

  3. dukkha- is an adjective here; it follows the gender of the preceding (pro)noun. Not so in the Mülasarvāstivāda version in The Gilgit Manuscript of the Sañghabhedavastu, ed. by R. Gnoli and T. Venkatacharya, Part 1, Roma 1977, 137: jātir duḥkhaṃ, jarā duḥkhaṃ, vyādhir duḥkhaṃ, maraṇaṃ duḥkham, priyaviprayogo duḥkhaṃ, apriyasaṃprayogo duḥkhaṃ, yad apicchan paryesamāno na labhate tad api duḥkham, sañkṣepatah pañca upādānaskandhā duḥkham. Here only yad apicchan paryesamāno na labhate tad api duḥkham contains api. ↩

  4. In translating the noun dukkha as ‘pain’ (and correspondingly the adjective as ‘causing pain’ or ‘painful’) I follow K. R. NORMAN “The Four Noble Truths”, in: Indogical and Buddhist Studies (Festschrift J.W. de Jong) ed. A.L. Hercus et. al. Canberra 1982: 377-391, n. 3 “without implying that this is necessarily the best translation”. ↩

  5. OLDENBERG writes: upādānakkhandhāpi ↩

  6. The pi at NDP AN I 177.2 seems to have escaped attention. ↩

  7. He depends on a text that included sokaparidevadukkhadomassupāyāsā and appiyehi sampayogo dukkho piyehi vippayogo dukkho, not on the Mahāvagga passage. ↩

  8. The essence of the commentary is given in these verses:
    Jātippabhutikaṃ dukkhaṃ yaṃ vuttam idha tādina
    avuttam yañ ca taṃ śabbaṃ vinā ete na vijjati
    Yasmā, tasmā upādānakkhandhā sañkhepato ime
    dukkhā ti vuttā dukkhantadesakena Mahesinā. ↩

  9. The fourth edition (Stuttgart-Berlin 1903) was the earliest available to me; see p. 146 and 293. I also checked the edition supervised by H. VON GLASENAPP (Stuttgart [1959?]) and saw that in this question nothing had changed; see p. 137 and 224 and note p. 426. ↩

  10. dukkhā is of course not ‘Leiden’, but ‘leidvoll’, if one depends on the Pāli sources, as OlDENBERG says he does. ↩

  11. Carl Friedrich KOEPPEN, Die Religion des Buddha und ihre Entstehung. I, Berlin 1857. ↩

  12. “Köppen (1, S.222, Anm.1) findet in diesen letzten Worten einen ‘metaphysischen Zusatz’ zum ursprünglichen Text der vier Wahrheiten, ohne allen Grund. So viel metaphysische Terminologie, wie in diesen Worten liegt, hat der Buddhismus von jeher besessen.” ↩

  13. Already v.GlaseNAPP, in his ‘Nachwort’ to OldenBERG’s Buddha [1959: 474] hinted at this problem, by pointing to the Rahogatasutta (SN no.36.11), though his approach is quite unhistorical. There, replying to a question, the Buddha admits (SN IV 216.20) he has taught both: there are three kinds of feelings, pleasant, unpleasant and neutral, and: whatever one feels belongs to the unpleasant (yam kiñci vedayitam tam dukkhasmim). But “the [second] statement has been made by me having in mind that sanikhārā as such are impermanent (mayā sañkhārānam yeva aniccataṃ sandhāya bhāsitam)”. See Lambert SCHMITHAUSEN, “Zur buddhistischen Lehre von der dreifachen Leidhaftigkeit”, ZDMG (Supplement III.2) 1977: 918-931. ↩

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