I return right this moment to my correspondence with Justin Whitaker on the Sigālovāda Sutta, taking off from his response to my previous post. The query at difficulty between us, I feel, is what constitutes a very good Buddhist life for a layperson or householder, a non-monk. We are able to get extra particular by asking: ought to the layperson’s life be one which aspires to emulate the monk’s? I don’t assume that it ought to, and I proceed to suspect that Justin doesn’t both.
For me there’s a deeper query that underlies any reply to the questions within the earlier paragraph. That’s: are there any items that it’s worthy for human beings to pursue regardless of their contributions to the allevation of struggling (and/or the pursuit of reality, appropriate seeing)? In additional classical phrases, are there correct purisatthas (puruṣārthas) aside from dukkhanirodha and yathābhūtadassana? It’s fairly clear to me that the Pali suttas, normally, take the reply to that query to be no. And it’s that No reply that underlies each the suttas’ advocacy of monasticism as the very best aim, and their viewing of the great family life because the one described within the Sigālovāda: an imperfect approximation of monasticism. For, the suttas say, it’s monasticism that really permits one to shed the attachments and pleasures that lure one in struggling. Monasticism doesn’t assure this aim by any means – as Justin notes, there are many dangerous monks – but it surely advances the aim significantly better than the family life does.
I disagree with the suttas on this method; I’d reply that deeper query Sure. I consider that each familial love and aesthetic pleasure have worth in themselves, regardless of whether or not they assist us cut back struggling. Justin describes a pleasure that he felt within the “friendships, occasional alcohol, and romance” he had as a youth. I acknowledge this pleasure and see it as one thing that’s worthwhile and price celebrating, not one thing to be shed. I do admire monks for his or her single-minded deal with the cultivation of a virtuous thoughts, and I do assume we laypeople have quite a bit to study from monks – however not by attempting to make our life nearer to theirs, not until we’re going to make the leap and be part of them.
Justin says that “the household life has worth as a part of the trail”. I’d push on this level: the trail to what? And the way does household life contribute to it? It appears to me that what Justin is saying right here will not be the normal view of the Pali suttas. Within the suttas, the magga is a path to the tip of struggling, and household life, if something, interferes with that path. The Sāmaññaphala Sutta tells us: “Family life (gharāvaso) is hindered, a path of mud. Pabbajjā (going forth into ordination) is air. Not simply does one who inhabits a family enter an especially full, extraordinarily pure, brightly good holy life (brahmacariya).” (DN I.62-3) Most individuals will keep again in that dusty family life – as a result of we’re not ok and powerful sufficient for the pure and shiny lifetime of the renouncer. It appears to me that that’s what underlies the Buddha’s recommendation that Sigāla keep again within the family life.
Against this, Justin says he does not see his household life as a lesser path. Neither do I. However why not? Justin says “I used to be and am pretty good at being a associate and now a father.” I’ve each motive to consider him on this. I want to assume that I’m additionally good at being the previous. However neither of those achievements takes away from the Sāmaññaphala’s declare that this path is lesser. So far as that sutta is worried, the time and psychological effort concerned in being a associate and father distracts from the actually vital pursuit of shedding the āsavas and kilesas, the psychological hindrances that maintain us out of nirvana. If one should take up such a path, then by all means do it properly, deal with the companions and kids one is trusted to look after. However to interact in such a path remains to be to be restricted in a single’s pursuit of true liberation – a restrict, once more, that the Buddha famous when he named his son Rāhula, “fetter”. The son was a fetter, a tie to the mud of worldly life, an obstacle to liberation.
In contrast to the Buddha, I don’t consider that one ought to consider youngsters as impediments, and I think about Justin doesn’t both. However that is some extent of our disagreement with him. The classical texts do have their causes for seeing youngsters that means. Strictly talking, having youngsters might properly improve struggling – whether or not in a classical sense during which there at the moment are extra beings on the wheel of rebirth, or within the trendy research that repeatedly and replicably present people get less happy when they are raising kids. Nevertheless it appears to me that, correctly understood, the worth of getting youngsters is not as a result of they cut back struggling – if that’s the aim, they may disappoint – however slightly in one other aim solely, a broader sense of achievement that comes from familial love.
Justin refers to “the large Buddhist path”. I don’t assume that the trail spelled out within the suttas is certainly large, if “large” implies that it has two lanes, a family and a monastic, which might be equally legitimate to journey on. Within the suttas the trail will not be large however lengthy: one lives this life virtuously as one can as a weak householder, within the hopes that within the subsequent life one will likely be sturdy sufficient to be a monk.
Once I declare familial love and aesthetic pleasure as items in themselves, Justin is correct to query whether or not this declare “hangs properly inside a Buddhist ethical or philosophical framework”. My view is a departure from the view of the suttas – identical to the rejection of rebirth, which I feel this departure is closely connected to. Justin is himself (rightly) able to explicitly abandon vital parts of the suttas’ instructing, notably on gender. When Justin says his household life will not be a lesser path, I feel that too is a departure from the suttas. However I do assume {that a} framework which acknowledges household life and aesthetic pleasure as intrinsic items can nonetheless remain Buddhist in essentially the most vital senses regardless of its departure from the suttas (and I think that matters). It’s simply that, as soon as we depart from the suttas in acknowledging the intrinsic worth of familial love, I feel we must always do the identical in acknowledging the intrinsic worth of aesthetic pleasure. And that’s the reason I don’t discover the Sigālovāda Sutta a very good information.
Cross-posted on the Indian Philosophy Blog.
