Chapter 3: Buddhaghosa and Asvaghosa: Buddhist Analogues to God

I. Important Buddhist Personalities

Siddhartha Gautama (6^th-5^th century B.C.): Founder of Buddhism

Asvaghosa (1^st – 2^nd Century A.D.)

Buddaghosa (5^th century A.D.)

II. Dukkha and the Way of Release

All is dukkha – (impermanence), but all dukkha leads to suffering. All suffering depends on flux or change in the world and desire as a part of the human personality. Relationships are not permanent. Jobs are not permanent. Nothing is permanent, except change itself. There is no substantial self (an-atta) and everything begins to die from the moment it is born. As long as impermanent things are desired, suffering is inevitable.

The cycle of death and rebirth is a cycle caught in the web of impermanence and suffering. Desire (for temporal and finite things) must come to end to break the cycle of samsara. Since the self or individuality is also an illusion, one must extinguish all desires for self and finite things. This extinguishes the cycle of death and rebirth and releases self. This release is called nirvana.

Strictly speaking, no one enters nirvana, for nirvana is unchanging. So release cannot be taken too literally. Everyone is already nirvana. Release is coming to see this, extinguishing individual consciousness. Nirvana is spoken of as analogous to a single drop of water that falls into an infinite ocean. This may describe the psychological aspect of release, but objectively there never was a time when the infinite ocean (nirvana) was distinguishable from individual drops of water (finite selves). The ocean-analogy suggests little more than a loss of the perception of individuality.

III. Nirvana

Nirvana is the ultimate state. Nothing can be said about Nirvana in the positive. At best we can speak of it solely in negative terms: absence of change, absence of individuality, absence of time, absence of desire, etc.

“A man comes to believe in his essential nature, to know that what exists is the erroneous activity of the mind and that the world of objects in front of him is non-existent. . .this is called gaining nirvana.” – Asvaghosa (see Ward, p. 71)

Nirvana is “an indefinable state, independent of all worldly ties, beyond all earthly passion, freedom from all egotistical, false ideas, - in short, it is the exact opposite of everything known to the conditioned, individual existence between birth and death.”

- Von Glasenapp, Buddhist commentator (see Ward, p. 60)

IV. Buddhism and Belief in God

It is commonly held that Buddhism has no place for a supreme personal creator of the universe, i.e., God as worshipped in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. This leads some commentators to claim that Buddhism is not a religion at all, since belief in God is supposed to be essential to religion.

However, according to Ward, there are indications that Buddhism is closer to theism than some commentators allow.

Nirvana is the one ultimate reality and has many of the “negative” qualities of God (e.g., without change, without beginning).

The Buddha-nature, which appears in the world at various times and assists people toward enlightenment, is said to have the qualities of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. Asvaghosa wrote: “I take refuge in the greatly compassionate one, the savior of the world, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient.” (Ward, p. 70).

There is a Supreme or perfect Mind, associated with Suchness (tathata), and it is endowed with many divine qualities, great wisdom, eternity, immutability – a state of perfection. (Ward, p. 64)

This is still at some distance from the personal creator God of Western theism, but there is a convergence toward Western theism in a way similar to what we find in Hinduism.

V. Potential Problems

Ward notes a couple of conceptual problems with the basic doctrines of Buddhism.

· Paradoxes of knowledge: (i) Nirvana is said to be incapable of description but yet it is something that can be known in the state of enlightenment as the one absolute essential truth. (ii) Nirvana is something that we can know exists without knowing anything about it because it is beyond all description.

· Paradox of individuality: If individuality is wholly unreal, then there is no self (an-atta), but then there is no thing to achieve enlightenment or release. What exactly loses individual consciousness if there is no actual individual consciousness? It looks like the entire scheme must actually presuppose some sort of substantial self, a distinct finite consciousness, which then actually achieves a change in perspective and experiences enlightenment and becomes one with nirvana.

Ward thinks that these paradoxes can be alleviated to some degree by softening the basic claims of Buddhism.

First, we must pay attention to the operative force of Buddhist language. The largely negative descriptions of nirvana function as indicators of the inadequacy of human language to speak of ultimate reality. (Ward p. 67).

Second, rather than viewing an-atta as self-denial or renunciation, one can view it as indicating that desires for finite things must be overcome by a higher vision of life. Self-denial is replaced by self-transcendence. In that case, we should not suppose that there is no self at all, but that the self we know must be transformed into a higher self. We must acquire a transformed vision of the world as the manifestation of nirvana. (Ward, pp. 72-73).

Ward claims that the Buddhist tradition is flexible enough to allow these ways of stretching some of its basic concepts into a more coherent view.

VI. Summary of Main Concepts

Key Terms: Dukkha, samsara, an-atta, nirvana.

Four Basic ideas:

Buddhism emphasizes:

(i) The search for enlightenment, under the guidance of those who have already become enlightened.

(ii) Acceptance of an-atta (no self doctrine)

(iii) Acceptance of dukkha, the impermanence and suffering of all things.

(iv) Pursuit of formalized techniques of self-discipline and meditation