It's a question we (metaphysical thinkers, philosophers, and intellectuals) love. We would probably all want to know. That someone may have been the foolish monk Ven. Malunkyaputta. Here's how the Buddha answered to subdue his delusion, ignorant confusion, and pernicious wrong views.
Metaphysical questions
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| Malunkyaputta, do not trouble yourself with such Qs |
On that occasion, Ven. Malunkyaputta had been meditating when he got distracted and started pondering. The hindrance of skeptical doubts arose in his mind, realizing that he had never gotten the answer to all of the usual "spiritual" questions seekers were usually in search of. All of those unanswered (some might even say unanswerable, the imponderable questions that plague Homo sapiens or "thinking human").
- Is the physical world finite or infinite?
- Did the universe have an origin, and will it end?
- Who created this Universe?
- Is the soul the same as the body or different?
- What becomes of a fully enlightened person after death?
- And so on ad nauseum. There is really no end to possible metaphysical speculations.
- There is even a Buddhist text that summarizes all of the view prevalent at the time of the Buddha, which is called the Brahmajāla Sutta or "The Net of All-Embracing Views."
- "Views" (ditthi) generally refers to wrong views (miccha-ditthi) unless otherwise qualified with samma- ("right-") views. They are as dangerous as a thicket one will get caught up in; it is far better to set them aside, awaken, and with an enlightened mind try to recall what they were when they used to make sense because they will not make sense -- and will not arise -- to the awakened (enlightened) mind/heart.
- Ven. Malunkyaputta did not stop there. He threatened the Buddha that he would quit the monastic life and disrobe if he did not get answers to these things.
- The Buddha gave him a powerful parable, asked him if the Buddha had ever promised to answer such questions in exchange for him becoming a monastic disciple, and thereby encouraged him to pursue the Path to the end of all suffering at which time he could see for himself independent of any teacher or teaching. This was that parable:
When one is shot with an arrow smeared with poison, that wounded person's family may summon a doctor to have the poison removed and provide an antidote [9].
But what if the wounded person refuses to let a doctor do anything until such time as certain important questions are answered? What if the wounded person demands first to know:
- Who shot me with this arrow?
- What is that person's caste and job?
- WHY did that person shoot this arrow?
- What kind of feather was used in its tail?
- What kind of wood was used in its shaft?
- What kind of poison was smeared on its tip?
- What was the method the poison was procured?
So, too, Malunkyaputta, a meditator will die long before getting such [fruitless metaphysical] questions answered.
It is no different for one who follows the Middle Way, which teaches only those things necessary to realize enlightenment (direct knowing-and-seeing for oneself).
Things not helpful and not necessary (but harmful and misleading), the Buddha (the Tathagata or Wayfarer, the Supremely Awakened One) does not teach.
It is because those types of questions are not helpful in one's quest for enlightenment that they have been left undeclared. More (Nontheistic religion)
More, more? Enough has been said, but for those persistent thinkers who question
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| I have more questions, Sir. - Ask them. |
A disciple, a student, also sets them aside and pursues this path-of-practice to its culmination: awakening in this very life. Then one may ask all such questions.
One will not ask them because they will not arise because they will not make sense once one understands and penetrates DEPENDENT ORIGINATION (paticca-samuppada).
One may even answer them for others on their quest who ask such loaded questions, but to do so will be a disservice to them which the Awakened One has avoided, set aside, and left undeclared.
- It would be like asking the question, "Have you stopped beating your wife? Yes or no!" What is the right answer? There isn't one. There's an explanation but not an answer.
- A more ancient example that still makes sense is the question, "When this fire goes out, which way does it go: up, down, sideways?" It doesn't "go" somewhere, for it ceases when its causes-and-conditions cease because, really, it never had an independent existence (an existence independent of those very causes and condition: fuel, wick, heat, oxygen, and process-of-combustion...
- In exactly the same way, when we ask about the "soul" (the "self," atta, atman, ego, personality, being, consciousness), "Where does it go after death? To annihilation? To eternal life? Which is it?!" The question is wrong, so any answer will be misleading and mistaken. But there is an answer:
- The Buddha formulated that answer in accordance with ultimate truth: Dependent Origination. "When this is, that comes to be; when this is not [present], that does not come to be." Or it may also be phrased more poetically as, "Not having been, they come to be; once having been, they cease." What? Those things. Which things? All composite things (nirvana being the only compact, a.k.a. non-composite, thing and so not a "thing," no-thing yet not "nothing") but most importantly the Five Aggregates clung to as self.
- That is why the Heart Sutra says, "Form (the first aggregate or heap) is emptiness, and emptiness is form." A better modern translation would be to say, "Form is impersonal [not self], and the impersonal is form." Then the exact same thing is then said of the remaining four aggregates: feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness(es), the khandha or skandhas in Sanskrit.
- The Buddha also went into greater detail when he answered, "What things?" with "the ALL that is burning."
How could this possibly be true? There are many who have followed the Middle Way, who have avoided four foolish (and detrimental) questions and pursued four wise (and beneficial) questions. What are they?
- Was I in the past?
- What was I in the past?
- Will I be in the future?
- What will I be in the future?
The fool ponders such thing fruitlessly, full of wrong view, caught in a thicket of views. However, the wise pursue four other questions which the Buddha has suggested, commended, and advocated:
- What is dukkha (disappointment, suffering, pain)?
- What is its cause?
- What is its solution?
- What is the way to its solution?
These, indeed, are of great benefit. They are known as the Catu-Ariya-Sacca, the Four Ennobling (Enlightening) Truths, the fourth being this very Ennobling Eightfold Path declared by the Buddha.
- Video; explained by Dhr. Seven and Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation) (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit
