The trouble with scriptures

The idea of a canonical scripture in Buddhism is dependent on the belief in the enlightenment of the Buddha. An ancient scripture is given canonical authority if it is Buddha vacana, the word of the Buddha. In Theravada Buddhism, this is usually interpreted to mean the actual words of the historical Buddha, and thus the canonical status of a scripture depends on a claim about its historical authenticity. In Mahayana Buddhism, Buddha vacana is more likely to be interpreted in non-historical terms, as whatever is conducive to enlightenment.

There is a widespread recognition in Buddhism that scriptures are limited vehicles for conveying the truth. Enlightenment is often said to be beyond words, so that words can only offer pointers in the direction of enlightenment. Textual fundamentalism is not impossible[1], but it is unusual, particularly amongst Western Buddhists. Nevertheless, there is a canon of scriptures that is venerated and given special status because of the connection it is believed to have with enlightenment. The fact that their status is not absolute should not deter us from asking critical questions about the status of scriptures, and the authority given them as sources of knowledge.

If, as in the Theravada, scriptures are given canonical status because of the belief that they represent the words of the historical Buddha, it is clear that the belief in their special value as a source of knowledge depends on a revelatory appeal to the Buddha’s enlightenment. Buddhists may protest that this “revelation” does not depend on the same assumptions as a revelation from God, but nevertheless the fact that they mark certain scriptures out as the word of the Buddha shows that the idea of revelation must be working in some respect.

It is possible to believe in a revelation from the Buddha and yet recognise the scripture as an imperfect verbal formulation, which we will also understand imperfectly. Buddhists may, indeed, claim that their canonical scriptures only offer good advice, to which they pay special attention because of its believed origin from the Buddha. Yet how many pieces of mere good advice are carefully preserved over 2000 years or more, memorised, exhaustively studied and commented on, venerated and turned into objects of worship? If they were the only possible pieces of good advice, this might be plausible, but given the many other pieces of good advice there are available which are not given the same kind of treatment, it becomes obvious that the reason Buddhists treat their scriptures in this way is merely due to their adherence to a cultural tradition, and has little to do with any unique features of the texts themselves.

This becomes even clearer in the case of the Mahayana approach. At least some Mahayanists claim that the appeal to the historical Buddha can be dispensed with, even if they like to keep up some kind of symbolic connection with him. This means that the justification for the special status of the scriptures is, in theory, purely one of how useful they are in practice. If this were really the case, however, Mahayanists ought to be constantly on the lookout for new candidates for their canons, and any book with a high level of useful spiritual content, regardless of its origin, should be included. However, this is far from being the case. In practice, Mahayanists maintain a closed canon based on cultural tradition.

If Buddhists do not in fact treat their scriptures as revelations, the whole idea of a canon becomes redundant. If scriptures merely offered good and useful advice, not only would this cross cultural and religious barriers, but it would vary in intensity. Rather than justifying a single kind of judgement that a scripture is “canonical“ (or Buddha vacana), the differing degrees of usefulness of the advice would justify different degrees of credit.

None of this is intended to suggest that the Buddhist scriptures do not, in fact, contain much useful advice. For example, there are instructions on meditation, ethical guidance, and glimpses of the Buddha as an inspiring character. The trouble with Buddhist scriptures consists only in the status given to them and its implications. Just as the Bible contains embarrassing bits (such as Lot offering his daughters’ virginity to a lustful mob, or God commanding the genocide of the Amalekites) that Christians might often wish were not there so they would not have to explain them away, the Buddhist canons also contain sections which are frankly an embarrassment to anyone who wants to in any way claim them as part of an authoritative set of documents. In the Buddhist canonical literature, for example, there is the story of Prince Vessantara, who sells his wife and children into slavery through supposedly exemplary non-attachment[2], there is the story of another exemplary prince who feeds himself to a hungry tigress[3], and there is the extremely crude defence of rebirth by the setting up of the stubborn and stupid “sceptic” Prince Payasi as a straw man to argue against it with ludicrous ineffectiveness[4]. If these passages were not given a special authoritative status by the fact of their being regarded as canonical, none of this need be an issue, but the canonisation of mixed traditional material creates arguments over such passages.

Buddhism has betrayed its own insights by not being able to jettison such material, and by continuing to give it authoritative status. The fact that Buddhists interpret this authoritative scriptural status in different ways, and will in practice use some bits of the canon much more than others, does not change the central point here – that having a canon at all is a mark of dogmatic assumptions. Buddhists cannot and should not accept claims as true just because they are in the canon, and therefore the way the canon should be regarded is no different from any other document – it should be judged in relation to experience using the Middle Way. So the existence of the canon and the special status of scriptures is either indefensible or it is redundant. Although what scriptures contain may be a useful source of information or guidance, this has nothing to do with them being scriptures.

One standard Buddhist response to this is to say that the type of authority that Buddhists place in their scriptures differs from the nature of scriptural authority in other religions. They might say that the authority of scriptures merely justifies giving them high regard, or a kind of prima facie authority – to be turned to first given the trust that Buddhists have in the Buddha as a previously useful source of advice. It is similar, perhaps, to trusting a weather forecaster that one has known to be correct in the past. This past experience of positive benefit from the advice of the Buddha is said to justify turning to the Buddhist scriptures, which are records of the Buddha’s words (or perhaps those of other enlightened followers of the Buddha), just as one would turn first to the reliable weather forecaster if one wanted a reliable weather forecast.

The trouble with the idea that trusting the scriptures is at all like trusting a reliable person is that it does not take into account the huge differences between the two situations. To judge a person reliable in one’s own experience, one can not only consult the pattern of what one has directly and personally experienced, but also the personal intuitions and the contextual factors. A local farmer who is a good weather forecaster will not only be known personally, but also will be basing his forecasts on a knowledge of the same local environment that I live in. He will also be making claims on a relatively straightforward matter where the scope for misunderstanding is limited. If I am a friend of his, I am also likely to be more charitable in my interpretations of situations where he might be judged wrong.

However, in the case of the Buddha, we do not meet him personally or directly in scriptures, but only as mediated by a 2,500-year-old tradition. We meet the Buddha that that tradition wishes to present to us, by necessity a highly selective and possibly distorted picture. He is speaking in the language and cultural context of ancient India, a cultural context very different from our own. To believe in the veracity of claims made in these circumstances is not a question of trust, but of faith. It is not supported by personal experience, contextual immediacy or even an assurance of accuracy.

Another possible response to this problem is to see it purely as a question about the historical accuracy of Buddhist scriptures, and try to provide scholarly answers. Scholarship can provide a limited amount of information to help us understand the context of the scriptures, their original intention and purpose, and the ways in which problems of language or transmission might distort our understanding of them. However, many scholarly assertions are in any case composed of guesswork based on necessarily limited evidence. No amount of scholarship is likely to be able to remove the alien cultural origins and the remoteness of Buddhist scriptures. It is possible to understand some aspects of the context in which the Buddha spoke, but not apply it relevantly to our own time, nor know how to do so. Merely understanding the aspects of the context that we are able to trace at this distance is not enough to do much to bridge the gap, especially when these are not ordinary documents, but ones that are having special reliance placed on them.

Furthermore, a preoccupation with solving the problem of the source of knowledge in Buddhism through the scholarly investigation of scriptures often seems to have the effect of digging Buddhists deeper and deeper into certain framing assumptions. The detailed investigation of traditional sources only reinforces the idea that they are a true source of knowledge, leading either to the acceptance or rejection of Buddhism purely on traditional grounds. Scholars, who seem on the face of it to be engaging in an objective scientific investigation of the objectivity of Buddhism, are often amongst the strongest conservative influences, as they keep the focus on traditional “Buddhism” as a field of study, rather than considering its claims in a larger practical and philosophical context.

Scholarly investigation of scriptures and their background also very rapidly becomes an end in itself, and a massive distraction from the insights offered by the texts. To understand the ideas in what is taken to be their “genuine” original form, the scholarly study of scriptures (whether done by Buddhists or by non-Buddhist academics) requires careful study of the context. All the attention is then given to “what is really being said” (as though we really had any access to that!) rather than to the critical evaluation or adaptation of the insightful ideas to be found in Buddhist scriptures.

In a self-fulfilling circle, the Buddhist scholar also sets out to find truths in scriptures and finds them there, but these “truths” are framed and created by the fact that they are in the scriptures, rather than being judged by any external needs and compared with other possible sources of insight. On many occasions, a Buddhist undertaking the study of scriptures has already abandoned any recognition that he/she is constructing insights for him/herself, but is looking for ones already there in the words of the scripture in a fashion which, judged only on Buddhist principles, must be deluded.

For all these reasons, scriptures are not a reliable source of knowledge in Buddhism. Where they offer understanding or insight, the value of these insights has to be judged according to other standards that do not originate in the scripture or its status. The belief in a canonical standard in Buddhism depends on metaphysical assumptions about enlightenment as revelation, which are at odds with some of the key insights in Buddhism. Scholarly study, which some Buddhists and others undertake as a way of overcoming these difficulties, is not at all able to overcome them, and in many ways only operates as a distraction from the underlying philosophical issues that surround Buddhism and which remain unexamined. Finally, although a critique of scriptures and a recognition of their limitations exist in Buddhism, these are largely not consistently applied, otherwise there would not be the same faith in scriptures that exists in many Buddhists.