Ancient debate on the afterlife in Buddhist texts

 Ancient debate on the afterlife in Buddhist texts

In what follows, I report the comment that Bhikkhu Analayo makes on the Payasi-sutta (DN 23; here an English translation: https://suttacentral.net/dn23/en/sujato?lang=en&layout=plain&reference=none&notes=asterisk&highlight=false&script=latin) and its parallels in his book 'Rebirth in Early Buddhism and Current Research'. This shows clearly that the existence of an 'afterlife' wasn't universally accepted even in ancient India.

"As briefly mentioned in the first chapter of my study, the early discourses give the impression of having come into being in a setting where the idea of rebirth was far from universally accepted. Hence it comes as no surprise that at times the early Buddhists had to defend this doctrine when facing those who rejected the idea of any form of survival after death. The Pāyāsi-sutta and its parallels record a prolonged debate between the materialist Pāyāsi and the Buddhist monk Kumārakassapa on precisely this topic. In addition to the early Buddhist discourses that report their discussion, a similar debate is also recorded in a Jain text. This goes to show that the need to defend teachings on rebirth against materialist challenges was shared by the Buddhist and Jain communities alike. The Pāyāsi-sutta and its parallels report that Pāyāsi brought up various experiments carried out to prove that the whole of personal reality consists of the body alone. According to the description of these experiments, criminals were executed in various ways to determine whether some immaterial substance or soul could be seen to escape at the moment of their passing away. Here are some of the experiments reported in the Dīrgha-āgama parallel to the Pāyāsi-sutta:

'In the village that is my fief some person committed thievery. The inspectors caught him, led him to me, and told me: “This man is a thief, may you punish him.” I replied: “Take that man, bind him, and put him into a big cauldron, cover it with soft leather and with a thick layer of mud, so that [the covering] is firm and thick—let there be no leak. Dispatch people to surround it and boil it over fire.” Then I wanted to observe and come to know whether his spirit goes out at some place. Leading my retinue we surrounded the cauldron and watched, but none of us saw his spirit come or go at any place. We opened the cauldron again to look and did not see the spirit coming or going at any place. For this reason I know that there is no other world.'

The reference to an “other world” is to rebirth in some other form of existence. An alternative procedure adopted with another thief is described as follows:

'I told my attendants to take and bind that man, take off his skin while he was alive, and seek the consciousness, yet we all did not see it. I again told my attendants to cut off the flesh and seek the consciousness, yet we still did not see it. I again told my attendants to sever the tendons and veins and seek the consciousness between the bones, yet we still did not see it. I again told my attendants to break the bones and extract the marrow to seek the consciousness inside the marrow, yet we still did not see it. Kassapa, for this reason I know that there is no other world.' 

Yet another thief reportedly received the following treatment:

'I told my attendants: “Take that man and weigh him.” My attendants took him while he was alive and weighed him. Then I told the attendants: “Take this man and slowly kill him without damaging his skin or flesh.” They followed my instruction and killed him without any damage. I again told my attendants: “Again weigh him.” He was heavier than before. Kassapa, we weighed that man when he was alive, when his consciousness was still there, his complexion was pleasing, he was still able to speak, and his body was light. When he was dead we weighed him again, when his consciousness had become extinct, he had lost his complexion, he was unable to speak, and his body had become heavy. For this reason I know that there is no other world."'

It is remarkable that already in ancient India we find the idea of trying to test religious doctrine by conducting various experiments in such a manner. This holds independent of whether one considers the text to be reporting what Pāyāsi had actually told his attendants to do or whether he had only made up these descriptions for the sake of debate. In both cases the basic assumption behind the description given of these experiments is that, for anything to exist, it needs to be physically measurable in some way. Since in reply to the earlier experiments Kumārakassapa had denied the possibility that the consciousness to be reborn can be seen, the last experiment then assumes that there should at least be some other evidence for it, such as weight. The body should be lighter after the departure of consciousness, but the experiment finds the opposite. The materialist position taken by Pāyāsi foreshadows an attitude that continues to emerge again and again in debates surrounding rebirth right up to modern times. According to this attitude, the entire range of mental experiences is a mere byproduct of matter and can be accounted for in material terms, hence anything that is not observable and measurable in material terms has no claim to being real at all. In the setting of the Pāyāsi-sutta and its parallels, Kumārakassapa is quick to challenge the assumptions underlying the epistemological position taken by Pāyāsi, which he does with the help of similes. He points out that, on granting the validity of this type of approach, one would have to grant to the congenitally blind the claim that, since they do not see certain things, these do not exist. Pāyāsi’s expectation that the mind should manifest as an easily visible physical phenomenon at the time of death is like someone chopping chopping up fire sticks and pounding them to dust in an attempt to find the fire that they can produce if used properly. Or else it is like someone who has heard the sound of a conch being blown and then addresses the conch with a request for more sound, or in some versions of the discourse even goes so far as to hit the conch, kick it with the foot, or threaten to smash it, all done in an attempt to hear its beautiful sound again. These replies exemplify the type of answer with which Buddhists of later times will try to meet the materialist challenge by rejecting its premises as invalid." (bhikkhu Analayo, Rebirth in Early Buddhism and Current Research, pp. 70-3)