Buddhism | | Page 25

Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

Panna (prajna in Sanskrit) is one of the key concepts in Buddhist thought. Usually translated as “wisdom”, panna is employed by the Buddha to describe how he came to discover and formulate the Dhamma: “Then, monks, through careful attention, there took place in me a breakthrough by wisdom: ‘When there is birth, aging-and-death comes to be; aging-and-death has birth as its condition.’ … ‘When there is consciousness, name-and-form comes to be; name-and-form has consciousness as its condition.’ … ” (Samyutta Nikaya 12) We are also reminded of the importance of panna when the Buddha recommends it as one of the four virtues for his lay followers: “Here, Visakha, a woman is accomplished in faith, moral discipline, generosity, and wisdom. … And how is a woman accomplished in wisdom? Here, Visakha, a woman possesses the wisdom that sees into the arising and passing away of phenomena, that is noble and penetrative and leads to the destruction of suffering.” (Anguttara Nikaya 8)

We can infer, from the above quotes, that panna is a key concept that leads us to important teachings of the Buddha such as “dependent origination” and “impermanence”. We also know, from the well-known Prajnaparamita, that panna leads us to another important teaching of the Buddha about sunyata, or “emptiness”. If panna is such an important concept in Buddhist thought, what does it really mean? What is it like? Does “wisdom” really capture what it really means?

The Buddha himself considers panna as something that one obtains as a result of sharpening one’s capacity called vipassna, or “insight”: “Two things, O monks, partake of true knowledge. What two? Serenity and insight. When serenity is developed, what benefit does one experience? The mind is developed … When insight is developed, what benefit does one experience? Wisdom is developed. …” (Anguttara Nikaya 2) Thus, panna is taught to be one part of the two things that lead to true knowledge, suggesting that panna is something beyond mere knowledge in Buddhist thought. According to Thich Nhat Hanh, “wisdom” does not quite capture the deep implications of panna, or prajinaparamita: “Perfect understanding is prajnaparamita. The word ‘wisdom’ is usually used to translate prajna, but I think that wisdom is somehow not able to convey the meaning. Understanding is like water flowing in a stream. Wisdom and knowledge are solid and can block our understanding. … Understanding, like water, can flow, can penetrate. Views, knowledge, and even wisdom are solid, and can block the way of understanding.” (The Heart of Understanding, Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1988, p.8)

While “wisdom” may not be a mistranslation, it is clear from these discussions that panna is something more than what the English word “wisdom” implies. Beyond “wisdom” or “knowledge”, panna implies “deep insight” to see things as they really are, beyond the world of appearances. It implies “understanding” that, like water, flows and penetrates from the world of conventional reality into the world of ultimate reality. As such, panna captures the essence of what the Buddhist practitioner needs to cultivate in order to reach enlightenment.

Given the crucial importance of panna in Buddhist thought, which is essential for that the Buddhist practitioner to cultivate, we would hardly expect panna to be employed to refer to something that clouds clarity in our thinking, or promotes forgetfulness in our deeds. But that seems to be the case when panna is combined with water as “般若湯” in Japanese, which means “wisdom water”. While it is tempting to infer that “wisdom water” refers to “deep insight” that comes from the cultivation of panna, it is not the case here. “Wisdom water” here is actually a word invented by Buddhist temples in Japan to refer to sake that they serve to their guests.

With the official statistics counting almost 75% of the population as Buddhists, and with some 75,000 temples scattered all over the land, there is no question that Japan is a major Buddhist country. But these numbers conceal the fact that most Japanese who profess to be Buddhists are not practitioners and that most temples which call themselves Buddhist temples do not serve as venues for Buddhist practice. In fact, some commentators go as far as using the somewhat derogatory term “Funeral Buddhism” to describe the reality of Japanese Buddhism today, as providing funeral services is the major source of income for most Buddhist temples. Some temples, especially those located in popular tourist destinations such as Kyoto, Nara, and Mt. Koya earn their income from tourists by providing lodging and meals for them.

When choosing to stay at Buddhist temples, tourists know that the meals served will be vegetarian meals, which is the case. At some temples, tourists are asked—not openly, but discreetly—whether they would like to have “般若湯”, or “wisdom water”, with their dinner. Thus, those tourists who are used to having sake with their evening meals at home can have “wisdom water” at Buddhist temples as well. But why do some Buddhist temples in Japan offer sake with dinner, when drinking intoxicants is clearly discouraged as one of the five precepts in Buddhism? Are not these Buddhist temples interested in disseminating the teachings of the Buddha to their guests?

A sympathetic interpretation of serving sake would be to say that these Buddhist temples are adapting their Buddhist practices to suit the cultural tradition of Japanese society. Ranked 70^th in the world in terms of per capita consumption of alcohol, according to the 2011 WHO Report, the Japanese are not necessarily known as heavy drinkers like the people in such countries as Czech republic, Hungary, and Russia. Moreover, the overall consumption of alcohol has been steadily declining since 2000. However, the Japanese have been known to be lovers of liquor from the earliest times of the nation’s history, judging from the statement that “they are fond of liquor” appears in History of Kingdom of Wei, written around 297. Japan is still regarded today as a society with its permissive attitude towards drinking. While the overall consumption has been declining, due perhaps to the stagnant national economy, business people in Japan still maintain the custom of drinking together after work. And at home, Japanese males, especially those who are over fifty, expect to have sake with their dinner, if not everyday but at least every other day. Drinking sake with meals may also have something to do with the characteristics of Japanese cooking, which goes well with sake, just as wine goes well with French cooking.

Whatever may be the reason behind it, Buddhist temples need to question the sagacity of continuing the custom of offering sake to their guests if they are serious about disseminating the teachings of the Buddha. Offering sake discreetly under the deceptive name of “wisdom water” is a clear violation of at least two of the five precepts, which Buddhist priests, of all people, should know very well. A message written in fine prints, “Please refrain from excessive drinking!” should be replaced by a clear message written in large prints, “Please refrain from drinking as doing so is one of the five precepts to be observed by Buddhist practitioners!”

Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

“A miracle may be accurately defined,” wrote David Hume (1711-1776) in his essay titled An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, published in 1748, “as a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent.”¹ Great infidel that he was, seeing nature as the work of “some deity who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance”, Hume was unlikely to have turned to the Deity as the miracle worker. And as a dominant figure of the Enlightenment who had an unfailing faith in the power of reason, Hume was also unlikely to have sought some invisible agent behind miracles. This leaves us with but one conclusion: that the above definition was actually Hume’s way of negating the existence of miracles. In fact, later in the same essay, Hume goes on to say, “No human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle and make it a just foundation for any such system of religion.”²

Hume’s negation of miracles must have posed a bold challenge to the theological tradition of the West, which had been dominated by doctrines sanctioned by the Church. Even Spinoza (1632-1677), known as the great rationalist philosopher of the seventeenth century, was ready to admit that the Bible, which is full of stories of miracles, must be treated as an exceptional, privileged document because people in biblical days were limited in their powers of observation and reasoning. As a matter of fact, the existence of miracles had been—as indeed it still is—sanctioned by none other than the authority of the Church. The strongest expression of the Church’s position on miracles can be found in the following statement from the First Vatican Council in 1870: “If anyone shall say that miracles can never be known for certain, or that the divine origin of the Christian religion cannot properly be proved by them: let him be cast out.”³

In negating the existence of miracles, Enlightenment thinkers like Hume went to the other extreme with their firm conviction that all natural events and phenomena could ultimately be made intelligible by rational inquiry. Their conviction has been bolstered by the development of modern science, as scientists have steadily expanded their body of knowledge of the natural world with discoveries of the laws of nature. The success of classical physics since Newton (1642-1727), in particular, should be noted as it set the stage for the emergence of “determinism”, an idea initially formulated by Laplace (1749-1827), a pivotal figure in the development of mathematical astronomy, which would completely eliminate miracles from the natural world. As Hawking and Mlodinow explain, “determinism” is the notion that “given the state of the universe at one time, a complete set of laws fully determines both the future and the past. This would exclude the possibility of miracles or an active role for God.”⁴

“Materialism” is a strong version of “determinism”, for it asserts that matter is the fundamental constituent of the universe and that the motions and behaviors of all material objects can ultimately be understood in terms of fundamental particles and the forces governing them. It was not until the emergence of quantum mechanics in the early part of the twentieth century that scientists started to raise doubts about “materialism”, as they came to recognize the essential role of the observer in the discovery of the laws of nature. Some modern scientists are ready to argue that consciousness must be included as an essential aspect of our descriptions about natural events and phenomena. However, they have not quite converted other scientists to their view who still cling to the materialist view of consciousness as a derived phenomenon that emerges from the workings of the material brain.

Turning our attention to the tradition of Eastern thought, Buddhism shares certain aspects of “determinism”, for it, too, excludes the possibility of miracles or an active role for God. However, Buddhism certainly rejects “materialism” as it, like quantum physics, recognizes that consciousness is an essential aspect of the evolution of the universe, as the Dalai Lama explains: “Buddhism … explains the evolution of the cosmos in terms of the principle of dependent origination, in that the origin and existence of everything has to be understood in terms of the complex network of interconnected causes and conditions. This applies to consciousness as well as matter.”⁵

The principle of “dependent origination”, or paticca-samuppada, is the theory of evolutionary change in Buddhist thought. It is a universal principle in that it applies to every possible event or phenomenon in the universe. This does not mean that we can identify all the causes and conditions behind a specific event or phenomenon. What we do know is that every event or phenomenon comes about as a result of the concurrence of all possible causes and conditions. To the extent that dependent origination is a universal principle, there is no place for any miraculous event or phenomenon that cannot be explained by this principle. Does this mean that it is un-Buddhist to talk about miracles?

Not necessarily, for we have none other than Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay), a recognized authority on Buddhist thought today, talking about miracles. However, when Thay talks about miracles, he is not talking about the kinds of miracles recounted in biblical stories. “People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—or our own two eyes. All is a miracle.”⁶ To walk on Earth—mindfully, that is—is what Thay means when he talks about a miracle. To walk mindfully is a miracle because sati, or mindfulness, enables us to transform ourselves to see things as they are and to see ourselves as we really are.

While mindfulness is a miracle, no external authority will sanction that we have accomplished this miracle. Although a seasoned master can be a guide in our practice to transform ourselves, it is up to us, individual practitioners, to realize that we have reached the level of accomplishment that can be called a miracle—a miracle that can only be described as the miracle of transformation.

Hume, David, On Human Nature and Understanding, New York: Macmillan, 1962, p. 120.
Ibid., p. 133.
First Vatican Council (On Line).
Hawking, Stephen, and Mlodinow, Leonard, The Grand Design, New York: Bantam Books, 2010.
The Dalai Lama, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality, New York: Broadway Books, 2005.
Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness, Boston: Beacon Press, 1975.

Category Archives: Buddhism

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