Ethics gets in the way: A Reply to David Bastow

Abstract

What I want to do is to examine some views about Nibbana (Nirvana), the Way to it and Buddhist ethics, which are new, imaginative and erroneous. They are set out in a paper' by David Bastow. He suggests an interpretation of the Way and the Goal in Early Buddhism such that: i. The Goal and the Way are not conceptually distinct. We know this because: (a) 'Everything said about this goal of Arahatship, with the exception of a very few pictorial similes, is by reference to the progressive achievements of the Way.' And (b) The alternative, which is unsatisfactory, is that the relation between the Way and the Goal is 'causal and therefore contingent'. (c) The Way, from the first stage of moral restraint up to the final liberation of Nibbana, is a pattern of progressive stages, each char acterised by self-restraint leading to a freedom. 2. But 'freedom', introduced hopefully as a unifying concept for the stages of the Way, is vague, so it is necessary to give it 'descriptive stiffening'. There are three possibilities: freedom from immorality, from craving (but both are rejected), or from illusion and all that is impermanent. Even the last possibility is rejected, however, since it does not cohere with the con cepts of freedom as found in the early stages of the Way. 3. The Way is morally justified, not in terms of the Goal, but because the later stages are a logical and natural development and culmination of the principles implicit in the early part, where they are normally accepted wNithout difficulty. Since we are not told what is meant by 'Early Buddhism', it is not clear what is to count as scriptural evidence for or against the above thesis, but I shall, like him, limit myself chiefly to the Pali Canon, though there will be references to the commentaries. Let us start with i. My main point here is that the Goal and the Way are distinct. There is some difficulty in saying 'conceptually distinct', because the Goal itself cannot be conceptualised. It is atakkavacara,2 'not in the realm of logical thought'. And we read3 'There is no measuring of man won to the goal, whereby they'd say His measure's so: that's not for him; when all conditions are removed, all ways of telling are removed'. But even