Poison Arrows

     The tension between speculative issues and practical issues is not new. In ancient India, one of the Buddha's disciples -- named Malukya -- faced the following quandary, according to a text translated by Glenn Wallis:
          "... [T]he venerable Malukya was living in solitary seclusion. Malukya reflected as follows. 'There are certain speculative matters that the Fortunate One [the Buddha] has left undetermined, set aside, and rejected. Is the world eternal, or is the world not eternal? Is the world infinite, or is the world finite? Is the life force identical to the body, or is the life force different from the body? Does a person who has come to know reality exist after death; not exist after death; both exist and not exist after death; or neither exist nor not exist after death? These are the matters that the Fortunate One has not determined. It does not please me or seem right to me that the Fortunate One has not determined these matters. I will approach the Fortunate One and ask him the reason for this refusal. If he determines these matters for me, then I will continue the training. If he does not determine these matters for me, then I will abandon the training ... .'" 
     That evening, Malukya posed his questions to the Buddha. The Buddha began with some tough love -- calling Malukya a "fool of a man" -- but then reminded him that he never promised his disciple that he would answer such questions. The Buddha went on to reply with what would become one of the most famous parables in all of Buddhist literature. Imagine, he said, that a man was shot with "an arrow thickly smeared with poison." The man's companions and friends brought a doctor to remove the arrow, but the man said that he would not consent to its removal until the following questions were answered: who shot the arrow; what caste the shooter was from; his family and name; his height; the color of his skin; the city he was from; whether the arrow was shot from a crossbow or a longbow; what the bowstring was fashioned from; which kind of wood the arrow's shaft was made of; what sort of bird the feathers on the shaft came from; the kind of sinew that was used to wrap the shaft; and what sort of point was on the arrow that wounded him.
     All of these questions would remain unanswered, said the Buddha, and the wounded man would die. In the same manner, argued the Buddha, a disciple might not enter into or remain in training with him and that person would die also. The questions posed by Malukya were speculative, the Buddha asserted, since "... still there is birth, there is aging, there is death; still there is sadness, regret, unease, depression, and anxiety." The Buddha stated that what he had made known was the destruction of these things in this world. "It is for this reason, Malukya, that you should bear in mind that which I have not determined, because it is indeterminate, and that which I have determined, because it is determinate." Matters such as whether or not the world is eternal were not determined by him, the Buddha said, because "To do so does not lead to what is beneficial, to the beginning of training, to disenchantment, to dispassion, to cessation, to peace, to direct knowing, to awakening, to unbinding. That is the reason that I have not determined these matters." What he had determined, the Buddha reminded Malukya, was "unease," the arising of  unease, the cessation of unease, and the path leading to the cessation of unease.
     The sutta (sutra in Sanskrit) ends by reporting that Malukya "rejoiced" at the Buddha's words. I think the Buddha's reasoning here -- regarding the distinction between the speculative and the practical -- is not only applicable in a theological context, but also in other areas; thus, I would encourage moderates (myself included) to focus on practical issues rather than on speculative ones.
     In my next post, I plan to discuss anger.
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References:
     The quotations above are taken from Glenn Wallis' Basic Teachings of the Buddha (New York, Modern Library, 2007), Culamalukya Sutta, Sutta 2, Majjhimanikaya 63.
     In Bhikkhu Bodhi's less secular translation of this text, the Buddha is referred to as the "Blessed One" rather than the "Fortunate One," and Bodhi uses the word "suffering" instead of "unease." See his In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon (Boston, Wisdom Publications, 2005), Culamalunkya Sutta, MN 63.