Pudgalavada

The Pudgalavāda (Sanskrit; Chinese: 補特伽羅論者) or "Personalist" school of Buddhism, was a grouping of early Buddhist schools that separated from the Sthavira nikāya around 280 BCE. Prominent groups classified as Pudgalavāda include the Vātsīputrīya nikāya and the Saṃmitīya nikāya.

Pudgala or "person"

The Pudgalavādins asserted that while there is no ātman, there is a pudgala or "person", which is neither the same as nor different from the skandhas (aggregates). The "person" was their method of accounting for karma, rebirth, and nirvana. Other schools held that the "person" exists only as a label, a nominal reality.

Pudgalavādin views were sharply criticized by the Theravada (a record of a Theravadin attack on the pudgala is found in the Kathavatthu), Sarvastivada, and the Madhyamaka.

Popularity

Among the most prominent of the Pudgalavādin schools were the Saṃmitīya. Étienne Lamotte, using the writings of the Chinese traveler Xuanzang, asserted that the Saṃmitīya were in all likelihood the most populous non-Mahayanist sect in India, comprising double the number of the next largest sect. The Pudgalavada school was either the most popular school of Buddhism or one of the most from the 3rd century BCE through the 10 century CE, spanning about 1,200 years or more.

The Pudgalavada school was confined to the Indian sub-continent as it did not spread to Burma, Tibet, Sri Lanka and other nations where Buddhism spread to. Starting from about the second century CE onward, there was a revitalization of Hinduism in India and then later Muslim conquerors which virtually eliminated Buddhism from India by around the 11th century CE. And with that, the end came to the Pudgalavada school. Their version of the Tipitaka was lost and only a few texts remain which were translated to Chinese and now subsequently to English and other languages, not until the late 20th century.

Although they no longer officially exist today in terms of a monastic lineage with transmission, their doctrines remain very popular today. Based on polls and surveys of Buddhists in informal polls at discussion forums, a sizable percentage of modern Buddhists hold Pudgalavada views, even though they might call themselves Theravadin or Mahayanist.

The problem of self in Buddhism

Professor L. Priestly writes:

The Buddha taught that no self is to be found either in or outside of the five skandhas or in their aggregates; the five are material form, feeling, ideation, mental forces, and consciousness. He rejected the two extreme positions of a permanent, unchanging self persisting in Samsara (cycle of death and rebirth) through successive lives, and of a self which is completely destroyed at death. He taught instead a middle position of dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda), according to which our existence in this life has arisen as a result of our ethically significant volitional acts (karma) in our last life, and such volitional acts in our present life will give rise to our existence (but will not determine our acts) in our next life. What we are now is thus not the same as what we were, since this is a new life with a different body, different feelings and so on, but neither is it entirely separate from what we were, since what we are now is the result of decisions made in our past life.

In the non-Pudgalavādin schools, which we now think of as orthodox in this regard, this teaching was interpreted (not unreasonably) as a denial that there is any substantial self together with an affirmation of the complex process of evanescent phenomena which at any particular time we identify as a person. In the opinion of these schools, the teaching understood in this way offers several advantages: first, it is true, in the sense that it can be accepted as an accurate account of what can actually be observed of a person (including the events and decisions of past lives, which were supposed to be accessible to the Buddha’s memory); secondly, it removes the basis for selfishness (the root of both wrong-doing and suffering) by exposing the ultimate unreality of the self as a substantial entity; and thirdly, it supports the view that what we do makes a real difference to what we become in both this life and future lives. It thus offers rational hope for an eventual dismantling of the otherwise self-perpetuating mechanism of misunderstanding, craving and suffering in which we are trapped.

But this interpretation of the Buddha’s teaching also involves certain difficulties. In the first place, even if we can understand the functional identity of the person as simply the continuity of a causal process in which the evanescent phenomena of the five aggregates occur and recur in a gradually changing pattern, it is hard to understand how this continuity is maintained through death to the birth of the person in a new life. If rebirth is immediate, as the Theravādins held, how can the final moments of one life bring about the beginning of a new life in a place necessarily at some distance from the place of death? But if there is an intermediate state between death and rebirth, as the Sarvāstivādins held, how can the person journey from one life to the next when the aggregates of the old life have passed away and the aggregates of the new life have not yet arisen? Or if there are aggregates in the intermediate state, why does this state not constitute a life interposed between the one that has ended and the one that is to begin?

In the second place, the denial of the ultimate reality of the self certainly seems to cut away the basis for selfishness, but it seems in the same way to cut away the basis for compassion. If the effort to gain anything for oneself is essentially deluded, how can it not be equally deluded to try to gain anything for other persons, other selves? If to be liberated is to realize that there was never anyone to be liberated, why would that liberation not include the realization that there was never anyone else to be liberated either? Yet it was out of compassion that the Buddha, freshly enlightened, undertook to teach in the first place, and without that compassion there would have been no Buddhism.

The Pudgalavādin Characterization of the Self

The Pudgalavādins described the person or self as “inexpressible,” that is, as indeterminate in its relation to the five aggregates, since it cannot be identified with the aggregates and cannot be found apart from them: the self and the aggregates are neither the same nor different. But whereas other schools took this indeterminacy as evidence that the self is unreal, the Pudgalavādins understood it to characterize a real self, a self that is “true and ultimate.” It is this self, they maintained, that dies and is reborn through successive lives in Samsara, continuing to exist until enlightenment is attained. Even in Parinirvana, when the aggregates of the enlightened self have passed away in death and no new aggregates can arise in rebirth, the self, though no longer existent with the aggregates of an individual person, cannot actually be said to be non-existent.

Like most other Shrāvakayāna Buddhists, the Pudgalavādins regarded Nirvana as a real entity, differing from the realm of dependent origination (though not absolutely distinct from it) in being uncaused (asamskrita) and thus indestructible. Accordingly, Nirvana is not something brought into being at the moment of enlightenment, but is rather an eternally existing reality which at that moment is finally attained. The Pudgalavādins held that the self is indeterminate also in its relation to this eternal reality of Nirvana: the self and Nirvana are neither the same nor different.

In its indeterminate relationship with the five aggregates and Nirvana, the self is understood to constitute a fifth category of existence, the “inexpressible.” The phenomena of the five aggregates and of temporal existence in general form three categories: past phenomena, present phenomena and future phenomena. Nirvana, as an eternal, uncaused reality, is the fourth category. The self or person, not to be described either as the same as the dependent phenomena of the temporal world or as distinct from them, is the fifth.

The Pudgalavādins distinguished three ways in which the self can be designated or conceived:

1. according to the aggregates appropriated as its basis in a particular life: In the this case, we have a conception of a particular person based on what we know of that person’s physical appearance, feelings, thoughts, inclinations and awareness.

2. according to its acquisition of new aggregates in its transition from a past life to its present one, or from the present life to a future one: In this case, we would have a conception of a particular person as one who was such-and-such a person, with that person’s body, feelings and so on, in a previous life, or as one who will be reborn as such-and-such a person, with that person’s body, feelings and so on, in a future life.

3.according to the final passing away of its aggregates at death after attaining enlightenment: In the this case, we have a conception of a person who has attained Parinirvana based on the body, feelings, thoughts, inclinations and awareness that have passed away at death without any possibility of recurrence.

In this way, all the statements made by the Buddha—and by others on his authority or on the strength of their own observation, concerning persons or selves and their past or future existences—can be shown to be based on the five aggregates from which those persons are inseparable.

The Pudgalavadins accepted the Buddhist doctrine of anatta. They did not hold an eternalism view. It is possible, according to some scholars that the name given to them of "personalists" was by the other schools of Buddhism in a disparaging way, believing them to be eternalists. They held that the pudgala was an indeterminate-self and not an eternal atman.

Paranirvana

The Pudgalavadins argue that karma and rebirth would not properly work under an extreme no-self process. Although anatta is true, there is still something that must get reborn, something that accumulates good and bad karma and someone that attains nirvana.

According to orthodox, mainstream Thervada and other schools when one attains paranirvana the perceived self is no longer supported by the aggregates and no longer exists just like a fire that has gone out when its fuel is exhausted.

The Pudgalavādins hold that the Buddha and other arahants who attain paranirvana become “unfathomable”, that they cannot be described in terms of arising or non-arising, existence or non-existence. Another text, preserved and accepted as authoritative by the Theravādins, explains that Nirvana exists eternally and can be attained even though there is no place where it is “stored up,” just as fire exists and can be produced by rubbing two sticks together even though there is no place where it is stored up. The extinction of the fire can be understood as a transition from its local existence supported by its fuel to a non-local state which cannot be described as either existence or non-existence. The Parinirvana of the Buddha will then be his transition from a local existence supported by the aggregates to a non-local state which is unfathomable. A canonical text of the Mahāyāna explicitly describes the non-local form of the Buddha after his death as his “eternal body,” which is said to be like the fire that has not gone north, south, east or west, but is simply extinct.

One of the Pudgalavādin sources speaks of the person in Parinirvana as having attained the “unshakeable happiness”, and another source says that the Pudgalavādins held that although Nirvana has the nature of non-existence, because there is no body, faculty or thought there, it also has the nature of existence, because the supreme, ever-lasting happiness is there. So Nirvana is characterized by eternal happiness, but it is a happiness unaccompanied by any body, faculty or thought. Moreover, another source ascribes to the Pudgalavādins the view that Nirvana is the quiescence of the person’s previous “coming and going” in Samsara; it seems to say, then, that Nirvana is a state that the person achieves. This “state” cannot be something that comes into being when Nirvana is attained; otherwise Nirvana would be dependent and so in principle impermanent. And in Parinirvana there are no aggregates, and thus no person, in any normal sense, of which this quiescence could be a state. But if this quiescence is Nirvana, it cannot be simply the non-existence of the person, since we are told explicitly that the person is not nonexistent in Parinirvana (though of course not existent, either). Nirvana must be quiescence in the sense in which it is the “cessation of suffering,” not as a state that arises at the moment of enlightenment and is completed at death, but as an already existing reality whose attainment puts an end to suffering and the coming and going of Samsara.

Brief history of Buddhism

At the time of the Buddha's paranirvana around 483 BCE, the community of Buddhists was very cohesive with no major differences in doctrines and is known as the pre-sectarian period. Beginning with the Second Buddhist council there were disagreements, especially in regard to the monastic Vinaya rules. By the time of the Third Buddhist council in 250 BCE, Buddhism was spread out across about 20 different early schools.

Each school of Buddhism had their texts and versions of the Tipitaka, many of which have been lost, especially of those schools no longer existing in modern times. We have the largest available Tipitaka in full translations from the Theravada Pali Canon. This tradition remained oral and was passed down until being put into writing starting around 100 BCE. Therefore, the Pali Canon, although complete is not necessarily historically one hundred percent accurate when you consider that there were other schools of Buddhism in existence and simply don't have their full texts around any more. There is always the possibility, the potential that we must consider that one of the other early schools of Buddhism, no longer existing -- had it right in the accurate Buddhavacana (words of the Buddha).

The Pudgalavada school established around 280 BCE as did the Mahāsāṃghika school. The Mahāsāṃghika school might be the precursor to the Mahayana, according to many scholars. The Theravada was established as we know it today, around 240 BCE. So if we go by a strict historical analysis, the Pudgalavada and the Mahāsāṃghika began earlier than the Theravada. Of course every sect claims that they are originated from the Buddha and represent a continuation of the teachings and it is just the name / label of the school that changes, but outside of meditative insights which cannot be independently verified, all we have is a historical analysis and based on that, none can definitively claim that they are the original.

Notions of self

1. Elimininativism would be the view that the self is a complete and useless fiction that so much gets in the way that we had best eliminate all mention of it altogether. (In another context, an eliminativist might say about the concept of the soul that it is utterly vacuous and so misleading that we had best purge our vocabulary of it.)

2. Reductionism would be the view that it makes sense to speak of a self, but only insofar as "self" is a convenient shorthand for a complex of phenomena that it would be cumbersome to mention in full detail.

3. Realism would be the view that the self is fully real in that there are predicates that apply to it but that cannot be applied to anything else. The self is one of the ultimately real constituents of the world, and it would therefore be an intellectual mistake to eliminate it or to see it as merely a convenient fiction. (In another context, some philosophers hold that consciousness is a sui generis reality that cannot correctly be seen as just a metaphorical or careless way of speaking about events in the brain.) No schools of Buddhism (including the Pudgalavada) have adopted this realism view were realists, but that one can find self-realists in most non-Buddhist schools of Indian philosophy. These are the full-fledged atmavadins.

Number one above would be associated with nihilism and number three with eternalism. Theravada and most schools of Buddhism would be number two above. The Pudgalavada find another middle way position between numbers 2 and 3. They argue that something is reborn, something acquires kamma and that there is an intermediate state between rebirth (similar to the bardo). And they argue that the metta prayers would be meaningless if there were no pudgala, some person to extend or to receive such metta.

References

• A.K. Warder. Indian Buddhism, 1970, 2nd edn 1980, 3rd edn 2000; Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi
• Priestley, Leonard (1999). Pudgalavāda Buddhism: The Reality of the Indeterminate Self. Toronto: Centre for South Asian Studies, University of Toronto.
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on 'Pudgalavāda'
• Thích, Thiện Châu (1984) The Literature of the Pudgalavādins, Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 7 (1), 7-16
• Thích, Thiện Châu, Boin-Webb, Sara (1999). The literature of the Personalists of early Buddhism, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass
• Thich Nhat Hanh. Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers, Riverhead Books, 1999
• Thich Nhat Hanh. Zen Keys, Three Leaves, 1994
• Dhamma Wheel discussion forum
• Dharma Wheel discussion forum