Pull the Arrow First

5.1 Pull the Arrow First

Of the four attested sentences, the last is "no further becoming" — when this life ends, no further round of birth-and-death is taken up. And the moment the words are out, the same follow-up rises in every mind: then this person, after death — does he exist, or not?

In the canon, the question was asked to someone's face. The someone was an arhat.

Four Questions on Vulture Peak

The Saṃyukta-āgama records: the Buddha was at the Bamboo Grove of Rājagṛha, and a monk named Anurādha was dwelling alone on Vulture Peak. One day a crowd of wanderers of other schools came to him, exchanged greetings, and went straight to the point: does the Tathāgata exist after death? Anurādha answered: as the World-Honored One has said, this is unanswered. Does the Tathāgata not exist after death? — This too is unanswered. Both exists and not? Neither exists nor not? — This too is unanswered.

The wanderers would not have it, and laid the charge bare: all four "unanswered" — what then, venerable one! Is the recluse Gautama one who does not know, does not see? Anurādha answered with the sentence that matters:

The World-Honored One is not without knowing, not without seeing.

Displeased, the wanderers reviled him a while and left their seats. Anurādha, unquiet at heart, went to the Buddha and laid the whole exchange before him: answering so, did I speak in accordance with the Dharma? Did I misrepresent the Blessed One? — the very same tremor of conscience, note, as the nun's question in the last chapter. The Buddha did not grade the answer directly; he examined him instead: is form permanent, or impermanent? Impermanent. Feeling, perception, formations, consciousness? Impermanent. Down to the bottom: is consciousness the Tathāgata? — No. And then the endorsement:

One who speaks thus speaks in accord with what has been declared and does not misrepresent the Tathāgata … For I know form as it really is — form's arising, form's cessation, and the way to form's cessation I know as they really are.

Read the scene steadily. Two points. First, "unanswered" is not ignorance — "not without knowing, not without seeing," in the text's own letters. Second, the Buddha's way of endorsing Anurādha was not to supply the missing "exists" or "does not," but to walk him back through the impermanence and non-self of the five aggregates: nowhere in form, feeling, perception, formations, or consciousness can that "self of the Tathāgata" be found which the question needs in order to be asked.

Where the Question Goes Wrong

The canon gathers questions of this type into one list, traditionally the "fourteen unanswered": the world eternal, not, both, neither; the world bounded, not, both, neither; the life-principle identical with the body, or different; the Tathāgata after death existing, not, both, neither. The treatises set out four modes of answering — the one-sided answer, the analytic answer, the counter-question, and the setting-aside — and assign these fourteen to the last: to be set aside only.

Why is setting aside the right mode? Look at the skeleton the fourteen share: each first posits something fixed — the world, the life-principle, the "self" of the Tathāgata — and then asks after its attributes. For "does the Tathāgata exist after death" to stand, a "self of the Tathāgata" must first be set up to be pointed at. But the taint-exhausted is precisely the one who has seen through that self. To a question whose subject does not stand, answer "exists" and you have certified a surviving self — fallen into the eternalist ditch; answer "does not" and you have certified an annihilated self — fallen into the annihilationist ditch. Whichever of the two words you utter, you have first countersigned the question's false presupposition. Only the not-answering — the setting aside — falls into neither: what it refuses is not the questioner, but the presupposition inside the question.

A figure. Fire burns in dependence on fuel; the fuel spent, the fire goes out. Someone asks: this fire that has gone out — did it go east, or west? The question cannot be answered — not because the fire's destination is a secret, but because fire was never a traveling thing: it is an event of burning arisen on fuel; fuel spent, the event ends, and there is no "where it went." Part Three heard, on the summit of Gayā, that all is burning — what burns beings is the fire of greed, hatred, delusion; and the taint-exhausted is the one whose fuel has been drawn out. To ask "does this person exist after death" is to ask "where did the extinguished fire go." What the four words "no further becoming" say is: the fuel is spent — the fuel of further becoming (ignorance, craving, clinging) is exhausted, and the burning-event called the round of birth-and-death has ended. They close the continuation of suffering; they do not sentence some "post-mortem self" to nothingness.

The Ultimatum at Jeta's Grove

But there is always someone who cannot let the list go. The Arrow Simile discourse of the Madhyama-āgama records: the Buddha was at Sāvatthī, in Jeta's Grove, and the venerable Mālunkyāputta, sitting alone in a quiet place, fell to scheming: these views the Blessed One sets aside and will not fully declare — I do not want this, I will not bear this, I will not allow this. If the Blessed One declares to me one-sidedly that the world is eternal, I will live the holy life under him; if he will not, I shall press him hard and quit him.

In the late afternoon he rose from his sitting, went to the Buddha, and served the ultimatum to his face: if the Blessed One knows one-sidedly, let him tell me; if he does not know, let him say straight out, I do not know.

The Buddha did not take up the topic. He asked three questions first: did I ever say to you, "the world is eternal" — did I ever promise these answers — that you came to live the holy life under me? — No, Blessed One. Did you ever declare to me that you would not train unless answered? — No, Blessed One. Then:

Mālunkyāputta, I never said anything of it to you, and you never said anything of it to me. You foolish man! Why do you falsely accuse me?

Rebuked to his face, Mālunkyāputta sat grieved at heart, head down, silent, his arguments gone. The Blessed One turned to the monks and gave the figure:

It is as if a man were struck by a poisoned arrow, and because of the arrow suffered extreme pain. His kinsmen, in pity and love, seeking his good and his safety, fetch the arrow-surgeon. But the man says: the arrow may not be drawn yet — first I must know that man's clan, his name, his birth …

The poisoned man, the surgeon already at his side, says: wait — first tell me the shooter's surname and given name; whether he is tall or short, dark or fair; whether the bow is of mulberry wood or horn; whether the bowstring is sinew or silk; the shaft wood or bamboo; the feathers eagle's, vulture's, or crane's — until each is known, no one draws the arrow. The text's verdict is a single sentence:

That foolish man would never come to know it, and in the meantime he would die.

The great suffering of birth-and-death is exactly that arrow in the flesh. The one who insists on settling the fourteen questions to the last detail before he will practice is the same man taking inventory of the arrow's feathers — certain to die in the interval of not-knowing. And then the Blessed One declared his reason:

This is not connected with the goal, not connected with the Dharma, not the root of the holy life; it does not tend to knowledge, does not tend to awakening, does not tend to nirvāṇa — therefore I do not declare it one-sidedly.

And what does he declare? Suffering, its arising, its cessation, and the way to its cessation — these I declare one-sidedly, because they tend to knowledge, to awakening, to nirvāṇa. It closes on one principle: what cannot be declared, I do not declare; what can be declared, I declare. The refusal of the fourteen is no evasion; it is pulling a man away from the arrow's inventory and back to the arrow.

Onward

"No further becoming" can now be set down securely: it is the seal of the mastery of exhaustion on the dimension of birth-and-death — it closes the suffering of further becoming, and pronounces nothing about a post-mortem self; grasping no surviving self, falling into no annihilated one, it touches neither ditch. Even from this — being dragged by a misplaced question into one ditch or the other — it is free.

Substance, knowing, depth, death — four faces seen. One face remains: all of this is the inside of the door; by what does the world outside see it? The last chapter watches the world read the seal.