Psychology & Buddhism.pdf

Buddhist Social Principles 261
all Buddhists: no killing, stealing, lying, or sexual misconduct. While these are universal
moral values, additional rules – including voluntary poverty and chastity –
were foundational to the Buddhist monastic order and marked its distinctive
identity, vision, and constancy of purpose through time and across cultures. The
monastic community became identified as the primary arena for cultivating meditation
and wisdom and it survives as one of the world’s oldest religious orders.
Buddhist morality was exceptional also because the Buddha’s definition of
purity was universal: the rules applied equally to everyone regardless of caste and
social distinctions. The Buddha insisted that these moral standards were more
important social criteria than birth or power or knowledge, that character counted
more than caste. Although the Buddha did not overtly challenge the idea of caste
as a social hierarchy, he did challenge its membership criteria based on birth and
ritual performance. While accepting all followers regardless of caste, he did spend
much of his time reforming brahmin priests by emphasizing character, and claimed
that his followers were the “true brahmin” (Masefield, 1986, pp. 1-36, 147-161,
164–170).
The classic anthology of his early teachings in the Dhammapada begins by
stating that the “Mind is the forerunner of all states,” and mental attitudes lead
inevitably to misery or happiness depending on whether one speaks and acts with
a pure or defiled mind. However, another early Dhammapada text from Gandhara
that survives in Prakrit has a different arrangement of its verses (Brough, 1962,
p. 290) and does not begin with a focus on psychology, but with a social critique:
Not by matted hair, nor by family, nor by birth does one become a brahmana;
but in whom there exist both truth and righteousness, pure is he, a brahmana is he.
What is the use of your matted hair, O witless man! What is the use of your
antelope garment? Within you are full (of passions), without you embellish.
If from anybody one should understand the Doctrine preached by the Fully
Enlightened One, devoutly should one reverence him, as a brahmana reveres the
sacrificial fire.
These verses are equivalent to verses 393, 394, and 392 respectively in the Pali
Dhammapada. The implication of placing these verses first in the Gandhara text
is that the social impact of Buddhist cultivation was equally as consequential as
its influence on personal happiness. These verses express a social revolution in
ancient India by rejecting the criteria of social status based on religious posturing
and birth. Instead, the new measures of worthiness, the new criteria for respect
and sanctity, were inner understanding and purity based on the Buddhist morality
of non-injury and nonattachment. This same effort to rank people by their moral
quality and understanding rather than by their birth or posturing was taught by
Socrates in the West and by Confucius in China, who also challenged the established
criteria for their social structures. The emphasis on universal morality,
instead of family and clan connections, was an important new development