Self and Social Status

When we introduce ourselves to someone new, they will ask us who we are. It’s a hard question to answer. In a nutshell it’s a question about self identity.

There are various culturally formed habits we fall into when answering. I have family in Spain, where asking your name is is not entirely innocent. There they mean to ask what family you are from. Closely related to this is, “Where are you from?” By isolating one’s family name and town, one has found out who you are. There identity is often associated with family, as in historically feudal cultures or cultures of landed nobility, where social rank depends on family, parents, and name. (Indeed, in Spain one retains the last names of one’s father and mother).

In the United States one of the first questions people ask is, “What do you do?” The point is to establish one’s position in the social rank through job status and assumed income. Since we are a culture of immigrants, last name matters less than job, and money has substituted for blood as the measuring stick of worth. This has been the case since the founding of the nation. It was noted by Alexis de Tocqueville in his study on early America, where he foresaw the possibility of a new aristocracy growing up out of manufacturing businesses, something we may be seeing right now in the creation of political oligarchy. (Vol. 2, p. 161).

While there is of course more to social identity than social hierarchy, the question is whether rank is ever fully separable from the more innocent concerns surrounding daily relationships. I don’t believe it is, which means that social identity is not innocent. It is instead a kind of shackle.

The Buddha’s Castelessness

The Buddha had a complex take on social identity, something which is not often appreciated. What is well known is that he stepped outside the traditional social ranking by leaving home and family, and retiring into the forest. It’s also well known that the Buddha did not consider the traditional caste system to be an adequate system of moral or spiritual rank, as the brahmins did.

However this is only a partial picture of the Buddha’s approach to social identity. The Buddha’s decision to leave home and family put him outside of the traditional caste system, but this was not a complete renunciation of social rank: ascetics and recluses (paribbājakās) were among the spiritual elite of ancient India. Ascetics were responsible not only for Jainism and the Upanishadic texts, but for the bewildering flowering of belief systems that we find in texts such as the Brahmajāla Sutta (Dīgha Nikāya 1), or the Discourse to the Kalamas (Aṅguttara Nikaya 3.65). Further into the depths of time, such recluses were arguably responsible for the Vedas themselves.

India had a long tradition of people gaining status by renunciation and asceticism, to the point that such people would merit donations of food, clothing, land, and other goods, and could expect to be feted by kings and nobles. They were “honored, revered, venerated” even by brahmins themselves. (Majjhima Nikāya 95.9). Indeed the Buddha’s disciples Sāriputta, Mogallāna, and Mahā Kassapa all met the Buddha as brahmin renunciants.

The main thrust of brahminic philosophy, though, was that such merit was gained solely by lineal descent, from within the traditional caste hierarchy: only brahmins could be true renunciants. To undercut this claim, the Buddha argued for the inadequacy of the traditional caste system and a redefinition of the word “brahmin”:

For name and clan are assigned
As mere designations in this world;
Originating in conventions,
They are assigned here and there.

For those who do not know this fact,
Wrong views have long underlain their hearts;
Not knowing, they declare to us:
‘One is a brahmin by birth.’

One is not a brahmin by birth,
Nor by birth a non-brahmin.
By action is one a brahmin,
By action is one a non-brahmin. …

Asceticism, the holy life,
Self-control and inner training —
By this one becomes a brahmin,
In this supreme brahminhood lies. (MN 98.12-13; c.f. Saṃyutta Nikāya 7.9).

For the Buddha, “brahmin” became a synonym for the arahant who had achieved nibbāna. This should only be understood metaphorically, since those in the saṅgha are said in fact to “have entered upon a casteless condition.” (AN 10.48, 10.101, adapted from Bodhi).

When asked by King Pasenadi whether there was any difference in the four castes’ abilities to attain nibbāna, the Buddha said that the only difference was in regard of “the five factors of striving”: confidence, health, honesty, energy, and wisdom.

[King Pasenadi:] “Now, if [the four castes] possessed these five factors of striving, and if their striving was right, would there be any difference among them in that respect?”

[Buddha:] “Here, great king, in this respect I say that among them there is no difference, that is, between the deliverance of one and the deliverance of the others.” (MN 90.12).

Uma Chakravarti outlines several ways in which the Buddhist notion of caste differs slightly from the traditional. In particular the Buddha’s noble or warrior caste (khattiya) is asserted to be above or equal to that of the brahmin, and the gahapati or householder appears as a kind of caste as well. (p. 98). She also says that, “the significant factor in Buddhist society for purposes of identification, particularly for the service groups, were the occupational divisions among people.” (p. 107). This is not very different from contemporary American society, one reason why the Nikāya texts do not seem so foreign to us.

The Buddha’s Caste Purity

However this isn’t the entire picture as regards the Buddha’s view of caste. Chakravarti also points to ways in which the Buddha appears to have reified a notion of caste purity, such as in the Ambaṭṭha Sutta (DN 3). There discussion turns to the status of the Buddha’s tribe, the Sākyas. Chakravarti says,

When the young brāhmaṇa Ambaṭṭha abused the Sākyas as ‘base born’, the Buddha retorted not by dismissing the notion of low birth, but by arguing that his own descent was absolutely unsullied. The Buddha’s major point of attack was that Ambaṭṭha himself was of impure descent and the Sākyas were originally his masters since he was a descendant of a union between a Sākya lord and one of their slave girls. (p. 110).

It might be said in response that the Buddha was only using a form of ‘skillful means’ to puncture the classist egoism of the young Ambaṭṭha: that is, that the Buddha didn’t really believe all the stuff about low birth, but knew that Ambaṭṭha would. Further, the Ambaṭṭha Sutta is problematic in certain ways that give it the appearance of being a later work. It is set up as a kind of investigation into the superhuman status of the Buddha: the reason Ambaṭṭha went to see the Buddha at all is that he was told by his teacher Pokkharasāti to investigate whether the Buddha had “the thirty two marks of the Great Man”. These are odd physical features that supposedly marked the Buddha as superhuman.

We saw this trope before in “Buddhas Human and Divine”. It indicates what is more likely a legendary than a historical account, since there is no good reason to believe the Buddha was anything other than an ordinary looking human being. For an example from the Nikāyas supporting his ordinariness, we can look at the Dhātuvibhanga Sutta (MN 140). There the Buddha spent the night in a small hut with the recluse Pukkusāti. It turned out that Pukkusāti was a follower of the Buddha but had never seen him in person. Pukkusāti did not know who he was rooming with until they had spent several hours together meditating and conversing, which would not be credible if the Buddha really did display these odd features.

My sense is that the notion of these marks arose in a later, post-parinibbāna tradition, perhaps as one of the first steps towards elevating the Buddha’s status to that of a legendary, superhuman being. These stories would likely not have been propounded among people who had actually seen the Buddha in person, since they would know them to be false.

The Ambaṭṭha Sutta includes other problematic events such as the appearance of a supernatural creature threatening violence to those who refuse to answer the Buddha’s questions. (Something we discussed in “On Buddhist Violence”).

It is also possible that, as Richard Gombrich has suggested, the Buddha had a satirical sense of allegory. (p. 80).  In that case these might have been intended as humorous vignettes rather than serious claims of the superhuman or supernatural. But after the passage of time, and in the context of a deeply serious work, it is hard to tell what is humor and what isn’t. If only the Buddha had use of emoticons!

Much of the rest of the sutta is taken up with a reiteration of prior doctrines about moral virtue and the fruits of recluseship taken from the Sāmaññaphala Sutta (DN 2). These are put forward as superior substitutes for the claims of brahminic status based on birth. They are also put forward as superior substitutes for the palmistry, astrology, spiritism, dream-interpretation, quackery, divination, and other “low arts” apparently practiced by many recluses and brahmins in order to make money, although these passages are taken entirely from the Brahmajāla Sutta. (DN 1.1.21-27).

Once we eliminate the repetitive sections, and set aside the problematic sections on the thirty two marks, there is little left in the sutta besides the discussion of caste that Chakravarti found problematic. Perhaps that too comes from a later, more caste-friendly tradition, or perhaps it is simply an example of the Buddha’s skillful means, around which other elements accreted.

The Buddha did, however, see a very close relation between the actions of kamma and low and high birth. This can be seen in the Cūlakammavibhanga Sutta (MN 135) where the Buddha outlines various results of good and bad kamma, but it is perhaps most clearly expressed in the Bālapaṇḍita Sutta (MN 129), which distinguishes between the qualities of fools and the wise. Here he discusses their respective kammic rebirths:

If, sometime or other, at the end of a long period, that fool comes back to the human state, it is into a low family that he is reborn — into a family of outcasts or hunters or bamboo workers or cartwrights or scavengers [the five kinds of low births] — one that is poor with little to eat and drink, surviving with difficulty,  where he scarcely finds food and clothing; and he is ugly, unsightly, and misshapen, sickly, blind, cripple-handed, lame, or paralyzed; he gets no food, drink, clothes, vehicles, garlands, scents and unguents, bed, lodging, and light … (MN 129.25).

Whereas for the wise,

If, some time or other, at the end of a long period, the wise man comes back to the human state, it is into a high family that he is reborn — into a family of well-to-do nobles (khattiyas), or well-to-do brahmins, or well-to-do householders (gahapatis) — one that is rich, of great wealth, of great possessions, with abundant gold and silver, with abundant assets and means, and with abundant money and grain. He is handsome, comely and graceful, possessing the supreme beauty of complexion. He obtains food and drink, clothes, vehicles, garlands, scents and unguents, bed, lodging, and light. … (MN 129.48).

That is, it isn’t quite true that for the Buddha caste, or low and high family, amounted to “mere designations in this world, originating in conventions”. Caste mattered, at least as much as kamma mattered: the two were intimately related. Behave unwisely and you were prone to be reborn in a lower caste; behave wisely and you might be reborn a noble or brahmin. If these were conventions, they were conventions with real causal power extending over multiple lifetimes.

Further, societal identity in the form of occupation inescapably finds itself in these rankings: some jobs tagged one as “low” or menial, others as “high” or well-to-do. Interestingly in the Nikāyas “high” and “low” in terms of birth or wealth seem to merge in these passages. Perhaps this is because the texts were written at a time of particular social ferment, one where wealth competed against older, brahmin aristocracies.

Escape

The point of practice is to escape the worldly winds of gain and loss, fame and disrepute, praise and blame, pleasure and pain. (AN 8.6). This move is reclusive in moving oneself away from the identity that society imposes upon us, and renunciant in renouncing that identity. Is it really possible to achieve all this from within a secular, lay context? Externally, it is not. That is, in traditionally Buddhist cultures there is an agreed upon understanding that a renunciant or monastic plays a different social role than a householder. While the monastic is not really outside of society (they still have clear benefits and obligations), becoming a monastic will entirely change one’s social role.

There is no equivalent external, social understanding of a lay or secular renunciant. Perhaps such an understanding will develop over time, but I would doubt it. Lacking such an agreed upon understanding, society will resist one’s rejection of, or change in, social rank. Since laypeople will tend to retain normal jobs and lives, they will be treated as normal social beings, subject to all the associated worldly winds.

Internally it is a different matter, of course. While we can do nothing about the way society views us, we can nevertheless strive towards equanimity in the face of change, and cultivate non-attachment towards social rank, and the worldly winds that accompany them.

This approach to non-self does not, perhaps, touch its more profound metaphysical implications. It substitutes a social approach to identity for a logical or ontological one. Yet I think understanding identity through its social role is more emotionally profound and life-changing, at least for those of us nearer the beginning of the path.

Conclusion

There are many aspects to non-self (anatta). Perhaps the most famous is the one we tend to hear about when discussing the early texts, or the later tradition. It is what I will term the philosophical problem: is there some kind of a self that is permanent, a locus of perfect control, a secure refuge? Is all reality empty? What does that mean?

There is a second sense to anatta as well, however. Here the emphasis isn’t so much on the philosophical aspect of personal identity over time, freedom of the will, or ontology, but rather on how we are defined within our culture or social milieu, and how we define ourselves. Is it possible to step outside such self-definition for a time, or to hold it with more equanimity? Is it possible to see that none of our socially imposed identities are our true, permanent self? Seeing through these identities can be a route towards freedom.

While it isn’t correct to say that the Buddha rejected hierarchies, it is perhaps correct to say he viewed socially constructed hierarchies as worthless at achieving the end of eliminating dukkha. Indeed, social hierarchies are themselves dukkha. In the place of social hierarchy he substituted the ethical hierarchy of the path, culminating in the “supreme brahminhood” of nibbāna. This achievement brought with it important external social implications: the Buddha asserted that he and his monks were the proper focus of societal veneration and generosity. But that achievement was one of rejecting those very social hierarchies, at least as proper aims in themselves.

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Bhikkhu Bodhi. Nikāyas (Wisdom).

Uma Chakravarti. The Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism (Munshiram Manoharlal, 1987).

Richard Gombrich. How Buddhism Began (Munshiram Manoharlal, 1997).

Alexis de Tocqueville. Democracy in America (Vintage Classics, 1990).

Maurice Walshe. The Long Discourses of the Buddha (Wisdom, 1987).