Pudgalavada
The Pudgalavāda was a Buddhist philosophical view and also refers to a group of Nikāya Buddhist schools that arose from the Sthavira Nikāya. The school is believed to have been founded by the elder Vātsīputra in the third century BCE. They were a widely influential school in India and became particularly popular during the reign of emperor Harshavadana. Harsha's sister Rajyasri was said to have joined the school as a nun. According to Dan Lusthaus, they were "one of the most popular mainstream Buddhist sects in India for more than a thousand years".
Doctrines
Pudgala thesis
The Pudgalavādins asserted that while there is no ātman, there exists a pudgala or sattva which is neither a conditioned dharma nor an unconditioned dharma. This doctrine of the person was their method of accounting for karma, rebirth, and nirvāṇa. For the Pudgalavādins, the pudgala was what underwent rebirth through successive lives in saṃsāra and what experiences nirvāṇa. They defended this view through philosophical argument as well as scriptural citation. According to Thiện Châu and Richard Gombrich, they used the Bhārahārasūtras a major reference for their view. This text states that the person is the bearer of the five aggregates, and that the taking up of them is craving and suffering:The Kathāvatthu also mentions that the Pudgalavādins relied on the following statements by the Buddha: "There is a person who exerts for his own good" and "There appears a person who is reborn for the good and happiness of many, for showing compassion to the world of beings." The Pudgalavādins held that this person was "inexpressible" and indeterminate in its relation to the five aggregates and could not be said to be neither the same as the aggregates nor different. However, the person could not be denied entirely, for if this were so, nothing would get reborn and nothing would be the object of loving-kindness meditation. Thus, according to L. S. Cousins:
The difference is that for the voidist the person is a label for the aggregates experienced as objects of consciousness whereas for the personalist the relationship between the person and those objects cannot be described as either the same nor different.Thus this pudgala was the subject of experiences, the doer of wholesome and unwholesome actions, and the experiencer of karma, transmigration and nirvāṇa. Yet it was also "indefinable", neither a conditioned nor an unconditioned dharma and neither the same as nor different from the five aggregates. However, as Thiện Châu notes in his survey of their literature, the Pudgalavādins carefully developed this theory especially to be compatible with anātman and the Middle Way and thus the pudgala is "not an absolute reality totally separated from compounded things."
The Abhidharmakośa shows how the Pudgalavādins explained their theory by using the analogy of fire and fuel. The five aggregates are the fuel and the pudgala the fire. The fire exists as long as there is fuel, but it is not the same as the fuel and has properties that the fuel does not. They are co-existent and the fuel are the support for the fire, and thus are not the same nor wholly different. For the Pudgalavādins, if one says that the person is the same as the aggregates, this is like saying fire and fuel are the same thing, which is one mistake. On the other hand, if one says that fire and fuel are totally different, this is like saying fire does not depend on fuel, a second mistake. Thus they took a middle road between these and argued for a person which is neither identical to the aggregates nor different from them. They sought to refute the view of other Buddhists that the aggregates and the person were the same. They held that, at death when the aggregates are destroyed, the person would then also be destroyed, thus not be reborn. They also believed it contradicted the Buddha's words i.e. "the bearer of the burden" exists.
The Kathāvatthu also mentions that the pudgala can be likened to what is called a being and also to what is called jiva, but that it is neither identical nor different from the body. One Pudgalavādin text explains the nature of this relationship as being based on clinging or appropriation :
The designation of appropriation is the designation of life internal appropriation in the present and is composed of the aggregates, elements and domains ; that is to say that the phenomena of appropriation concerning the internal life in the present, which is formed by compounded things – and the fetters is what is called the designation of appropriation.The Pudgalavādins also seem to have held that the liberated person exists even after parinirvāṇa in a state of supreme bliss, or as Thiện Châu notes, they saw nirvāṇa as "a transcendental domain" and an "existence in the beyond".
Three designations of the pudgala
According to the Pudgalavādin text known as the Traidharmakaśāstra, the pudgala can be designated in three ways, called the three prajñaptis:- The pudgala designated by the bases. This refers to the person which cannot be said to be identical to the aggregates or different to them. Thich Thien Chau names this as "the essential factor that unifies a person's life processes. Stated otherwise, it is the pudgala that appropriates and sustains a body for a certain amount of time."
- The pudgala designated by transmigration, refers to the fact that an individual cannot be said to be the same nor different to who they were in a past life and will be in the future. This allows for a subject which is karmically responsible for their actions. According to the Pudgalavādins, if there is a continuity in between lifetimes, there must be the possessor of that continuity as well as that which individuates a person from others and is the subject of experiences, this is the pudgala.
- The pudgala designated by cessation, which refers to the fact that after death, a Buddha cannot be said to be existent, non-existent, both or neither.
If the appropriator is something different from the skandhas themselves, then there is a sixth skandha, which is doctrinally impermissible. If the skandhas appropriate themselves, that leads to a vicious cycle of infinite regress. Hence, the Vātsīputrīya argue, the nominal person is neither the same as nor different from the skandhas. It is a heuristic fiction that avoids these unwarranted consequences and lends coherence by also corresponding to how actual persons experience themselves—that is, as distinct individuals continuous with, but not absolutely identical to or reducible to, their own pasts and futures.Lusthaus also explains their reasoning for the second and third designations as follows:
But what remains constant or continuous between such lives? If it is a self-same invariant identity, then this would indeed be a case of atmavada, a view the Vātsīputrīyas, like all Buddhists, reject. In what sense would someone be the same or different from the person in one's previous life? If completely different, then to posit a continuity between them is incoherent. If the same, then their real discontinuities are ignored, leading to a form of eternalism, another impermissible view for Buddhists. Hence, they are neither the same nor different, but linked by a fictional pudgala. Finally, Buddhist practice leads to nirvana; but who attains this? If there is an integral individual that ceases on attaining nirvana, then this would entail the unwarranted view of annihilationalism. If there is no cessation of the karmic individual, then there is no nirvana. Both extremes, though implicit in standard Buddhist formulations, render Buddhism itself incoherent, a problem only solved, the Vātsīputrīyas argue, if one admits the fictional pudgala implicit in standard Buddhist doctrine.With this system, Pudgalavādins held that they could explain karmic moral retribution and personal identity by positing an ineffable dharma that avoids falling into the extremes of annihilation and eternity. One Pudgalavāda text affirms that this doctrine is a Middle Way thus:
If the pudgala could be described in terms of existence or non-existence, one would fall into nihilism or eternalism, but the Buddha does not allow us to uphold there two opinions. If one says that the pudgala does not exist, that is committing a fault in the order of the questions to be avoided. That expression is not justified. Why? If one affirms that no pudgala exists, that is a fake view. If, one affirms that the pudgala exists, that is a right view. That is why it is possible to say that the pudgala exists.
Criticism
Because they felt that Vātsīputrīya views were close to the view of a self or ātman, they were sharply criticised by the Vibhajyavādins, as well as by the Sarvastivādins, Sautrantikas, and the Madhyamaka school. The earliest source for the pudgala doctrinal controversy is the Puggalakatha of the Kathāvatthu, attributed to Moggaliputtatissa.The Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu argued against the pudgala theory in his Abhidharmakośa. Vasubandhu begins by stating that the Vātsīputrīya hold that the pudgala 'is based' on the five aggregates, and that this could mean one of two things:
- The five aggregates form an object, the pudgala. In this case, pudgala is just a nominal designation for the five aggregates, and not an independent object.
- The pudgala is caused by the aggregates. In this case, pudgala also refers to just the aggregates and not to something else independent of them.