Religion 38 (2008) 54e67
www.elsevier.com/locate/religion
The Buddha counsels a theist: A reading
of the Tevijjasutta (Dıghanik
aya 13)
Glenn Wallis a,b
a Department of Religion, University of Georgia, Peabody Hall, Athens, GA 30602, USA
b Won Institute of Graduate Studies, 137 S. Easton Road, Glenside, PA 19038, USA
Abstract
The dominant culture in India in the Buddha’s day, Brahmanical culture, took as axiomatic the existence
of a supernatural creator deity. This deity, termed ‘Brahm
a’, was conceived as being ‘the all-seeing, the all-
powerful, the Lord, the maker and creator, ruler, appointer and orderer, father of all that have been and
will be’. Although the Buddha completely rejected such apparent metaphysical speculation as a ‘thicket of
views’, he nowhere formulated a systematic repudiation of theism. In one canonical text, however, the Bud-
dha, encountering a young Brahmin espousing theistic beliefs, gives a series of analogies and similes that
help to illuminate his views on the matter. In short, the Buddha saw such a belief as being dangerously re-
flexive, and hence as a symptom of a debilitating conceptual and affective disorder. Thus, in the dialogue,
the Buddha aims to ease this ailment of his interlocutor through a threefold strategy: (1) displaying the lan-
guage usage that under girds the problem; (2) reorienting the interlocutor towards the primacy of his con-
ceptual apparatus as the proper locus of concern; and (3) providing a practice through which the
interlocutor may develop the skills necessary for conceptual and affective health. The parameters of the dis-
cussion in this sutta are wide enough to render it of relevance to contemporary debates on theism. That is,
the issue at stake in the sutta may be read as being not only about a restricted local notion of deity, but
about God, broadly conceived. The article contains fresh translations from the text under consideration,
the Tevijjasutta of the Dıghanik
aya (13).
Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
E-mail address: glenn.wallis@woninstitute.org.
0048-721X/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.religion.2007.09.001

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G. Wallis / Religion 38 (2008) 54e67
55
God?
Faith means not wanting to know what is true.dFriedrich Nietzsche.
Is there any theme in the history of the world’s religions or in the contemporary study of religion
that even approaches the pride of place granted the discourse on ‘God’? The Buddha, in contrast to
the discipline that studies him, was unimpressed by the supposed importance of this issue, and thus
refrained throughout his life from posing the very question of ‘God’s’ existence. It is thus not sur-
prising that in thousands of dialogues with all manner of interlocutors, as recorded in the P
ali canon,
the Buddha nowhere formulates anything like a cohesive response to the issue of theism.1 The
1 This is not to say that the Buddhist canons are short on references to ‘the gods’ (deva). In fact, suttas containing material
on devas are quite extensive in the P
ali canon. The Samyuttanik
aya, for instance, opens with an extended mixed prose verse
_
section containing dialogues that the Buddha and his followers engaged in with devas of various classes (devat
a, devaputta,
devaduhit
a, yakkha, vanadevat
a), as well as individual devas (Sakka, Brahm
asdpluraldM
ara). In translation (the recom-
mended one is Bodhi, 2000) this section alone is over 250 pages in length. There is also the Gandhabbhasamyutta (3.31), the
_
Sakkhasutta (4.40.10), and three suttas titled Visiting the devas (5.55.18e20). Virtually every other division of the P
ali canon
contains numerous references to devas. Furthermore, the Buddha is commonly referred to as ‘a teacher of gods and men’
(satth
a devamanuss
anam). A common gloss for ‘the world’ in the canon is ‘this place with its gods, M
ara, and Brahm
a
_
(imam lokam sadevakam sam
arakam sabrahmakam). Finally, the Buddha did not overtly contest the cosmology of his
_
_
_
_
_
day, in which there were held to be numerous deva realms, actual places where one might be reborn. Of course, the Buddha
would often graft his system of ‘meditative absorption’ ( jh
ana) over this cosmological scheme, suggesting an appropriation
more symbolic than literal; but he would generally retain the deva-designations (e.g., ‘realm of the devas of streaming radi-
ance,’ ‘realm of the devas of measureless aura’). In short, Buddhist literature of all stripes, Therav
ada, Mah
ay
ana, and Vaj-
ray
ana, is permeated, like a rag in oil, to use a Buddhist simile, with devas. So, that there is an abundance of material on ‘the
gods’ in the P
ali canon is incontestable. But what it all means is still unclear (to me, to us), and has gone largely unexplored in
the secondary literature. (See the bibliography for references.) My own view, tentative, pending a more thorough investiga-
tion of the material in total, is that there are at least four ways of viewing the deva material. The first view is that the Buddha
really did see ‘with his divine eye . thousands of devas’ (Dıghanik
aya, 2006, 16.1.27), converse with them, debate with them,
and so on; that is, we may hold out the possibility, as many ‘believers’ do, that there really are such entities in the world. An
obvious, perhaps somewhat simplistic rebuttal to this view is that, as the sutta under investigation in the present article
makes clear, no one has ever seen such entities outside of the literature itself. That is, while it is true that Indian literature
(including what we would call ‘religious’ literature) is rife with devas, Indian anatomical studies are not. Another, more se-
rious rebuttal to this view is that a literal reading of the deva material (along with many features of the Buddha’s Indian
cosmology) is incompatible with an anti-metaphysical reading of the Buddha’s teachings; and that the Buddha’s teachings
are clearly such is central theme of my argument in the present article. These rebuttals point to the second way to view the
deva material; namely, as a literary conceit. The devas always make intriguingdand to their Indian audience, recognizabled
interlocutors; and intriguing, recognizable interlocutors make for provocative literature, oral or otherwisedjust look at our
own fairy tales; and provocative tales are attended to, responded to, remembered, and handed down. There may, in fact, be
a cognitive compulsion to do so (see, for example, Boyer, 1994.) A third view is that deva is pre-Freudian code for ‘psycho-
logical force’. As Bhikkhu Bodhi notes, ‘the devas usually come to visit the Buddha in the deep stillness of the night, while the
rest of the world lies immersed in sleep’ (Bodhi, 2000, p. 73). What might such a qualification suggest? I don’t know, exactly;
but I would begin making sense of such a state of affairs by seeing it as suggesting a psychological situation within a literary
one. Of course, the notion ‘psychological’ is just as vague and ghost-like as deva, but at least it is our notion. And this fact
points to the fourth way of viewing the material on devas; namely as cultural coin. Buddhist teachers in contemporary North
America reflexively adopt certain axiomatic American cultural constructs (the notion of equality, the inevitability of mate-
rialism, the necessity of therapeutic healing, the need for scientific validation and philosophical sophistication, and so on).
Similarly, the Buddha adopted some basic cultural axioms of his own time and place. Some, of course, he would reject; but
some he would not. Why not? For the sake of communication perhaps; or perhaps he did so just as reflexively and uncon-
sciously as modern-day teachers do. The present article is meant as a contribution towards a fuller understanding of the
meaning of ‘the devas’ in the Buddha’s teaching and in Buddhist literature. We still have a long way to go.

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56
G. Wallis / Religion 38 (2008) 54e67
Tevijjasutta of the Dıghanik
aya (text 13), however, contains a revealing account of the Buddha’s en-
counter with a theist.2 In this article, I will translate and analyse relevant portions of this sutta, and
consider just what light it might shed on the Buddha’s position regarding an issue that continues to
animate so much of humanity to actions both heart-warming and monstrous.
The Buddha’s technique
Before beginning, it will be helpful to the reader if I make explicit the basic interpretative frame-
work that I am employing in my reading of the Tevijjasutta. This framework is based on what I
see as the central methodological tack of the Buddha in the sutta. The Buddha’s technique in-
volves three moves. The first is to put on display the problem raised by his interlocutor as being
one not presented by the worlddas the interlocutor erroneously assumesdbut as being rooted
in the interlocutor’s unreflective acceptance of certain ways of using language. The second is to
reorient his interlocutor towards what is present and generative: his sensory apparatus. Finally,
the Buddha provides his interlocutor with a practice whereby he may cultivate a state of being
that approaches that which he previously imputed to an absent, supernatural being.
Through sustained dialogue, the Buddha helps his interlocutor to clarify to himself his very
practice of speaking and thinking with, specifically, theistic language (i.e., language that assumes
supernatural agency). The Buddha enables him to see that his language is riddled with imprecise
usage, unfounded claims, and vacuous notions; and that such language, furthermore, engenders
an entanglement in delusion and unwarranted expectation. Once there is some understanding
of the nature of his language, the interlocutor can see for himself just how his life had been ori-
ented towards a counterfeit promise (of heaven, salvation, union, etc.)done that had no real ca-
pacity for being fulfilled in life, but remained always in the realm of a particular story that was
fashioned by his language. The Buddha’s method thus serves his broader aim as a teacher: to
lead his partner in dialogue to self-awareness. Only once the interlocutor becomes aware of
what he is doing when he speaks and thinks in the particular terms that he does can he free himself
from entrenched tendencies, and begin to cultivate the skill of wisdom, the primary disposition
gained through the Buddha’s training.
This coupling of a dialogical method and careful attention to the individual’s specific concep-
tual and affective confusions reveals, furthermore, the therapeutic nature of the Buddha’s encoun-
ter with others. The disquiet exhibited in the question of the interlocutor in the Tevijjasutta is
relieved under the very examination of the Buddha. The interlocutor’s question, rooted as it
was in ignorance or mis-knowledge (avijja), ceases to have force. But if conversation with the Bud-
dha amounts to a sort of talking cure, it is not because the interlocutor has been convinced of any-
thing, say, some logical or conceptual error in his position. Rather, he is cured because he has
simply seen his position for the first time. Seeing his position means gaining insight into the prem-
ises, suppositions, psychological dependencies, and emotional commitments that have been
opaquely entrenched in that position all along. This insight liberates the interlocutor from the
unconscious force exerted by culturally acquired pictures of the world.
2 I translated from Rhys Davids and Carpenter (1967). The title, Tevijja (threefold knowledge) refers to the three
Vedas, the texts held sacred by the Brahmins.

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G. Wallis / Religion 38 (2008) 54e67
57
The Buddha’s technique is consequently inseparable from the ultimate aim of his teachings. A
dialogical encounter with the Buddha is permeated by the same ‘flavour’ as is the entirety of his
dhamma, namely, insight and liberation. We may glimpse in this fact a possible reason for the
Buddha’s refusal to expound a general critique of theismdor of anything else, for that matter.
The reason might be this: general critiques and theories lack the force to expose the affectively
potent individual practices operating behind specific world-building strategies, such as one’s
employment of language, concept, and analogy.
The struggle
We are engaged in a struggle against the bewitchment of the intellect by means of language.d
Ludwig Wittgenstein.
The Tevijjasutta begins with the Buddha staying in a mango grove near the ‘Brahmin’ village
called Manas
akata, in the region of Kosala. Many wealthy and famous Brahmins also happen
_
to be staying in Manas
akata at that time. As if demonstrating the characteristic feature, in the
_
Buddhists’ view, of this class of Indians, two young Brahmins begin arguing.
Now, as they were wandering along the road, a dispute arose between V
asettha and
_ _
Bh
aradv
aja concerning the right and wrong paths. The young Brahmin V
asettha said:
_ _
‘This is the only direct path; this is the straight path that leads to salvation, and leads one
who follows it to communion3 with Brahm
a. This is what is proclaimed by the Brahmin
Pokkharas
ati’.
And the young Brahmin Bh
aradv
aja said: ‘This is the only direct path, this is the straight
path that leads to salvation, and leads one who follows it to communion with Brahm
a.
This is what is proclaimed by the Brahmin T
arukkha’.
But neither could V
asettha convince Bh
aradv
aja, nor Bh
aradv
aja convince V
asettha
_ _
_ _
(Dıghanik
aya, 1996, 13.3e5).
There are three premises operating in the debate. For the young men engaged in argument,
these premises amount to cultural axioms, since the Vedic Brahmin class, into which they were
born, posited them as incontrovertible. The first premise holds that there exists an entity known
as ‘Brahm
a’. This entity was understood to be an indefinable potency that created the phenomenal
world. Omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient, in some sense immanent and in some sense
transcendent, ‘Brahm
a’ has been understood by Christian observers of Indian culture since the
sixteenth century to be remarkably similar to their own conception of deity; so similar, in fact,
that the term ‘God’ is generally considered an appropriate translation. So, in these latter terms,
3 The term that I am translating as ‘communion’, sahavyat
a, means, more literally, ‘companionship, fellowship’. Rhys
Davids (1890e1910) and Walsh (1995) both translate the term as ‘union’. As Walsh points out, ‘union’ probably goes
too far theologically since it implies ‘mystical union rather than merely belonging to the company of Brahm
a’ (ibid).
But, as he also mentions, the dialogue concerns a dispute about doctrines, so it is not clear precisely what is being re-
ferred to here. ‘Communion’ captures equally a sense of togetherness and unity while preserving the ‘religious’ nuance
implied by the young Brahmins.

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58
G. Wallis / Religion 38 (2008) 54e67
the first premise is: ‘‘God’ is given.’4 The second premise at work for both disputants in the argu-
ment is that this entity is directly knowable, i.e., its existence is not merely a matter of inference.
And the third premise holds that certain Brahmin teachers know, and have revealed, the way to
that direct knowledge of God. V
asettha and Bh
aradv
aja disagree only on which teachers have
_ _
revealed the right path to the direct knowledge of God.
V
asettha suggests that they go to the ascetic Gotama, the Buddha, who, they had heard,
_ _
was staying nearby. The two young men viewed the Buddha as a great teacher ‘perfected
in knowledge and conduct’(Dıghanik
aya, 1996, 13.7), and thus agreed to take to heart what-
ever he told them. They approach the Buddha and, after exchanging the proper courtesies of
greeting, explain to him the nature of their argument. The Buddha’s immediate reaction shows
that he was unable to discern any real disagreement. He says, ‘so what, then, V
asettha, is the
_ _
dispute, the argument, the difference of opinion between you all about’ (Dıghanik
aya, 1996,
13.9)?
Looking again at the basic structure of the argument, the Buddha’s response could not be more
reasonable. The argument says: it is given that there is an X; this being the case, X is knowable; P
and T teach the means of discerning X. The structure of the argument conforms precisely to how
language functions in the everyday world when it is employed as a means of positing, locating,
and describing existents. So, the young Brahmins’ argument is wholly commonsensical at the
structural level. The Buddha’s inability to see a substantive disagreement at this point is just a
recognition that the argument is, so far, grammatically intact.
But then V
asettha makes a move that stirs the Buddha into full counselling mode. In response
_ _
to the Buddha’s question, V
asettha continues:
_ _
[We have a disagreement concerning] the right and wrong paths, Gotama. Various Brah-
mins, Gotama, declare various paths. Do all of these paths lead the one who follows
them to communion with God? Just, Gotama, as near a village or a town there are many
different paths, yet they all meet in the villagedjust in that way are all the various paths
declared by various Brahmins. Do all of these paths lead the one who follows them to
communion with God?
4 It might be possible to reconstruct a more exact notion of what the disputants had in mind for the term ‘Brahma’.
But any theological intricacies that we might thereby uncover would be beside the point. The terms of the argument are
broad. The Buddha does not require certain clarifications about how ‘Brahm
a’ is being construed before he begins his
therapeutic questioning. It is enough for him that there is some notion in play of a supernatural deity who is ‘the all-
seeing, the all-powerful, the Lord, the maker and creator, ruler, appointer and orderer, father of all that have been and
will be’ (Dıghanik
aya, 1996, 1.2.5). Thus, any and all notions of supernatural agency are under question here. So, in
order to make the argument less exotic, and to place it more squarely in the western discourse on the matter, I am going
to translate ‘Brahm
a’ as ‘God’ from now on. This equation of the two terms will raise for many readers of this journal
the larger issue of the comparative religions project. Keeping the discussion about ‘God’ at the general level that I do
may be responsible vis-a`-vis the data under investigation, but it probably won’t satisfy those who are interested in ad-
vancing inter-religious dialogue. The discussion in this article, however, can, in fact, be viewed as a contribution to the
comparative project in this sense: the Buddha’s response to his interlocutor in the present text is precisely a response to
those who would engage in inter-religious dialogue about supernatural agency. And his response is that no such project
is possible because of the very issues raised in the sutta, beginning with the fact that the basic condition for such dia-
loguedcoherent shared languagedis never established. Whenever some sort of agreed upon terminology is established,
the comparative nature of the project disappears. What appears in its place is some hybrid tradition that is no tradition
at all.

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G. Wallis / Religion 38 (2008) 54e67
59
[The Buddha responds:] Do you say, ‘they lead’, V
asettha?
_ _
I say, ‘They lead’, Gotama.
Do you say, ‘They lead’, V
asettha?
_ _
I say, ‘They lead’, Gotama.
Do you say, ‘They lead’, V
asettha?
_ _
I say, ‘They lead’, Gotama (Dıghanik
aya, 1996, 13.10).
(By the third time the Buddha asks ‘They lead?’, he is, I imagine, vigorously rubbing his tem-
ples. He was relaxing in a grove of mangoesdnow this!) By comparing the path to God to a path
leading to a village, V
asettha is now claiming more for his terms than the logical structure of ev-
_ _
eryday descriptive usage will allow. The idea of a village and a path leading to that village is a non-
controversial notion: everyone understands what it means. Even more crucially, village/path is
a technically verifiable referent. God and a path leading to God is neither non-controversial nor
obviously referential. The analogy thus exposes a misuse of language on the part of V
asettha,
_ _
which, for the Buddha, is symptomatic of an unhealthy confusion. If V
asettha wants to claim
_ _
for a path to God that it leads, then the question of the proper path would never arise; it would
simply require a straightforward act of verification, just as the proper path to the village is trans-
parently known by the countless people who tread it. As the dialogue continues, the Buddha en-
deavours to show his interlocutor that this transparency is not at all the case in regard to the path
to God. I imagine that the tone in the Buddha’s voice becomes gentler at this point, and that his
countenance softens. The reason is this: in uttering the words that he does without any apparent
inkling as to their problematic nature, V
asettha has now shown himself to be entranced by a view
_ _
or picture of the world. In this particular case, the picture is a theistic one, in which there is some
notion of an anthropomorphic supernatural creator deity. The combination of three factors point
to V
asettha’s entrancement with this picture. The first factor is the fact that the idea of ‘God’ is
_ _
utterly nonsensical to anyone who does not already share the quite particular system of reference
(Vedic/Brahmanical, Christian, Deistic, etc.) within which it is afforded meaning. The second fac-
tor is the fact that the wide-ranging consequences of this theistic picture (some notion of revela-
tion, sacred scripture, bodily resurrection, heaven, etc.) are so transparently dubious to anyone
who is not already captivated by that picture. The final factor is V
asettha’s apparent obliviousness
_ _
to the very fact that he holds this picture at all, i.e., that there even exist alternative ways of seeing
the worlddthat one may choose. V
asettha’s situation is indeed self-enforced. Although the no-
_ _
tions that form his view are culturally derived, he himself holds them in view with precisely
such locutions as ‘They lead; they lead’.
V
asettha’s simplistic equating of the of path to the village with the path to God is entertained by
_ _
the Buddha because it marks the precise place where V
asettha’s conceptual and emotional sore
_ _
points are located. The Buddha thus begins a series of questions aimed at relaxing these points,
thereby permitting V
asettha to gain some insight into the unconscious practice of holding
_ _
a view in place. I present here the Buddha’s summation of his own questioning.
So, you say, V
asettha, that not one of the Brahmins who are learned in the three Vedas has
_ _
ever seen God with his own eyes,5 nor has any of their teachers or any of the teachers’
5 The term sakkhi means quite literally ‘with’ (sa) ‘eyes’ (akkhi). It implies being in the presence of, seeing face to face,
witnessing.

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60
G. Wallis / Religion 38 (2008) 54e67
teachers, going back seven generations. Neither could any of the ancient seers among those
Brahminsdthe creators and expounders of the sacred texts [mantra] who composed, de-
clared, and recited the ancient verses. say: ‘We know, we see, when, how, and where
God appears’. So, the Brahmins who are learned in the three Vedas are saying this: ‘We teach
this path to communion with God, this path which we do not know, and which we have not
seen; this is the only direct path, this is the straight path that leads to salvation, and leads one
who follows it to communion with God’.
Now, what do you think, V
asettha? This being the case, does not the talk of the Brahmins
_ _
learned in the three Vedas turn out to be ridiculous?
Yes, indeed, Gotama (Dıghanik
aya, 1996, 13.14).
If there is nothing even approaching an instantiation of anyone’s having encountered some en-
tity ‘God’, then what does it mean to claim, as the theists do, that ‘this is the direct path that leads
to liberation, and leads one who follows it to communion with God’? The sentence certainly does
not carry meaning in the obvious way that the claim that one can come across the path to the vil-
lage does. Again, the Buddha is not concerned here with discussing matters of language theory,
rules of evidence, or the conditions for valid syllogisms and logic.6 Since V
asettha has not shown
_ _
himself to be held captive by any of these strategies of argument, such a concern on the Buddha’s
part would be misplaced. V
asettha, rather, has shown himself to be captivated by the story, told
_ _
by Brahmins since time immemorial, about the existence and nature of ‘the all-seeing, the all-pow-
erful, the Lord, the maker and creator’dthe story about God. The Buddha is thus aiming at dis-
mantling something much more instinctive than an intellectual apparatus. He is endeavouring to
expose the language practice that supports V
asettha’s conceptual and linguistic storytelling. So, in
_ _
keeping with the nature of the argumentdi.e., its being story-likedthe Buddha now tells some
stories of his own.
Saying that the Brahmins’ notion of a path to God ‘is not reasonable’ (Dıghanik
aya, 1996,
13.15), the Buddha offers a series of parallels. The first one highlights the problematic nature
of V
asettha’s usage of the verbs to see and to know.
_ _
V
asettha, it is just as a single line of blind men clinging to one another, and the first one sees
_ _
nothing, the middle one sees nothing, and the last one sees nothingdjust so, V
asettha, is the
_ _
talk of the Brahmins learned in the three Vedas nothing but blind talk: the first one sees
nothing, the middle one sees nothing, and the last one sees nothing. The talk then of these
Brahmins learned in the three Vedas turns out to be ridiculous, mere words, vacuous, and
desolate (Dıghanik
aya, 1996, 13.15).
Not only are the seven generations of Brahmins, their teachers, and the founding sages like
a great file of blind men speaking blindly of what they do not see, but even if they did have the
eyes to seedeven if there were something such as ‘God’ to be seendthey would still not know any-
thing like a path to that supernatural entity. The Buddha next points out that although the Brah-
mins direct prayers to the sun and moon, they are not able to point out anything like a path that
leads to those celestial bodies (Dıghanik
aya, 1996, 13.16e17). That is, theists do not articulate any
but the most figurative, analogical, and allegorical notions of seeing and knowing a path to God.
6 The scholastics of later centuries were, of course, interested in precisely such matters. See Hayes (1998).

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G. Wallis / Religion 38 (2008) 54e67
61
As if bringing V
asettha down, step-by-step, from his lofty imaginings to a more realistic view of
_ _
life, the Buddha turns from this celestial image to an image of love and desire in the human realm.
V
asettha, it is as if a man were to say: ‘I am going to seek out and love the most beautiful
_ _
woman in the land’. And the people would ask him: ‘Dear man, this ‘most beautiful woman
in the land’ddo you know which class she belongs to?’ Asked this, he would have to answer,
‘no’. And then the people would ask him: ‘Dear man, this ‘most beautiful woman in the
land’ddo you know her name, or her family name, whether she is tall or short or of medium
height, dark or brown or golden in complexion, or in what village or town or city she lives?’
Asked this, he would have to answer, ‘no’.
And then people might say to him: ‘So then, foolish man, you neither know nor see the one
whom you seek and desire?’ Asked this, he would have to answer, ‘no’.
Now what do you think, V
asettha? This being the case, does not the talk of that man turn
_ _
out to be ridiculous?’
Certainly so, Gotama (Dıghanik
aya, 1996, 13.19).
We might perceive in this story an implicit hypothesis concerning the very presence of theistic
notions in a culture. People, in this view, seek an agent such as ‘God’ for the same reasons that the
young man in the story seeks out the most beautiful woman in India: in response to a compulsive
longing for satisfaction. The Buddha’s first noble truth already proposed that an invariable hu-
man experience is the fact that available objects produce at best a fleeting satisfaction; and that
such satisfaction, on closer examination, is really just another, if a more subtle, register of
pain. The solution chosen by the figure in the story is to imagine the perfect woman, affectively
bond to her, and then seek her out for love. How can V
asettha not admit that such behaviour
_ _
is ‘ridiculous’?
V
asettha, however, could have objected that whereas the young man in the story knows noth-
_ _
ing about the woman he seeks, the Brahmanical theologians have in fact worked out the details
about God. On this account, the young man presented by the Buddha is nothing but a straw man,
a poor example of a believer, comparable to one of the all-too-common proponents of theism who
are ignorant of the intricacies of their theological traditions. In another text (Majjhimanik
aya,
1996, 95), the Buddha gives us some idea of how he might respond to this objection. There, he
mentions five bases for having conviction in a religious system: faith (saddh
a), inclination
(ruci), oral tradition (anussavo), careful consideration of the grounds (
ak
araparivitakko), and re-
flective acceptance of a view (ditthinijjh
anakkhanti) (Majjhimanik
aya, 1996, 95.14). It is acceptable
_ _
to make a truth claim on the basis of any one of these modes; but the ‘truth’ being claimed must,
in honesty and fairness, be limited to the scope encompassed by the particular mode of conviction.
That is, the person who posits ‘God’ on the basis of faith is ‘protecting the truth’ (saccam anurak-
khati) when he says, ‘thus is my faith’ (Majjhimanik
aya, 1996, 95.15), and acknowledges that he
has no warrant to make a more elaborate claim or come to a definite conclusion. Thus the person
may not justly claim: ‘only this is true, anything else is wrong’ (Majjhimanik
aya, 1996, 95.15). So,
while it may be true that a religious tradition has constructed an elaborate theology, far-reaching
institutions, weighty authorities, intricate devotional practices, and complex, sophisticated doc-
trines in the name of some all-powerful creator deitydall of which, furthermore, are ‘fully ap-
proved of by society and tradition, well transmitted, well conceptualised, and well reflected

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G. Wallis / Religion 38 (2008) 54e67
on’dit does not change the ‘empty, hollow, and false’ nature of the universal claim to truth re-
quired by theism (Majjhimanik
aya, 1996, 95.14).
The final analogy that the Buddha presents to V
asettha as a means of revealing to him the er-
_ _
rors in his conceptualisation of the path to God might be read as alluding to what the Buddha
viewed as both the intricacies and vacuity of theistic traditions.
V
asettha, it is just as if a man were to make a staircase at a crossroads, leading up to a palace.
_ _
And people would say to him: ‘Dear man, this staircase leading to the palaceddo you know
whether it is for a palace that will face east, south, west or north, or whether it will be of high,
low or medium size?’
Asked this, he would have to answer, ‘no’.
And people would say to him: ‘Well, foolish man, you are making a staircase leading to a pal-
ace that you neither know nor see?’
And when asked, he would have to answer: ‘Yes’.
Now, what do you think, V
asettha? This being the case, does not the talk of that man turn
_ _
out to be ridiculous?’
Certainly, Gotama (Dıghanik
aya, 1996, 13.21).
This analogy is a particularly apt way for the Buddha to end this portion of the dialogue be-
cause it points out what, in his view, is really waiting for the theists at the end of all of their com-
plex systems and doctrines. In the end, no matter how intricate and elaborate the staircase may be,
the fact remains that it leads to empty space. There is no palace: it is all staircase.
In the World
‘The true life is absent’. But we are in the world. Metaphysics arises and is maintained in this
alibi.dEmmanuel Levinas.
Levinas (1961) begins Totality and Infinity with the above words. This statement captures beau-
tifully the Buddha’s own impatience, perhaps even bafflement, with speculative metaphysical no-
tions such as ‘God’. In positing a path leading to communion with God, V
asettha and other
_ _
theists are in essence submitting that the true life is absent. Understanding ‘the true life’ to refer
to a religion’s ultimate aim for a persondheaven, liberation, salvation, uniondthe various strat-
egies of theistic religions (faith, devotion, prayer, etc.) can then be understood as means of insur-
ing that that which is absent here is fully realized there. There, of course, is always some presumed
beyond, whether conceived in spatial, epistemological, cognitive, affective, or some other terms. In
the second section of the Tevijjasutta, the Buddha, like Levinas’ imaginary interlocutor, insists:
But we are in the world. He does this by showing that even if there were a God and a path to
God such as the theists claim, and even if the Brahmins could see or know the path, they would
still be incapable of treading that path to the heavenly communion they so sought.
The reasons given by the Buddha for this state of affairs are couched in a group of analogies
involving a river ‘brimful of water’ and a Brahmin who not only speaks ridiculously, as in the pre-
vious analogies, but also ‘continuously neglects the duties of a Brahmin (or, conversely, ‘under-
takes what a Brahmin should not do’). The Buddha seems intent here on disabusing V
asettha
_ _
of any belief in the magical quality of religious practices. He presents a humorous image of the

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G. Wallis / Religion 38 (2008) 54e67
63
Brahmin summoning the far bank of the river to come to him so that he can cross to the other
side: ‘Come here, other bank, come here’ (Dıghanik
aya, 1996, 13.24)! The Buddha is concerned
with more here than making the obvious observation that no amount of ‘wheedling’ will have
an effect in the world of real objects. He is, more importantly, lampooning the Brahmins’ primary
vehicle to ‘spiritual’ power and social prestigedtheir liturgical languagedas being equally ineffec-
tual. In his next statement to V
asettha the Buddha explicitly equates such ‘wheedling’ with the
_ _
supplications of the Brahmins.
V
asettha, in just the same way [as the Brahmin summoning the river bank], do the Brahmins
_ _
who are learned in the three Vedas, who continuously neglect the duties of a Brahmin and
undertake what a Brahmin should not do, declare: ‘We call on Indra, Soma, Var
una, Is
ana,
Paj
apati, Brahm
a, Mahiddhi, Yama!’ That such Brahmins . by reason of their summoning,
wheedling, requesting or delighting, should, after death, when the body is dissolved, attain
communion with Goddthis just is not reasonable (Dıghanik
aya, 1996, 13.25).
With this analogy, the Buddha begins to orient V
asettha towards the proper mode of practice
_ _
and life, or, as that orientation is symbolized later on, ‘to the farther shore’ (phrases such as ‘the
other bank’, ‘the farther shore’, ‘the other side’ are, of course, common locutions for nibb
ana/
nirv
ana). Then, in quick succession the Buddha has the Brahmin unable to cross the river because
_
of a failure of technique (his ‘wheedling’), then bound and immobilized with his hands tied behind
his back, and, finally, lying prostrate with his head covered with a shawl. After each telling, the
Buddha asks: ‘What do you think, V
asettha, would that man be able to cross to the farther shore’
_ _
(Dıghanik
aya, 1996, 13.26, 29)?
One way of understanding the problem in each of the analogies given by the Buddha in the Te-
vijjasutta is to consider that in each case someone was involved in an incorrect, hence fruitless,
orientation: building a staircase towards empty space; moving blindly towards some indeterminate
place shrouded in darkness; searching throughout the land for the most beautiful woman; calling
out for help to the river bank. And in the final two analogies, the person is incapable of being
oriented towards anything at all: he is bound, immobilized, and prostrate on the ground. The Bud-
dha has him just where he wants himdback on the ground! And he has the ever-consenting
V
asettha figuratively in the same place. Lying on the ground, now with his head shrouded
_ _
(Dıghanik
aya, 1996, 13.29), there will be no more wheedling, no more talk about a path to God.
In such a position, and, for someone with his former conceptual commitments, only in such
a position, is V
asettha open to the teaching of the Buddha. The cause of the kind of disorientation
_ _
experienced by the figures in his analogies, the Buddha explains, lies in one’s inability to attend
carefully to the workings of his or her sensory apparatus. The result of such inattentiveness is con-
fusion: the person confuses non-substantial, ephemeral phenomena for phenomena capable of be-
ing grasped and of yielding genuine satisfaction. As the following statement indicates, the Buddha
equates this state of confusion concerning the sensory apparatus with being bound and chained.
These five strands of sense desire are called in the noble [i.e. Buddhist] discipline ‘chains and
bonds’. Which five? Forms perceptible to the eye which are pleasing, enjoyable, charming,
agreeable, desirable, enticing, sounds perceptible to the ear . scents perceptible to the
nose . tastes perceptible to the tongue, tangible objects perceptible to the body. These
five strands of sense desire are called in the noble discipline ‘chains and bonds’. And

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Document Outline

• The Buddha counsels a theist: A reading of the Tevijjasutta (DIghanikAya 13)
  • God?
  • The Buddhas technique
  • The struggle
  • In the World
  • Concluding remarks
  • References

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