The Root of the Instruction Not to Be Angry
In the preceding discussion, I examined how the Buddha’s inner revolution became connected to social revolution. Beneath it was an exceedingly simple yet frightening question: “There is no such thing, is there?” I now want to conclude the discussion of anger, the second of greed, anger, and delusion. Why are we told not to become angry, fight, quarrel, create conflict, or judge others? It is not merely because anger is unhealthy. At the root lies the realization that my own thinking may be wrong.
Let us follow this question through the last four verses of the Duṭṭhaṭṭhaka Sutta in the Sutta Nipāta. Following the original meaning of “do not be angry” brings us to the beginnings of love, peace, benevolence, and scientific thinking. Together, these can be called the end of absolutism. In Nietzsche’s phrase, “God is dead.” In the Buddha’s terms, God dies, rebirth dies, and an absolute law of karma dies as well.
Human-Made Teachings and Unstable Peace
People blindly believe that a deliberately fabricated teaching will bring a peace worthy of reverence. Yet seeking escape from rebirth by seeing the ātman is to depend on an unstable peace.
This fifth verse is crucial. The Buddha himself began his practice by accepting an idea dominant among the renunciants of his time: discover the ātman, true self, or soul within, and one escapes rebirth, reaches perfect peace, and knows the truth of the universe. People believed one who found it would become like a god.
The Buddha, however, saw that belief itself as a deliberately fabricated and conditioned teaching. It was not a truth eternally inscribed in the universe but an idea made by human beings. This connects with the attitude I have repeatedly emphasized. A law, view, body of knowledge, convention, or doctrine transmitted by authority must still be questioned. It may not be true; it may be wrong. The Buddha did not simply advance one more step toward his old goal. He recognized that the goal itself was a human construction.
Why Views Are So Difficult to Release
Attachment to views is indeed difficult to overcome. Even after examining teachings carefully, people are captured by them. Thus, seized by dogma, they take up one teaching and discard another.
This is also the Buddha’s own story. Having been caught by such a view, he could say how difficult it is for people to relinquish their own ideas. The world contains innumerable doctrines, laws, conventions, and authorities. We accept what pleases us and reject what does not, then live inside the dogmatic world assembled by those choices. Studying doctrines extensively does not automatically free us. Even after careful examination, we can become attached again.
The purified person has no fixed conception of any being in this world. Having abandoned illusion and the delusion of knowing, where could such a purified person be said to go? That person is free of such attachment.
“Being” here includes the self, animals, souls, gods, ātman, this world and the next, and a world after death. People say, “I saw it. I saw a ghost. I experienced a soul or God.” Yet hearing an idea from the past and interpreting a private experience through it does not mean one knows it. The Buddha calls this illusion and the delusion of knowing.
The question “Where could that person go?” belongs to the same context. People then assumed that after death one was reborn elsewhere. Once the belief itself has been released, asking where that person goes no longer makes sense. Purification does not mean establishing a definite postmortem destination; it means freedom from attachment to the idea that one must go somewhere.
Anger Arises from Attachment to Views
One attached to a doctrine becomes entangled in dispute. But how, and on what grounds, could one condemn a person bound to nothing? Such a person tries neither to acquire nor reject and is free of attachment to all views in this world.
The decisive phrase in the final verse is “free of attachment to all views.” This is the original form of anger and the inner meaning of the instruction not to be angry. We become angry because we think we are right and the other person is wrong. We rage because we have settled that we suffered an injustice and the other acted wrongly.
Things change when we admit that our own thought may be mistaken. We can no longer insist that we are one hundred percent right, pour anger on another, declare the other view one hundred percent wrong, and advance toward quarrel, war, and massacre. Such violence grows from our narrow judgment, views, and delusions. What must be relinquished is not thought itself but attachment to the belief that my view alone is the complete answer.
Is There Another Absolute Answer Called Right View?
Someone may respond, “Does this not merely mean abandoning prejudice?” Human beings cannot live with no views. Buddhists may ask whether the Noble Eightfold Path contains right view, right speech, right action, and a right path. The problem is whether we can know completely what is right. If there is no final standard of good and evil, how are we to live?
The moment a person believes that something complete and perfect exists, attachment to it begins. The Buddha did not say only to avoid prejudice; he said not to cling to any view. A statement does not become the answer merely because it is written in scripture, spoken by someone famous, or believed by everyone. It may be wrong. This is a skeptical standpoint and is connected to agnosticism.
Pyrrhonian skepticism, said to have learned near India after Pyrrho traveled with Alexander, begins from the impossibility of perfect knowledge. Nietzsche’s “God is dead” likewise overturns the absolute standpoint. People cannot perfectly know everything beyond their own position, and words in a book arise from the author’s perspective and level of understanding. No book therefore becomes perfect wisdom by itself. The destruction of absolutism had already begun with the Buddha.
Equality Appears When I Know I Am a Frog in a Well
When I know that I am a frog in a well, I can question inherited common sense. Does God exist? Does a soul exist? Is there perfect goodness or an eternal law? Rather than believing because a great person said it or because it was systematized for centuries, I can ask, “Is that really so?” Only after releasing attachment to views can we think, discuss, and debate, because my thought may be mistaken.
The caste order of ancient India trembles before this question. Some said they came from Brahmā’s mouth as children of God while others came from his hands or feet as lowly beings. But are divine descent, caste, rebirth, and soul real? Could they be human imaginings? Once the question is asked, all people appear equal. I too am born and die; what I know is only a fragment of the world, and even that knowledge may be wrong.
The conventions and views covering our eyes are images, illusions, representations made by us. In the language of the Diamond Sūtra, when attachment to such marks is released, the world begins to appear more as it is. We can answer “I am noble and you are base” with “By what standard?” Scientific thought becomes possible through that critical awareness, because inherited claims can be reconsidered and debated.
Dialogue, Democracy, Benevolence, and Revolutionary Thought
Rules in the saṅgha can also be examined together and shaped through discussion rather than imposed only as an absolute command. If I do not know everything, a seemingly foolish person may offer a brilliant insight. Diversity comes to be respected, and we gain a reason to listen to another perspective. Democracy, equality, and benevolence begin there.
I may not differ greatly from a creature I dismissed as insignificant. The noble and the base may be engaged merely in measuring one acorn against another. People of another country or nation are no different from me. I heard in the past that they were different, but I can reconsider and recognize that it was my thought. Revolutionary transformation becomes possible through this reconsideration.
The Buddha’s teaching is revolutionary not because it fixes the answer of one age forever. It gives us a standard for asking of democracy, capitalism, elections, economic, social, and welfare systems, equality, and peace: “Is the present arrangement right? Can it be improved?” Releasing attachment to every view can become the beginning of each new revolution.
From Theocentrism to Humanism
Humanism stands against a God-centered order. Ancient rulers claimed to be children of gods or members of divinely chosen bloodlines. Brahmins said their class emerged from Brahmā’s mouth; Gilgamesh presented himself as partly divine; the foundation myth of ancient Joseon spoke of descendants of heaven. The authority of old law codes likewise rested on the claim that a god had given them. God was the final standard legitimating power and class.
The turn that begins with the Buddha consists in asking, “There was no such thing, was there? Is it a human imagining? Is it really true?” This is why abandoning all views is revolutionary. Human beings cannot completely eliminate viewpoints, but we can abandon attachment to the claim that our view is perfectly right. The Buddha himself recognized that the shared renunciant goal—find the ātman, attain liberation, and escape rebirth—was a humanly constructed view.
Absolutism Revived Inside Buddhism
This teaching was exceedingly difficult for ancient Indian society to accept. Even when Brahmanical traditions absorbed parts of Buddhism and developed into later Hindu traditions, they could not fully accept the Buddha’s mode of thought. Buddhism itself also found “do not cling to any view” difficult to handle. The moment a religion tells people not to kill or commit adultery and commands them to follow what is right, the question returns: is that not also a view?
The original meaning of anger was consequently hidden, and religion discarded its skeptical edge and returned to absolutism. Buddhism too elevated the Buddha into a perfect godlike being, declared every word one hundred percent correct, and imagined him as possessing all knowledge without changing from beginning to end. In making religion easier to follow, the blade of “be free of attachment to every view” grew dull. The teaching narrowed into “do not be prejudiced,” while a fixed right view was made compulsory.
Because I Do Not Know Everything
The Buddha’s original teaching is not a declaration of perfect knowledge of the world. It is the collapse of absolutism: “There was no such thing. I cannot know the world perfectly. We are all frogs in a well.” Without this basic skepticism, Buddhism, the emptiness of person, and the emptiness of phenomena become difficult to understand. We cannot see why phenomena are empty.
We are told not to rage, fight, and quarrel because none of us can claim to be one hundred percent right. Dialogue and peace are possible because we cannot say that we know every truth. Knowing that I too am a frog in a well who sees only a part, I can treat others equally and cooperate. This current did not end with the Buddha. Socrates said he neither knew nor imagined that he knew; Pyrrho spoke of withholding judgment on the path toward ataraxia. Under different names, awareness of the limits of knowledge and doubt toward absolute views have continued into modern society.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.