Skillful Means: The Heart of Buddhist Compassion [Paperback]

Skilful means was a technique employed by the Buddha to enable his disciples to awaken, or to be saved from danger which relied on bribes, inducements, threats or half truths - just as a parent may employ on a young child. For example, once the Buddha promised one of his monks divine nymphs if he would meditate - eventually after that monk awoke, the Buddha was freed from his promise. What if the entire often complex teaching of the Buddha was skilful means, merely a complex advertisement or device to draw people in - given they would only truly comprehend reality after they had themselves pierced the veil? What if the teaching had no inherent truth at all?

This work tackles not so much compassion or even Skilful Means (Upaya) but the Buddhist attitude towards view and whether Buddhism makes any empirical statements of truth that go beyond a soteriological function. It spans the spectrum of Buddhism in its search for the development of Upaya, emphasised in the Mahayana approach.

Of the four "heretical" teachers in the Pali Canon, Sanjaya Belatthaputta was caricatured as an extreme sceptic. Asked e.g., "is the world eternal?" he replied using the fourfold logic: I don't say (i)it is, (ii)it isn't, (iii) it's both yes and no, nor (iv)it's neither yes nor no. The Buddha is reputed to have asked "Does this apply to your own philosophy?" One problem that the student will face is that Buddhism itself appears to have aspects of this "eel wriggling" approach. Schroeder argues, reiterating the famous simile on the raft, that the bulk of the scriptures could be seen as little more than skilful means with no essential propositions. Whereas Schroeder confines his argument to the realms of Buddhist philosophy and meditation, the idea can extend to our experience of reality and attempts at its reification. There is nothing especially new in this Upayic approach to Buddhism though what begins like the re-invention of the wheel is quickly superseded by the ramifications of this idea and how it affects our understanding of the teaching. Schroeder is at pains to be modest stating that the book itself does not represent another skilful means.

The author deepens his approach by clarifying the concept of conventional truth vs ultimate truth that was again enlarged by the Mahayana schools. One highlight of the book is Schroeder's analysis of the old Abhidhamma approach representing a matrix of postulates on the functioning of mind and meditation; in particular the description of the arising and ceasing of mind moments within a temporal frame. According to the Sarvastivadins, says Schroeder, the character of the mind moments changed but the essential underlying substance of experience svabhava remained. The Sautrantika's rejected this as it admitted of a self or atman, but replaced it by stating that only the present is real and that moments arise and cease into nothing. These arguments encapsulate a paradox found in any search for "ultimate truth". The latter scheme denies causation by ignoring past conditions and the mechanism of present conditioning. Nagarjuna and later schools tackled this problem by expanding the concepts of emptiness in phenomena leading to non-duality, important in Zen.

We are taken from the Abhidhamma approach through Vimalakirti and Nagarjuna to Zen including a little on Pure Land. Each tradition in succession seem in part a one-upmanship of the previous approach, trying at each turn to avoid the impression of clinging to theories and external forms. The author incorporates elements of Western philosophy and metaphysics into a narrative that is pithy yet engaging and fairly comprehensive.
Schroeder is critical of occidental interpretations of Nagarjuna as a philosopher and metaphysician independent of a soteriological aspect. This is important as more will probably be written on Indian philosophy in the West than ever before.
Several scholarly works are cited though a few seem questionable. Schroeder's unfamiliarity with ancient Buddhism is somewhat betrayed in his assertions e.g., that the fire worshippers the Buddha gave the Fire Sermon to (headed by Uruvela Kassapa) "ritually burnt their own flesh" when there is no precedent that the then fire-worshippers did this. He also mentions the Buddha to be with the five ascetics who "once lived in the mountains". In this light, Schroeder's analysis of the Abhidhamma approach to Theravada in terms of "seven stages of purification" may be too fixed belying the diversity of teachings then available. The original Buddhism was not Theravada and traditions can only be defined by comparison to alternatives and due to degrees of sometimes unfortunate polarisation to retain integrity.

This academic though accessible book, rich in quotation remains somewhat inconclusive at the end though it can be seen that the concept of Upaya in the sense of an absence of fixed teachings probably existed in all traditions. It will be an invaluable reference and an entertaining read about what the teaching is not. Perhaps the work could have been rounded off to indicate what Buddhism therefore does amount to and how it may critically hinge on the learner's state of mind. E.g. When questioned about the Buddha's views and those of his disciples the layman Anathapindaka admits ignorance but does explain his own view (Anguttara Nikaya X.93). To present Buddhism as merely Upaya could simply entrap us in another view. The teaching is a means to truth and involves a grounding in skilled qualities of mind like love, energy, concentration, equanimity, emphasised by the Buddha several times - perhaps these qualities could have been scrutinised to see if they represented nouns or verbs. If they are to be seen as clunky beliefs or potential wings to freedom.

This is an academic book, which focuses on the idea of "skillful means" (upaya) in Buddhism. Very broadly speaking, the idea is that the teachings of Buddhism are intended as means to an end, the end being the liberation of all sentient beings from suffering (dukkha). The book argues that the idea of Upaya, though more prominent in Mahayana Buddhism, was in fact present and central even in early Abbhidharma-period Buddhism. Moreover, the book explores the idea of Upaya in other periods of Buddhism, such as Nagarjuna's teachings and Chan/Zen Buddhism. The foreward by the excellent Zen scholar T. P. Kasulis is also interesting. However the book is not for the general audience and will only be useful to readers familiar with the history of Buddhism and its primary schools and teachers.

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