斯坦福哲学百科全书 Buddha佛

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy斯坦福哲学百科全书

Buddha佛

First published Thu Feb 17, 2011; substantive revision Thu Feb 14, 2019

The Buddha (fl. circa 450 BCE) is the individual whose teachings form the basis of the Buddhist tradition. These teachings, preserved in texts known as the Nikāyas or Āgamas, concern the quest for liberation from suffering. While the ultimate aim of the Buddha’s teachings is thus to help individuals attain the good life, his analysis of the source of suffering centrally involves claims concerning the nature of persons, as well as how we acquire knowledge about the world and our place in it. These teachings formed the basis of a philosophical tradition that developed and defended a variety of sophisticated theories in metaphysics and epistemology. 首次发布于2011年2月17日：实质性修订 2019年2月14日

佛陀（大约公元前450年）是其教义构成佛教传统基础的个人。这些教义保存在被称为"尼基亚人"或"伽玛斯"的课文中，涉及寻求从苦难中解放出来。虽然佛陀教义的最终目的是帮助个人获得美好生活，但他对痛苦根源的分析主要涉及关于人的性质，以及我们如何获得关于世界和我们在其中的地位的知识的主张。这些教义构成了哲学传统的基础，这种传统发展并捍卫了形而上学和认识论中各种复杂的理论。

1. Buddha as Philosopher佛陀为哲学家

This entry concerns the historical individual, traditionally called Gautama, who is identified by modern scholars as the founder of Buddhism. According to Buddhist teachings, there have been other Buddhas in the past, and there will be yet more in the future. The title 'Buddha’, which literally means 'awakened’, is conferred on an individual who discovers the path to nirvana, the cessation of suffering, and propagates that discovery so that others may also achieve nirvana. If the teaching that there have been other Buddhas is true, then Gautama is not the founder of Buddhism. This entry will follow modern scholarship in taking an agnostic stance on the question of whether there have been other Buddhas, and likewise for questions concerning the superhuman status and powers that some Buddhists attribute to Buddhas. The concern of this entry is just those aspects of the thought of the historical individual Gautama that bear on the development of the Buddhist philosophical tradition.

这个条目涉及历史人物，传统上被称为高塔玛，谁被现代学者确定为佛教的创始人。根据佛教的教导，过去还有其他佛陀，将来还会有更多佛像。标题"佛陀"，字面意思是"觉醒"，授予一个人谁发现涅磐的道路，停止痛苦，并传播这一发现，使其他人也可以实现涅磐。如果说有其他佛陀的教导是真的，那么高塔玛就不是佛教的创始人了。这一条目将遵循现代学术，在是否有其他佛陀的问题上采取不可知论的立场，同样，对于一些佛教徒将佛陀归因于超人地位和权力的问题。这个条目的关注点只是历史个体高塔玛思想的那些方面，它承载着佛教哲学传统的发展。

The Buddha will here be treated as a philosopher. To so treat him is controversial, but before coming to why that should be so, let us first rehearse those basic aspects of the Buddha’s life and teachings that are relatively non-controversial. Tradition has it that Gautama lived to age 80. Up until recently his dates were thought to be approximately 560–480 BCE, but many scholars now hold that he must have died around 405 BCE. He was born into a family of some wealth and power, members of the Śākya clan, in the area of the present border between India and Nepal. The story is that in early adulthood he abandoned his comfortable life as a householder (as well as his wife and young son) in order to seek a solution to the problem of existential suffering. He first took up with a number of different wandering ascetics (śramanas) who claimed to know the path to liberation from suffering. Finding their teachings unsatisfactory, he struck out on his own, and through a combination of insight and meditational practice attained the state of enlightenment (bodhi) which is said to represent the cessation of all further suffering. He then devoted the remaining 45 years of his life to teaching others the insights and techniques that had led him to this achievement.佛陀将在这里被视为哲学家。这样对待他是有争议的，但在来为什么应该这样之前，让我们先排练一下佛陀生活的基本方面和相对没有争议的教义。传统认为高塔玛活到80岁。直到最近，他的约会日期被认为是大约公元前560-480年，但许多学者现在认为，他一定是在公元前405年左右去世的。他出生在一个拥有一定财富和权力的家庭，是奥基亚家族的成员，目前位于印度和尼泊尔边界地区。故事是，在成年早期，他放弃了他作为一个住户（以及他的妻子和年幼的儿子）的舒适生活，以寻求生存痛苦问题的解决方案。他首先与一些不同的流浪禁欲症患者（[阿拉马纳斯）接触，他们声称知道从苦难中解放的道路。发现他们的教导不尽如人意，他自己动手，通过洞察力和冥想实践的结合，达到了启蒙（菩提）的状态，据说这代表着停止一切进一步的痛苦。然后，他把余生的45年时间都用在教别人导致他取得这一成就的见解和技术上。

Gautama could himself be classified as one of the śramanas. That there existed such a phenomenon as the śramanas tells us that there was some degree of dissatisfaction with the customary religious practices then prevailing in the Gangetic basin of North India. These practices consisted largely in the rituals and sacrifices prescribed in the Vedas. Among the śramanas there were many, including the Buddha, who rejected the authority of the Vedas as definitive pronouncements on the nature of the world and our place in it (and for this reason are called 'heterodox’). But within the Vedic canon itself there is a stratum of (comparatively late) texts, the Upaniṣads, that likewise displays disaffection with Brahmin ritualism. Among the new ideas that figure in these ('orthodox’) texts, as well as in the teachings of those heterodox śramanas whose doctrines are known to us, are the following: that sentient beings (including humans, non-human animals, gods, and the inhabitants of various hells) undergo rebirth; that rebirth is governed by the causal laws of karma (good actions cause pleasant fruit for the agent, evil actions cause unpleasant fruit, etc.); that continual rebirth is inherently unsatisfactory; that there is an ideal state for sentient beings involving liberation from the cycle of rebirth; and that attaining this state requires overcoming ignorance concerning one’s true identity. Various views are offered concerning this ignorance and how to overcome it. The Bhagavad Gītā (classified by some orthodox schools as an Upaniṣad) lists four such methods, and discusses at least two separate views concerning our identity: that there is a plurality of distinct selves, each being the true agent of a person’s actions and the bearer of karmic merit and demerit but existing separately from the body and its associated states; and that there is just one self, of the nature of pure consciousness (a 'witness’) and identical with the essence of the cosmos, Brahman or pure undifferentiated Being.高塔玛自己可以归类为拉马纳人之一。存在这样一种现象，如阿拉马纳斯告诉我们，对当时在印度北部甘地盆地盛行的惯常宗教习俗有某种程度的不满。这些做法主要包括维达斯规定的仪式和祭品。在拉马纳人中，有许多人，包括佛陀，他们拒绝将维达斯的权威作为关于世界性质和我们在其中地位的明确声明（因此被称为"异质体"）。但是，在吠陀本身有一个层次（相对较晚）文本，Upaniṣads，同样表现出对婆罗门仪式主义的不满。在这些（"正统"）文本中，以及在那些我们熟知的异质-拉马纳斯的教义中，有以下新思想：有知觉的生物（包括人类、非人类动物、神和各种地狱的居民）重生：重生受业力因果规律的制约（善行为代理人带来宜人的果实，恶行导致不愉快的果实等）：持续的重生本质上是不能令人满意的：有一个理想的状态，有知觉的人涉及从重生周期的解放：达到这种状态需要克服对真实身份的无知。对于这种无知以及如何克服这种无知，人们提出了各种看法。《巴加瓦德Gītā（被一些正统学校列为Upaniṣad）列举了四种这种方法，并讨论了关于我们身份的至少两种不同观点：一种是多种不同的自我，每种观点都是一个人行为的真正代理人，是业力优点和缺点的承担者，但与身体及其相关国家是分开存在的：只有一个自我，纯意识的本质（一个"见证人"），与宇宙的本质，婆罗门或纯粹的无差别存在相同。

The Buddha agreed with those of his contemporaries embarked on the same soteriological project that it is ignorance about our identity that is responsible for suffering. What sets his teachings apart (at this level of analysis) lies in what he says that ignorance consists in: the conceit that there is an 'I’ and a 'mine’. This is the famous Buddhist teaching of non-self (anātman). And it is with this teaching that the controversy begins concerning whether Gautama may legitimately be represented as a philosopher. First there are those who (correctly) point out that the Buddha never categorically denies the existence of a self that transcends what is empirically given, namely the five skandhas or psychophysical elements. While the Buddha does deny that any of the psychophysical elements is a self, these interpreters claim that he at least leaves open the possibility that there is a self that is transcendent in the sense of being non-empirical. To this it may be objected that all of classical Indian philosophy—Buddhist and orthodox alike—understood the Buddha to have denied the self tout court. To this it is sometimes replied that the later philosophical tradition simply got the Buddha wrong, at least in part because the Buddha sought to indicate something that cannot be grasped through the exercise of philosophical rationality. On this interpretation, the Buddha should be seen not as a proponent of the philosophical methods of analysis and argumentation, but rather as one who sees those methods as obstacles to final release.佛陀同意他的同代人开始同一个天体工程，即对我们的身份一无所知，是造成苦难的原因。使他的教导与众不同的（在这个分析层面上）在于他说无知包括：有一个'我'和'我的'的自负。这是著名的非自我佛教教义。正是在这种教导下，关于高塔玛能否合法地被代表为哲学家的争论开始了。首先，有些人（正确地）指出，佛陀从未断然否认存在超越经验赋予的自我，即五个斯堪的纳达或心理物理元素。虽然佛陀否认任何心理物理元素都是自我，但这些解释者声称，他至少留下了一种可能性，即在非经验意义上，有一种自我是超然的。对此，可以反对印度所有古典哲学——佛教和正统哲学——都理解佛陀否定了自我吹捧的宫廷。对此，有时人们回答说，后来的哲学传统只是把佛陀搞错了，至少部分是因为佛陀试图通过运用哲学理性来指明一些无法把握的东西。关于这一解释，佛陀不应被视为分析和论证的哲学方法的支持者，而应被视为将这些方法视为最终释放的障碍的人。

Another reason one sometimes encounters for denying that the Buddha is a philosopher is that he rejects the characteristically philosophical activity of theorizing about matters that lack evident practical application. On this interpretation as well, those later Buddhist thinkers who did go in for the construction of theories about the ultimate nature of everything simply failed to heed or properly appreciate the Buddha’s advice that we avoid theorizing for its own sake and confine our attention to those matters that are directly relevant to liberation from suffering. On this view the teaching of non-self is not a bit of metaphysics, just some practical advice to the effect that we should avoid identifying with things that are transitory and so bound to yield dissatisfaction. What both interpretations share is the assumption that it is possible to arrive at what the Buddha himself thought without relying on the understanding of his teachings developed in the subsequent Buddhist philosophical tradition.人们有时否认佛陀是哲学家的另一个原因是，他拒绝理论对缺乏明显实际应用的事项进行理论化的典型哲学活动。对此的解释，那些后来的佛教思想家，谁确实去建立理论的最终性质的一切根本就没有注意到或适当欣赏佛陀的建议，我们避免理论本身的缘故，并限制我们的注意力，那些直接关系到从痛苦中解放出来的事情。从这个角度看，非自我的教学不是形而上学的一点，只是一些实际的建议，大意是我们应该避免认同那些暂时性的东西，所以必然会产生不满。两种解释都认为，在不依赖对佛陀在随后的佛教哲学传统中发展起来的教导的理解的情况下，有可能得出佛陀本人的想法。

This assumption may be questioned. Our knowledge of the Buddha’s teachings comes by way of texts that were not written down until several centuries after his death, are in languages (Pāli, and Chinese translations of Sanskrit) other than the one he is likely to have spoken, and disagree in important respects. The first difficulty may not be as serious as it seems, given that the Buddha’s discourses were probably rehearsed shortly after his death and preserved through oral transmission until the time they were committed to writing. And the second need not be insuperable either. But the third is troubling, in that it suggests textual transmission involved processes of insertion and deletion in aid of one side or another in sectarian disputes. Our ancient sources attest to this: one will encounter a dispute among Buddhist thinkers where one side cites some utterance of the Buddha in support of their position, only to have the other side respond that the text from which the quotation is taken is not universally recognized as authoritatively the word of the Buddha. This suggests that our record of the Buddha’s teaching may be colored by the philosophical elaboration of those teachings propounded by later thinkers in the Buddhist tradition.这一假设可能会受到质疑。我们对佛陀教义的了解来自于他死后几个世纪才写下来的经文，这些文字是用语言（Péli和梵文的中文翻译）而不是他可能讲过的，在重要方面意见不一。第一个困难可能并不像看上去那么严重，因为佛陀的话语可能是在他死后不久排练的，并通过口头传播保存下来，直到他们致力于写作的时候。第二个也不必是不可超的。但第三个问题令人不安，因为它表明文本传输涉及在宗派争端中协助一方或另一方的插入和删除过程。我们的古代来源证明了这一点：一方引用佛陀的一些话语支持他们的立场，而另一方却回应说，引用的经文并非普遍承认为佛词的权威性。这表明，我们对佛陀的教导记录可能因佛教传统中后来思想家提出的这些教义的哲学阐述而变色。

Some scholars are more sanguine than others about the possibility of overcoming this difficulty, and thereby getting at what the Buddha himself had thought, as opposed to what later Buddhist philosophers thought he had thought. No position will be taken on this dispute here. We will be treating the Buddha’s thought as it was understood within the later philosophical tradition that he had inspired. The resulting interpretation may or may not be faithful to his intentions. It is at least logically possible that he believed there to be a transcendent self that can only be known by mystical intuition, or that the exercise of philosophical rationality leads only to sterile theorizing and away from real emancipation. What we can say with some assurance is that this is not how the Buddhist philosophical tradition understood him. It is their understanding that will be the subject of this essay.一些学者比其他人更乐观地认为有可能克服这一困难，从而了解佛陀本人的想法，而不是后来的佛教哲学家认为他所想的。这里不会就这一争端采取任何立场。我们将对待佛陀的思想，因为它被理解在后来的哲学传统，他启发。由此产生的解释可能忠实于他的意图，也可能不忠实。至少从逻辑上讲，他相信有一个超越自我，只能通过神秘的直觉来认识，或者哲学理性的运用只会导致无菌的理论化和脱离真正的解放。我们可以肯定地说，这不是佛教哲学传统理解他的原因。正是他们的理解将成为本文的主题。

2. Core Teachings2. 核心教学

The Buddha’s basic teachings are usually summarized using the device of the Four Noble Truths:佛陀的基本教义通常是用"四圣谛"说四种真理来概括的：

There is suffering.有痛苦。一者、苦圣谛

There is the origination of suffering.苦难的起源二者、集圣谛

There is the cessation of suffering.有停止痛苦 三者、灭圣谛

There is a path to the cessation of suffering.有一条停止苦难的道路;四者、道圣谛。

The first of these claims might seem obvious, even when 'suffering’ is understood to mean not mere pain but existential suffering, the sort of frustration, alienation and despair that arise out of our experience of transitoriness. But there are said to be different levels of appreciation of this truth, some quite subtle and difficult to attain; the highest of these is said to involve the realization that everything is of the nature of suffering. Perhaps it is sufficient for present purposes to point out that while this is not the implausible claim that all of life’s states and events are necessarily experienced as unsatisfactory, still the realization that all (oneself included) is impermanent can undermine a precondition for real enjoyment of the events in a life: that such events are meaningful by virtue of their having a place in an open-ended narrative.这些主张中的第一个似乎是显而易见的，即使"痛苦"被理解为不仅意味着痛苦，而且意味着存在的痛苦，即我们短暂的经历所产生的那种挫折、疏远和绝望。但据说对这个真理的欣赏程度不同，有些相当微妙和难以实现：其中最高的据说涉及认识到一切都是痛苦的本质。也许，目前的目的足以指出，虽然这不是难以置信的说法，即所有生活的状态和事件都必然经历不尽如人意，但认识到所有（包括自己）都是非长期的，可能会破坏真正享受生活中事件的先决条件：这些事件由于在不限成员名额的叙述中占有一席之地而有意义。

It is with the development and elaboration of (2) that substantive philosophical controversy begins. (2) is the simple claim that there are causes and conditions for the arising of suffering. (3) then makes the obvious point that if the origination of suffering depends on causes, future suffering can be prevented by bringing about the cessation of those causes. (4) specifies a set of techniques that are said to be effective in such cessation. Much then hangs on the correct identification of the causes of suffering. The answer is traditionally spelled out in a list consisting of twelve links in a causal chain that begins with ignorance and ends with suffering (represented by the states of old age, disease and death). Modern scholarship has established that this list is a later compilation. For the texts that claim to convey the Buddha’s own teachings give two slightly different formulations of this list, and shorter formulations containing only some of the twelve items are also found in the texts. But it seems safe to say that the Buddha taught an analysis of the origins of suffering roughly along the following lines: given the existence of a fully functioning assemblage of psychophysical elements (the parts that make up a sentient being), ignorance concerning the three characteristics of sentient existence—suffering, impermanence and non-self—will lead, in the course of normal interactions with the environment, to appropriation (the identification of certain elements as 'I’ and 'mine’). This leads in turn to the formation of attachments, in the form of desire and aversion, and the strengthening of ignorance concerning the true nature of sentient existence. These ensure future rebirth, and thus future instances of old age, disease and death, in a potentially unending cycle.正是随着（2）的发展和阐述，实质性的哲学争论开始了。（2） 简单的说法，即痛苦产生的原因和条件。（3） 然后明确指出，如果痛苦的起源取决于原因，那么通过停止这些原因可以防止今后的痛苦。（4） 指定了一套据说在此类停止中有效的技术。然后，许多问题都取决于正确识别痛苦的原因。答案传统上在一份清单中阐明，该列表由因果链中的十二个环节组成，这些环节以无知开始，以痛苦结束（以老年、疾病和死亡状态表示）。现代奖学金已经确定，这个名单是一个后来的汇编。对于声称传达佛陀自己教导的文本，本清单有两种略有不同的提法，文本中也含有12个项目中的一部分。但可以肯定地说，佛陀教导了对苦难起源的分析，大致大致如下：鉴于心理物理元素（构成有知觉存在的部分）的功能齐全的组合存在，对有知觉存在的三个特征的无知——痛苦、无常和非自我——将导致与环境的正常相互作用。，拨款（确定某些元素为"我"和"我的"）。这反过来又导致以欲望和厌恶的形式形成依恋，以及加强对有知觉存在的真正本质的无知。这些确保未来的重生，从而在未来的老年，疾病和死亡的情况下，在一个潜在的无休止的周期。

The key to escape from this cycle is said to lie in realization of the truth about sentient existence—that it is characterized by suffering, impermanence and non-self. But this realization is not easily achieved, since acts of appropriation have already made desire, aversion and ignorance deeply entrenched habits of mind. Thus the measures specified in (4) include various forms of training designed to replace such habits with others that are more conducive to seeing things as they are. Training in meditation is also prescribed, as a way of enhancing one’s observational abilities, especially with respect to one’s own psychological states. Insight is cultivated through the use of these newly developed observational powers, as informed by knowledge acquired through the exercise of philosophical rationality. There is a debate in the later tradition as to whether final release can be attained through theoretical insight alone, through meditation alone, or only by using both techniques. Ch’an, for instance, is based on the premise that enlightenment can be attained through meditation alone, whereas Theravāda advocates using both but also holds that analysis alone may be sufficient for some. (This disagreement begins with a dispute over how to interpret D I.77–84.) The third option seems the most plausible, but the first is certainly of some interest given its suggestion that one can attain the ideal state for humans just by doing philosophy.据说，摆脱这个循环的关键在于实现关于有知觉存在的真理——它的特点是痛苦、无能和非自我。但是，这种认识并非易事，因为侵占行为已经使欲望、厌恶和无知成为根深蒂固的习惯。因此，（4）中规定的措施包括各种形式的培训，旨在用更有利于看到事物的习惯来取代这种习惯。冥想训练也是提高观察能力的一种方式，特别是对一个人的心理状态。洞察力是利用这些新发展的观察能力培养的，而这种能力是通过运用哲学理性获得的知识所提供的。在后来的传统中，人们争论的是，最终的释放是仅仅通过理论洞察才能实现的，仅仅通过冥想，还是只能通过使用这两种技术来实现。例如，Ch'an的前提是，只有冥想才能获得启蒙，而塞拉瓦达主张同时使用这两种疗法，但也认为，单靠分析对有些人来说可能就足够了。（这种分歧始于关于如何解释D I.77-84的争论。第三种选择似乎最合理，但第一种选择肯定是一些兴趣，因为它的建议，一个人可以达到理想的状态，人类只是通过做哲学。

The Buddha seems to have held (2) to constitute the core of his discovery. He calls his teachings a 'middle path’ between two extreme views, and it is this claim concerning the causal origins of suffering that he identifies as the key to avoiding those extremes. The extremes are eternalism, the view that persons are eternal, and annihilationism, the view that persons go utterly out of existence (usually understood to mean at death, though a term still shorter than one lifetime is not ruled out). It will be apparent that eternalism requires the existence of the sort of self that the Buddha denies. What is not immediately evident is why the denial of such a self is not tantamount to the claim that the person is annihilated at death (or even sooner, depending on just how impermanent one takes the psychophysical elements to be). The solution to this puzzle lies in the fact that eternalism and annihilationism both share the presupposition that there is an 'I’ whose existence might either extend beyond death or terminate at death. The idea of the 'middle path’ is that all of life’s continuities can be explained in terms of facts about a causal series of psychophysical elements. There being nothing more than a succession of these impermanent, impersonal events and states, the question of the ultimate fate of this 'I’, the supposed owner of these elements, simply does not arise.佛陀似乎已经举行了（2）构成他的发现的核心。他称他的教导是两种极端观点之间的"中间道路"，正是这种关于痛苦因果起源的说法，他认为这是避免这些极端观点的关键。极端是永恒主义、人是永恒的观点和毁灭主义，即人完全不存在的观点（通常理解为死亡时的意思，尽管不排除一个任期仍然短于一生）。显然，永恒主义需要佛陀所否认的那种自我的存在。不立即显而易见的是，为什么否认这种自我并不等于声称这个人在死亡时被消灭（甚至更早，这取决于一个人对心理物理元素的无常程度）。解决这个难题的办法在于，永恒主义和毁灭主义都有着共同的前提，即有一个'我'的存在可能超越死亡或在死亡时终止。"中间路径"的概念是，所有生命的连续性都可以用一系列精神物理因素的因果关系来解释。这些非个人化的事件和状态接二连三，这个"我"的最终命运问题，这些元素的所谓所有者，根本就没有出现。

This reductionist view of sentient beings was later articulated in terms of the distinction between two kinds of truth, conventional and ultimate. Each kind of truth has its own domain of objects, the things that are only conventionally real and the things that are ultimately real respectively. Conventionally real entities are those things that are accepted as real by common sense, but that turn out on further analysis to be wholes compounded out of simpler entities and thus not strictly speaking real at all. The stock example of a conventionally real entity is the chariot, which we take to be real only because it is more convenient, given our interests and cognitive limitations, to have a single name for the parts when assembled in the right way. Since our belief that there are chariots is thus due to our having a certain useful concept, the chariot is said to be a mere conceptual fiction. (This does not, however, mean that all conceptualization is falsification; only concepts that allow of reductive analysis lead to this artificial inflation of our ontology, and thus to a kind of error.) Ultimately real entities are those ultimate parts into which conceptual fictions are analyzable. An ultimately true statement is one that correctly describes how certain ultimately real entities are arranged. A conventionally true statement is one that, given how the ultimately real entities are arranged, would correctly describe certain conceptual fictions if they also existed. The ultimate truth concerning the relevant ultimately real entities helps explain why it should turn out to be useful to accept conventionally true statements (such as 'King Milinda rode in a chariot’) when the objects described in those statements are mere fictions.这种对有知觉存在的看法后来从传统和终极两种真理的区别中阐明。每一种真理都有它自己的对象领域，只有传统真实的东西和最终是真实的事物。传统意义上的实体是常识所接受的真实实体，但经过进一步分析后发现，这些实体整体是由较简单的实体复合而成的，因此根本不严格地说是真实的。传统真实实体的股票示例是战车，我们之所以认为战车是真实的，只是因为考虑到我们的兴趣和认知限制，在以正确的方式组装部件时，对零件有一个单一名称更为方便。由于我们相信有战车，因此我们有一个有用的概念，战车据说只是一个概念小说。（然而，这并不意味着所有概念化都是伪造的;只有允许还原分析的概念导致本体论的这种人为膨胀，从而导致一种错误。归根结底，真正的实体是概念小说可以分析的终极部分。最终真实的陈述是正确描述最终确定真实实体的排列方式。传统的真实陈述是，鉴于最终真正的实体是如何排列的，如果某些概念小说也存在，它将正确地描述它们。关于相关最终真实实体的最终真相有助于解释为什么当这些陈述中描述的对象仅仅是虚构的时，接受传统真实陈述（如"米琳达国王乘坐战车"）应该是有用的。

Using this distinction between the two truths, the key insight of the 'middle path’ may be expressed as follows. The ultimate truth about sentient beings is just that there is a causal series of impermanent, impersonal psychophysical elements. Since these are all impermanent, and lack other properties that would be required of an essence of the person, none of them is a self. But given the right arrangement of such entities in a causal series, it is useful to think of them as making up one thing, a person. It is thus conventionally true that there are persons, things that endure for a lifetime and possibly (if there is rebirth) longer. This is conventionally true because generally speaking there is more overall happiness and less overall pain and suffering when one part of such a series identifies with other parts of the same series. For instance, when the present set of psychophysical elements identifies with future elements, it is less likely to engage in behavior (such as smoking) that results in present pleasure but far greater future pain. The utility of this convention is, however, limited. Past a certain point—namely the point at which we take it too seriously, as more than just a useful fiction—it results in existential suffering. The cessation of suffering is attained by extirpating all sense of an 'I’ that serves as agent and owner.利用这两个真理之间的区别，"中间道路"的关键见解可以表达如下。关于有知觉的人类的终极真理只是有一系列非常的、非个人的精神物理元素的因果关系。由于这些都是不精确的，并缺乏其他属性，将需要人的本质，他们都不是一个自我。但是，鉴于这些实体在因果系列中的正确安排，将它们视为一个人的一件事是有用的。因此，传统上，有的人，东西，持续一辈子，并可能（如果有重生）更长的时间。这是常规正确的，因为一般来说，当此类系列的一部分与同一系列的其他部分认同时，整体幸福感更高，整体痛苦和痛苦更少。例如，当目前的一组心理物理元素与未来的元素认同时，它不太可能从事行为（如吸烟），导致现在的乐趣，但更大的未来痛苦。然而，这项公约的效用是有限的。过去的某一点——即我们把它看得太重的点，不仅仅是一个有用的小说——它导致了生存的痛苦。停止痛苦是通过消除作为代理人和所有者的"我"的所有感觉来实现的。

3. Non-Self3. 非自我

The Buddha’s 'middle path’ strategy can be seen as one of first arguing that there is nothing that the word 'I’ genuinely denotes, and then explaining that our erroneous sense of an 'I’ stems from our employment of the useful fiction represented by the concept of the person. While the second part of this strategy only receives its full articulation in the later development of the theory of two truths, the first part can be found in the Buddha’s own teachings, in the form of several philosophical arguments for non-self. Best known among these is the argument from impermanence (S III.66–8), which has this basic structure:佛陀的"中间道路"策略可以被看作是第一次争辩说，"我"这个词没有真正表示的，然后解释我们的错误意义上的'我'源于我们雇用了以人的概念为代表的有用的小说。虽然这一战略的第二部分只有在两个真理理论的后期发展中才能得到充分阐述，但第一部分可以在佛陀自己的教义中找到，其形式是非自我的若干哲学论据。其中最有名的是来自无懈可境的论点（S III.66-8），它有这个基本结构：

If there were a self it would be permanent.如果有一个自我，这将是永久的。

None of the five kinds of psychophysical element is permanent.这五种心理物理元素中没有一种是永久性的。

∴ There is no self.没有自我。

It is the fact that this argument does not contain a premise explicitly asserting that the five skandhas (classes of psychophysical element) are exhaustive of the constituents of persons, plus the fact that these are all said to be empirically observable, that leads some to claim that the Buddha did not intend to deny the existence of a self tout court. There is, however, evidence that the Buddha was generally hostile toward attempts to establish the existence of unobservable entities. In the Pohapāda Sutta (D I.178–203), for instance, the Buddha compares someone who posits an unseen seer in order to explain our introspective awareness of cognitions, to a man who has conceived a longing for the most beautiful woman in the world based solely on the thought that such a woman must surely exist. And in the Tevijja Sutta (D I.235–52), the Buddha rejects the claim of certain Brahmins to know the path to oneness with Brahman, on the grounds that no one has actually observed this Brahman. This makes more plausible the assumption that the argument has as an implicit premise the claim that there is no more to the person than the five skandhas.事实上，这一论点没有明确声称五个斯坎达（精神物理元素类别）是详尽的人的组成，加上事实，这些都说是经验观察，导致一些人声称，佛陀并不打算否认存在一个自我吹捧的法院。然而，有证据表明，佛陀通常对建立不为人注意的实体存在的企图怀有敌意。例如，在《波哈佩达·苏塔》（D I.178-203）中，佛陀将一个假设一个看不见的预言家来解释我们内省认知意识的人比作一个仅仅基于这样一个女人必须存在的思想而孕育了对世界上最美丽的女人的渴望的男人。在Tevijja Sutta（D I.235-52）中，佛陀拒绝某些婆罗门人的说法，即知道与婆罗门合一的道路，理由是没有人真正观察过这个婆罗门。这使得更合理的假设，即该论点有一个隐含的前提，声称没有比五个斯坎达人更多的人。

Premise (1) appears to be based on the assumption that persons undergo rebirth, together with the thought that one function of a self would be to account for diachronic personal identity. By 'permanent’ is here meant continued existence over at least several lives. This is shown by the fact that the Buddha rules out the body as a self on the grounds that the body exists for just one lifetime. (This also demonstrates that the Buddha did not mean by 'impermanent’ what some later Buddhist philosophers meant, viz., existing for just a moment; the Buddhist doctrine of momentariness represents a later development.) The mental entities that make up the remaining four types of psychophysical element might seem like more promising candidates, but these are ruled out on the grounds that these all originate in dependence on contact between sense faculty and object, and last no longer than a particular sense-object-contact event. That he listed five kinds of psychophysical element, and not just one, shows that the Buddha embraced a kind of dualism. But this strategy for demonstrating the impermanence of the psychological elements shows that his dualism was not the sort of mind-body dualism familiar from substance ontologies like those of Descartes and of the Nyāya school of orthodox Indian philosophy. Instead of seeing the mind as the persisting bearer of such transient events as occurrences of cognition, feeling and volition, he treats 'mind’ as a kind of aggregate term for bundles of transient mental events. These events being impermanent, they too fail to account for diachronic personal identity in the way in which a self might be expected to.前提（1）似乎基于人们经历重生的假设，以及认为自我的一个功能是解释过时的个人身份。这里的"永久"意味着至少几个生命的继续存在。佛陀以身体只存在一辈子为由，排除了身体作为自我。（这也表明，佛陀并不是指"无常"的意思，即一些后来的佛教哲学家的意思，即仅仅存在片刻;佛教的瞬间学说代表着后来的发展。构成其余四种心理物理元素的精神实体可能看起来更有前途，但排除了这些可能性，理由是这些实体都源于对感官教员和对象之间接触的依赖，并且持续的时间不超过特定的感官对象接触事件。他列举了五种心理物理元素，而不仅仅是一种，这表明佛陀接受了一种二元论。但是，这种展示心理因素无常性的战略表明，他的二元论并不是像笛卡尔和尼雅正统印度哲学派那样从物质本体学中熟悉的那种身心二元论。他没有把头脑看作是认知、感觉和意志等短暂事件的持久携带者，而是将"头脑"视为一系列短暂心理事件的总术语。这些事件是无能的， 它们也没有以自我被期望的方式解释过时的个人身份。

Another argument for non-self, which might be called the argument from control (S III.66–8), has this structure:非自我的另一个论点，可能被称为控制参数（S III.66-8），有这种结构：

If there were a self, one could never desire that it be changed.如果有一个自我，一个人永远不能渴望它被改变。

Each of the five kinds of psychophysical element is such that one can desire that it be changed.

五种心理物理元素中的每一种都是如此，以至于人们都渴望改变它。

∴ There is no self.∴没有自我。

Premise (1) is puzzling. It appears to presuppose that the self should have complete control over itself, so that it would effortlessly adjust its state to its desires. That the self should be thought of as the locus of control is certainly plausible. Those Indian self-theorists who claim that the self is a mere passive witness recognize that the burden of proof is on them to show that the self is not an agent. But it seems implausibly demanding to require of the self that it have complete control over itself. We do not require that vision see itself if it is to see other things. The case of vision suggests an alternative interpretation, however. We might hold that vision does not see itself for the reason that this would violate an irreflexivity principle, to the effect that an entity cannot operate on itself. Indian philosophers who accept this principle cite supportive instances such as the knife that cannot cut itself and the finger-tip that cannot touch itself. If this principle is accepted, then if the self were the locus of control it would follow that it could never exercise this function on itself. A self that was the controller could never find itself in the position of seeking to change its state to one that it deemed more desirable. On this interpretation, the first premise seems to be true. And there is ample evidence that (2) is true: it is difficult to imagine a bodily or psychological state over which one might not wish to exercise control. Consequently, given the assumption that the person is wholly composed of the psychophysical elements, it appears to follow that a self of this description does not exist.前提 （1） 令人费解。它似乎以自我应该完全控制自己为前提，这样它就会毫不费力地根据自己的欲望调整自己的状态。自我应该被认为是控制之地，这当然是合理的。那些声称自己只是被动证人的印度自我理论家认识到，举证责任在于他们来证明自己不是代理人。但它似乎难以置信地要求自己完全控制自己。我们不需要这种愿景看到自己，如果它要看到其他的东西。然而，视觉案例提出了另一种解释。我们可能认为，这种愿景并不认为这样做会违反一个不灵活的原则，大意是一个实体不能自行运作。接受这一原则的印度哲学家列举了一些支持性的例子，如不能割伤自己的刀和不能触摸自己的指尖。如果这一原则被接受，那么如果自我是控制之地，它就永远无法自行行使这一功能。自我控制者永远无法发现自己处于寻求将其状态更改为它认为更可取的状态的位置。对此的解释，第一个前提似乎是真的。有充分证据表明（2）是真的：很难想象身体或心理状态，一个人可能不希望行使控制。因此，鉴于假设此人完全由心理物理元素组成，似乎不存在这种描述的自我。

These two arguments appear, then, to give good reason to deny a self that might ground diachronic personal identity and serve as locus of control, given the assumption that there is no more to the person than the empirically given psychophysical elements. But it now becomes something of a puzzle how one is to explain diachronic personal identity and agency. To start with the latter, does the argument from control not suggest that control must be exercised by something other than the psychophysical elements? This was precisely the conclusion of the Sāṃkhya school of orthodox Indian philosophy. One of their arguments for the existence of a self was that it is possible to exercise control over all the empirically given constituents of the person; while they agree with the Buddha that a self is never observed, they take the phenomena of agency to be grounds for positing a self that transcends all possible experience.因此，这两个论点似乎可以给出充分的理由来否认一种可能导致二元个人身份并作为控制点的自我，因为假设对人而言，没有比经验赋予的精神物理元素更多的了。但现在，如何解释二元化的个人身份和代理权成了一个谜。从后者开始，控制的论点难道不表明控制必须由心理物理因素以外的其他因素来行使吗？这正是Sāṃkhya正统印度哲学学派的结论。他们关于自我存在的论点之一是，有可能对人的所有经验赋予的选民进行控制：虽然他们同意佛陀的观点，即一个自我从未被观察过，但他们认为代理的现象是假设一个超越一切可能的经验的自我的理由。

This line of objection to the Buddha’s teaching of non-self is more commonly formulated in response to the argument from impermanence, however. Perhaps its most dramatic form is aimed at the Buddha’s acceptance of the doctrines of karma and rebirth. It is clear that the body ceases to exist at death. And given the Buddha’s argument that mental states all originate in dependence on sense-object contact events, it seems no psychological constituent of the person can transmigrate either. Yet the Buddha claims that persons who have not yet achieved enlightenment will be reborn as sentient beings of some sort after they die. If there is no constituent whatever that moves from one life to the next, how could the being in the next life be the same person as the being in this life? This question becomes all the more pointed when it is added that rebirth is governed by karma, something that functions as a kind of cosmic justice: those born into fortunate circumstances do so as a result of good deeds in prior lives, while unpleasant births result from evil past deeds. Such a system of reward and punishment could be just only if the recipient of pleasant or unpleasant karmic fruit is the same person as the agent of the good or evil action. And the opponent finds it incomprehensible how this could be so in the absence of a persisting self.然而，这种反对佛陀非自我教导的路线，更常见地是针对无常的论点而制定的。也许它最戏剧性的形式是佛陀接受业力和重生的教义。很明显，尸体在死亡时就不存在了。鉴于佛陀的论点是，精神状态都源于对感官对象接触事件的依赖，似乎也没有心理成分的人可以移民。然而，佛陀声称，尚未获得启蒙的人在死后将作为某种有知觉的人重生。如果没有从一个生命到下一个生命的任何成分，下辈子的人怎么会和今生是同一个人呢？当增加重生受业力支配时，这个问题就变得更加尖锐了，业力是一种宇宙正义：那些出生在幸运环境中的人是因前一生的善行而生的，而不愉快的出生是过去邪恶行为的结果。只有当愉快或不愉快的业力水果的接受者与善恶行为的代理人是同一个人时，这种奖惩制度才能存在。对手发现，如果没有一个坚持的自我，怎么会如此难以理解。

4. Karma and Rebirth 卡玛和重生

It is not just classical Indian self-theorists who have found this objection persuasive. Some Buddhists have as well. Among these Buddhists, however, this has led to the rejection not of non-self but of rebirth. (Historically this response was not unknown among East Asian Buddhists, and it is not rare among Western Buddhists today.) The evidence that the Buddha himself accepted rebirth and karma seems quite strong, however. The later tradition would distinguish between two types of discourse in the body of the Buddha’s teachings: those intended for an audience of householders seeking instruction from a sage, and those intended for an audience of monastic renunciates already versed in his teachings. And it would be one thing if his use of the concepts of karma and rebirth were limited to the former. For then such appeals could be explained away as another instance of the Buddha’s pedagogical skill (commonly referred to as upāya). The idea would be that householders who fail to comply with the most basic demands of morality are not likely (for reasons to be discussed shortly) to make significant progress toward the cessation of suffering, and the teaching of karma and rebirth, even if not strictly speaking true, does give those who accept it a (prudential) reason to be moral. But this sort of 'noble lie’ justification for the Buddha teaching a doctrine he does not accept fails in the face of the evidence that he also taught it to quite advanced monastics (e.g., A III.33). And what he taught is not the version of karma popular in certain circles today, according to which, for instance, an act done out of hatred makes the agent somewhat more disposed to perform similar actions out of similar motives in the future, which in turn makes negative experiences more likely for the agent. What the Buddha teaches is instead the far stricter view that each action has its own specific consequence for the agent, the hedonic nature of which is determined in accordance with causal laws and in such a way as to require rebirth as long as action continues. So if there is a conflict between the doctrine of non-self and the teaching of karma and rebirth, it is not to be resolved by weakening the Buddha’s commitment to the latter.发现这一反对意见有说服力的不仅仅是印度古典的自我理论家。一些佛教徒也有。然而，在这些佛教徒中，这导致了拒绝的不是非自我，而是重生。（从历史上看，东亚佛教徒对此的反应并不为人所知，在当今西方佛教徒中也不罕见。然而，佛陀本人接受重生和业力的证据似乎相当有力。后来的传统将区分佛陀教义中两种类型的话语：一种是供寻求圣人教导的住户的话语，另一种是供已经精通他教导的寺院牧师的话语。如果他对业力和重生概念的使用仅限于前者，那将是一回事。因此，这种呼吁可以解释为佛陀的教学技巧的另一个例子（通常称为乌普雅）。其理念是，不遵守最基本的道德要求的住户不太可能（因为不久将要讨论的理由）在停止苦难方面取得重大进展，而业力和重生的教导，即使严格地说不属实，也确实给那些接受它的人一个（谨慎的）道德理由。但是，这种"高贵的谎言"的理由，佛陀教一个教义，他不接受失败，面对的证据，他也教给相当先进的寺院（如A III.33）。他所教导的不是当今某些圈子里流行的业力版本，例如，根据这种版本，出于仇恨而做出的行为使代理人更愿意在未来出于类似动机采取类似行动，这反过来又使代理人更有可能经历负面经历。相反，佛陀教导的是，每一个动作都有其自身对代理人的具体后果，其享乐性质是根据因果法确定的，只要行动继续下去，就需要重生。因此，如果非自我教义与业力和重生的教导之间存在冲突，就不能通过削弱佛陀对后者的承诺来解决。

The Sanskrit term karma literally means 'action’. What is nowadays referred to somewhat loosely as the theory of karma is, speaking more strictly, the view that there is a causal relationship between action (karma) and 'fruit’ (phala), the latter being an experience of pleasure, pain or indifference for the agent of the action. This is the view that the Buddha appears to have accepted in its most straightforward form. Actions are said to be of three types: bodily, verbal and mental. The Buddha insists, however, that by action is meant not the movement or change involved, but rather the volition or intention that brought about the change. As Gombrich (2009) points out, the Buddha’s insistence on this point reflects the transition from an earlier ritualistic view of action to a view that brings action within the purview of ethics. For it is when actions are seen as subject to moral assessment that intention becomes relevant. One does not, for instance, perform the morally blameworthy action of speaking insultingly to an elder just by making sounds that approximate to the pronunciation of profanities in the presence of an elder; parrots and prelinguistic children can do as much. What matters for moral assessment is the mental state (if any) that produced the bodily, verbal or mental change. And it is the occurrence of these mental states that is said to cause the subsequent occurrence of hedonically good, bad and neutral experiences. More specifically, it is the occurrence of the three 'defiled’ mental states that brings about karmic fruit. The three defilements (kleśas) are desire, aversion and ignorance. And we are told quite specifically (A III.33) that actions performed by an agent in whom these three defilements have been destroyed do not have karmic consequences; such an agent is experiencing their last birth.梵语术语业力字面意思是"行动"。现在所说的业力理论有些松散，更严格地说，认为行动（业力）和"水果"（phala）之间存在因果关系，后者是行动的代理人的快乐、痛苦或冷漠的经历。这是佛陀似乎以最直接的形式接受的观点。据说行动有三种类型：身体、言语和精神。然而，佛陀坚持认为，行动不是指所涉及的运动或改变，而是带来改变的意志或意图。正如贡布里希（2009年）指出的，佛陀坚持这一点反映了从早期的仪式性行动观向将行动带入道德范畴的观点的转变。因为当行动被视为受道德评估时，意图才变得相关。例如，人们不采取道德上应受责备的行为，仅仅通过发出与长者在场时亵渎的发音相近的声音来侮辱长者：鹦鹉和语言学前的孩子可以做尽可能多的。道德评估的关键是产生身体、言语或精神变化的精神状态（如果有的话）。正是这些精神状态的发生，据说导致随后的享乐好，坏和中立的经验的发生。更具体地说，是三种"污秽"的精神状态的发生带来了业力果实。这三种污秽是欲望、厌恶和无知。我们非常具体地被告知（A III.33），销毁这三种污秽的代理人所采取的行动不会产生业力后果：这样的代理人正在经历他们的最后一次出生。

Some caution is required in understanding this claim about the defilements. The Buddha seems to be saying that it is possible to act not only without ignorance, but also in the absence of desire or aversion, yet it is difficult to see how there could be intentional action without some positive or negative motivation. To see one’s way around this difficulty, one must realize that by 'desire’ and 'aversion’ are meant those positive and negative motives respectively that are colored by ignorance, viz. ignorance concerning suffering, impermanence and non-self. Presumably the enlightened person, while knowing the truth about these matters, can still engage in motivated action. Their actions are not based on the presupposition that there is an 'I’ for which those actions can have significance. Ignorance concerning these matters perpetuates rebirth, and thus further occasions for existential suffering, by facilitating a motivational structure that reinforces one’s ignorance. We can now see how compliance with common-sense morality could be seen as an initial step on the path to the cessation of suffering. While the presence of ignorance makes all action—even that deemed morally good—karmically potent, those actions commonly considered morally evil are especially powerful reinforcers of ignorance, in that they stem from the assumption that the agent’s welfare is of paramount importance. While recognition of the moral value of others may still involve the conceit that there is an 'I’, it can nonetheless constitute progress toward dissolution of the sense of self.在理解这一关于污秽的说法时需要谨慎一些。佛陀似乎在说，不仅在没有无知的情况下，而且在没有欲望或厌恶的情况下，也有可能采取行动，然而，如果没有一些积极或消极的动机，很难看出怎么会有故意的行动。要想看到自己如何绕过这个困难，必须认识到，"欲望"和"厌恶"分别是指那些被无知所影响的积极和消极的动机，即对苦难、无礼和非自我的无知。大概开明的人，虽然知道这些事情的真相，仍然可以从事积极的行动。他们的行动不是基于这样的前提，即有一个"我"，这些行动可能具有重大意义。对这些问题的无知通过促进一种强化无知的动机结构，使重生，从而进一步加剧存在的痛苦。我们现在可以看到，遵守常识性道德如何被视为在停止苦难的道路上迈出的第一步。虽然无知的存在使一切行动——即使被认为是道德上好的——在业力上是有力的，但那些通常被认为是道德邪恶的行为是无知的有力强化者，因为它们源于这样一种假设，即代理人的福利至关重要。虽然承认他人的道德价值可能仍然涉及有"我"的自负，但它仍可能构成在自我意识的消解方面取得的进展。

This excursus into what the Buddha meant by karma may help us see how his middle path strategy could be used to reply to the objection to non-self from rebirth. That objection was that the reward and punishment generated by karma across lives could never be deserved in the absence of a transmigrating self. The middle path strategy generally involves locating and rejecting an assumption shared by a pair of extreme views. In this case the views will be (1) that the person in the later life deserves the fruit generated by the action in the earlier life, and (2) that this person does not deserve the fruit. One assumption shared by (1) and (2) is that persons deserve reward and punishment depending on the moral character of their actions, and one might deny this assumption. But that would be tantamount to moral nihilism, and a middle path is said to avoid nihilisms (such as annihilationism). A more promising alternative might be to deny that there are ultimately such things as persons that could bear moral properties like desert. This is what the Buddha seems to mean when he asserts that the earlier and the later person are neither the same nor different (S II.62; S II.76; S II.113). Since any two existing things must be either identical or distinct, to say of the two persons that they are neither is to say that strictly speaking they do not exist.这次对佛陀的业力意义的游览，可能有助于我们了解他的中间道路策略如何被用来回应对非自我从重生的反对。这种反对意见是，在没有移民自我的情况下，业力在生活中产生的奖励和惩罚是永远不值得的。中间路径策略通常涉及定位和拒绝由一对极端观点共享的假设。在这种情况下，人们的看法是：（1）晚年的人应该得到早年行动所产生的果实;（2）这个人不配得到结果。（1） 和 （2） 共有的一个假设是，根据行为的道德性质，人们应该得到奖励和惩罚，人们可能会否认这一假设。但这无异于道德虚无主义，据说中间道路可以避免虚无主义（如毁灭主义）。一个更有前途的选择可能是否认最终有诸如人可以承受沙漠等道德属性的东西。这就是佛陀声称前人和后人既不相同也不不同时的意思（S II.62：S II.76：S II.113）。既然现存的两样东西必须相同或不同，所以说这两个人，他们两者都不是，就是严格地说，它们并不存在。

This alternative is more promising because it avoids moral nihilism. For it allows one to assert that persons and their moral properties are conventionally real. To say this is to say that given our interests and cognitive limitations, we do better at achieving our aim—minimizing overall pain and suffering—by acting as though there are persons with morally significant properties. Ultimately there are just impersonal entities and events in causal sequence: ignorance, the sorts of desires that ignorance facilitates, an intention formed on the basis of such a desire, a bodily, verbal or mental action, a feeling of pleasure, pain or indifference, and an occasion of suffering. The claim is that this situation is usefully thought of as, for instance, a person who performs an evil deed due to their ignorance of the true nature of things, receives the unpleasant fruit they deserve in the next life, and suffers through their continuing on the wheel of saṃsāra. It is useful to think of the situation in this way because it helps us locate the appropriate places to intervene to prevent future pain (the evil deed) and future suffering (ignorance).这种选择更有希望，因为它避免了道德虚无主义。因为它允许人们断言人及其道德属性是传统意义上的真实。说这话就是说，鉴于我们的兴趣和认知限制，我们更好地实现我们的目标——尽量减少整体的痛苦和痛苦——表现得好像有些人具有道德上的重要属性。归根结底，只有非个人实体和因果顺序的事件：无知、无知所促成的欲望、基于这种欲望形成的意图、身体、言语或精神行为、快乐感、痛苦或冷漠感，以及痛苦的时刻。这种说法是，这种情况被认为是有用的，例如，一个人谁执行一个邪恶的事，因为他们不知道事情的真实性质，收到他们不愉快的果实，他们应得的下辈子，并通过他们继续在saṃsāra的车轮上受苦。以这种方式思考这种情况是有用的，因为它帮助我们找到适当的干预地点，以防止未来的痛苦（恶行）和未来的苦难（无知）。

It is no doubt quite difficult to believe that karma and rebirth exist in the form that the Buddha claims. It is said that their existence can be confirmed by those who have developed the power of retrocognition through advanced yogic technique. But this is of little help to those not already convinced that meditation is a reliable means of knowledge. What can be said with some assurance is that karma and rebirth are not inconsistent with non-self. Rebirth without transmigration is logically possible.毫无疑问，很难相信业力和重生以佛陀所宣称的形式存在。据说，它们的存在可以通过先进的瑜伽技术来证实那些已经发展出逆向认知能力的人。但是，对于那些还不相信冥想是一种可靠的知识手段的人来说，这没有什么帮助。可以肯定地说，业力和重生与非自我并不矛盾。没有轮回的重生在逻辑上是可能的.

5. Attitude toward Reason 对理性的态度

When the Buddha says that a person in one life and the person in another life are neither the same nor different, one’s first response might be to take 'different’ to mean something other than 'not the same’. But while this is possible in English given the ambiguity of 'the same’, it is not possible in the Pāli source, where the Buddha is represented as unambiguously denying both numerical identity and numerical distinctness. This has led some to wonder whether the Buddha does not employ a deviant logic. Such suspicions are strengthened by those cases where the options are not two but four, cases of the so-called tetralemma (catuṣkoṭi). For instance, when the Buddha is questioned about the post-mortem status of the enlightened person or arhat (e.g., at M I.483–8) the possibilities are listed as: (1) the arhat continues to exist after death, (2) does not exist after death, (3) both exists and does not exist after death, and (4) neither exists nor does not exist after death. When the Buddha rejects both (1) and (2) we get a repetition of 'neither the same nor different’. But when he goes on to entertain, and then reject, (3) and (4) the logical difficulties are compounded. Since each of (3) and (4) appears to be formally contradictory, to entertain either is to entertain the possibility that a contradiction might be true. And their denial seems tantamount to affirmation of excluded middle, which is prima facie incompatible with the denial of both (1) and (2). One might wonder whether we are here in the presence of the mystical.当佛陀说一个人在一个生命中，一个人在另一个生命中既不相同也不不同时，一个人的第一反应可能是采取"不同"来表示"不一样"以外的其他东西。但是，尽管鉴于"相同"的模糊性，这在英语中是可能的，但在Péli来源中是不可能的，因为佛陀被明确地否认数字特征和数字特征。这让一些人怀疑佛陀是否没有采用一种反常的逻辑。这种怀疑因那些选择不是两个而是四个，即所谓的四重奏（catuṣkoṭi）的案件而得到加强。例如，当佛陀被问及开明者的死后状况时（例如，在M I.483-8），可能性被列为：（1）死后继续存在，（2）死后不存在：（3）死后既存在又不存在：（4）死后既不存在也不存在。当佛陀拒绝 （1） 和 （2） 时， 我们得到 "既不相同也不不同" 的重复。但是，当他继续娱乐，然后拒绝，（3）和（4）逻辑上的困难是复杂的。由于每个 （3） 和 （4） 似乎在形式上是矛盾的， 娱乐要么是娱乐的可能性， 矛盾可能是真的。他们的否认似乎等于肯定被排斥的中间人， 这显然与否认 （1） 和 （2） 不相容。人们可能会怀疑，我们是否在这里的神秘的存在。

There were some Buddhist philosophers who took 'neither the same nor different’ in this way. These were the Personalists (Pudgalavādins), who were so called because they affirmed the ultimate existence of the person as something named and conceptualized in dependence on the psychophysical elements. They claimed that the person is neither identical with nor distinct from the psychophysical elements. They were prepared to accept, as a consequence, that nothing whatever can be said about the relation between person and elements. But their view was rejected by most Buddhist philosophers, in part on the grounds that it quickly leads to an ineffability paradox: one can say neither that the person’s relation to the elements is inexpressible, nor that it is not inexpressible. The consensus view was instead that the fact that the person can be said to be neither identical with nor distinct from the elements is grounds for taking the person to be a mere conceptual fiction. Concerning the persons in the two lives, they understood the negations involved in 'neither the same nor different’ to be of the commitmentless variety, i.e., to function like illocutionary negation. If we agree that the statement '7 is green’ is semantically ill-formed, on the grounds that abstract objects such as numbers do not have colors, then we might go on to say, 'Do not say that 7 is green, and do not say that it is not green either’. There is no contradiction here, since the illocutionary negation operator 'do not say’ generates no commitment to an alternative characterization.有一些佛教哲学家以这种方式"既不相同也不不同"。这些人是个人主义者（Pudgalavédins），他们之所以被称为"个人主义者"，是因为他们肯定了这个人的最终存在，认为这种存在是一种在依赖心理物理元素时被命名和概念化的东西。他们声称这个人既不相同，也不与心理生理因素不同。因此，他们准备接受，关于人与要素之间的关系，什么也说不来。但他们的观点遭到了大多数佛教哲学家的拒绝，部分原因是它很快导致了一个不可言喻的悖论：人们既不能说人与元素的关系是无法表达的，也不能说它不是无法表达的。相反，一致的看法是，可以说这个人既不相同，也不与元素不同，这是把这个人仅仅是概念小说的理由。关于这两个生命中的人，他们理解"既不相同也不不同"所涉及的否定是无承诺的多样性，即像断章离合的否定一样运作。如果我们同意"7是绿色"的说法在语义上是不合时宜的，理由是数字等抽象物体没有颜色，那么我们可能会说，'不要说7是绿色，也不要说不是绿色'。这里没有矛盾，因为断断面的否定操作员"不说"不会产生对替代性特征的承诺。

There is also evidence that claims of type (3) involve parameterization. For instance, the claim about the arhat would be that there is some respect in which they can be said to exist after death, and some other respect in which they can be said to no longer exist after death. Entertaining such a proposition does not require that one believe there might be true contradictions. And while claims of type (4) would seem to be logically equivalent to those of type (3) (regardless of whether or not they involve parameterization), the tradition treated this type as asserting that the subject is beyond all conceptualization. To reject the type (4) claim about the arhat is to close off one natural response to the rejections of the first three claims: that the status of the arhat after death transcends rational understanding. That the Buddha rejected all four possibilities concerning this and related questions is not evidence that he employed a deviant logic.还有证据表明，类型 （3） 的索赔涉及参数化。例如，关于arhat的主张是，在某种方面，可以说它们在死后存在，而另一些方面，可以说它们死后就不再存在。接受这样的命题并不要求人们相信可能存在真正的矛盾。虽然类型 （4） 的索赔在逻辑上似乎与类型 （3） 的索赔相同（无论它们是否涉及参数化），但传统将此类索赔视为断言主题是超越一切概念化的。拒绝关于阿尔哈特的类型 （4） 索赔是结束对前三个索赔的拒绝的一种自然反应： 死后阿哈特的地位超越了理性的理解。佛陀拒绝了所有四种可能性，这和相关问题并不能证明他使用了一种反常的逻辑。

The Buddha’s response to questions like those concerning the arhat is sometimes cited in defense of a different claim about his attitude toward rationality. This is the claim that the Buddha was essentially a pragmatist, someone who rejects philosophical theorizing for its own sake and employs philosophical rationality only to the extent that doing so can help solve the practical problem of eliminating suffering. The Buddha does seem to be embracing something like this attitude when he defends his refusal to answer questions like that about the arhat, or whether the series of lives has a beginning, or whether the living principle (jīva) is identical with the body. He calls all the possible views with respect to such questions distractions insofar as answering them would not lead to the cessation of the defilements and thus to the end of suffering. And in a famous simile (M I.429) he compares someone who insists that the Buddha answer these questions to someone who has been wounded by an arrow but will not have the wound treated until they are told who shot the arrow, what sort of wood the arrow is made of, and the like.佛陀对诸如有关阿尔哈特的问题的回答有时被引用来为自己对理性态度的不同说法辩护。这就是佛陀本质上是一个实用主义者的说法，一个为了自身利益而拒绝哲学理论的人，只有在这样做有助于解决消除苦难的实际问题的情况下，才运用哲学理性。佛陀似乎接受这种态度时，他捍卫他拒绝回答这样的问题，关于阿尔哈特，或系列的生命是否有一个开始，或活的原则（jīva）是否与身体相同。他呼吁所有可能的意见，关于这些问题分心，只要回答这些问题不会导致停止污秽，从而结束痛苦。在一个著名的比喻（M I.429）中，他比较了一个人谁坚持佛陀回答这些问题的人谁已经受伤的箭，但不会有伤口治疗，直到他们被告知谁射箭，什么样的木材箭是由，等。

Passages such as these surely attest to the great importance the Buddha placed on sharing his insights to help others overcome suffering. But this is consistent with the belief that philosophical rationality may be used to answer questions that lack evident connection with pressing practical concerns. And on at least one occasion the Buddha does just this. Pressed to give his answers to the questions about the arhat and the like, the Buddha first rejects all the possibilities of the tetralemma, and defends his refusal on the grounds that such theories are not conducive to liberation from saṃsāra. But when his questioner shows signs of thereby losing confidence in the value of the Buddha’s teachings about the path to the cessation of suffering, the Buddha responds with the example of a fire that goes out after exhausting its fuel. If one were asked where this fire has gone, the Buddha points out, one could consistently deny that it has gone to the north, to the south, or in any other direction. This is so for the simple reason that the questions 'Has it gone to the north?’, 'Has it gone to the south?’, etc., all share the false presupposition that the fire continues to exist. Likewise the questions about the arhat and the like all share the false presupposition that there is such a thing as a person who might either continue to exist after death, cease to exist at death, etc. (Anālayo 2018, 41) The difficulty with these questions is not that they try to extend philosophical rationality beyond its legitimate domain, as the handmaiden of soteriologically useful practice. It is rather that they rest on a false presupposition—something that is disclosed through the employment of philosophical rationality.诸如此类的传道无疑证明了佛陀对分享他的见解以帮助他人克服苦难的高度重视。但这与这样一种信念是一致的，即哲学理性可以用来回答与紧迫的实际关切缺乏明显联系的问题。至少有一次佛陀会这么做。佛陀被迫回答有关阿尔哈特等人的问题，首先拒绝四重奏的所有可能性，并以这种理论不利于从saṃsāra中解放出为由为自己的拒绝辩护。但是，当他的提问者表现出对佛陀关于停止苦难之路的教导价值失去信心的迹象时，佛陀以耗尽燃料后熄火的例子作为回应。佛陀指出，如果有人被问及这场大火的去向，人们可以一直否认它已经向北、向南或向任何其他方向移动。原因很简单，"它往北走了吗？"同样，关于阿尔哈特等人的问题也有着错误的假设，即有这样一种假设，即一个人在死后可能继续存在，在死亡时就不再存在，等等（Anélayo 2018， 41）这些问题的难点不在于他们试图将哲学理性扩展到其合法领域之外，作为社会学有益实践的代言人。相反，他们建立在一个错误的前提上——这是通过哲学理性的用法来揭露的。

A different sort of challenge to the claim that the Buddha valued philosophical rationality for its own sake comes from the role played by authority in Buddhist soteriology. For instance, in the Buddhist tradition one sometimes encounters the claim that only enlightened persons such as the Buddha can know all the details of karmic causation. And to the extent that the moral rules are thought to be determined by the details of karmic causation, this might be taken to mean that our knowledge of the moral rules is dependent on the authority of the Buddha. Again, the subsequent development of Buddhist philosophy seems to have been constrained by the need to make theory compatible with certain key claims of the Buddha. For instance, one school developed an elaborate form of four-dimensionalism, not because of any deep dissatisfaction with presentism, but because they believed the non-existence of the past and the future to be incompatible with the Buddha’s alleged ability to cognize past and future events. And some modern scholars go so far as to wonder whether non-self functions as anything more than a sort of linguistic taboo against the use of words like 'I’ and 'self’ in the Buddhist tradition (Collins 1982: 183). The suggestion is that just as in some other religious traditions the views of the founder or the statements of scripture trump all other considerations, including any views arrived at through the free exercise of rational inquiry, so in Buddhism as well there can be at best only a highly constrained arena for the deployment of philosophical rationality.佛陀为了自身利益而重视哲学理性的说法，另一种挑战来自于权威在佛教学中所扮演的角色。例如，在佛教传统中，人们有时会遇到这样的说法：只有佛陀等开明的人才能知道业力因果关系的所有细节。如果认为道德规则是由业力因果关系的细节决定的，这可能意味着我们对道德规则的了解取决于佛陀的权威。同样，佛教哲学的后续发展似乎也受到了使理论与佛陀某些关键主张相容的需要的制约。例如，一所学校发展了一种精心设计的四维主义形式，不是因为对现在主义有任何深深的不满，而是因为他们认为过去和未来的不存在与佛陀所谓的认识过去和未来事件的能力不相容。一些现代学者甚至怀疑，在佛教传统中使用"我"和"自我"等词语，非自我是否只不过是一种语言禁忌（科林斯1982年：183年）。建议是，正如在其他一些宗教传统中，创始人的观点或经文的陈述胜过所有其他考虑，包括通过自由进行理性探究得出的任何观点，因此在佛教中，充其量只能有一个高度受限的部署哲学理性的舞台。

Now it could be that while this is true of the tradition that developed out of the Buddha’s teachings, the Buddha himself held the unfettered use of rationality in quite high esteem. This would seem to conflict with what he is represented as saying in response to the report that he arrived at his conclusions through reasoning and analysis alone: that such a report is libelous, since he possesses a number of superhuman cognitive powers (M I.68). But at least some scholars take this passage to be not the Buddha’s own words but an expression of later devotionalist concerns (Gombrich 2009: 164). Indeed one does find a spirited discussion within the tradition concerning the question whether the Buddha is omniscient, a discussion that may well reflect competition between Buddhism and those Brahmanical schools that posit an omniscient creator. And at least for the most part the Buddhist tradition is careful not to attribute to the Buddha the sort of omniscience usually ascribed to an all-perfect being: the actual cognition, at any one time, of all truths. Instead a Buddha is said to be omniscient only in the much weaker sense of always having the ability to cognize any individual fact relevant to the soteriological project, viz. the details of their own past lives, the workings of the karmic causal laws, and whether a given individual’s defilements have been extirpated. Moreover, these abilities are said to be ones that a Buddha acquires through a specific course of training, and thus ones that others may reasonably aspire to as well. The attitude of the later tradition seems to be that while one could discover the relevant facts on one’s own, it would be more reasonable to take advantage of the fact that the Buddha has already done all the epistemic labor involved. When we arrive in a new town we could always find our final destination through trial and error, but it would make more sense to ask someone who already knows their way about.现在可能是，虽然这是从佛陀的教导中发展起来的传统，但佛陀本人却非常崇高地对理性的无拘无束地使用。这似乎与他代表在回应报告时所说的相冲突，即他仅仅通过推理和分析得出了结论：这样的报告是诽谤性的，因为他拥有一些超人的认知能力（M I.68）。但至少一些学者认为这段话不是佛陀自己的话，而是后来虔诚主义担忧的表达（《贡布里希2009：164》）。事实上，人们确实在传统中发现了一个关于佛陀是否无所不知的问题的激烈讨论，这种讨论很可能反映了佛教和那些假定无所不知的创造者的婆罗门学派之间的竞争。至少在大多数情况下，佛教传统是小心翼翼的，不要把那种无所不知的通常归因于一个完美存在：在任何时候，所有真理的实际认知。相反，据说佛陀是无所不知的，只是在弱得多的意义上，总是有能力认识任何与躯体学项目相关的个人事实，即他们过去生活的细节，业力因果法的运作，以及某一个人的污秽是否被消灭。此外，这些能力据说是佛陀通过特定的训练过程获得的，因此其他人也可以合理地渴望这些能力。后来传统的态度似乎是，虽然一个人可以自己发现相关的事实，但利用佛陀已经做了所有涉及的显性劳动这一事实会更合理。当我们到达一个新的城镇，我们总是可以通过反复试验找到我们的最终目的地，但它会更有意义地问的人谁已经知道他们的方式。

The Buddhist philosophical tradition grew out of earlier efforts to systematize the Buddha’s teachings. Within a century or two of the death of the Buddha, exegetical differences led to debates concerning the Buddha’s true intention on some matter, such as that between the Personalists and others over the status of the person. While the parties to these debates use many of the standard tools and techniques of philosophy, they were still circumscribed by the assumption that the Buddha’s views on the matter at hand are authoritative. In time, however, the discussion widened to include interlocutors representing various Brahmanical systems. Since the latter did not take the Buddha’s word as authoritative, Buddhist thinkers were required to defend their positions in other ways. The resulting debate (which continued for about nine centuries) touched on most of the topics now considered standard in metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of language, and was characterized by considerable sophistication in philosophical methodology. What the Buddha would have thought of these developments we cannot say with any certainty. What we can say is that many Buddhists have believed that the unfettered exercise of philosophical rationality is quite consistent with his teachings.佛教哲学传统源于早期将佛陀的教义系统化的努力。在佛陀去世的一两个世纪内，外在的分歧导致了关于佛陀在某些问题上的真实意图的争论，例如个人主义者和其他人之间关于人的地位的争论。虽然这些辩论的各方使用了许多标准的哲学工具和技术，但他们仍然被佛陀对手头问题的看法具有权威性的假设所限制。然而，随着时间的推移，讨论范围扩大，包括代表各种婆罗门制度的对话者。由于后者没有把佛陀的话作为权威，佛教思想家被要求以其他方式捍卫他们的立场。由此产生的辩论（持续了大约九个世纪）触及了现在被认为是形而上学、认识论和语言哲学标准的大多数主题，其特点是哲学方法相当复杂。佛陀会怎么看这些事态发展，我们不能肯定地说。我们可以说的是，许多佛教徒认为，自由行使哲学理性与他的教导是完全一致的。

Bibliography Primary Sources书目主要来源

[A]

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Other Internet Resources

The Pali Tipitaka, Pali texts

Ten Philosophical Questions to Ask About Buddhism, a series of talks by Richard P. Hayes

Access to Insight, Readings in Therevada Buddhism

Buddhanet, Buddha Dharma Education Association

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Abhidharma | Japanese Philosophy: Zen Buddhism | Madhyamaka | Nāgārjuna | two truths in India, theory of | Yogācāra

书目

主要来源

[A] 安古塔拉·尼卡亚：《渐进谚语之书》，跨F.L.伍德沃德与E.M野兔，5卷，布里斯托尔：帕利文本协会，1932-6。

[D] Dīgha尼基亚：佛陀的长篇大论：Dīgha尼卡亚的翻译，跨莫里斯·沃尔什，波士顿：智慧出版物，1987年。

[M] 马吉玛·尼卡亚：佛陀的中长篇话语：《玛吉玛·尼卡亚的翻译》，跨比克胡·纳纳莫利和比克胡·菩提，波士顿：智慧出版物，1995年。

[S] Saṃyutta尼卡亚： 佛陀的互联话语， 跨比克胡菩提， 波士顿： 智慧出版物， 2000 年。

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朗金，诺亚，2005年。早期佛教形而上学，伦敦：路由。

鲁格，大卫·塞福特，1977年。《印度哲学杂志》第5：1-71期，《Catuṣkoṭi四个立场的运用与马哈亚纳佛教现实描述问题》。

西德瑞茨，马克，2007年。佛教哲学，印第安纳波利斯：哈克特。

史密斯，道格拉斯和贾斯汀惠特克，2016年。"以哲学家的身份阅读佛陀"，哲学东、西，66：515-538。

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