Michael Pye on Skilful Means

SKILFUL MEANS IN BUDDHIST AND CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALTY
Michael Pye

AN ORIENTATION FOR A TALK FOR THE KYOTO COSMOS CLUB, January 13th 2008

“Skilful means” is a compacted translation for a small group of expressions used in Mahayana Buddhism. Nowadays the concept is widely referred to in the English-speaking world by the Sanskrit word upāya, which however by itself just has the meaning of “means”. The longer expression “skill in means” translates the Sanskrit upaya-kauśalya. In the Chinese versions of Mahayana sutras however, especially those by Kumarajiva, the concept was conflated and used to refer to “skilfully used devices”. So “skilful means” corresponds to the Japanese Buddhist term hōben (from Chinese fangbian), which is usually explained as kōmyō na shudan (i.e. a skilfully applied means). In English the spellings skilful and skillful are both correct, by the way! My study of this concept which was first published in 1978 used the first spelling, in order to save typewriter strokes and paper.

The basic idea has two aspects. First, the buddhas and bodhisattvas use skilful means in order to express their compassion and lead living beings into the Buddhist path. These means or devices, various forms of teaching and practice, are geared to the karmic situation and the various dispositions of the living beings who are being addressed. What in one respect is inexpressible is set out in a skilfully adapted manner, so that it can be communicated and received. However, second, it is necessary for the living beings not only to benefit from these expressions of Dharma, but also to realize their inadequacy and go beyond them. Failure to do this would mean that one gets stuck, spiritually speaking, in some form of expression which is no longer a help but becomes a hindrance. Thus one of the high virtues (“perfections”) to be practised by a bodhisattva is the ability to assist others skilfully with the necessary means while at the same time being able to dispense with them. (Of course, a buddha can do it without needing to “practise” any more.) In being assisted, the living beings are in turn led into the bodhisattva way and consequently have to get used to giving up all their ladders, rafts and crutches.

This way of thinking finds extended expression in the Lotus Sutra, the Teaching of Vimalakirti and the Perfection of Insight literature. So anyone who has their own English translation/s of any of these texts might care to take them in hand. In the Lotus Sutra, chapters 2 (on “skilful means”) and 3 (the parable of the burning house) are especially relevant, but so too are the parables in later chapters and in particular the chapter on “the length of life of the Tathāgata” (appearing as 15 in Sanskrit and 16 in translations from Chinese, which are more common.) Chapters 2 and 16 are regularly recited in the Nichirenite tradition. In chapter 16 we learn that the Tathāgata (the Buddha) put on an appearance of entering nirvana in order to give living beings the confidence that such a goal might be possible. This relativisation of a central Buddhist concept is matched by the profound deconstruction of traditional terminology found in not a few other places, for example in the very short and widely used Heart Sutra.


The underlying question is: What were/are the Mahāyāna Buddhists doing with their own tradition? First, they were telling us how it is that a Buddha comes to be teaching at all. You may recall that at first his mind “inclined towards little effort”, because what would be the point of trying to explain the inexpressible to the ignorant…? But then God stepped in (Brahma). This is an old story from early Buddhism (the threefold request by Brahma, etc.) but in the Lotus Sutra it is retold (twice) in terms of “skilful means”. So it’s a kind of meditation on why and how a Buddha teaches Dharma (i.e. why there is “Buddhism”). Second, and at the same time, the Mahāyānists were finding a way to unblock hindrances which apparently had arisen in the spiritual path to liberation, in particular by removing the focus on the progress of the individual, which seemed to set up an obstructive differentiation between advanced monks and other living beings. It is often said that a bodhisattva “postpones” his (her) entry into nirvana out of compassion. But this is a distorting simplification. Since all “dharmas” and thus all living beings are “nirvanic” from the beginning, such a motivation would be self-defeating, obstructing a clear perception of the “voidness” of things, i.e. their lack of an ontologically assertable “self”. In this regard, the Mahāyānists were recovering early Buddhist teaching, with revised vocabulary.

In short, the Mahāyāna Buddhists were telling us how to understand Buddhism, and in particular they were dealing with the status of religious concepts and constructs in that religion. Their motivation was however not philosophical, speculative or academic. It was spiritual. It is in this respect that the concept of “skilful means” can be adopted and applied in other traditions also.

It is at this point I leave the “history of religions” or the history of religious ideas, and move into an area of personal interest. The concept of “skilful means” can help us to understand how other traditions work too, that is, how they work spiritually, or how they can work. It can help us to understand that there is always a variety of religious expressions and forms of teaching and practice, while at the same time none of these, not even the most cherished ones, should become obstructions or hindrances. On the contrary, all such forms, e.g. notions of “God”, need to find their due relativity.

This understanding can be applied to Christianity, I believe, and perhaps to other religious traditions as well, in so far as they have a spiritual path or orientation. In the oral presentation I discussed further the transferability of this concept to Christianity, not now as a neutral specialist in the academic study of religions, but in terms of religious orientation. This orientation may be thought of as both Buddhist and Christological. Sometimes discussed in this connection is a short passage in the epistle of Paul to the Philippians, namely 2: 5-8, where we find in a nutshell what has been called a “kenotic christology” (kenotic from kenosis, meaning emptying, because Christ is said to have emptied himself). But there is more to think about… The whole world of religious language is at stake. One might say: “Hold your hats” ... but perhaps it’s all quite obvious and you don’t need to!

© Michael Pye, Kyōto January 2008