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| Buddhist Astrological Iconography (Japan) |
The existence of 'Buddhist astrology' itself is a curious thing
because, according to both vinaya texts and several sūtras, it
really should not exist. Nevertheless, we can point to a few major
specimens across the centuries in which astrology is unapologetically
explained: the Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna
(second or third century CE), Amoghavajra's Xiuyao jing
宿曜經 (eighth
century) and the Kālacakra
Tantra (eleventh
century). Many Buddhist authors indeed took an interest in astrology
and weaved it into Buddhist literature, creating what can be called a
'Buddhist astrology'. Although we can speculate about how extensive
it was in India – and I personally think it was quite significant
from the eighth century onward – much of it was transmitted and
preserved in East Asia and Tibet where it evolved and flourished in the new
environments.
But how did the
early Buddhist community feel about astrology? Bronkhorst
points out that Buddhists did not substantially participate in what
would become known as jyotiḥ-śāstra
(a field encompassing astrology and astronomy including mathematical
astronomy). He states it “may have been inseparably connected with
mundane matters, in that those who practised it may often have had to
make their living through explaining omens and predicting the future
with its help. Such practices were however frowned upon in the
buddhist tradition from an early date onward.”1
This helps to explain why the
encyclopedic explanation of nakṣatra astrology in the
Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna is
given by the layman Triśaṅku and not the Buddha. Although we might
get the sense that the author(s) of this work felt astrology was
indeed valid, they were still aware of the prevailing sentiments
against it at the time. This work would have been written shortly
before Hellenistic astrology was being introduced and spread around
India. The representative work in this respect is the Yavanajātaka
– the 'jātaka
of the Greeks'. The status of astrologers was elevated in the
following centuries resulting in well-known figures like Varāhamihira
in the sixth century.
The
Buddhists were no doubt exposed to these influences and Mahāyāna
literature like the Avataṃsaka-sūtra
suggests the bodhisattva might study calendrical science and
astrology for the benefit of beings, which indicates at least some
had reconsidered the Buddha's prohibition on such matters. By the
early eighth century a model of hemerology (selection of auspicious
days for rites) based on a hybrid of Hellenistic and Indian elements
had become essential to the proper execution of maṇḍala-s
and initiations within the tantric community.
Again,
this stands in contrast to the Buddha's word that such things are
inappropriate. The Brahmajāla-sutta
in the Dīghanikāya presents the Buddha castigating the wrong
activities of some śramaṇa-s
and brāmaṇa-s in exchange for food. Pingree states that
“some of these activities involve various forms of sacrifices and
the expelling of demons and other undesirable beings; but a large
number are concerned with various forms of divination. Almost every
type of omen mentioned by the Buddha is found in both the earlier
cuneiform literature and in the later Sanskrit texts; and the
terrestrial omens are numerated in an order – houses, ghosts,
snakes, poisons, scorpions, mice, vultures, crows, and quadrupeds –
that corresponds almost completely with the order of the Tablets of
Šumma ālu.
The Buddha also lists in his sermon a number of celestial and
atmospheric omens: lunar eclipses, solar eclipses, observations of
the stars (nakhatta = nakṣatra, probably including
planets here), the Moon's and the Sun's going on and off their paths
(probably those familiar from Enūma Anu Enlil, the Paths of
Enlil, Anu, and Ea), the stars' going on their paths, the falling of
meteors and shooting stars, the 'burning of the directions' (i.e., a
glow on the horizon), earthquakes, thunder, and the risings, the
settings, the brightness, and the dimness of the Moon, the Sun, and
the stars.”2
It is of course most unlikely the
Buddha actually said such things given that the Pāḷi canon was
formulated long after his death (and moreover, the extant version is
arguably from even later), but the Buddhist literature presents him
in this light and incidentally also records the ongoing introduction
of Babylonian astrology into India, which occurred through
intermediaries such as the Achaemenids and Seleucids. The early
Buddhist community was witness to this and the architects of the
literary tradition found it simply inappropriate for the śramaṇa
to practice.
This has led some to suggest that
although it was rejected as inappropriate, its validity was not –
in other words, you could believe in astrology, but you were not
supposed to practice it. This is a simplistic conclusion and ignores
another specimen of extant literature which actually expresses
skepticism about the effectiveness of astrology and refutes
astrological determinism: the Saddharmasmṛtyupasthāna-sūtra
(正法念處經;
T 721). The Chinese translation was done by Gautama Prajñāruci
between 538–541. In it we find long skeptical discussions of
astrology and creative attempts to turn the monk from astrology to
orthodox Buddhist practice.
有三大曜，謂病老死，此為最大，常住世間。彼惡沙門，不思惟此而更思惟餘世間曜。彼人愚癡，無有聞慧，思惟世間二十八宿。如是思惟，則有罪過。而不思惟彼出世間二十八宿。若能思惟實觀察者，入涅槃城。二十八者，所謂五陰，及五取陰，十八界等。思惟此者，到於涅槃。以如實觀離欲持戒，故得涅槃。數星思惟則不能得。
There are three great luminaries [graha, i.e., stars or
planets], called illness, old age and death. These are greatest and
perpetually present in the world. That wicked śramaṇa does
not contemplate this, but further contemplates other worldly
luminaries. That person is foolish, not having wisdom through
hearing, and contemplating the twenty-eight worldly nakṣatra-s
[constellations]. One is at fault to contemplate like this and not
contemplate the twenty-eight transcendental nakṣatra-s. One
will enter the city of nirvāṇa should one be able to
contemplate and truly observe them. The twenty-eight are the five
skandha-s, five pañcōpādāna-skandha-s
and eighteen dhātu-s. One who contemplates these will arrive
at nirvāṇa. When there is observation of things as they
truly are, detachment from desire and the upholding of precepts,
nirvāṇa is consequently attained. It cannot be attained
through counting stars.3
This suggests that in fact many
bhikṣus were neglecting more orthodox practice in favor of
astrology. This is especially noteworthy because a belief in the
effectiveness of astrology requires, to some extent, assent to the
idea of astrological determinism, i.e., that one's condition, fate
and personality are primarily and directly determined by the
influences of stars rather than individual action. This effectively
undermines the concept of past karma determining one's condition,
which would have been objectionable to Buddhists of the scholastic
schools. It also brings to mind similar objections to astrology on
the part of Christians who saw it as an issue with respect to free
will. The text addresses how astrology is incompatible with karma as
follows.
此星復為勝星所覆，彼星異時而復更為異星所覆，是故當知數星思惟義不相應。若其有人，數星思惟，謂星因緣，有苦有樂，非是自身有苦有樂，彼星更有餘星所覆，云何而能與他苦樂。故知由業而得。如是善不善果，非星能與。
This star is further covered by a
superior star. That star at a different time is further covered by a
different star. Thus it should be understood that astrology is
untenable. If there is someone who does astrology, thinking that it
is due to the stars that there are sufferings and ease, and that it
is not from oneself that there are sufferings and ease, then how is
it that when those stars are covered by other stars they can impart
sufferings and ease to others? Thus it is understood that [sufferings
and ease are] come about due to karma. It is not the stars which can
impart the fruits of virtue and non-virtue like this.4
Again, this being a Buddhist text
written for bhikṣus, it indicates many such individuals had already
adopted a view of astrological determinism and the author of this
work felt this was wrong and had to be refuted. However, as the
proliferation of astrology in Buddhist culture would suggest, such
arguments did not successfully eliminate the heresy.
Incidentally, we might note that
the vinaya codes in theory could address the practice of astrology,
and perhaps they were used in some monasteries in India to contain
the heresy, but I am unaware of any evidence to suggest this
happened.
There
was, however, a way to skirt the issue of karma and this is provided
in a short line from one of Amoghavajra's translations in the eighth
century. The *Parṇaśabarī-bodhisattva-sūtra
葉衣觀自在菩薩經
(T 1100) has the following:
若國王男女、難長難養、或短壽疾病纏眠5、寢食不安、皆由宿業因緣、生惡宿直。或數被五曜陵逼本宿、令身不安。
Whether king, man or woman,
[some] will be difficult to raise and nourish – some will have
short lifespans, bound in illness and at unease with sleep and
eating. All is due to past karma and causes-conditions, being born
under a bad constellational convergence.6
Some often have their birth nakṣatra intruded upon by the
five planets, making them uneasy.7
This is saying that a person's
ill health and unease are a result of not only karma, but being born
under unfavorable astrological circumstances. Another way to
interpret this is that being born under such circumstances was a
result of past negative karma. Just as someone born with a deformity
attributed to past negative karma might be 'locked into' that state
for life, so too is the individual stuck with their bad stars. This
sort of understanding was arguably only available in a Mantrayāna
context which could freely accommodate otherwise foreign and
heterodox ideas into the doctrinal fabric of a new Buddhadharma.
This belief in astrological
determinism indeed should challenge our understandings of what
Buddhists believed or ought to have believed about karma. The various
theories of karma discussed at length in the Abhidharmakośa,
for example, might have been argued and upheld by a minority of
scholastic monks, but alternative views – which were apparently
heretical to some Buddhist authors – still withstood the test of
time and became accepted by an evidently significant number of elite
Buddhist clerics who wrote the relevant canonical texts we have
today.
I have never encountered a
discussion of Buddhist philosophy in modern scholarship (be it
western or Asian) which takes into account the Buddhist concept of
astrological determinism. It is simply not recognized in modern
scholarship as even existing, even though it was quite influential in
the development of Tantric Buddhism especially. This is perhaps
because there was no representative school in India, or China or
Tibet for that matter, which could be understood as a coherent
community with established doctrines and arguments arguing for the
truth of astrology. There was of course the Sukuyō-dō 宿曜道
lineage in
Japan from the tenth to the fourteenth century, but their history and
existence is seldom known today, let alone discussed even in modern
Japanese scholarship. Their tradition, however, was far more
practical than theoretical.
It is this gap in modern
scholarship that my ongoing research addresses. There is much more to
be considered and in due time our discussions here will go into more
detail as time permits.
Notes:
1 Johannes
Bronkhorst, Buddhism in the Shadow of Brahmanism Handbook of
Oriental Studies (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 120.
2 David
Pingree, From Astral Omens to Astrology From Babylon to Bīkāner
(Rome: Ist. Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente, 1997), 32–33.
3 T
721, 17: 290b12–19.
4 T
721, 17: 290b1– 8.
6 This
refers to a convergence between the moon and an unfavorable
nakṣatra.
7 T
1100, 20: 448b11–13.
