Chapter 3 - Ditthupadana

Another kind of upadana is ditthupadana which means clinging to false views. It covers all the false views, exclusive of those in the categories of the third and fourth upadana. So every false belief is to be regarded as upadana. Here we will describe at length ten false views that have a firm grip on the people.

The first view is that alms giving is not a good kammic act, that it means only a waste of money. This view rejects the sense of values and the fruits of a good act. It has, however, no basis in fact. The act of dana makes the donor joyful. It benefits the recipient physically and mentally and it may even help to save the life of a starving man. The donor is popular and highly esteemed. After his death, he attains the deva world. It is hard to convince the sceptic of this post mortem reward, but these other worldly results of kamma come within the purview of Arahats and other holy men with psychic powers. One of these powers is the ability to see with the divine eye (dibbacakkhu). This psychic power enables one to see donors prospering in deva worlds or evil doing non donors suffering in the lower worlds. Such vision can be had even by some yogis who have not acquired psychic powers but developed much samadhi. Again some may dismiss these visions as figments of imagination but the agreement of these accounts about the other worlds lends weight to their credibility.

The second false view is also a negation of the kammic benefits for alms giving on a grand scale.

The third false view rejects the kammic benefits of feeding guests, giving gifts on new year day and so forth. This view is essentially the same as the third view. It refers to small acts of dana that were in vogue in ancient India but were dismissed as futile by heretics.

The fourth view denies the kammic result of any morally good or evil act. There is a lot of evidence for the kammic effects of a mans acts in this life, and, as for the other worldly result of an act, those with psychic power can testify to it. But people who are excessively fond of sensual pleasure like to give free rein to their desires. They frown on moral values and ideas which they regard as a hindrance to their material progress. So they put forward many arguments to justify their rejection of the kammic law. In the final analysis all this is due to their excessive love of sensual pleasure.

The fifth and sixth view deny any respect, honour or support that we owe to our parents for all their loving care in our childhood. It is said that a man and his wife get children through sexual intercourse by accident, that they bring up the children from a sense of responsibility, and so there is no reason why children should be grateful to their parents. So it is not a good deed on the part of a man to look after his parents nor is it an evil to wrong them. It is a terrible view; those who hold it will not be respected by their children.

The seventh view denies the existence of any world other than the human and the animal worlds. It also rejects the belief that an animal may be reborn as a human being.

The eighth view denies rebirth of a human being in deva or animal worlds or in hell. It preaches annihilation of life after death.

The ninth view denies rebirth by //opapatika// or spontaneous generation. In other words, it denies the existence of devas, brahmas, petas, asuras, etc., who appear with their full fledged bodies without being conceived in the womb. This view is untenable since encounters with good or evil spirits are reported from all over the world; there are mediums and witch doctors who can invoke spirits; and devas, Brahmas, etc., are sometimes visible to the yogis who practise vipassana.

The last view is that there is no ascetic or Brahman who speaks of this world and the other invisible world and who conforms to his teaching. The view implies that there is no person who can speak independently of this world and the other world on the basis of his actual extraordinary experience, that all their teaching is guesswork and speculation, and so false and evil.

Today this view is echoed by those who scoff at religion. They reject the existence of Buddhas and Arahats who know the world as it really is through their own effort. But the logic underlying this view is self defeating for by the same kind of reasoning, one can reject the view since those who hold it also do not know anything about this or the other world really.

As for the Buddha dhamma, it rests on extraordinary insight (Sayain abhinna desita). As such it leads itself to empirical investigation and there is much scientific evidence for it.

The man who preached the Indian brand of agnosticism in the time of the Buddha was Ajita. He attacked all religious teaching without qualification and so it is to be assumed that the arahats and the Buddha, too, were the targets of his denunciation.