The Parable of the Poisoned Arrow

In a very early post (Don't Ask Me, 2009) I wrote:

I have always liked the idea that the Buddha regarded certain questions as unanswerable: the so-called "Undetermined Questions." That is, when asked these particular questions, he simply said ... nothing. Depending on which tradition you listen to, there are either fourteen or ten such questions, but to a hyper-logical Western mind there seem at root really only to be four questions, which have been expanded -- in what seems like an anticipation of the user-satisfaction questionnaire -- by the addition of supplementaries, so that "Is the world finite? Or not? Or both? Or neither?" counts as four questions. If you added "At weekends?" I suppose there'd be five.

But the core questions are:

Is the world eternal?
Is the world finite?
Is the self identical with the body?
Does an enlightened being exist after death?

All good questions, but you can see why the Buddha might choose to stare meaningfully into the distance at that point. In many ways, this is a more helpful response than the wheel-spinning scholasticism of the Christian church grappling with such questions, or the linguistic nit-picking of philosophers in later centuries. It's not quite "Don't know, don't care" but you can imagine a certain amount of serene finger-tapping going on whenever those questions came up.

Now, I'm no scholar (I'm also not a Buddhist), so it has taken me 16 years finally to come across The Parable of the Poisoned Arrow.

It seems a certain monk, Malunkyaputta, found this silence deeply annoying. You can imagine him lying awake at night, fuming: Why doesn't he just answer the fucking questions? He either knows the answers, or this is all a con-job, and he's not the Buddha, just a very naughty boy! I know I shouldn't, but tomorrow I'm going to insist that he gives me some answers, or I'm outta here! So, stepping up as a convenient straight man for another Great Teaching, he did.

Siddhartha "Buddha" Gautama's answer goes on a bit – time was not a pressing matter in the serene days before mobile phones or even clocks and watches – and in its descent into ever finer detail you can detect a certain sarcasm, I think. You can read the whole thing here on Wikipedia, in what I trust is an accurate translation. But, essentially, what he is saying is: Hey, you! You've been shot with a poisoned arrow! Do you really want to know all this irrelevant stuff – the name, rank, and number of the guy who shot it, blah blah blah, all the way down to the brand of bowstring he uses – or do you want me to pull the damn thing out and treat the wound? Your choice! Die of pointless time-consuming curiosity, or be saved. Time is running out, idiot!

To repeat what I said in that earlier post: in many ways, this is a more helpful response than the wheel-spinning scholasticism of the Christian church grappling with such questions, or the linguistic and metaphysical nit-picking of philosophers in later centuries. "So, is this "Jumping Jesus!" you cried out to when the arrow hit you of the same substance or of a similar substance to God?" "Can an arrow exist without being perceived in someone's mind (or, in your case, arm)?" Who knows? Who cares? Get this bloody arrow out of me! It hurts! Professionally speaking, you might say this is religion as ER surgery, rather than cloistered theology. And all the better for that, too.

All of which somehow puts me in mind of this beautiful song by K.D. Lang, "Simple", from her album Hymns of the 49th Parallel:

"Love will not elude us: love is simple..." Now there's a New Year's message to take to heart.

So, as the final day of the year approaches I wish you all the best for 2026! But do watch out for those poisoned arrows, real or metaphorical. Should you get hit by one  – it happens – follow Dr. Siddhartha's advice and don't waste time wondering about the who, what, when, or why: just accept that "life hurts", as Doc S. likes to say, and get it seen to right away. Keep it simple.