Chapter 3. The discipline of arguments about hidden motives¶

The expression's bad reputation must first be acknowledged. In Chinese, "arguments about hidden motives" is almost another name for "ignoring evidence and pointing straight into people's hearts." The discipline of history has likewise long warned that motives cannot be established and that documentary inquiry must stop at observable conduct. This is precisely the boundary this volume intends to cross. Volume 1 has already written a history of transformation that records conduct alone. This volume asks why change took precisely this form at each juncture, and that question cannot bypass people: who was pushing, who benefited, who was afraid. Doctrinal texts give reasons, not motives. Reasons are written for opponents and believers to read. Yet "motives cannot be established" is sound as a discipline and excessive as an assertion. Motives leave no archives, but they leave traces. Choices of rhetoric, the distribution of prohibitions, on whom punishments fall, who is named, who is silenced: all are observable conduct, and conduct can be checked. The question is therefore not whether inference is possible but whether it follows rules. The Preface has already established three; their details follow here.

First, every conjecture must be explicitly marked as conjecture. This volume uses three levels of wording. When the historical sources state something explicitly, it writes "the record states this." When something can be securely inferred from corroborating evidence, it writes "it can be inferred." Any guess at motives that goes beyond the evidence is introduced with "this volume conjectures." The three levels are not mixed. Whenever readers encounter the third-level marker, on any page, they are entitled to cross out the entire sentence. The argument will still stand after it is removed. None of this volume's arguments about hidden motives carries structural weight. This guarantee is made once here for the entire volume and will not be repeated later.

Second, every imputation of motives must supply corroborating evidence. A sound conjecture about motives must explain which traces of conduct support it and what kind of counterexample would refute it. This volume will conjecture that the function of Mahādeva's five propositions was to redistribute authority (Essay 2 of this volume). Its corroborating evidence is that every one of the five propositions targets the core of the elders' qualifications. A way to refute it is also readily available: if any historical source from either side records the elders calmly accepting the five propositions, the conjecture falls. The writer must have in mind a way the conjecture could be refuted; it need not be spelled out on paper in every case. Where it adds information, it should be given in the text; where it is obvious, it need not be elaborated. An imputation of motives for which no possible refutation can be supplied will not be written.

Third, wherever an ordinary explanation and an explanation through hidden motives coexist, the ordinary one must be presented first. Institutional inertia, economic pressure, and cognitive limitations must always appear before personal self-interest. Arguments about hidden motives may explain only the remainder left by ordinary explanations. At most junctures, once the ordinary account has been given, little remains. The imputation of motives in this volume is therefore bound to be less frequent than readers expect. This is not timidity. Thinking the worst of people is easy; the difficulty is proving that one must.

There is also a class of cases in which motives need not be guessed only from old papers. The Pure Land essay in Volume 2 compared a detail shared by Pure Land and the Abrahamic religions: teachings that anyone can believe describe themselves as a "narrow gate" and "a teaching difficult to believe" (the Pure Land essay in Volume 2, Part II, Chapter 3). That discussion compares the traditions' own rhetoric and draws on general research in social psychology and the sociology of religion. It does not present fieldwork showing how believers actually use the rhetoric of a "narrow gate" or a "teaching difficult to believe." The proposed account of this rhetoric's function in contemporary settings therefore remains an interpretation supported by comparison, not a function already established by three converging kinds of evidence. It neither recovers the founders' intentions nor, by itself, identifies the motives of particular believers. The distinction matters here: this volume seeks to explain the direction of historical change, not to reconstruct an inner biography from structural resemblance. Credibility is thus a matter of degree, not of presence or absence. It varies with the thickness of the historical record, and the rules tighten or loosen accordingly. Where evidence is thin, conjectures must be more numerous but have lower credibility, and the rules must be strictest. Where evidence is thick, the tradition still lives and routes of corroboration are plentiful, conjectures can instead be fewer and more substantial. This also completes the discipline stated at the end of Chapter 1.

One word is needed on where greed, hatred, and delusion have gone. This book originally intended to use the three poisons for an explicit analysis of the forces acting at each juncture. The Preface has explained why that approach was abandoned: it was too mechanical, like shooting an arrow first and drawing the target afterward. The three poisons then receded into a discipline governing where to look. Greed reminds this volume to ask at every juncture who benefits, what is promised, and which desire the rewriting satisfies. Hatred prompts the questions of who is expelled, what is condemned, and for whom the rewriting creates an enemy. Delusion prompts the questions of what is obscured and which question may no longer be asked. The three poisons reach no conclusions; they only list questions. They determine where this volume looks, not what it sees.

The top tier and the second rule abbreviate the rule stated in Chapter 3: a way to overturn a conjecture must be available, but it need not be written out in every case. The text gives it where it adds information and leaves obvious cases unstated. “Plain explanation” means an explanation in terms of institutional inertia, economic pressures, or cognitive limits before an explanation in terms of personal self-interest.

Two final boundaries remain. First, structure and people must be separated. When Volume 2 judged tathāgatagarbha as "taking in advance" and esoteric Buddhism as "enactment," it judged the function of doctrinal structures, not any individual master's character. This volume asks about motives, and its objects are historical actors. The two kinds of judgment must not be transferred to one another. To say that a structure functions as a form of attachment is not to say that its maker was greedy; to say that a patriarch had practical motives is not to say that his doctrine is therefore false. Second, those who impute motives must confess their own first. This volume's own motives are equally open to such scrutiny. The impulse to classify the teachings was already acknowledged as craving in the Preface to Volume 2. Only rules that apply to oneself deserve to be applied to ancient people. This chapter guarantees the discipline of arguments about hidden motives throughout the volume. Wherever the writing fails to uphold it, readers may cite this chapter against it.