REL 3349 Buddhist Meditation Discussion of “Yoga, Brief History of an Idea” Thesis? What is Yoga? Yoga Sutras of Patañjali Visuddhimagga Yogadṛṣṭisamuccaya By the , however, the core principles of yoga were more or less in place, with most of what followed being variations on that original core: 1. Yoga as an analysis of perception and cognition. [Yogācāra Buddhism 4th c.] 2. Yoga as the raising and expansion of consciousness. [Mahābhārata; Mahayana and Jain soteriology] 3. Yoga as a path to omniscience [Nyaya-Vaisesika; Mahayana, Jain, Theravada, Sarvastivada, etc. ] 4. Yoga as a technique for entering into other bodies, generating multiple bodies, and the attainment of other supernatural accomplishments. [rise of Tantric Buddhism, YS, etc. ] NY Times: “It’s time to roll out your yoga mat and discover the combination of physical and mental exercises that for thousands of years have hooked yoga practitioners around the globe. The beauty of yoga is that you don’t have to be a yogi or yogini to reap the benefits. Whether you are young or old, overweight or fit, yoga has the power to calm the mind and strengthen the body.“ Webster’ s Dictionary: A system of physical postures, breathing techniques, and sometimes meditation derived from Yoga but often practiced independently especially in Western cultures to promote physical and emotional well-being. Swami Vivakananda: Indian Guru Who Brought Eastern Spirituality to the West Anagārika Dharmapāla (1864 – 1933) was a Sri Lankan Buddhist revivalist and a writer who presented at the first World Parliament of Religion in 1893, representing Buddhism. During his speech, “Buddhism” was presented as a contemplative, gentle, and rational religion, completely compatible to science, that predated Christianity. REL 3349 Buddhist Meditation Cosmic Context Saṃsāra 12 Link Chains of Dependent Origination 1. Ignorance 2. Formation 3. Consciousness 4. Name and form 5. Six senses 6. Contact 7. Sensation 8. Craving 9. Grasping 10.Becoming 11.Birth 12.Old age and death Past Present Future greed Lower Realms hatred ignorance THREE POISONS Karma and Psychology karma Five conditions of karma (p.120): 1. A living being 2. knowing that the being is living 3. Intention for action towards it 4. Action is done 5. Being is actually harmed * Karma is the fuel of saṃsāra. Mind is the precursor of karma. Purification of mind frees one from saṃsāra. Historical Context The Buddha: Awakened One • Buddha vs. arhat, śrāvaka, pratyekabuddha, and bodhisattva? The Buddha awarenesses events. Lumbini, east of Kapilavastu, was the birthplace of Sidhārtha Gautama (the Buddha). The Brahmanical Tradition 1. 2. 3. 4. Aryans migrated from ancient Iran to Indus valley in the beginning of the 2 millennium BCE. The Aryans supposedly brought with them the Vedas, the corpus of sacred religious-ritual literature, detailed a particular vision of the world and society: ritual purity and caste system. Ritual purity: society reflects a hierarchy of ritual purity Caste system (varna): • – Brāmins: priests • – Kşatriyas: rulers • – Vaiśyas: merchants • – Śūdras: servants The Alternative Tradition: 1. Śramaṇa: one who “strives” spiritually. Also called the samnyāsin, or a renouncer (of the household life), or religious mendicant. 2. This counter movements to the hegemony of the Vedic tradition consists of many different groups: Widespread by the 5th BCE, these mendicant groups may be characterized by three features: • Asceticism • Meditative/contemplative: (dhyāna) or concentration; absorption (samādhi). • Philosophical: views of existence 3. Examples: Jains (ascetics), Ājīvakas (determinalist), Charvakas or Lokāyata (materialists), and the Ajñanas (skeptics). 4. The historical Śākyamuni Buddha was part of this śramaṇa mendicant tradition. Timeline Aryans migrated from ancient Iran to Indus valley. Vedic texts form from 1500-500 BCE. 2 millennium BCE Buddhism transmits to China and lasts for 1000 years. By 4th CE, Buddhism goes to Korea; 6 CE goes to Japan. Birth of Siddharma Gautama, Śākyamuni Buddha 1 millennium BCE 5th BCE Emergence of the śramaṇas, the counter-mainstream movement of contemplatives. 1000 BCE to the Buddha’s time. 3rd BCE Aśoka conquers and unites the Indian subcontinent and more; great patron of Buddhism. Buddhism goes to Sri Lanka. 1st CE Dharma O R D I N A RY M E A N I N G U LT I M AT E M E A N I N G Dharma, also as…. T E XT S C ANON Four Noble Truths Suffering or dissatisfaction (duhkha): pain, anguish Cause: greed/craving, aversion, delusion (three poisons) Cessation: nirvāṇa or a) extinction of the three poisons; b) final condition of the Buddha; c) awakening Path: systems of training such as: the Three Higher Trainings; the eightfold path of right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, concentration; six or ten perfections Analogy: a doctor’s diagnosis of an illness. The Three Higher Trainings Three higher Trainings Eightfold Path right view Morality (śīla) right intention right speech Meditation (samādhi) right action right livelihood Wisdom (prajñā) right effort right mindfulness right concentration No-Self, Anātman ātman or self is the Upaniṣadic notion of ultimate, unchanging substrate that underlies all experiences. Buddhism denies its existence and proposes that the self is only a psycho-somatic phenomena of the five skandhas: form, sensation, perception, volition, consciousness. REL 3349 Buddhist Meditation Buddhist Systems of Meditation Śamatha Vipaśyanā Śamatha Five Methods of Stilling the Mind Mindful recollection of the breath Meditation on impurity Meditation on the four boundless states Meditation on causes and conditions Meditation on buddha Obscurations to meditation Treatises on meditation often cite mental distraction and dullness as the most basic impediment to the development of samādhi. Subjected to a slightly more detailed analysis, they are expanded into a set of five basic obstacles known as the five types of mental “covering;’ or “obscuration“ (S. nivaraṇa): • desire • anger • dullness • distractedness and remorse • doubt/torpor/fear They are called coverings or obscurations because they color the mind’s activity and conceal its intrinsic potential for concentration and wisdom. Śamatha Five Methods as Antidotes Mindful recollection of the breath Meditation on impurity Meditation on the four boundless states Meditation on causes and conditions Meditation on buddha Breath… Counting: 1-10 on each exhalation; reverse counting (and skipping a number) Following: nostrils, abdomen, whole body Concentrating: the “elixir fields” (C. dantian) Impurity… Other: internal organs; decomposition of a corpse Self: internal organs; decomposition of a corpse Real or visualized. Leading to progressive stages of concentration…. Buddha… Intoning Reciting Visualizing – glorified (physical) form/attributes – merit or spiritual qualities (4 dimensions) – ritualization Four boundless states… Causes and Conditions… Meditation on cause and condition is divided into four parts: (I) contemplation of existence and nonexistence; (2) contemplation of the three states of time; (3) contemplation of space; (4) contemplation of motion. REL 3349 Buddhist Meditation Rise of Mahāyāna Buddhism Earliest Mahāyāna (“Great Vehicle”) scriptures possibly date back to 1 BCE; this date is pushed back from Chinese translations of the texts by Lokaksema in the 2 CE and extant fragments of Sanskrit scriptures from the 1 CE. The production of Mahāyāna scriptures span for roughly 6-7 centuries. Earliest Mahāyāna scripture: Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra or “Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Lines.” Scholarly Theories of Its Origin 1. 2. 3. 4. Early view: Mahāyāna was in competition with Hīnayāna schools (evolved from Mahāsaṃghikā) Early view: Mahāyāna was a devotional movement (stūpa worship), hence must be a “lay movement” Current view: Mahāyāna came out of the forest dwelling tradition of ascetic monks who sought to revive the spirit of Śākyamuni Buddha in the path he took as a bodhisattva Current view: Mahāyāna arose out of a cult of the book Features of the Mahāyāna Pāramitās: compassion wisdom nirvāṇa buddhahood 1. Giving dāna 2. Morality śīlā 3. Patience kṣānti 4. Fortitude virya 5. Meditation dhyāna 6. Discernment prajñā 7. Skillful means upāya 8. Vow, resolution, aspiration, determination praṇidhāna 9. Spiritual power bala 10. Knowledge jñāna Insight Meditation: Vipaśyanā (Pali: vipassana) Vipaśyanā: a set of techniques that are designed specifically to generate liberating insight into no-self, no-mind, and emptiness. Much of the Mahāyāna practices remain the same as early Buddhism: Early Vipaśyanā (Pali: vipassana) Satipaṭṭhāna sutta (Foundations of Mindfulness): Body Sensations Mind Dharmas Mahāyāna Vipaśyanā The Four Stations of Mindfulness entails contemplation of four basic objects: • • • • the gross physical body Sensation the mind dharmas, or elemental units of psycho-physical experience that constitute experience of body, sensation, and mind. Purpose of the Four Stations of Mindfulness Rupert Gethin An OPUS book The Foundations of Buddhism Rupert Gethin is Lecturer in Indian Religions in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, and co-director of the Centre for Buddhist Studies, at the University of Bristol. He is author of The Buddhist Path to Awakening (1992) and is a specialist in Theravada Buddhism. OPUS General Editors Christopher Butler Robert Evans John Skorupski OPUS books provide concise, original, and authoritative introductions to a wide range of subjects in the humanities and social sciences. They are written by experts for tlie general reader as well as for students. The Foundations of Buddhism Rupert Gethin Oxford New York OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford oxz 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford NewYork Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan South Korea Poland Portugal Singapore Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Rupert Gethin © 1998 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published as an Oxford University Press paperback 1998 All rights reserved. No part of this publication· may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in ariy,fonn or by any means, without the prior permission in writingpf,Oxford Ul).iversity Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under tenhs” agreed With the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to “the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Gethin, Rupert. The foundations of Buddhism f Rupert Gethin. Includes index. 1. Buddhism. I. title. BQ4012.G47 1998 294.3-dc21 98-12246 ISBN 0-19-289223-1 11 Typeset by Graphicraft Typesetters Ltd., Hong Kong Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic For my mother Acknowledgements My understanding of the Buddhist tradition owes much to many. Some of what is owed and to whom is apparent from the notes and bibliography of the present volume, but some deserve special mention. To Lance Cousins, who first introduced me to Buddhism, I owe a special debt. A number of people have read drafts of parts of this book during the course of its writing; to Lance Cousins, Hugh Gethin, Michael Houser, Rita Langer, Ken Robinson, Alexander von Rospatt, Ornan Rotem, Gregory Schopen, and Paul Williams I am especially grateful for their comments, criticisms, and encouragement. I am also grateful to my students and all those others whose questions and puzzled faces have prompted me to try to express what I understand of Buddhism more clearly. Finally a word of thanks to my editor at OUP, George Miller, for his patience and help. siddhir astu subham astu Contents List of Tables and Figure xii List of Maps xiii A Note on Buddhist Languages xvii INTRODUCTION I THE BUDDHA: THE STORY OF THE AWAKENED ONE The historical Buddha The legend of the Buddha The nature of a buddha 7 7 r6 27 2. THE WORD OF THE BUDDHA: BUDDHIST SCRIPTURES AND ScHOOLS Dharma: texts, practice, and realization The first recitation of scriptures · SUtra and Abhidharma The origin of the ancient Buddhist schools The Mahayana sUtras 35 35 39 45 49 56 I. 3· FouR TRUTHS: THE DISEASE, THE CAUSE, THE CuRE, THE MEDICINE The orientation of the Buddha’s teaching The disease of suffering 59 59 6o The origin of suffering: attachment, aversion, and delusion 68 The cessation of suffering: nirvaQ.a 74 The way leading to the cessation of suffering 79 4· THE BuDDHIST CoMMUNITY: MoNKS, NuNs, AND LAY FOLLOWERS 85 The Buddha’s followers and the origin of the Buddhist order 85 X Contents Ordination and the Buddhist monastic ideal The underlying concerns of the Vinaya From wandering to settled life The spiritual life The lay community Spiro’s schema: apotropaic, kammatic, and nibbanic Buddhism 5· THE BuDDHIST CosMos: THE THRICE-THousANDFOLD WORLD Of space and time: world-systems Cosmology and psychology: macrocosm and microcosm Cosmology, folk religion, and modern science 6. No SELF: PERSONAL CONTINUITY AND DEPENDENT ARISING The Buddhist critique of self as unchanging The problem of personal continuity Ignorance, attachment, and views of the self The elaboration of the teaching of dependent arising Did the Buddha deny the existence of the self? 7· THE BUDDHISM PATH: THE WAY OF CALM AND INSIGHT Introductory remarks The role of faith Good conduct The practice of calm meditation The stages of insight meditation The relationship of calm and insight 8. THE ABHIDHARMA: THE HIGHER TEACHING Stories, legends, texts, and authors The Abhidharma as a system of Buddhist thought The consciousness process, karma, and rebirth Some Abhidharma problems 87 91 95 101 107 IIO II2 II2 II9 !26 133 133 J40 146 149 159 163 163 165 169 174 18j 198 202 202 207 215 2!8 Contents 9· THE MAHAYANA: THE GREAT VEHICLE The beginnings of the Mahayana The vehicle of the bodhisattva Transcendent buddhas Emptiness and the ‘perfection of wisdom’ Nagarjuna and the ‘middle’ (Madhyamaka) school ‘Ideas only’ (vijfiapti-miitra) and the Yogacara The Tathagatagarbha ro. EvoLVING TRADITIONS OF BuDDHISM: SouTH, EAsT, NORTH, AND WEST Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lanka and South-East Asia: Southern Buddhism China, Korea, and Japan: East Asian Buddhism Tibet and Mongolia: Northern Buddhism A final note: Buddhism in the West xi 224 224 226 231 234 237 244 250 253 253 257 266 273 &~ m Select Bibliography 302 Glossary 319 Index 323 List of Tables and Figure Tables 1. The noble eightfold path The thirty-one realms of existence according to the Pali sources 3· Dependent arising 4· The forty subjects of calm meditation according to Buddhaghosa 5· Ascending stages of calm meditation 6. The stages of insight according to Buddhaghosa’s Visuddhimagga 7. The scheme of the five paths and the ten bodhisattva stages 8. The Abhidharma Pitaka 81 2. Figure 1. The Tibetan ‘Wheel of Existence’ u6 152 178 182 193 196 205 List of Maps The Ganges basin at the time of the Buddha 2. The spread of Buddhism in the ancient world 3· Buddhism in the modern world I. xiv XV xvi MAP 1. The Ganges basin at the time of the Buddha 0 0 50 50 100 100 miles 150 km Land over 1000 metres MAP 2. 500 1000 miles 500 1000 1500 km The spread of Buddhism in the ancient world ~ The extent of Buddhist influence 0 0 0 ‘ ? JAPAN MAP 3· 500 1000 miles 500 1000 1500 km Buddhism in the.modern world Theravada or ‘southern’ Buddhism East Asian or ‘eastern’ Buddhism [::J Tibetan or ‘northern’.Buddhism 0 0 SRI LANKA a .~b ~ft-0:~! ~· ,’ .i~vf!J ~~ A Note on Buddhist Languages The original language of Buddhist thought is problematic. It was not Sanskrit (Old Indo-Aryan) but a closely related Middle Indo-Aryan dialect similar to Pali, the canonical language of the Buddhism of Sri Lanka and South-East Asia. As Buddhism developed in ancient India it tended increasingly to speak the universal language of ancient Indian culture, Sanskrit. Subsequently Buddhist texts were translated into Chinese _and Tibetan which became major Buddhist languages in their own right. The general principle I have adopted is to quote universal Buddhist terms in both Sanskrit and (when there is a difference) Pali, placed in parentheses after the English translation so: ‘aggregates’ (skandha/khandha). If the term is used again in the body of the text I have generally preferred the Sanskrit form, unless the context is exclusively that of Theravada Buddhism. Terms that are specific or characteristic of a particular Buddhist tradition are quoted in the appropriate language(s), either Pali or Sanskrit with, where appropriate, their Chinese or Tibetan, or occasionally their Japanese or Korean translation. The transliteration of Indian languages follows the standard transliteration scheme (see A. L. Basham, The Wonder that Was India, so6~8); Chinese is quoted according to the Wade~Giles system, rather than Pin-Yin, Tibetan according to the Wylie system. Words that have become part of the English language (i.e. would be found in an English dictionary) are left unitalicized but the appropriate diacritical marks have been added, hence ‘nirval)a’. Introduction The term ‘Buddhism’ refers to a vast and complex religious and philosophical tradition with a history that stretches over some 2,500 years, taking in, at one time or another, the greater part of Asia, from Afghanistan and parts of Persia in the west to Japan in the east, from the great islands of Sumatra and Java in the south to Mongolia and parts of southern Russia in the north. As one writer reminds us, over half the world’s population today lives in areas w:here Buddhism has at one time or another been the dominant religious influence. 1 Living Buddhism divides into ‘ three broad traditions: 2 I. The Theravada tradition of Sri Lanka and South-East Asia, also sometimes referred to as ‘southern’ Buddhism. Its canonical scriptures are preserved in Pali, an ancient Indian language closely related to Sanskrit. The school exemplifies a certain conservatism. Relative to the other two traditions, it can be regarded as generally closer in doctrine and practice to ancient Buddhism as it existed in the early centuries BCE in India. Today it is the religious tradition followed by a population of over IOO million in Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos. 2. The East Asian tradition of China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, also sometimes referred to as ‘eastern’ Buddhism. Its scriptures are preserved in Chinese and its general outlook is that of the Mahayana or ‘Great Vehicle’, a movement of ancient Indian Buddhist thought and practice that from about the beginning of the Christian era dubbed those who did not adopt its overall vision of Buddhism-represented today by the Theravada-followers of the ‘Lesser Vehicle’ (hinayiina). East Asian Buddhism is extremely diverse; it has coexisted with Confucianism, Taoism, 2 Introduction Shinto, and, more recently but less happily, Communism; it remains a significant religious tradition for a population of soo million to I,ooo million. 3· The Tibetan tradition, also sometimes referred to as ‘northern’ Buddhism. Its scriptures are preserved in Tibetan and once more its outlook is broadly that of the Mahayana, but its i:nore specific orientation is that of the ‘Vehicle of the Diamond Thunderbolt’ (vajra-yiina), also known as Tantric Buddhism, Today it is the religious tradition followed by IO million to 20 million, principally in Tibet and Mongolia, but also in parts of Nepal and Himalayan India. All three of these traditions look back to ancient Buddhism and the land of India, where Buddhism was born but whence it vir· tually disappeared over five centuries ago. The present volume was conceived as an introduction to Buddhist thought and practice, and is intended to be accessible to the reader with no previous knowledge of Buddhism. Given its great diversity and its long history, the task of introducing Buddhism is a daunting one. As is fashionable to point out these ·days, ‘Buddhism’ is something of an intellectual abstraction: in reality there is not one Buddhism but many Buddhisms. Any writer of an introductory text to Buddhism is faced with the problem of how to do justice to the richness and diversity of ~Buddhism both past and present. Most of the existing introductory volumes to Buddhism offer their readers some kind of general survey of the different ‘Buddhisms’, and attempt to give an equal and balanced treatment of all that Buddhism has been and still is. The advantage of this approach is that, ideally if not always in practice, it avoids the pitfall of seeming to imply that one or other form of Buddhism represents a ‘truer’ form of Buddhism than others, or that one has somehow captured the real essence of Buddhism. Its disadvantage is that, in a volume of some 300 pages, one is in danger of saying very little about an awful lot, and of presenting the reader with what amounts to a catalogue of dates, people, places, doctrines, and practices; a reader may finish such a book, yet somehow know very little of Buddhism. For this Introduction 3 reason it seems worth while trying to introduce Buddhism in a more explicitly focused way. The approach I have adopted in the present volume, then, is to try to identify and focus on those fundamental ideas a,nd practices that constitute something of a common heritage shared by the different traditions of Buddhism that exist in the world today. Of course, the precise nature of that common heritage is open to question. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the areas of Buddhist thought and practice outlined in the present volume -the story of the Buddha (Chapter 1), a textual and scriptural tradition (Chapter 2), the framework of the four noble truths (Chapter 3), the monastic and lay ways of life (Chapter 4), a cosmology based around karma and rebirth (Chapter 5), the teaching of no self and dependent arising (Chapter 6), a progressive path of practice leading on from good conduct. and devotions through stages of meditation to a higher understanding (Chapter 7), the theoretical systems of either the Abhidharma or the Madyamaka and Yogacara (Chapters 8 and 9), the path of the bodhisattva (Chapter 9)-are all, in one way or another, assumed by and known to all Buddhism. These are the foundations upon which Buddhism rests. Of course, I do not mean to suggest by this that a Buddhist layman in Tokyo and a Buddhist laywoman in Bangkok, that a monk in Colombo and a nun in Lhasa, would all respond to questions on these topics precisely along the lines set out in the relevant chapters below. None the less, it is not unreasonable nor, I think, is it to commit oneself to an essentialist view of Buddhism to suggest that, whatever the nature of the Buddhist terrain, one cannot dig much below the surface without coming across some trace of the patterns of thought and practice outlined here, even if at different times and in different places the constructions built on their foundations present their own distinctive and peculiar aspects. Moreover, the fact that those patterns of thought and practice are not immediately apparent does not of itself mean that they exert no influence. That we may not always be consciously aware of particular ideas and theories, or that we may be unable to articulate them in detail, does not 4 Introduction mean that those ideas fail to affect our view of the world. The principles of, say, Newtonian physics, Darwinian evolutionary theory, and Freudian psychology contribute to a world-viewthat is shared by many who have never read a word of what Newton, Darwin, or Freud wrote and would be hard pressed to explain in detail any of their ideas. I should, however, add that I have not entirely eschewed the general-survey approach; Chapter 9, on specifically Mahayana ideas, and especially Chapter IO, an overview of the history of the different traditions of Buddhism in Asia, are intended to give some indication of what I have not covered and provide some form of orientation for further study. Apart from its simply allowing a more sustained account of some significant aspects of Buddhist thought and practice, there is a further reason why I think focusing on the common heritage as indicated above is appropriate at the introductory level: it affords a perspective on the development of Buddhist thought and practice which calls into question what might be dubbed the standard ‘textbook’ view and is in fact more in tune with recent scholarship. This textbook view tends to see the history of Buddhism in terms of a division into two major ‘sects’: the Theravada and the Mahayana. More specifically, according to this ‘textbook’ view, in origin the Mahayana was at once a popular religious protest against the elitist monasticism of early Buddhism and a philosophical refutation of its dead-end scholasticism; moreover,this religious protest and philosophical refutation rapidly all but marginalized earlier forms of Buddhism. The research published in the last twenty years or so has increasingly made such a view of the development of Indian Buddhist thought and practice untenable. The Mahayana did not originate as a clearly defined ‘sect’ and, far from being a popular lay movement, it seems increasingly likely that.it began as a minority monastic movement and remained such for several hundred years, down to at least the fifth century CE. Moreover, what is becoming clearer is that many elements of Buddhist thought and practice that were once thought to be characteristic of the emerging Mahayana were simply developments within what has been called by some Introduction 5 ‘mainstream’ Buddhism;3 and while the Mahayana certainly criticized aspects of mainstream Buddhist thought and practice, much more was taken as said and done, and just carried over. Thus, instead of seeing Mahayana as simply superseding earlier forms of Buddhism in India, the approach adopted in the present volume is to try to focus on the common ground between the non-Mahayana and Mahayana in the formative phase of Indian Buddhist thought and practice, and by referring to both the Pali sources of Sri Lanka and the Sanskrit sources of northern India to present an outline of ‘mainstream’ Buddhist thought and practice as the foundations for developments in India and beyond. Such an approach, then, does tend to privilege what is ancient, but throughout· I have attempted to give some indication of how these basic principles of Buddhist thought and practice might relate to more recent developments. Let me add here a few words on my specific approach to my material. In describing Buddhist thought and practice, my aim has been, in the first place, simply to act as spokesman for its principles, and to try to articulate those principles as Buddhist tradition itself has understood them. In the second place, I have tried to give some indication of and pass some comment on the critical and scholarly issues that have emerged in the modern academic study of Buddhism over the last rso years or so. Some might question the need for yet another introductory volume on Buddhism, yet as a teacher of introductory courses on Buddhism at a university I find myself somewhat dissatisfied with the available teaching materials. Certainly there are available a number of survey-type books ranging from short and sketchy to more moderate-sized treatments. In addition there are some solid introductions to various aspects of Buddhism -the social history of Theravada, Mahayana thought, Chinese Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism-but if one looks for a volume giving a more focused account, reflecting recent scholarship, of what, for want of a better expression, one might refer to as the principles of ‘mainstream’ Buddhist thought and practice, there appears to be a gap. It is hoped that the present work will go some way to filling that gap. 6 Introduction In sum, what distinguishes the present volume is that it contains rather more sustained expositions of Buddhist cosmology, no self and dependent arising, the path of meditation, and the theoretical Abhidharma framework (which underlies all later Buddhist thought) than other introductory books. Thus there is material here which, although basic from a Buddhist point of view, is only available in specialized books and articles. I hope, then, that while the book is intended to be accessible to the novice, there may also be something here for the elders of Buddhist studies. 1 The Buddha The Story of the Awakened One The historical Buddha In January 1898 an Englishman, W. C. Peppe, digging into a mound on his estate at Pipdihwa just the Indian side of the IndianNepalese border, unearthed a soapstone vase some six inches in height with a brief inscription around its lid. The inscription, written in the Brahmi script and dating from about the second century BCE, was in one of the ancient Indian dialects or Prakrits collectively referred to as Middle Indo-Aryan. The precise interpretation of the inscription remains problematic, but it appears to claim that the vase is ‘a receptacle of relics of the Blessed Buddha of the Sakyas’. 1 The circumstances of this find and the find itself actually reveal a considerable amount about the nature and long history of what we know today as ‘Buddhism’. Peppe was among the early excavators of ruined Buddhist stiipas or monumental burial mounds. Such stupas vary considerably in size. The largest were made to enshrine the relics of the Buddha himself or of Buddhist ‘saints’ or arhats (Pali arahat), while smaller ones contained the remains of more ordinary men and women. 2 Today countless stupas are to be found scattered across the Indian subcontinent (where over the past hundred years a few have been restored to something of their former glory) and also other countries where Buddhism spread. Buddhism was, then, in origin an Indian phenomenon. Beginning in the fifth century BCE, its teachings and institutions continued to flourish for some fifteen centuries on Indian soil, inspiring and moulding the intellectual, religious, and cultural life of India. During this period Buddhism spread via the old trade routes far beyond the 8 The Buddha confines of India right across Asia, from Afghanistan in the west to Japan in the east, affecting and touching the lives of millions of people. Yet by around the close of the twelfth century Bud” dhist institutions had all but disappeared from India proper, and it is in the countries and cultures that lie beyond India that Buddhism flourishes today. None the less all the variou~ living traditions of Buddhism in some way look back to and revere a figure who has a certain basis in history-a figure who lived and died in northern India several centuries before the beginning of the Christian era and belonged to a people known as the Sakyas (Pali Sakya). He is Sakya-muni, ‘the sage of the Sakyas’, or as our inscription prefers to call him buddho bhagavii-‘the Blessed Buddha’, ‘the Lord Buddha’. So who, and indeed what, was the Lord Buddha? This is a quesc tion that might be answered in a number of different ways, a question about which both the Buddhist tradition and the historian have something to say. The nature of the Buddha is a subject that the Buddhist tradition itself has expounded on at length and to which we will return below but, in brief, the word b_uddha is not a name but a title; its meaning is ‘one who has woken up’. This title is generally applied by the Buddhist tradition to a class of beings who are, from the perspective of ordinary humanity, extremely rare and quite extraordinary. In contrast to these Buddhas or ‘awakened ones’ the mass of humanity; along with the other creatures and beings that constitute the world, are asleep-asleep in the sense that they pass through their lives never knowing and seeing the world ‘as it is’ (yathii-bhutarrt). As a consequence they suffer. A buddha on the other hand awakens to the knowledge of the world as it truly is and in so doing finds release from suffering. Moreover-and this is perhaps the greatest significance of a buddha for the rest of humanity, and indeed for all the beings who make up the universe-a buddha teaches. He teaches out of sympathy and compassion for the suffering of beings, for the benefit and welfare of all beings; he teaches in order to lead others to awaken to the understanding that brings final relief from suffering. An ancient formula still used in Buddhist devotions today puts it as follows: The Buddha 9 For the following reasons he is a Blessed One: he is an Arhat, a perfectly and completely awakened one, perfect in his understanding and conduct, happy, one who understands the world, an unsurpassed trainer of unruly men, the teacher of both gods and men, a blessed buddha. 3 Such is a buddha in general terms, but what of the particular buddha with whom we started, whose relics appear to have been enshrined in a number of stupas across the north of India and to whom the Buddhist tradition looks as its particular founderthe historical Buddha? Let us for the moment consider the question not so much from the perspective of the Buddhist tradition as from the perspective of the historian. The Buddha and the Indian ‘renouacer’ tradition We can know very little of the historical Buddha with any degree of certainty. Yet within the bounds of reasonable historical probability we can form quite a clear picture of the kind of person the Buddha was and the main events of his life. The oldest Buddhist sources, which provide us with a number of details concerning the person and life of the Buddha, date from the fourth or third century BCE. Unfortunately when we tum to the nonBuddhist sources of a similar date, namely the earliest texts of the Jain and brahmanical traditions, there is no explicit mention of the Buddha at all. 4 It would be a mistake to conclude, however, that non-Buddhist sources thus provide us with no corroborative evidence for the picture of the Buddha painted in early Buddhist texts. Essentially the latter present the Buddha as a sramatJa (Pali samaf}a). This term means literally ‘one who strives’ and belongs to the technical vocabulary of Indian religion, referring as it does to ‘one who strives’ religiously or spiritually. It points towards a particular tradition that in one way or another has been of great significance in Indian religious history, be it Buddhist, Jain, or Hindu. Any quest for the historical Buddha must begin with the sramatJa tradition. Collectively our sources may not allow us to write the early history of this movement but they do enable us to say certain amount concerning its character. a IO The Buddha The tradition is sometimes called the ‘renouncer (sarrmyiisin) tradition’. What we are concerned with here is the phenomenon of individuals’ renouncing their normal role in society as a member of an extended ‘household’ in order to devote themselves to some form of religious or spiritual life. The ‘renouncer’ abandons conventional means of livelihood, such as farming or trade, and adopts instead the religious life as a means of livelihood. That is, he becomes a religious mendicant dependent on alms. What our sources make clear is that by the fifth century BCE this phenomenon was both widespread and varied. Thus while ‘renouncers’ had in common the fact .that they had ‘gone forth from the household life into homelessness’ (to use a phrase common in Buddhist sources), the kind of lifestyle they then adopted was not necessarily the same. This is suggested by some of the terms that we find in the texts: in addition to ‘one who strives’ and ‘renouncer’, we fil).d ‘wanderer’ (parivriijaka/paribbiijaka), ‘one who begs his share [of alms]’ (bhik(fulbhikkhu), ‘naked ascetic’ (ace/aka), ‘matted-hair ascetic’ (jatila), as well as a number of other terms. 5 Some of these wanderers and ascetics seem to have been loners, while others seem to have organized themselves into groups and lived under a teacher. Early renouncers seem to· have been for the most part male, although with the growth of Buddhism and Jainism it is certainly the case that women too began to be numbered among. their ranks. Three kinds of activity seem to have preoccupied these wanderers and. ascetics. First, there is the practice of austerities, such as going naked in all weathers, enduring all physical discomforts, fasting, or undertaking the vow to live like a cow or . even a dog. 6 Secondly, there is the cultivation of meditative and contemplative techniques aimed at producing what might, for the lack of a suitable technical term in English, be referred to as ‘altered states of consciousness’. In the technical vocabulary of Indian religious texts such states come to be termed ‘meditations’ (dhyiina/jhiina) or ‘concentrations’ (samiidhi); the attainment of such states of consciousness was generally regarded as bringing the practitioner to some deeper knowledge and experience of the nature of the world. Lastly there is the development of The Buddha II various philosophical views providing the intellectual justification for particular practices and the theoretical expression of the ‘knowledge’ to which they led. While some groups and individuals seem to have combined all three activities, others favoured one at the expense of the others, and the line between th’e practice of austerities and the practice of meditation may not always be clear: the practice of extreme austerity will certainly alter one’s state of mind. The existence of some of these different groups of ancient Indian wanderers and ascetics with their various practices and theories finds expression in Buddhist texts in a stock description of ‘six teachers of other schools’, who are each represented as expounding a particular teaching and practice. Another list, with no details of the associated teachings and practices, gives ten types of renouncer. In fact two other ancient Indian traditions that were subsequently of some importance in the religious life of India (the Ajivikas and the Jains) find a place in both these ancient Buddhist lists; the Jain tradition, of course, survives to this day. 7 But one of the most significant groups for the understanding of the religious milieu of the historical Buddha is omitted from these lists; this is the early brahmanical tradition. To explain who the ·brahmins (briihma1Ja) were requires a brief excursus into the early evolution of Indian culture and society. The brahmanical tradition It is generally thought that some time after the beginning of the second millennium BCE groups of a nomadic tribal people began to move south from ancient Iran, through the passes of the Hindu Kush and down into the plains of the Indus valley. These people spoke dialects of Old Indo-Aryan, that is, of Sanskrit and they are known as the Aryas. The Aryas who moved into India were descendants of nomadic pastoralists who had occupied the grasslands of central Asia, some of whom similarly moved west into Europe. Once in India the Aryas’ cultural influence gradually spread southwards and eastwards across the plains of northern India. By the time the Buddha was born, probably early in the fifth I2 The Buddha century BCE, the Aryas had been in India perhaps a thousand years and their cultural influence extended down the Ganges valley as far as Pataliputra (modern Patna). The coming of the Aryas into India did not bring political unity to northern India, but it did bring a certain ideology that constitutes one of the principal components of Indian culture. This Aryan vision of society was principally developed and articulated by a hereditary group within Aryan society known as briihmafJas or, in the Anglo-Indian spelling, brahmins. The original literature of the brahrnins is known as the Vedas, the oldest portions of which, found in the l_?.g Veda, date from about rsoo BCE. By the time of the Buddha, Vedic literature probably already comprised several different classes: the four collections (saf!lhitii) of verses attributed to the ancient seers (r#), the ritual manuals (also known as briihmaiJas) giving instruction in the carrying out of the elaborate Vedic sacrificial ritual, and ‘the forest books’ (iiraiJyaka) explaining the esoteric meaning of this sacrificial ritual. The final class of Vedic literature, the Upani~ads, containing further esoteric explanations of the sacrificial ritual, was still in the process of formation. Two aspects of the brahmanical vision are of particular importance, namely an understanding of society as reflecting a hierarchy of ritual ‘purity’, and a complex system of ritual and sacrifice. From the brahmanical perspective society comprises two groups: the Aryas and the non-Aryas. The former consists of the three hereditary classes (variJa) in descending order of purity: briihmaiJaS (whose prerogative and duty it is to teach and maintain the Vedic tradition), k~atriyas or rulers (whose prerogative and duty is to maintain order and where necessary inflict appropriate punishment), and the vaisyas (whose prerogative and duty is to generate wealth through farming and trade). These three classes are termed ‘twice born’ (dvija) by virtue of the fact that traditionally male members undergo an initiation (upanayana) into a period of study of the Vedic tradition under the supervision of a brahmin teacher; at the end of this period of study it is their duty to maintain the household sacrificial fires and, with the help ofbrahmins, carry out various sacrificial rituals in accordance with the prescriptions of Vedic tradition. The non-Aryas The Buddha 13 make up the fourth class, the sildras or servants, whose basic duty it is to serve the three other classes. While it is important not to confuse these four classes (varlJa) and the countless castes (jiiti) oflater Indian society, it is none the less the ideology of the relative ritual purity of the classes that underpins the medieval and .modern Indian ‘caste system’. The brahmins’ hereditary ritual status empowered them to carry out certain ritual functions that members of other classes were excluded from, but at the time of the Buddha not all brahmins were full-time ‘priests’. Precisely how brahmins related to the various groups of wandering ascetics is not clear. 8 In part we can see the brahmanical vision of society and that of the wandering ascetics as opposed to each other, in part we can see the two as complementing each other. To accept the brahmanical view of the world was to accept brahmanical authority as an aspect of the eternal structure of the universe and, as such, unassailable. Yet wandering ascetics threatened brahmanical supremacy by offering rival visions of the world and society. On the other hand, within brahmanical circles we find the development of certain esoteric theories of the nature of the sacrificial ritual and philosophical views about the ultimate nature of man and his relationship to the universe at large. These theories may to some extent have drawn on ideas developing amongst the groups of wandering ascetics; at the same time they may have substantially contributed to the development of the tradition of the wanderers itself, since it is clear that brahmin circles were an important recruiting ground for the various groups of wandering ascetics. Yet it seems clear that in certain respects the Buddhajs teachings were formulated as a response to certaih brahmanical teachings. 9 The Buddha and history It is in this milieu that the historian must understand the historical Buddha as existing. And given this milieu, the bare ‘facts’ of the Buddha’s life as presented by tradition are historically unproblematic and inconsequential. The precise dates of the Buddha’s life are uncertain. A widespread Buddhist tradition records that he was in his eightieth r4 The Buddha year when he died, and the dates for his life most widely quoted in modern published works are 566-486 BCE. These dates are arrived at by, first, following a tradition, recorded in the Pali sources of ‘southern’ Buddhism, that the great Mauryan king, Asoka, was consecrated 2r8 years after the death of the Buddha, and, secondly, taking 268 BCE as the year of Asoka’s accession. This is done on the basis of the Asokan rock-edict reference to rulers in the wider Hellenic world who can be dated from other ancient sources. But both the figure 2r8 and the accession of Asoka in 268 BCE are problematic. In contrast to the southern ‘long chronology’, northern Buddhist Sanskrit sources. adopt a ‘short chronology’, placing Asoka’s accession just roo years after the death of the Buddha, while recent research suggests that Asoka’s accession may be plausibly placed anywhere between 280 and 267 BCE. 10 But such figures as 2 r8 and roo should properly be seen as ideal round numbers.U Moreover, as was first pointed out by Rhys Davids and more recently by Richard Gombrich, a time lapse of rather less than 2r8 years from the Buddha’s death to Asoka’s accession is suggested by the figures associated with the lineage of teachers found in a Pali source, namely an ancient Sri Lankan chronicle, the DipavaJ!lsa. 12 While there is no scholarly consensus on the precise dates of the Buddha, a detailed examination of all the available data and arguments by scholars in recent years has resulted in a general tendency to bring the date of the Buddha considerably forward and pl&ce his death much nearer 400 BCE than 500 BCE. . The earliest Buddhist sources state that the future Buddha was born Siddhartha Gautama (Pali Siddhattha Gotama), the son of a local chieftain-a riijan-in Kapilavastu (Pali Kapilavatthu) on what is now the Indian-Nepalese border. He was thus a member of a relatively privileged and wealthy family, and enjoyed a comfortable upbringing. While the later Buddhist tradition, in recounting the story of his youth, certainly likes to dwell on the wealth of Siddhartha’s family and the extravagance of his princely upbringing, there is something of a cultural misunderstanding involved in the notion that the Buddhist tradition presents the Buddha as born a royal prince, the son of a great king. The Buddha IS In representing the Buddha as a rajan or k$atriya the tradition is effectively recording little more than that he was, in European cultural terms, a member of a locally important aristocratic family. At some point he became disillusioned with his comfortable and privileged life; he became troubled by a sense of the suffering that, in the form of sickness, old age, and death, sooner or later awaited him and everyone else. In the face of this, the pleasures he enjoyed seemed empty and of little value. So he left home and adopted the life of a wandering ascetic, a srama!Ja, to embark on a religious and spiritual quest. He took instruction from various teachers; he practised extreme austerities as was the custom of some ascetics. Still he was not satisfied. Finally, seated in meditation beneath an asvattha tree on the banks of the Nairafijana in what is now the north Indian state of Bihar, he had an experience which affected him profoundly, convincing him that he had come to the end of his quest. While the historian can make no judgement on the nature of this experience, the Buddhist tradition (apparently bearing witness to the Buddha’s own understanding of his experience) calls it bodhi or ‘awakening’ and characterizes it as involving the deepest understanding of the nature of suffering, its cause, its cessation, and the way leading to its cessation. The Buddha devoted the rest of . his life to teaching this ‘way to the cessation of suffering’ to groups of wanderers and ordinary householders. In the course of his wanderings across the plains that flank the banks of the Ganges he gathered a considerable following and by the time of his death at about the age of So he had established a well-organized mendicant community which attracted considerable support from the wider population. His followers cremated his body and divided up the relics which were enshrined in a number of stupas which became revered shrines. That the subsequent Buddhist tradition is founded upon and inspired by the teaching activity of a charismatic individual who lived some centuries before the beginning of the Christian era can hardly be doubted. In the words of the great Belgian scholar Etienne Lamotte, ‘Buddhism cannot be explained unless we accept that it has its origin in the strong personality of its 16 The Buddha founder.’ 13 Given this premiss, none of the bare details of the Buddha’s life is particularly problematic for the historiansomething we should bear in mind in the face of certain modern scholarly discussions of the life of the Buddha, such as Andre Bareau’s, which, in dwelling on t.he absence of corroborative evidence for many of the details of the traditional life of the Buddha, introduces a note of undue scepticism with regard to the whole account. Of course, as the Buddhist tradition tells it, the story of the life of the Buddha is not history nor meant to be. The whole story takes on a mythic and legendary character. A wealth of detail is brought in capable of being read metaphorically, allegorically, typologically, and symbolically. Much of this detail is to modern sensibilities of a decidedly ‘miraculous’ and ‘supernatural’ kind. The story of the Buddha’s life becomes not an account of the particular and individual circumstances of a man who, some 2,500 years ago, left home to become a wandering ascetic, but something universal, an archetype; it is the story of all those who have become buddhas in the past and all who will become buddhas in the future, and, in a sense, of all who follow the Buddhist path. It is the story of the Buddhist path, a story that shows the way to a profound religious truth. Yet for all that, many of the details of his eady life given in the oldest sources remain evocative of some memory of events from a distant time. If we persist in distinguishing and holding apart myth and history, we are in danger of missing the story’s own sense of truth. Furthermore, the historian must recognize that he has virtually no strictly historical criteria for distinguishing between history and myth in the accounts of the life of the Buddha. And at that point he should perhaps remain silent and let the story speak for itself. 14 The legend of the Buddha Sources The centrepiece of the legend of the Buddha is the story of the Buddha’s life from his conception to the events of his awakening and his first teaching. This narrative must be accounted one The Buddha I7 of the great stories of the world. Part of the common heritage of Buddhism, it is known throughout Asia wherever Buddhism has taken root. The core of this story and not a few of its details are already found in the Sutra and Vinaya collections of early Buddhist texts (see next chapter). 15 In literary works ‘and in sculptural reliefs that date from two or three centuries later, we find these details embellished and woven together to form a more sustained narrative. The classical literary tellings of the story are found in Sanskrit texts such as the Mahiivastu (‘Great Story’, first century cE), the Lalitavistara (‘Graceful Description’, first century cE), in Asvagho~a’s poem the Buddhacarita (‘Acts of the Buddha’, second century cE), and in the Pali Nidiinakathii (‘Introductory Tale’, second or third century CE), which forms an introduction to the commentary on the Jiitaka, a collection of stories of the Buddha’s previous births. 16 New narratives of the life of the Buddha have continued to be produced down to modern timesP Tibetan tradition structures the story of the Buddha’s life around twelve acts performed by all buddhas, while Theravadin sources draw up a rather longer list of thirty features that are the rule (dhammatii) for the lives of all buddhas. 18 The substance of these two lists is already found in the oldest tellings of the story. What follows is in effect the story of these twelve acts and (most of) the thirty features, told with a bias to how they are recounted in the early discourses of the Buddha and Pali sources, together with some comments aimed at providing a historical perspective on the development of the story. The legend The Buddhist and general Indian world-view is that all sentient beings are subject to rebirth: all beings are born, live, die, and are reborn again and again in a variety of different circumstances. This process knows no definite beginning and, ordinarily, no definite end. The being who becomes a buddha, like any other being, has known countless previous lives-as a human being, an animal, and a god. An old tradition tells us that the life before the one in which the state of buddhahood is reached is always 18 The Buddha spent as a ‘god’ (deva) in the heaven of the Contented (Tu~ita/ Tusita). Here the bodhisattva (Pali bodhisatta)-the being intent on awakening-dwells awaiting the appropriate time to take a human birth and become a buddha. Dwelling in the Tu~ita heaven is the first of the twelve acts, but how does the bodhisattva come to be dwelling here? The answer, in short, is that it is as a result of having practised ‘the perfections’ (piiramitii/piiraml) over many, many lifetimes. Long ago, in fact incalculable numbers of aeons ago, there lived an ascetic called Sumedha (or Megha by some) who encountered a former buddha, the Buddha DipaQlkara. This meeting affected Sumedha in such a way that he too aspired to becoming a buddha. What impressed Sumedha was DipaQlkara’s very presence and a sense of his infinite wisdom and compassion, such that he resolved that he would do whatever was necessary to cultivate and perfect these qualities in himself. Sumedha thus set out on the path of the cultivation of the ten ‘perfections’: generosity, morality, desirelessness, vigour, wisdom, patience, truthfulness, resolve, loving kindness, and equanimity. In undertaking the cultivation of these perfections Sumedha became a bodhisattva, a being intent on and destined for buddhahood, and it is the life in which he becomes the Buddha Gautama some time in the fifth century BCE that represents the fruition of that distant aspiration. Many jiitakas-‘[tales] of the [previous] births [of the Bodhisattva]’-recount how the Bodhisattva gradually developed the ‘perfections’. Such stories, like the story of the Buddha’s life, are deeply embedded in Buddhist culture and serve to emphasize how, for the Buddhist, the being who dwells in Tu~ita as one intent on buddhahood is a being of the profoundest spiritual qualities. The appearance of such a being in the world may not be unique, but is nevertheless a rare and special circumstance, for a buddha only appears in the world when the teachings of a previous buddha have been lost and when beings will be receptive to his message. So it is said that surveying the world from Tu~ita the ·Bodhisattva saw that the time had come for him to take a human birth and at last become a buddha; he saw that the ‘Middle Coun- The Buddha 19 try’ of the great continent of Jambudvipa (India) was the place in which to take birth, for its inhabitants would be receptive to his message. The Bodhisattva was conceived on the full moon night of A~a
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