Sacred Texts 3 Buddhism L13-19 text

 

 

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INTRODUCTION

Professor Biography ............................................................................i

Course Scope .....................................................................................1

LECTURE GUIDES

LECTURE 1

Reading Other People’s Scriptures ....................................................4

LECTURE 2

Hinduism and the Vedas...................................................................11

LECTURE 3

What Is Heard—Upanishads ............................................................19

LECTURE 4

What Is Remembered—Epics ..........................................................26

LECTURE 5

Laws of Manu and Bhagavad Gita ...................................................33

LECTURE 6

Related Traditions—Sikh Scriptures .................................................40

LECTURE 7

Judaism—People of the Book ..........................................................47

LECTURE 8

Five Books of Torah ..........................................................................54

LECTURE 9

Prophets and Writings ......................................................................61

LECTURE 10

Apocrypha and Dead Sea Scrolls.....................................................68

ii

LECTURE 11

Oral Torah—Mishnah and Talmud ....................................................75

LECTURE 12

Related Traditions—Zoroastrian Scriptures 82

LECTURE 13

The Three Baskets of Buddhism 89

LECTURE 14

Vinaya and Jataka 96

LECTURE 15

Theravada Sutras 103

LECTURE 16

Mahayana Sutras ...........................................................................111

LECTURE 17

Pure Land Buddhism and Zen ........................................................118

LECTURE 18

Tibetan Vajrayana ...........................................................................126

LECTURE 19

Related Traditions—Jain Scriptures ...............................................134

LECTURE 20

Five Confucian Classics .................................................................141

LECTURE 21

Four Books of Neo-Confucianism...................................................149

LECTURE 22

Daoism and the Daodejing .............................................................156

LECTURE 23

The Three Caverns of Daoist Scriptures ........................................163

 

LECTURE 24

Related Traditions—Shinto and Tenrikyo .......................................170

LECTURE 25

Christian Testaments Old and New ................................................177

LECTURE 26

Gospels and Acts............................................................................184

LECTURE 27

Letters and Apocalypse ..................................................................191

LECTURE 28

Apocryphal Gospels .......................................................................198

LECTURE 29

Related Traditions—Mormon Scriptures.........................................206

LECTURE 30

Islam and Scriptural Recitation .......................................................213

LECTURE 31

Holy Qur’an ....................................................................................220

LECTURE 32

Hadith and Sufism ..........................................................................228

LECTURE 33

Related Traditions—Baha’i Scriptures ............................................235

LECTURE 34

Abandoned Scriptures—Egyptian and Mayan................................243

LECTURE 35

Secular Scripture—U.S. Constitution .............................................250

LECTURE 36

Heavenly Books, Earthly Connections ...........................................257

iv

SUPPLEmENTaL maTERIaL

Recommended Texts and Translations ..........................................264

Bibliography ....................................................................................268

 

The Three Baskets of Buddhism

Lecture 13

 

T

here are about 400 million Buddhists in the world, mostly in Southeast Asia and East Asia but also in Europe and North America. 

The Buddhist canon of scripture is huge, running to more than 100,000 pages. Buddhists call their canon the Tripitaka, which means “Three Baskets.” These are the Vinaya (rules for monks and nuns), the Sutras (discourses of the Buddha), and the Abhidharma (“higher teachings,” that is, works of systematic philosophy). Buddhism also has several well-defined sets of texts: the Pali canon, Chinese canon, and Tibetan canon. In this lecture, we’ll learn the basic divisions and origins of the Buddhist canon, then take a closer look at specific texts in the four lectures that follow.

Oral Origins of the Buddhist Canon

• Siddhartha Gautama, the northern Indian prince who became the Buddha, lived in the 5th century B.C.E. After his enlightenment under a bodhi tree, he wandered about for 45 years, preaching the Four Noble Truths and related doctrines about the nature of reality, causation and interconnectedness, and the workings of the human mind.

• The Buddha never wrote anything down, but he gathered around him disciples, who gave up ordinary life to become monks and nuns; they listened intently and memorized the sermons they heard him teach.

• When the Buddha died, around 480 B.C.E., he didn’t appoint a successor; instead, he indicated that the movement should follow the dharma and the Vinaya. Thus, the word of the Buddha became paramount. But there were difficulties almost immediately. For example, shortly before his death, the Buddha had told Ananda, one of his chief disciples, that the minor rules for monks could be eliminated, but because he didn’t specify which rules were the minor ones, the disciples hesitated to change anything.

• At the first three-month retreat season after the Buddha’s death, his followers held their initial council. Some 500 enlightened monks gathered together for a communal recitation of the Buddha’s words. The Vinaya were first recited by Upali, a former barber. Then, Ananda recited the Sutras—tens of thousands of words—without missing a syllable. Even now, all the Buddhist sutras begin “Thus have I heard,” connecting each one with Ananda’s firsthand account. 

The Pali Canon

• The oral transmission of the Buddha’s teachings continued for several centuries. During that time, there arose 18 different schools of Buddhism, each with a somewhat different set of memorized, authoritative texts. 

o Eventually, all the early schools disappeared, with the exception of the Theravada school (“Teachings of the Elders”).

o Perhaps one of the reasons for the survival of this particular form of early Buddhism was the fact that these believers managed to preserve their scriptures in written form, although not in India but on the island of Sri Lanka.

• The Buddhist scriptures were first brought to Sri Lanka in the 3rd century B.C.E. by monks who had memorized them. Two centuries later, in 29 B.C.E., a king in Sri Lanka, fearing that too many monks would die in political turmoil and famine, called for a council of Theravada monks. Five hundred scribes wrote down the scriptures they recited in Pali, an old Indian language that was closely related to the dialect in which the Buddha had originally taught.

• The Pali canon is the oldest surviving set of Buddhist scriptures. It included six volumes of the Vinaya, with rules for monks and nuns and commentaries on the rules. The second basket consisted of the Sutras in 36 volumes. These are arranged in five collections (nikayas), mostly by length. The last section, the Little Texts, contains some of the most popular Buddhist texts, including the Dhammapada and the Jataka, stories of the Buddha’s previous lives.

• The Pali canon was rounded out by six volumes of the Abhidharma, in seven texts. These “higher teachings” include analysis and commentary on various lists in the Vinaya and Sutras, with no stories, illustrations, or anecdotes. This basket systematizes Buddhist teachings about psychology and philosophy, constituent elements of reality or the mind, and causation. For the most part, the Abhidharma was developed in the centuries after the Buddha’s death. 

• The Pali canon, with its numerous lists and repetitions, appears to have been shaped for memorization. The sounds of the Pali texts were eventually transcribed into various Southeast Asian regional scripts, such as Sinhalese, Burmese, Thai, and Khmer. There is even a transliteration of the Pali canon into Roman letters, accompanied by an English translation—a project that was begun in 1881 and is still ongoing. 

Chinese and Tibetan Canons

• In the 1st century B.C.E., new Buddhist sutras began to circulate. These texts were written in Sanskrit, the classical language of India, and offered a somewhat different view of Buddhism. 

o The Buddha was now considered a god to be worshipped rather than a man who had found enlightenment and then passed from this existence into nirvana; there was more emphasis on bodhisattvas; and salvation was thought to be available to anyone, not just monks and nuns. This was Mahayana Buddhism, or the “Greater Vehicle.” 

o These sutras were longer and more philosophically sophisticated, with even more miraculous elements than those of the Theravada school. They also originated as written literature rather than oral teachings.

• In the 1st and 2nd centuries C.E., Buddhist missionaries began to travel from India to China, and they took with them some of these new scriptures, along with older scriptures from the Theravada and other early schools. Efforts to translate these scriptures into Chinese started in about the 2nd century and continued for 800 years. The Chinese canon eventually stabilized in about the 10th century, when printed copies began to become available. 

• In the standard, punctuated edition of the Chinese canon, published in Japan in the 1920s, there are 55 volumes of the Tripitaka, plus another 45 supplementary volumes. 

o The Chinese canon includes Chinese translations of five versions of the Vinaya from schools other than the Theravada, a version of the Abhidharma, many Mahayana sutras, Tantras (esoteric texts), commentaries, treatises, encyclopedias, dictionaries, histories, and even some non-Buddhist texts from Hinduism and Nestorian Christianity. 

o We often have Chinese translations of Indian Buddhist scriptures for which the originals have completely disappeared.

• From the 7th to the 13th centuries, there were translations of Buddhist scripture into Tibetan, and eventually, a separate Tibetan canon was established in the 14th century, with two major divisions: the Kangyur, which consists of texts attributed to the Buddha and translated from Sanskrit originals (98 volumes), and the Tengyur, 224 volumes of commentaries and treatises. Most of these were also translated from Sanskrit.

Effects of an Extensive Canon

• Obviously, the sacred texts of Buddhism play a different role in that religion than the Bible does in Judaism or Christianity. Ordinary believers are not expected to be familiar with the entire canon, and even monks and nuns—some of whom devote their lives to scriptural scholarship—can master only a small portion of the whole. 

• For many centuries, Buddhists had an open canon, to which new books and perspectives could be added. This sense of continuing revelation and deepening understanding was exhilarating to many, but the profusion of Buddhist scripture could also be confusing. Different schools of Buddhism focused on particular texts, and there was a realization that the canon was full of inconsistencies. 

• Buddhism, like most other religious traditions, also encompasses a number of paradoxes or contradictions. These do not discredit or delegitimize the faith; rather, they function as creative tensions that impel believers toward greater searching and dedication. 

The Significance of Sacred Texts

• Despite the size of the Buddhist canon, any discussion of it is pervaded by a sense of impermanence and loss. The scriptures were originally written on dried palm leafs that were quite fragile, particularly in the tropical climates of South and Southeast Asia. The Theravada Pali canon survived in such manuscripts, but the scriptures of other early schools have not. 

o For example, in 1994, the British Library acquired 80 Buddhist manuscript fragments, dating to the 1st century C.E. These are the oldest surviving Buddhists writings in the world. 

o They are not Theravada texts but seem to be a tiny fraction of the canon of the Dharmaguptaka school. Such discoveries are a poignant reminder of how much has been lost.

• Some Buddhists, concerned about the perishability of palm leaf manuscripts and paper, turned to more durable substances. In caves in Fangshan County, 45 miles southwest of Beijing, there are more than 14,000 stone slabs inscribed with texts from the 

 

Chinese Buddhist canon. This massive project was begun by monks and laypersons in the 7th century and eventually gained governmental support in the 11th and 12th centuries. 

• Similarly, the world’s largest book is written, not on paper, but on 730 marble tablets, each tablet 

 

The Kuthodaw Pagoda in mandalay, Burma houses the world’s largest book, text from the Pali canon inscribed on marble tablets.

 

housed in a pagoda in a massive array at the Kuthodaw Pagoda in Mandalay, Burma. These tablets represent a copy of the Pali canon commissioned by the king of Burma in 1860.

• Buddhists in East Asia, seeking to preserve and propagate their scriptures, were the first to adopt the new technology of printing. In 764, the Japanese Empress Kōken commissioned the printing of 1 million copies of a brief Buddhist chant, each housed in a portable wooden pagoda, some of which have survived to this day. 

• The world’s earliest printed book, produced in 868, is a copy of the Diamond Sutra found at Dunhuang, a way station on the ancient Silk Road in northwest China. It had been walled up in a secret vault in a cave temple, along with thousands of other manuscripts, around the year 1000 and was rediscovered in 1900. The 16-footlong scroll predated Gutenberg’s Bible by almost 600 years and is today housed in the British Library.

• These printing projects, like the many Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Tibetan editions of the Buddhist canon that followed, were motivated by a desire to preserve the scriptures, to make them more widely available, to show compassion to others, and to gain merit for the next life. Yet in good Buddhist fashion, this merit was not always for oneself. The Diamond Sutra from Dunhuang ends with a colophon noting that it was made in memory of a believer’s parents. Often, the significance of sacred texts lies not just in the contents of the books but also in what they meant to the people who created and used them.

    Suggested Reading

Denny and Taylor, eds., The Holy Book in Comparative Perspective.

Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhism.

Holm, ed., Sacred Writings.

Mitchell, Buddhism.

    Questions to Consider

1. How do the Three Baskets of Buddhist scripture differ from the three Buddhist canons?

2. Why would a religion so focused on the impermanence of all things put so much effort into the preservation of sacred texts? 

Vinaya and Jataka

Lecture 14

Buddha’s life that can be gleaned from various sacred compositions.

The Vinaya

Buddha’s enlightenment under a bodhi tree. 

Varanasi); thus, he traveled 150 miles to seek them out. 

o He announced to these men that he had discovered the middle way between a life of self-indulgence and self-mortification. Then, in this first sermon, he taught the Four Noble Truths.

o The first truth is that the “fivefold clinging” to existence is suffering. The second truth is that the cause of suffering is desire. The third is that the cessation of suffering comes from stopping desire. And the fourth truth is that the path to the cessation of suffering is the Eightfold Path—right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. 

o The Buddha goes on to explain that “fivefold clinging” refers to the Buddhist idea that there is no self or atman; instead, all sentient beings are composed of five skandhas, or aggregates— body, sensations, perceptions, psychic dispositions, and consciousness—which are temporarily connected and constantly changing. There is no eternal, unchanging soul.

• This is a wonderfully concise restatement of the basic message of Buddhism, but the point of this particular text is not just doctrine; it’s about the origins of the community of monks, which is as essential to Buddhism as any specific beliefs. The Mahavagga goes on to report that each of the five ascetics became enlightened upon hearing the words of the Buddha and was immediately ordained by him. From then on, monks ordained by the Buddha ordained other monks, who in turn, ordained others in an unbroken succession that has continued for more than 2,500 years.

• All Buddhists strive to live by the Five Precepts: no killing, no stealing, no sexual misconduct, no lying, and no intoxicants. Buddhist monks and nuns, beginning as novices, adopt five additional restrictions (in addition to celibacy): no eating after noon; no singing, dancing, or attending shows; no perfumes, cosmetics, or decorative accessories; no sleeping in luxurious beds; and no accepting money. Eventually, these rules became elaborated into a lengthy code called the Pratimoksha.

The Pratimoksha

• Buddhist monks and nuns give up home, family, and possessions and wander about or reside in a monastery, begging for the basic necessities of life while devoting themselves to spiritual matters. They are supported by donations from ordinary believers, and in return, they preach the dharma, that is, the principles of Buddhism. Without the oversight and responsibilities that come with family life, they are a vulnerable group, subject to temptations and difficulties.

• The Buddha, recognizing their special needs, mandated that twice a month, monks and nuns would gather (separately) to recite the Pratimoksha, which is a list of rules regulating their behavior. The idea is that this is a time to confess any sins or mistakes; silence is taken as a sign of continuing purity.

• There are eight sections to the Pratimoksha, and at the end of each, the monks recite the words of the Buddha: “In respect to [these rules] I ask the venerable ones, ‘Are you pure in this matter?’ A second time I ask the venerable ones, ‘Are you pure in this matter?’ A third time I ask the venerable ones, ‘Are you pure in this matter?’ The venerable ones are pure herein. Therefore do they keep silence.”

• The eight categories of offenses are arranged according to severity, from those that require expulsion (sexual intercourse, theft, killing of humans, and false claims of supernatural powers), through probation, forfeiture, and so on. 

• As with many sacred texts, it’s not just the words that are important but also the ceremony. 

o For monks, the ceremony serves as a reaffirmation of their values and commitment, a check on one another, and an aid to mindfulness; it also increases awareness of the Three Poisons: greed, hatred, and delusion. Finally, the ceremony and the rules preserve the harmony of the sangha and enable spiritual progress.

o For laypersons, the ceremony assures them that the monks are worthy of donations, that they are self-disciplined and trustworthy in every way, and that they are following tradition. The Pratimoksha requires regular contact between the sangha and laity, but these interactions are carefully regulated. 

The sangha is dependent on the lay community and vice versa.

sangha—a self-

perpetuating social organization with no leader—and the Unlike Christianity, where celibate priests and nuns are not part of every branch of the faith, in Buddhism, the sangha—the community of monks and nuns—is at the core.

o For outsiders, it’s remarkable to note the success of the practicality of the 

Pratimoksha. These rules don’t seem to include any arbitrary taboos, as can be found in other religious traditions, and there’s no notion that the regulations were revealed from on high. Rather, they were developed over the course of the Buddha’s lifetime in response to various situations and questions.

Buddhist Nuns

• Three versions of the Vinaya are in use today, one for each of the major Buddhist traditions, and the Pratimoksha in each is slightly different, although in all three versions, there are more rules for nuns. o The Buddha was originally reluctant to allow women to leave their homes and families and join the sangha, but he was persuaded to do so on the condition that nuns accept eight rules that subordinated them to monks. 

o His foster mother, Maha Pajapati, accepted these constraints and was ordained, along with 500 other devout women.

• There was never any doubt that women could progress spiritually and even achieve full enlightenment, but the Buddha seems to have worried about the vulnerability and respectability of females living independently at a time when it was thought that women needed male protection and guidance. He was also concerned that the common people might be suspicious of a celibate monastic community that included both men and women. Nevertheless, he gradually granted nuns the right to recite the Pratimoksha apart from monks and confess their wrongdoings to other nuns rather than to monks.

• The order of nuns continues to thrive in the Mahayana countries of East Asia, but the order in Theravada Buddhism mostly died out between the 11th and 13th centuries. Still, there are devout, celibate women in Theravada Buddhism who leave their families, shave their heads, and live by the Ten Precepts but aren’t full nuns. 

Jataka Stories

• The Jataka stories appear in the Little Texts subsection of the Sutra basket. According to tradition, as the Buddha sat under the bodhi tree seeking enlightenment, he went through a series of everdeepening meditative states, one of which allowed him to view his past lives. In his post-enlightenment preaching, the Buddha sometimes drew on these recovered memories to make moral points, talking about something that happened when he was a king, a commoner, or even an animal.

• There are 547 Jataka stories in the Theravada canon. The story of the goose with the golden feathers and the greedy wife, told within the frame of a problem caused by a greedy nun, is similar to Aesop’s tale of the goose that laid golden eggs. In fact, some scholars have speculated that this story came to Greece from India, along with several other Jataka tales. 

• Each of these stories from the Buddha’s previous lives teaches a simple lesson in Buddhist morality. The tales include the story of a woodpecker who risked his life to help a lion; an elephant 

who threw himself off a cliff to feed a group of people who were starving; and a monkey king who stretched out his body like a bridge so that his fellow monkeys, under attack from humans, could scramble across him to safety.

• One of the most inspiring, or perhaps most troubling, of the Jataka stories is the tale of the Buddha’s last incarnation before he became Siddhartha Gautama. 

o At that time, the Buddha was born as a prince named Vessantara, who was extraordinarily, even dangerously generous. He gave away a magic rain-making elephant to a neighboring kingdom that was suffering from drought, and his people were so unhappy with him that he was forced to take his family into exile. Before he left, he gave away most of the royal treasury to the poor. On the road, he gave away the four horses that pulled his carriage; then he gave away the carriage. 

o A poor, greedy Brahman asked Vessantara for his two children to be his servants, and though he knew the Brahman would not treat them well, Vessantara nevertheless ignored his own feelings and handed them over. 

o One of the gods, worried that Vessantara would give away his wife next, disguised himself as a beggar and asked for her. Of course, Vessantara agreed, though the god immediately revealed his true nature, returned the wife, and tricked the cruel Brahman into leading the children back to their royal grandparents in the capital. 

o The Brahman was rewarded richly for returning the children, but he died of overeating within a few days. At last, Vessantara was welcomed home to the capital, reunited with his family, and crowned king.

    Suggested Reading

Cowell, ed., The Jataka,

Gethin, The Foundations of Buddhism.

Khoroche, trans., Once the Buddha Was a Monkey.

Rhys Davids and Oldenberg, trans., Vinaya Texts.

    Questions to Consider

1. How has the Vinaya been crucial in making the Buddhist sangha (monks and nuns) the longest continuously existing social organization in the world?

2. Why have stories of the Buddha’s previous lives, including times when he took the form of animals, become so important in teaching the principles of Buddhism? 

Theravada Sutras

Lecture 15

 

I

n this lecture, we’ll discuss some of the most famous and significant sacred texts in the Theravada tradition of Buddhism. Theravada was one of the 18 early schools of Buddhism and the only one to survive to the present day, mostly in Southeast Asia. There are two other major divisions within Buddhism: the Mahayana and Vajrayana. The main differences among the three traditions are in some ways analogous to Catholicism, Protestantism, and Eastern Orthodoxy in Christianity, except the different types of Buddhists have traditionally gotten along much better than Catholics and Protestants. In this lecture and the next two, we’ll explore the sacred texts of each of these schools.

Buddhist Traditions

• Theravada (“Teachings of the Elders”) is the oldest surviving form of Buddhism, and its followers number about 125 million, mostly in Southeast Asia. They believe that the Buddha was a man who gained enlightenment, then passed into nirvana; thus, there is nothing left of him to worship. 

o Believers must follow the path that the Buddha took, but in practical terms, only monks and nuns are able put in the time necessary for study and meditation or to abandon all earthly attachments in a way that will achieve enlightenment. 

o The characteristic scriptures of Theravada Buddhism are in the Pali language.

• The term Mahayana means the “Greater Vehicle,” and this form of Buddhism teaches that all believers, not just monks and nuns, are capable of enlightenment. This form of Buddhism dominates East Asia (China, Korea, Taiwan, and Japan) and claims more than 185 million believers. 

o Mahayana Buddhists believe that the Buddha was a god rather than just a spiritually advanced man, and they put a great deal of emphasis on bodhisattvas—beings who achieve enlightenment but choose to remain in the world system rather than entering nirvana. The bodhisattvas vow that they will enter nirvana only after all other sentient beings have been enlightened. These are Buddhist divinities to whom one can pray. 

o Mahayana Buddhism, which began in about the 1st century C.E., includes many schools (similar to Protestant denominations), such as the emptiness school of Madhyamika, the consciousness-only school of Yogacara, and several distinctive schools of Japanese Buddhism, including Zen. The Mahayana scriptures were originally composed in Sanskrit, though they were eventually translated into Chinese and Tibetan.

• Vajrayana (“Thunderbolt”) Buddhism is by far the smallest of the three Buddhist traditions, with about 20 million adherents. Nevertheless, its prominence in Tibetan culture, which includes a reverence for the Dalai Lama, has brought it a great deal of attention in the West. This form of Buddhism builds on various Mahayana schools but adds many Tantric texts that introduce various ritual shortcuts for attaining Buddhahood, including mantras, mudras, mandalas, and visualizations.

• There are different versions of the Vinaya for Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana Buddhists, but the differences are minor. The most striking contrasts are to be found in the largest section of the Three Baskets—the Sutras. 

Samyutta Nikaya: “Connected Discourses”

• In the Pali canon of the Theravadas, there are five subsections in the Sutra basket: 34 Long Discourses, 150 Middle-Length Discourses, several thousand Connected Discourses and Enumerated Discourses, and 15 Little Texts, which offer a plethora of miscellaneous writings. Most of these sacred texts were intended for monks and nuns.

o In one of the Connected Discourses, for example, the Buddha explains to an ascetic, Kassapa, that suffering is not created by oneself or by others, and it does not simply arise without being created. Kassapa’s mistake, according to the Buddha, is to assume that there is a self that is responsible for suffering.

o The Buddha then offers an alternative analysis of causation, in which suffering is the result of the cycle of conditioned arising (sometimes known as dependent origination). The 12 conditions arise from ignorance—the origin of suffering. The Buddha breaks the weak link in the chain—ignorance—by achieving enlightenment.

• There are some profound ideas in this discourse about causation and the elusiveness of individual identity, but the sutra perhaps means more to a devoted Buddhist than to an outsider. However, there are several other texts that have been powerful in the lives of laity and may even mean something to non-Buddhist seekers of wisdom. 

The Therigatha

• The Therigatha (“Verses of the Elder Nuns”) consists of 73 poems in which nuns recount how they became enlightened. This is the world’s earliest known collection of women’s literature, with poems supposedly written in the 5th century B.C.E.

• A typical example was composed by Vaddhesi, a woman who was a nurse to Maha Pajapati, the Buddha’s foster mother. She speaks of trying and failing—day after day, for 25 years—to calm her mind and overcome desire.

• A more famous nun is Kisa Gotami, whose story has been retold in many versions over the centuries. After the death of her son, halfmad with grief, she asks the Buddha for medicine to make the boy well. He teaches her, however, that her grief is not unique—death is an inescapable part of life. She finally buries her son and asks the Buddha to be ordained a nun. Kisa Gotami became well respected 

for her spiritual insight and poetry, and in time, she escaped the sorrows of this world and passed into nirvana.

The Dhammapada

• The Dhammapada (“Verse of the Buddha’s Teachings”) is probably the most famous of all Theravada scriptures, and it also comes from the Little Text section of the Sutra basket. Even though the Pali canon tends to be focused on monks, the Dhammapada has ethical advice and inspiration for all Buddhists. 

• The Dhammapada consists of 423 verses, divided into 26 sections, and includes no extended arguments or complicated doctrinal formulations. It has been loved and memorized by both Theravada and Mahayana Buddhists for more than 2,000 years. The prominence of the Dhammapada in Asia made it one of the first Buddhist texts to be translated into English. 

• We can get a sense of the book’s contents by simply looking over the 26 section headings, which include such titles as “Thought,” “The Fool,” “The Wise Man,” “Old Age,” “Self,” “The World,” “Happiness,” “Pleasure,” “Anger,” and “The Way.” In general, its themes concern moral action, the fleeting nature of life, selfmastery, and warnings about desire. Some of its teachings refer to specifically Buddhist doctrines, such as the Four Noble Truths and the Three Refuges, but much of it might be applicable to almost anyone’s life.

• The Dhammapada tends to sound like a book of proverbs. Buddhists have long considered each one a saying of the Buddha himself, and later commentators provided collections of anecdotes that gave the story behind each saying. For example, the tale of Kisa Gotami was thought to be the basis for verse 287: “As a great flood carries off a sleeping village, death carries off the person whose mind is distracted, intoxicated by possessions and children” (Wallis).

• Verse 276 on individual effort reads: “It is you who must make the effort. The masters [i.e., the Buddhas] only point the way. But 

if you meditate and follow the law, you will free yourself from desire” (Byrom).

o One of the things that is most striking about Theravada Buddhism is that it is not a savior religion. The Buddha can’t rescue anyone from the consequences of karma or give someone enlightenment. People must do these things for themselves. The Buddha can only show the way. 

o There’s a tough-minded realism here that may be attractive to some people in our own scientific, skeptical age. Of course, Buddhism is an ancient religion, and in the earliest texts, there is talk of miracles, gods, demons, and superhuman powers, but there is also a streak of practical empiricism that is worth considering.

Discourse to the Kalamas

• The Discourse to the Kalamas begins with Ananda reciting, “Thus have I heard”; he then tells the story of a time when the Buddha, traveling with a large number of monks, arrived at the town of Kesaputta. The inhabitants there, members of the Kalama clan, came out to greet him because they had heard reports of the Buddha’s wisdom and spiritual attainments. 

• But the Kalamas had a question. Many holy men, ascetics, and sages had come through their town, and each of them had praised his own doctrines while condemning the teachings of others. How, the Kalamas asked, can they tell the difference between truth and falsehood?

• The Buddha tells the Kalamas that it is appropriate to have doubts or to be perplexed. That in itself is worth noting, became some religions put a premium on faith and discourage questioning. The Buddha then continues with these famous words:

Do not accept a thing by recollection [repeated hearing], by tradition, by mere report, because it is based on the authority of scriptures, by mere logic or inference, by reflection on conditions, 

Selections from the Dhammapada

The dangers of giving in to desire: 

He who lives looking for pleasures only, his senses uncontrolled, immoderate in his food, idle, and weak, Mara (the tempter) will certainly overthrow him, as the wind throws down a weak tree. (7, Muller)

Disciplining one’s mind: 

The wise man guards his mind which is unruly and ever in search of pleasure. The mind well-guarded brings great happiness. (36, Austin, in Humphries)

Impermanence:

A fool is troubled, thinking, “I have sons; I have wealth”; but even himself doesn’t belong to himself—let alone sons, let alone wealth. (62, Roebuck)

Karma: 

Whosoever offends a harmless, pure and innocent person, the evil falls back upon that fool, like light dust thrown up against the wind. 

(125, Babbitt)

How we should treat others:

Conquer anger through gentleness, unkindness through kindness, greed through generosity, and falsehood by truth. (223, Easwaran)

The superiority of Buddhism:

The best of paths is the path of eight. The best of truths, the four sayings. The best of states, freedom from passions [nirvana]. The best of men, the one who sees. (273, Mascaro)

Individual effort: 

It is you who must make the effort. The masters [i.e., the Buddhas] only point the way. But if you meditate and follow the law, you will free yourself from desire. (276, Byrom)

 

because of reflection on or fondness for a certain theory, because it merely seems suitable, nor thinking: “The religious wanderer is respected by us.” (Holder) 

• The Buddha then tells the Kalamas how they can know not what to accept but what to reject: “But when you know for yourselves: ‘These things are unwholesome, blameworthy, reproached by the wise, when undertaken and performed lead to harm and suffering’—these you should reject” (Holder). In other words, he tells them that they should base their beliefs on personal experience and direct observation.

• The Buddha follows up by introducing the Kalamas to the doctrine of the Three Poisons—that suffering and sorrow in this world have three basic roots: greed, hatred, and ignorance. Then he suggests that they can know what to accept by looking for the opposites: things that are wholesome, unblameworthy, commended by the wise, and when put into practice, lead to benefit and happiness. These sorts of things will lead to an untroubled mind, pure and free from hatred. 

• In other words, the Buddha says that we don’t have to believe his teachings because they are traditional, scriptural, popular, or reasonable or because the Buddha himself is well known. Instead, we should try out the practices he recommends—the Five Precepts, kindness, meditation, self-mastery, detachment—and see if they bring good results. In fact, he goes on to say that whether there is an afterlife or not, this is still a good way to live.

• It seems as if Buddhism is a religion that would be well-suited for our modern Western ideas of individual autonomy—the freedom to choose and to act—but then the Buddha undercuts it all with a paradox. He suggests that there is no self that chooses or acts. Later Buddhists, in the Mahayana tradition, will heighten this contradiction by arguing that there is also no nirvana, no samsara, no salvation, and even no Buddha.

    Suggested Reading

Burtt, ed., The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha.

Gethin, Sayings of the Buddha.

Holder, trans., Early Buddhist Discourses.

Murcott, trans., The First Buddhist Women.

Rhys Davids, trans., Psalms of the Sisters.

Roebuck, trans., The Dhammapada.

    Questions to Consider

1. How did the world’s earliest anthology of women’s literature become part of the Buddhist canon?

2. What has made the Dhammapada the most popular text in Theravada Buddhism, that is, the oldest surviving branch of the religion?

mahayana Sutras

Lecture 16

 

T

he Mahayana division of Buddhism, predominant in East Asia, is the largest today. Mahayana Buddhists worship the Buddha as a god, look to bodhisattvas for assistance, and think that enlightenment can be attained by ordinary believers—not just monks and nuns—in this lifetime. This form of Buddhism had its origins between 100 B.C.E. and 100 C.E., when new sacred texts began to appear anonymously, texts that offered a slightly different take on the teachings of the Buddha. The origins of Mahayana Buddhism may have had something to do with the decision to commit the Theravada scriptures to writing in the 1st century B.C.E., giving the texts more of an independent life and making them more accessible to laypersons.

Perfection of Wisdom Sutras

• The earliest Mahayana sutras were concerned with the perfection of wisdom. These claimed to offer deeper insights into the meaning of the Buddha’s teachings, or dharma. The first of these texts seems to have been the Sutra of Perfect Wisdom in 8,000 Lines. There were later versions in 18,000 lines, 25,000 lines, and even 100,000 lines.

• These sutras all purport to convey the words of the Buddha, and they explain the ways in which being a bodhisattva is superior to being a disciple. Ordinary disciples are assumed to simply want to gain enlightenment and escape the cycle of suffering for themselves, while bodhisattvas become enlightened and then renounce nirvana until they have assisted every other sentient being in attaining the same liberation. They undertake this great act of self-sacrifice for the good of others, exhibiting “perfect compassion.”

• Six perfections characterize bodhisattvas: perfect generosity, perfect morality, perfect patience, perfect exertion, perfect meditation, and perfect wisdom. Taking a vow to become a bodhisattva is enough to get one started on the bodhisattva path and to begin working on the 

 

perfections. The idea is to aim for enlightenment but not for selfish reasons; instead, bodhisattvas seek to end the suffering of all beings throughout the universe.

• Perfect wisdom, which is attained by meditation rather than by logical analysis, means seeing thing as they actually are. In Mahayana Buddhism, this means recognizing that reality is beyond language and beyond such human concepts as being and nonbeing. 

o Indeed, nothing has a “self-existence,” or a permanent identity or form. Instead, meditation leads one to an intuitive understanding that all things are intrinsically empty—empty of a permanent essence or self-existence. There’s nothing really there, which means that there is nothing to hold on to or desire. 

o Taken to its logical limit, perfect wisdom means that there is ultimately no such thing as the Buddha, the Eightfold Path, bodhisattvas, or even enlightenment. All such phenomena are empty. 

• Sometimes, the wisdom sutras can be rather obtuse, and they’re often quite long. It seems paradoxical to use ever more words to try to explain something that is ultimately beyond words, but some interesting insights emerge from the sutras. If, in the end, everything is emptiness, then there is really no difference between things for which we make human distinctions. This is the doctrine of nonduality, which is illustrated in a story from the famous Vimalakirti Sutra (c. 100 C.E.). 

o Vimalakirti was a layperson who taught the dharma so authoritatively that the Buddha sent some of his disciples to talk with him. Through a series of dialogues, we see that Vimalakirti’s understanding surpasses theirs and, indeed, is equaled only by that of the Buddha himself. These  debates were witnessed by disciples, bodhisattvas, gods, and goddesses.

o At one point, a goddess showers heavenly flowers on all the spectators. Those that hit the bodhisattvas bounce off and fall to the floor, but they stick to the bodies of the Theravada monks. The goddess explains that the disciples still make distinctions between worldly and unworldly things, but because the bodhisattvas have gone beyond those conceptual categories, they are indifferent to the flowers and, thus, nothing sticks to them. Similarly, there is ultimately no difference between life and death, enlightened and unenlightened beings, even samsara (reincarnation) and nirvana (extinction).

o Later on in the sutra, Vimalakirti challenges 32 bodhisattvas to explain nonduality, and they all take a turn, each trying to best the one before. Finally, Vimalakirti offers his contribution, which is to say nothing, and Manjusri, a bodhisattva famous for his transcendent wisdom, says, “Excellent! This is indeed the entrance into the nonduality of the bodhisattvas. Here there is no use for syllables, sounds, and ideas” (Thurman, 77).

Reactions: Lotus Sutra

• There were several reactions to the new Mahayana Buddhist texts. The first was puzzlement: Where did these new scriptures come from? And how can they possibly be the words of the Buddha, given that they have appeared 500 years after his death? 

o Mahayana monks offered various explanations. These were the higher teachings of the Buddha, they said, which he entrusted only to his most advanced disciples, and they had been hidden away until the present age. 

o Another explanation was that the new scriptures had been heard and preserved by celestial bodhisattvas (rather than Ananda), who were now revealing them. 

• Not everyone found these explanations convincing, but over time, the Mahayana sutras became more accepted, along with the distinctive doctrines of infinite compassion, bodhisattvas, multiple buddhas in multiple worlds, the buddha nature that is within each 

 

Lotus Sutra provided an answer in the famous parable of the burning house. 

o Once there was a wealthy man who had many young sons, and they all lived in a large house with only one exit. One day, the house caught fire. The man managed to get his sons out by promising that he had presents for them outside the gate. 

o A disciple of the Buddha explained that the man had not exactly lied to his sons because he gave each of them something much better than they could have imagined. This was not a case of telling falsehoods as much as using “expedient devices.” Out of compassion, the man tailored his message to each son so that he could save them all.

o The Buddha himself goes on to explain that this life is like a burning house, and he came into the world to save people from “the fires of birth, old age, sickness and death, care, suffering, stupidity, misunderstanding, and the three poisons.” But most people are so caught up in their day-to-day concerns and activities that they have no idea what danger they’re in. 

o Thus, he offers them three vehicles: that of the arhat, or disciple (basically, Theravada Buddhism); that of the solitary Buddha; and that of the bodhisattva (Mahayana). Each message appeals to different types of people, but in the end, they all receive the same wondrous gift of enlightenment. 

o The moral of the tale is that the Buddha may have told some disciples one thing and other disciples another—his words may seem contradictory—but his teachings are all nevertheless part of one great truth, the truth of Mahayana Buddhism, the One Vehicle.

More Reactions: Diamond and Heart Sutras

• Even if the theological contradictions could be resolved, there remained the practical problem of a canon that includes hundreds of books, some of them quite long. Even monks and nuns couldn’t master them all, and for Mahayana Buddhism, with its new emphasis on the spiritual progress of laypersons, the problem was even more acute. 

• One response was to pick out a few sutras that were considered particularly insightful or advanced and focus on them as a sort of canon within the canon. Different schools of Buddhism championed different texts, but in East Asia, the Lotus Sutra became the most popular and widely read of the sacred texts of Buddhism.

o The Lotus Sutra was originally compiled in the 1st century C.E. It was first translated from Sanskrit into Chinese in the 3rd century, then again much more accurately in the early 5th century, after which it became very popular, especially in Japan. 

o In China, it was adopted as the key scripture of the Tiantai school of Buddhism, which then spread to Japan as the Tendai school. In Japan, it was adopted by the imperial family and cultural elites, and its message was spread though art, music, sermons, ritual performances, protective charms, and Noh drama. 

o Eventually a 13th-century Japanese monk named Nichiren made the Lotus Sutra the center of his new form of Buddhism and taught his followers to look to it for salvation. The practices of Nichiren are still followed today in a Japanese lay Buddhist movement called Soka-gakkai.

• Another tactic, rather than focusing on a single text, was to try to distill the expanding versions of the perfection of wisdom sutras into something much shorter and more portable. Thus, for example, rather than the Perfection of Wisdom in 18,000 Lines, we find the Diamond Sutra, which is about the size of a pamphlet. 

o This sutra consists of a dialogue between the Buddha and a disciple, in which the Buddha explains repeatedly that the ordinary ways of thinking about Buddhism are undercut by the realization that all things are emptiness.

o The Heart Sutra goes even further, reducing the Buddha’s esoteric wisdom to a single page, which is recited daily by monks and lay Buddhists throughout East Asia. 

• Mahayana sutras are often associated with what scholars term “the cult of the book.” These texts were regarded as sacred objects, almost apart from their actual contents. They were seen as physical manifestations of the Buddha, and copying, reciting, reading, hearing, explaining, or even holding them were regarded as actions that brought great merit. The paradox here is worth noting: Mahayana scriptures are objects of veneration and care, but they have no ultimate value—the goal is to move beyond them. 

    Suggested Reading

Conze, trans., The Large Sutra of the Perfect Wisdom.

Lopez, The Story of Buddhism.

Strong, ed. and trans., The Experience of Buddhism.

Teiser and Stone, eds., Readings of the Lotus Sutra.

Thurman, The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti.

Tsai, trans., Lives of the Nuns.

Watson, trans., The Lotus Sutra.

Williams, Mahayana Buddhism.

    Questions to Consider

1. Why did the Buddhist canon of scripture expand dramatically some 400 years after the death of the Buddha?

2. How did Buddhists deal with a collection of sacred texts so large that it was difficult to read, let alone master, in a single lifetime?

 

Pure Land Buddhism and Zen

Lecture 17

I

n 11th-century Japan, Buddhist monks had calculated that the year 1052 marked the beginning of a period when Buddhism would gradually decline. In response, people buried copies of sutras to preserve them for future generations. Among these sutras were the Lotus Sutra and the three Pure Land Sutras: the Larger Pure Land Sutra (or Sutra of Immeasurable Life), the Smaller Pure Land Sutra (or Amida Sutra), and the Sutra of Meditation on Amida Buddha. The message of these texts is that in a degenerate age, it’s impossible to gain enlightenment through one’s own efforts; thus, our only recourse is to rely on the grace of Amida Buddha (known as Amitabha in China), which means “infinite light.”

Pure Land Sutras

• Mahayana Buddhism introduced the idea of multiple buddhas and bodhisattvas in other parts of the universe. 

o Some of these beings had created buddha-fields, or Pure Lands, and people of ordinary moral capacities or even grievous sinners could ask to be reborn in one of these celestial realms. The most famous of these was the Western Paradise of Amida, or the Land of Bliss. 

o This paradise is like heaven but not in the Christian sense because it doesn’t last forever. Rather, it’s a place where individuals can enjoy a pleasant environment in which to learn the dharma and gain enlightenment at their own pace; eventually, they will go directly from the Pure Land into nirvana.

• The Pure Land Sutras offer detailed accounts of the wonders of this region: filled with streams, flowers, fruits, bejeweled trees, parks, pools, and palaces. The air is filled with music and delightful fragrances, and everywhere, one hears the truths about 

the six perfections, nonexistence, no-self, friendliness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and so forth. 

o The Pure Land Sutras are not particularly long texts, but there’s enough detail that one can almost see the Pure Land—which is partly the point: These texts can be used as aids to meditation and visualization. 

o But the most prominent practice associated with Pure Land Buddhism is the nembutsu, that is, the invocation of Amida’s name 10 times to achieve salvation.

• The Larger and Smaller Pure Land Sutras originated in India around 200 C.E., while the Meditation Sutra seems to have been written in Central Asia or China, but all these sutras gained their greatest popularity in medieval Japan during an era of political and spiritual crisis. 

o A 12th-century Buddhist monk named Honen founded the Pure Land School when he encouraged his followers to disregard such traditional Buddhist practices as meditating, performing good works, and chanting scriptures and simply to focus on reciting the nembutsu. 

o A generation later, Honen’s disciple Shinran argued that true faith wouldn’t feel the need for ceaseless repetitions; calling on Amida even once, in full sincerity, would be enough. Shinran gave up monasticism, married, and founded the True Pure Land school, perhaps the most widely practiced form of Buddhism in Japan today. 

Zen Origins and Scriptures

• With so many scriptures in the Mahayana tradition advocating so many seemingly contradictory positions, some Buddhists looked for a more direct path to enlightenment. Zen focused on meditation under the personal guidance of someone who was already enlightened. 

• The word Zen is a Japanese form of the Chinese chan, which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit dhyana, referring to a mind absorbed in meditation. The school had its origins in China, where Mahayana Buddhism was influenced by Daoism, especially its idea of wordless teaching. Legends trace its beginning to the Indian monk Bodhidharma, who came from the west to China in the early 5th century. He became known as the first patriarch.

• A famous definition of Zen is sometimes attributed to Bodhidharma, though it actually dates from several centuries later: “A special transmission outside the scriptures; / Without depending on words and letters; / Pointing directly to the human mind; / Seeing the innate nature, one becomes a Buddha.”

• It is somewhat ironic that a religious tradition that is primarily inward looking and generally disregards scripture developed a body of authoritative sacred texts—scriptures—that eventually became part of the Chinese Buddhist canon. 

o The most famous of these texts is the Platform Sutra of the sixth patriarch, written about 780. This text is quite unusual because, unlike most sutras, it is not presented as the words of the historical Buddha or a bodhisattva. The Platform Sutra is a sermon given by the 7th-century Zen patriarch Huìnéng.

o In this sermon, Huìnéng recounts that he was once an illiterate gatherer of firewood who happened to hear the Diamond Sutra being recited, and his mind was awakened. He traveled to a monastery, where he worked for eight months as help in the kitchen. When the fifth patriarch was about to die, he asked his disciples to write poems that would indicate the level of their spiritual progress. Everyone hesitated until finally, the head monk, Shenxiu, wrote a poem anonymously on a wall in the middle of the night.

o Huìnéng realized that Shenxiu’s poem, which offers a purification model of enlightenment, was insightful but didn’t completely capture the whole truth. Huìnéng composed 

his own poem, suggesting that enlightenment comes from recognizing reality by seeing beyond the ordinary distinctions we make in life.

o When the fifth patriarch saw Huìnéng’s poem, he recognized its profound understanding, and summoning Huìnéng secretly, he explained the Diamond Sutra to him, gave him the robe of transmission and appointed him as his successor (the sixth patriarch), and then sent him away so as not to upset the monks.

• The Platform Sutra was written by later followers of Huìnéng to defend his claims to leadership over those of Shenxiu. It is often regarded as promoting the idea of sudden enlightenment over gradual enlightenment, though some scholars have suggested that the Platform Sutra actually appears to transcend those theological distinctions and find room for both constant practice and liberating insight.

Zen Buddhism in Japan

• Zen became the dominant form of Buddhism in China in the 12th century, a time when Buddhist monks were traveling from Japan to China seeking the full dharma. Eventually, Zen declined in China with the rise of Neo-Confucianism, but it came into its own in Japan. Not only was its meditational and ethical discipline attractive to samurai, but its aesthetic sense became fundamental in Japanese art, music, drama, tea drinking, and even archery and swordsmanship. 

• Two monks were chiefly responsible for bringing Zen to Japan: Eisai (late 12th century), who advocated the Rinzai school of sudden enlightenment, and Dogen (13th century), founder of the Soto school of gradual enlightenment. Both Zen traditions emphasized experiential understanding through meditation and downplayed scripture study, discursive thought, and philosophical analysis. Both schools also stressed the importance of the master-disciple relationship. 

 

o Monks would practice daily meditation and then have private interviews with their Zen teachers, who would evaluate and guide their practice.

o These interviews often included rather cryptic exchanges, and Rinzai masters in particular were known for teaching through silence, shouting, or unexpected, even bizarre actions. 

o Unlike the Soto 

The aesthetic sense of Zen Buddhism has influenced many aspects of life in Japan, including gardening, art, and even swordsmanship.

 

school of gradual enlightenment, where students were encouraged to sit with an empty, calm mind, Rinzai teachers encouraged their disciples to meditate on koans—paradoxical sayings or narratives that could jolt one from ordinary modes of thinking. 

o Inevitably, stories of how famous Zen masters became enlightened and taught others were collected and canonized, along with classic examples of koans. Two of the most famous compilations are the Blue Cliff Record (12th century) and the Gateless Barrier (13th century).

• Despite its prominence in Japanese culture, Zen Buddhism is not uniquely Japanese; it’s not the only type of Buddhism in Japan; it’s not a major division of Buddhism; and it doesn’t entirely reject doctrine or scriptures. Zen Buddhists believe that sacred texts are inadequate rather than worthless; a direct mind-to-mind transmission is needed for enlightenment.

Fǎxiǎn’s Pilgrimage

• Whether or not you believe that enlightenment or nirvana is accessible through meditation, calling upon Amida, or reciting the Diamond Sutra, clearly, the vast Buddhist canon asks and answers some of life’s most profound questions: Is there a reality beyond ordinary existence? How does the mind shape and, perhaps, limit our perceptions of reality? What is the right balance between study and experience in learning something new? And, for our purposes, how important are sacred texts for gaining insight or wisdom?

• On the one hand, we have the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment, much beloved by Zen Buddhists, which suggests that the scriptures can be a distraction. On the other hand, we have the example of such figures as Fǎxiǎn, a Chinese monk who set out on a pilgrimage to India in 399 in search of authoritative Vinaya texts.

o For at least two centuries, trade goods, along with the new religion of Buddhism, had been coming to China from unknown lands in the west. But the transmission of the religion was somewhat fragmentary. Although the Chinese had a number of Buddhist scriptures, the translations weren’t good and the doctrines seemed contradictory. 

o In response to this situation, Fǎxiǎn set off on foot, following the Silk Road through deserts and over mountains, crossing rivers, and at one point climbing down 700 ladders attached to cliffs. Fǎxiǎn traveled through 30 different kingdoms in present-day China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, visiting holy sites and studying with various teachers. Then he sailed home on ships that stopped at Sri Lanka and Indonesia, with his precious cargo of Buddhist relics, images, and scriptures.

o At one point, a fierce storm arose, and Fǎxiǎn’s ship sprang a leak. The terrified merchants on the ship threw their goods and merchandise overboard to lighten the load. Fǎxiǎn tossed 

his cup and wash basin into the sea, but he refused to part with anything else, praying fervently to the bodhisattva Guanyin to save the ship.

o After 13 days, the voyagers finally reached a small island, and everyone survived. Eventually, Fǎxiǎn made it back to China. Altogether, his journey took him 14 years and covered more than 8,000 miles. He spent the rest of his life translating into Chinese the Sanskrit texts he had so laboriously acquired, and he wrote an account of his travels, which itself became part of the Chinese Buddhist canon.

• Fǎxiǎn’s account of his visit to Vulture Peak, where the Buddha was thought to have taught the Lotus Sutra, is incredibly moving. Fǎxiǎn realizes that all that remains in his era are “traces of the Buddha’s presence,” including the scriptures that preserve his words. But to Fǎxiǎn, those sacred texts were worth a decade and a half of untold hardships and dangers, followed by a lifetime of meticulous study.

    Suggested Reading

Chang, Chung-Yuan, trans., Original Teachings of Ch’an Buddhism.

Conze, et al., trans., Buddhist Texts through the Ages.

Gethin, The Foundations of Buddhism.

Inagaki and Steward, trans., The Three Pure Land Sutras.

Moerman, “The Death of the Dharma.” 

Olson, ed., Original Buddhist Sources. 

Sekida, trans. and commentator, and Grimstone, ed., Two Zen Classics. 

    Questions to Consider

1. In what ways was Buddhism transformed when it became popular in Japan?

2. Why might a religion that explicitly rejects reliance on sacred texts, such as Zen Buddhism, eventually produce texts that are themselves revered? 

Tibetan Vajrayana

Lecture 18

scholarship, it’s enormously important. 

Tibetan Vajrayana and Its Canon

small scepter-like object used in rituals. Japan known as Shingon (“True Word”).

of Sanskrit texts that have otherwise been lost.

• Buddhism first came to Tibet at the time of Songtsen Gampo, an early-7th-century king who had married two Buddhist princesses, one from Nepal and the other from China. Under his direction, a Tibetan script was developed, based on Sanskrit, so that translations could begin. Buddhism wasn’t particularly influential, however, until the late 8th century, when another king invited an Indian monk to establish a monastery. 

o Buddhists soon faced intense hostility from the native Tibetan religion of Bon. The king invited the Indian Tantric master Padmasambhava to duel with demons and Bon priests through spectacular feats of magic. 

o This was the legendary “first dissemination” of Buddhism into Tibet, which is associated with the Nyingma sect, the oldest school of Tibetan Buddhism. 

o Tradition reports that about this time (c. 792), the king ordered a public debate between Chinese and Indian Buddhists. The Indians won, but another period of persecution followed not long after. 

• In the 10th century, more monks came from India, bringing a “second dissemination” of Buddhism into Tibet, which picked up momentum with the arrival of Atisha in 1042. Atisha, an accomplished scholar, valued the discipline and insights of early forms of Buddhism, such as Theravada, along with Mahayana philosophy and its emphasis on the bodhisattva path and the latest Tantric techniques. He founded the Kadam school of Tibetan Buddhism, which was later followed by the Kagyu school and the Sakya school. 

• Buddhist monks fleeing the Muslim conquest of India carried new scriptures to Tibet, where they were translated and eventually canonized. The Tibetan canon consists of two parts. The first is the Kangyur—the translation of the word of the Buddha—consisting of more than 600 texts in 98 volumes. The second, much longer part is the Tengyur—translations of treatises—which consists of 

 

through strict morality and discipline (Vinaya). By practicing meditation, calm abiding and higher perceptions will arise. 

• Atisha further explains the necessary combination of skillful means and wisdom (perfection of wisdom) and ends by acknowledging the efficacy of mantras, actions, and performances under the direction of a teacher or guru (Tantrism). 

• But Atisha warns that even though monks can study the antras and make offerings, they are not allowed to receive secret or wisdom initiations. To do so would result in breaking their vows, defeat, and bad rebirths. 

Tantrism

• Tantrism is a type of Buddhism that arose in India in the 6th or 7th centuries and combined Mahayana doctrines with secret rituals or practices that offered shortcuts to enlightenment. The bodhisattva path, with its six perfections, could take many lifetimes to complete. One of the six perfections was perfect meditation, which was generally understood to mean stilling the mind and body. Tantric teachers, by contrast, urged students to put the body and mind to work through mudras (ritual postures or gestures), mantras (sacred sounds or phrases), mandalas (sacred symbolic diagrams), and visualizations of multiple gods and goddesses. 

• Tantrism is active rather than quiescent or passive. It uses physical and mental functions to transcend body and mind, like using fire to fight fire or desire to overcome desire. 

o Mahayana perfection of wisdom texts teach that in the end, there is no difference between samsara and nirvana, that attachment and aversion are both traps, that anything and everything can be a manifestation of the Buddha’s dharmabody (ultimate reality). 

o Tantrism adds actions to those insights. Thus, we can see how using a bowl fashioned from a human skull or blowing a horn made from a human bone might demonstrate that one has stepped beyond ordinary conceptions.

• Tantrism is also known for rituals that involve drinking wine or eating meat in a cemetery at night or even engaging in sexual behavior without desire, while visualizing one’s partner as a deity. It’s easy to imagine how such practices might be abused, which is why it is crucial that they are undertaken under the direction of a qualified guru (Tibetan: lama). 

o Another reason that expert guidance is needed is that Tantric texts are often written in cryptic language that is unintelligible to outsiders; further, it’s often unclear whether the rituals described are meant to be visualized in meditation or physically performed.

o Many Tantric practices require a yi-dam, that is, a holy being chosen for a particular worshipper, appropriate to his or her nature. These deities may be male or female, wrathful or peaceful. 

• It is common to categorize tantras into four stages: (1) action tantras, where adherents visualize themselves as servants of meditational deities and offer their devotions; (2) performance tantras, in which adherents see themselves as equal to a deity and perceive their own potential as enlightened bodhisattvas; (3) yoga tantras, or the gradual identification with deities to gain their perfections and wisdom; and (4) supreme yoga, that is, the transformation into a bodhisattva by learning to control energy channels, centers, winds, and drops within one’s subtle body. 

o In supreme yoga, one experiences the bliss of the union of self and other, of wisdom and compassion (skillful means), which may be visualized as the sexual union of male and female. 

o Some forms of supreme yoga might involve ritualized sexual intercourse, with spouses in the case of lay Buddhists or Nyingmapa lamas, who are permitted to marry. Monks in other sects of Tibetan Buddhism, who have taken vows of celibacy, are allowed only to visualize such actions.

The Hevajra Tantra and Tibetan Book of the Dead

• About one-fifth of the Kangyur—the first part of the Tibetan canon—consists of Tantric texts, including a profusion of mantras, mudras, and mandalas that can put one in tune with a yi-dam and provide a focus for meditation and visualization. 

o The Hevajra Tantra, influential in the Sakya school, is one example of these texts. Hevajra is a popular chosen deity (yidam) of the wrathful variety and is often depicted with multiple arms holding weapons and skull bowls, embracing a female consort, and standing on a lotus and a corpse.

o The tantra offers detailed instructions for multiple rituals and visualizations, but it’s not really meant to be understood by outsiders; understanding requires a qualified guru. For us, it raises an interesting question that applies to many religions: Is the body a hindrance or a help to spiritual progress and salvation—however one might define it?

• The most famous text of Vajrayana Buddhism is the Tibetan Book of the Dead, although it is much better known in the West than in Tibet. The story of this text starts with theosophy, a sort of 19thcentury New Age religion that taught the oneness of all beings, reincarnation, and karma, combined with an interest in mystical insight, esoteric teachings, and occult experiences. 

o In 1919, Walter Evans-Wentz, a theosophist, traveled to north India and bought an old Tibetan manuscript from a monk. Not knowing Tibetan himself, he found a translator and together, they produced what we know today as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, first published in 1927. It’s important to note, however, than Evans-Wentz’s volume was more a product of American spiritualism than Tibetan culture.

o The manuscript Evans-Wentz came across was part of a larger cycle of texts known as Bardo Thodol (“Liberation in the Intermediate State through Hearing”). The work belongs to a rather unique genre called terma, or “treasure texts.” These are documents that were thought to have been written by Padmasambhava in the 8th century and then hidden so that they could survive centuries of persecution and be rediscovered in later generations.

o The text, which was read in the presence of someone who was dying, is more about rebirth than death. It gives a detailed description of what the dying person is about to experience and how he or she should respond. It speaks of three intermediate stages in the 49 days between death and rebirth, leading to either liberation from future rebirths or rebirth as a god, a demigod, a human, an animal, a hungry ghost, or a hell-being.

    Suggested Reading

Davidson, “Atisa’s A Lamp for the Path to Awakening.”

Gyatso (Dalai Lama XIV, author) and Jinpa (trans.), Essence of the Heart Sutra. 

———, The World of Tibetan Buddhism.

Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhism. 

Lopez, The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Mitchell, Buddhism: Introducing the Buddhist Experience.

Power, Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism.

Rinchen (author) and Sonam (trans.), Atisha’s Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment.

Snellgrove, The Hevajra Tantra.

    Questions to Consider

1. What makes Tibetan Buddhism distinctive, and what is Tantrism?

2. Why is the Tibetan Book of the Dead better known in America than in Tibet? 

Related Traditions—Jain Scriptures

Lecture 19

J

ainism and Buddhism are sister religions—much like Judaism and Christianity. The two Indian traditions share many foundational concepts and come out of the same social environment. And like Judaism and Christianity, they followed different paths, with one becoming a successful missionary religion, and the other, arguably the more demanding of the two, maintaining a vibrant religious and intellectual presence yet remaining relatively small. Today there are some 500 million Buddhists in the world, and only about 4 million Jains. Despite the size differential, Jainism is an ancient religious tradition that is well worth studying; in this lecture, we’ll see how Jainism upends some of our common assumptions about scripture.

Jainism and Buddhism

• It’s not exactly clear when Buddha and Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, lived. Traditional dates are in the 6th century B.C.E., though scholars now lean more toward the 5th century. Either way, Buddha and Mahavira seem to have been contemporaries or near-contemporaries.

• Both were raised as princes in the Kshatriya (warrior) caste in northern India. Both left home at the age of 30 to find spiritual fulfillment through asceticism and meditation. After six years, the Buddha dropped his severe fasting and then became enlightened under a bodhi tree. In contrast, Mahavira never gave up his ascetic practices, and after 12 years, he achieved his own sort of enlightenment and became a Jina, or “Conqueror.” 

• Jains are those who follow the Jinas. Mahavira is not regarded as the founder of the religion; rather, he is the last of a series of 24 Tirthankaras in this world era. Tirthankara means “maker of a ford”—someone who gains liberation and can teach others the way across the oceans of suffering and samsara. Actually, even Mahavira is a title—“Great Hero”; his name was Vardhamana.

• For the next three or four decades after enlightenment, both Buddha and Mahavira taught the truths they had discovered. They gained lay followers and ordained monks and nuns, who left behind all worldly connections and devoted themselves exclusively to salvation. Their teachings were passed down orally for several centuries before they were transcribed in written form.

Basic Principles of Jainism

• As you may recall, Hindus believed that humans, animals, and gods all had a soul, or atman, while the Buddha proclaimed that nothing had a soul. Mahavira taught that everything has a soul—not just people and animals but plants, rocks, drops of water, gusts of wind, and flames of fire. 

o The world is divided into two types of phenomena—jiva (living beings, or the life principle within things) and ajiva (insentient matter, time, and space). 

o There is no creator god or creation; jiva have been entangled with material elements from eternity, but even without a beginning, there can nevertheless be an end, and existence as a human being offers the best chance at this. 

o Once a jiva is freed from the corrupting influence of matter, it attains infinite knowledge, perception, bliss, and energy. But it remains distinct; it isn’t subsumed into brahman (as in Hinduism), and it doesn’t dissipate into nonexistence (Buddhism.)

• In all three religions, living a good life to attain a better rebirth is a good thing, but the ultimate goal is to escape from the cycle of rebirth altogether. 

o In Hinduism, this is done when one’s atman merges with brahman (ultimate reality), through the ways of knowledge, works, or devotion. In Buddhism, liberation comes with the realization that there was never any self to begin with, and like Hinduism, it develops the notion of savior figures— bodhisattvas—who can assist in this process.

o In Jainism, however, liberation comes only through one’s own efforts, by ridding oneself of karma, which is thought of as a subtle form of matter that sticks to jiva and weighs them down. Escaping karma can be done through ascetic renunciation, with the preeminent virtue being ahimsa, or nonviolence. Jains believe it is far better to suffer oneself than to cause suffering to other living beings. 

• All Jains accept the five vows: no injuring other living beings, no lying or deceit, no taking what is not given, no sexual immorality, and no attachment. For ordinary Jains, this means living simple lives of kindness, integrity, and generosity. Sexual relations are restricted to marriage, and possessions are kept to a minimum. When Jains pray (or, more accurately, chant mantras), they show respect for those who have achieved liberation, but they are not allowed to ask for blessings or material benefits.

• The requirements for monks and nuns are much stricter, because they hope to attain moksha, or liberation, in this lifetime by ridding themselves of all karmic residues. They give up home, family, and nearly all possessions and eat only what is given to them. Jain monks and nuns are not allowed to use vehicles and must walk barefoot everywhere. Their lives are devoted to meditation, preaching, and scholarship, and the greatest spiritual achievement is to gradually stop eating or drinking anything and fast to death. 

• There are several subsects of Jains, but the major division is between Shvetambara and Digambara Jains, which split sometime around the 4th or 5th centuries C.E. The main differences are that Digambara (“Sky-clad”) monks wear nothing whatsoever, while Shvetambara (“White-clad”) monks and nuns wear plain white robes. 

Jain Scriptures

• In most world religions, scripture is at the core of religious identity, but in Jainism, Shvetambaras and Digambaras for the most part reject each other’s scriptures as forgeries. They are clearly in the same religious tradition, and their beliefs are quite similar, but there are almost no shared textual resources.

• Shvetambaras and Digambaras both agree that Mahavira taught 14 texts called Purvas, which were identical to those taught by all the preceding Tirthankaras. These communicated the eternal truths of omniscient beings. Mahavira’s first followers came from the Brahman caste, and those disciples memorized the Purvas, but ultimately, all the Purvas were lost, with only fragments or paraphrases remaining.

• Over several centuries, the Shvetambaras developed replacement scriptures that captured some of the traditions associated with Mahavira and were written in the Ardhamagadhi language—a more vernacular dialect than Sanskrit, though it became a literary, scriptural language. 

o Most Shvetambaras accept 45 texts as authoritative, most of which go by the name of sutras: 12 Angas (“limbs”), dealing with basic doctrines, moral prescriptions for monks and laypersons, cosmology, and narratives of Mahavira, Jina, and pious believers; 12 Upangas (“subordinate limbs”), treating ontological, cosmological, and epistemological matters; 6 Cheda-sutras (“separate”) , having to do with disciplinary issues; 4 Mula-sutras (“basic”) that were typically studied by new monks and nuns, 10 miscellaneous texts on astrology and ascetic ritual; and 2 appendices that offer summaries and explanations. 

o This Shvetambara canon was written down on palm-leaf manuscripts about the 5th century C.E. after a series of councils, yet even today, there is not complete agreement on exactly which texts belong in the collection of 45, and some Shvetambara subsects reject as many as 13 of them. 

• Digambara Jains also believe that the 14 original Purvas were lost, but they reject all the Shvetambara scriptures. Instead, they view as authoritative two doctrinal synopses written by monks in the 2nd century C.E.: the Scripture of Six Parts and the Treatise on 

the Passions. The Digambara scriptures are written in a different vernacular language, called Jaina Sauraseni. 

• In both traditions, laypersons don’t really read or study the scriptures; instead, they learn some of their contents through sermons or short summaries written by monks. Nevertheless, the Jains have a rich tradition of scholarship, commentaries, philosophy, and literature. 

Examples of Jain Texts

• Hermann Jacobi, a German scholar, translated four Jain texts for Max Müller’s Sacred Books of the East: the Acaranga Sutra, the Uttaradhyayana, the Kritanga Sutra, and the Kalpa Sutra.

• Jacobi began with the first of the 12 Angas, the Acaranga Sutra, which is often regarded as the oldest item in the Jain scriptures and includes rules for monks and nuns regarding food, clothing, and lodging, as well as the earliest account of Mahavira’s life. This sutra also includes the Five Great Vows undertaken by all Jains.

• The Uttaradhyayana, one of the four Mula-sutras, is more specific about what the vows mean for renunciants. For instance: “If a layperson abuses a monk he should not grow angry against him; because he would be like a child, a monk should not grow angry.” 

• Jacobi also translated the second Anga, the Kritanga Sutra, which offers an introduction to Jain teachings, as well as a critical examination of competing doctrines at the time of Mahavira. According to the Kritanga Sutra, “These three classes of living beings have been declared by the Jinas: (1) earth, water, fire, wind; (2) grass, trees, and plants; and (3) the moving beings, both the eggbearing and those that bear live offspring, those generated from dirt and those generated in fluids. Know and understand that they all desire happiness.” 

• And finally, Jacobi translated the Kalpa Sutra, which retells the story of Mahavira’s life with more legendary details than what is found 

in the Acaranga Sutra, along with narratives from the biographies of a few other Tirthankaras. This text is from one of the Cheda-sutras, but it gained its prominence from the fact that it is read aloud every year during the eight-day Paryushana (rainy season festival)—the most important event in the Shvetambara ritual calendar, when Jains fast, confess their sins, and ask forgiveness.

• The Digambaras also celebrate Paryushana, but instead of the Kalpa Sutra, they recite the Tattvartha Sutra (“That Which Is”), the first systematic exposition of Jain doctrines written in Sanskrit, which was composed by the 2nd-century monk Umasvati. In 250 terse aphorisms, it covers Jain epistemology, metaphysics, cosmology, and ethics. 

o Although it is not exactly scriptural, the Tattvartha Sutra is nevertheless the only Jain text that is held in high respect by both Shvetambaras and Digambaras. 

o The form is similar to that of Hindu sutras, and it quickly moves through lists of the seven categories of truth, five varieties of knowledge, eight types of karma, different types of beings, various spatial realms, enumerations of vows and moral precepts, karmic obstacles, and the process of liberation.

• What’s striking about Jainism is not just the desire to escape perpetual suffering but the desire to avoid any entanglement in causing or even benefiting from the use and exploitation of other living creatures, both animate and inanimate. The Uttaradhyayana in particular offers a powerful, even startling vision of empathy and compassion.

    Suggested Reading

Dundas, The Jains.

Jacobi, trans., Jaina Sutras.

Jaini, The Jaina Path of Purification.

Tatia, trans., Tattvartha Sutra.

    Questions to Consider

1. What does it mean for a religion when the sacred texts associated with a founding figure have all been lost?

2. How is it that the two major branches of Jainism have virtually no scriptures in common?

3. How do Jain sacred texts emphasize the concept of ahimsa, or nonviolence?