[Buddha-l] Re: Mahayana taught by the Buddha?

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Tue, 2005-06-21 at 10:39 +1200, Andrew Ward wrote:

> >That is the official position of traditional Mahayana teachers.
> >
> Do they have this position because they disagree with the scholars on 
> the dates that the various writings were created? Or do they have this 
> position because they find hints of Mahayana teachings in the original 
> Pali scriptures?

Hardly any traditional Mahayana teachers have any knowledge of the Pali
canon, since it was not translated into Chinese or Tibetan. Parts of the
Sanskrit (or perhaps some vernacular Indian language) canons that were
approximate counterparts of the Pali canon were translated into Chinese
and Tibetan, but they tend to be ignored, mostly because of a strong
prejudice against them. (Just last weekend I heard a veteran Zen
practitioner say "Why would anyone study inferior teachings when we have
access to superior Mahayana teachings?") So I don't think the answer is
that traditional Mahayana teachers find hints of Mahayana teachings in
any of the śrāvakayāna canons. Rather, I think the traditional Mahayana
teachers subscribe to the view that the Mahayana teachings were spoken
by the Buddha and then transmitted "underground" for several centuries
until people were ready for them.

> Of course, whether you accept or reject a teaching should be based on 
> it's content, not on it's author. 

Yes, and the content of any teaching should be accepted when it turns
out to be useful to accept it. Only you can decide how useful a teaching
is to you.

> However, in cases where faith is required to follow a teaching until
> you have the neccessary understanding of it, then it is easier if you
> already have respect for the author's other works.

The problem I see in this way of looking at things is that if you don't
have the necessary understanding of a teaching, there is no way you can
follow it anyway. Faith will not come to your aid, because faith itself
is generated by seeing that a teaching is working, and a teaching works
only after you understand it. So faith is the end point, not the
starting point. The whole issue of who the author of a teaching is is a
distraction. My advice would be not to worry about that, unless you are
an historian and want to speculate on how things got to be as they are.

> If someone reads a teaching about aspiring to become a Bodhisattva and
> decides this is a good course of action, they need to have faith that
> what is contained in the teaching is actually possible.

Again, I would disagree with you on that. First, I don't think it's at
all necessary to believe that something is possible in order to strive
in the direction of it. In Buddhism you need not have any idea where you
are going; it is sufficient to know what you want to get away from. If
you are not happy being selfish, you move away from selfishness. You can
do this even if you have no idea whether it's possible to become
perfectly altruistic. Bodhicitta is just moving in the direction of
altruism. Could you be more altruistic than you now are? If so, you need
know nothing else. 

Have you found that by cultivating kindness through contemplative
exercises you can move away from selfishness, even if only for a while?
If so, then you have all the faith you need to keep doing those
exercises. Knowing who invented the exercises will not help you follow
them any more than knowing who wrote the software you are using to read
this e-mail message will help you send an intelligent reply.

Did the historical Buddha teach anything about bodhicitta? Damned if I
know. Is bodhicitta worth cultivating? As Krishnamurti was fond of
saying to such questions, "Find out."

-- 
Richard Hayes
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes