[Buddha-l] Anomalous doctrines

[Dan Lusthaus]

I won't respond to everything Stephen proposed, since that would require an
email message at least twice as long as the one he sent. Some quick
observations instead.

First, there are all important issues. We have too little hard knowledge
about early Buddhism and the rise of Mahayana, and too much speculation. So
any effort to address that should always be welcome.

Second, the proposal seems to presuppose that the cause pre-exists in the
effect (a kind of samkhyan position in reverse), since it basically attempts
to justify Mahayana innovations by assigning them early credentials, earlier
than the putative emergence of mahayana. Almost arguing in reverse, since
this or that form of mahayana or tantra holds positions XYZ, and something
resembling y seems to be shuffled, perhaps uncomfortably, into the early
materials, there must have been a fuller blown early XYZ -- or at least Y -- 
dimension to early Buddhism, so early it has been erased from explicit
memory by agendas driven elsewhere, though, nonetheless, miraculously
preserved and resurrected by later Mahayana figures. In short, the proposal
becomes a cover story for the standard Mahayana myth of how its origins were
not sudden divergent innovations, but an emergence of factors from the
original Buddha that had been kept in a subterranean existence during the
interim.

Third, I find Schayer's proposal thoroughly unconvincing, for a number of
reasons -- methodological, historical, and otherwise, but will only mention
one tangential rejoinder. If one reads carefully the remnants of the
so-called pudgalavadins, one finds that not only were their positions quite
different from how most of their mainstream detractors depicted them, but
they, too, could cite Nikaya proof texts for their position, thus, like
Mahayana, enabled to make the claim that they were preserving an/the
original, deeper teaching of the Buddha, obscured by a mainstream coverup.
The pudgalavadins were -- although we rarely pay attention to this -- at
certain times the apparent majority in India (Xuanzang reports almost as
many pudgalavadins in India as all the other schools of Buddhism put
together), which is why Vasubandhu has to devote an entire chapter of the
Ko"sa to knocking off their high horse, and others attacked them
mercilessly. Their rhetoric influenced many other forms of Buddhism, from
Nagarjuna's fire and fuel chapter (lifted entirely from Pudgalavading
sources), to the Tibetan bardo theories. I have joked with some friends that
the "true" Buddhism is Pudgalavada Buddhism, since everything that makes
sense in Buddhism conforms to their version (karmic theory, etc.), and they
were ones who pressed the issue of prajnapti first -- the pudgala is a
prajnapti, not a dravya. In short (in case the point is being missed), one
can connect all sorts of dots from later developments through circuitous
routes back to something in the origin (just as one can connect certain
facets of East Asian Buddha-nature theory back to Indian precedents).
Speculation is easy; verification is another story.

Like Bruce, I'm surprised that you find the distilled Nikaya core -- if we
can call it that -- too meager to justify 40+ years of a first rate teacher.
Which contemporaneous thinker has left a larger corpus? Let's even throw in
those cheaters, those who write and record. Distill Plato down by the same
rules, and there's not much there either. The early Jain literature is
largely nonextant. How many university teachers say only utterly new things
every time they teach the same course? I have an easier time imagining, for
instance, that Buddha spent decades honing his basic models into
sophisticated multi-applicable pedagogic tools (and he did a stunning job of
it), than that he would have been continuously spinning out increasingly
digressive theories. He left more than enough for the rest of us to work
with.

Following Richard's request, I'll stop here, more to follow.
Dan Lusthaus