[Buddha-l] Anomalous doctrines

[Stephen Hodge]

Dear Bruce,

Thanks for your comments.
> Interesting, but considering that this material was being preserved and 
> transmitted orally, that is in fact quite a bit, and also considering the 
> sophistication of thought that some of these discourses contain, quantity 
> (or lack thereof) is not a very compelling argument, nor is it even 
> strongly suggestive.
But I wonder in what form and what was the extent ?  Also to me, greater and 
greater degrees of philosophical sophistication suggests later and later 
works. I am not, of course, suggesting that the Buddha's teachings were not 
sophisticated but I would imagine that they would perhaps have first been 
transmitted in a condensed matrika kind of format.

> Before or after the death of the Buddha? As far as hunches go, I opt for 
> Gombrich's: "I have the greatest difficulty in accepting that the main 
> edifice [of the Pali Texts] is not the work of one genius." It is no less 
> reasonable to push this material back towards the Buddha who, if we are to 
> believe the texts, was concerned about the preservation of his teachings.
After the death of the Buddha.  I wonder whether Gombrich is hinting at what 
I suggest, that the canonical form of the texts was the work of one man, not 
the Buddha, as Frauwallner proposes for the old Skandhaka.  You say that the 
Budha was concerned about the preservation of his teachings.  How do you 
know this ? From the texts themselves.  This therefore seems to be a 
circular argument -- thecomposers of Mahayana sutras were also very 
concerned about the preservation of their teachings as the exhortations to 
copy etc the texts shows.

> Sparse? Again, that is a value judgment.
Well, from the simple maths of the matter, no, I don't think this is a value 
judgement.  I did also suggest reasons why this may be so.

> First of all there is no reason not assume that there wasn't a body of 
> teachings already in place at the time of the Buddha death that was being 
> carefully transmitted by the monastic Sangha
First, I did not say that there was not some body of teachings by the time 
of the Buddha's passing, but your ideas about a monastic Sangha somewhat 
begs the question.  Why do you assume that there was a "monastic" in 
existence then ?  You will say that the suttas and vinaya mention its 
existence, but again this is a circular argument not borne out, I believe, 
by the archaeological data.  I think our friend Schopen has something to say 
about this in his recent book

> Recent scholarship has pushed the death of the Buddha from 100 to 150
> years from the rise of the Ashoka, and there seems to be evidence to
> suggest an established (though not complete) "Canon" by the time of 
> Ashoka.
The above short dating of the Buddha's death has not gone unchallenged by 
some experts in the field.  But this is not important to me.  I have not 
denied that some form of canon, perhaps open-ended, was in existence by the 
time of Asoka.  This would fit in with Frauwallner's findings about 
composition of the old Skandhaka.   It is unfortunate that the same exercise 
that he carried out on the surviving Vinayas cannot be done with the Nkayas 
/ Agamas -- we just don't have enough material to make any informed 
judgement.

> Again, there is nothing here to suggest that oral texts were not 
> extensively used during the Buddha's lifetime [snip].as well as preserving
> the teachings.
Again, I have no real problem with this in principle -- my question is how 
many of these "texts" were later preserved in the Nikayas / Agamas.  You 
know that traditionally the suttas were supposed to be compiled at the first 
council a short time after the Buddha's death by 500 arhats.  What exactly 
was compiled is debatable but do you know the story of the monk who heard 
what they were reciting and rejected their version, saying that he preferred 
to remember the teachings as he had heard them from the Buddha.  He might 
have been a bit dense or mistaken in his recollection, but another 
posibility is that he really did remember what the Buddha taught and it did 
not have the format or possibly the content.  This may be an apocryphal 
story but it does suggest that there was some discontent with the way the 
teachings were compiled.


> The texts point to that.
A circular argument again.

> Memorization would have taken up a lot of time, though it is to stretch it 
> a bit to say "most of their time," but then that is what the Sangha was 
> for.
Well, if you look at the story of Revata mention in the Visuddhimagga 
(3:51), he did not even have time to meditate.  Some people can memorize 
large amonts of text, but the people you are talking about work from printed 
books.  To transmit texts orally, not only do you have to learn the corpus 
yourself but then you have to spend at least the ame amount of time teaching 
others.

> Maybe, but we also have very clear examples of the Pali Canon containing 
> teachings that are not in keeping with Theravada doctrine, so how much of 
> that sort of editing went on is open to question.
Tis does not affect my argument -- the emergence of the Theravada doctrine 
post-dates the compilation.  By the time they really began developing heir 
specific doctrinal stance, the canon may have already been closed and there 
was nothing they could about the contradictory teachings except ignore them 
or explain them away.

> (re: Nirvana) Well, I'd have to look at the context for this, but other 
> more
> recent studies suggest something a bit different.
Recent doesn't mean right -- I have work by several fairly recent scholars 
and they do not agree in many points. There is a new book out by Curzon 
Press on the history of Nirvana that I would like to see.

> And the nature of this ultimate reality? And do we take this literally or 
> figuratively? And let us not forget that the word tathagata was frequently 
> used for the arahant.
Regarding the above, I'll get back to you on your first question.  For your 
second question, I think it was taken literally by at least some people at 
the time. The implications of the term "tathagata" has been studied several 
times and probably needs more work.  Note that it was also used by the Jains 
(tahaagaya) and is not specifically Buddhist, but a common Indian title for 
a particular kind of being, also that arhats can be tathagatas in the same 
sense that the Buddha was both.  It has also been suggested that a tathagata 
was generally conceived to be the spiritual counterpart of the cakravartin.

> > Nirvana is possible because it is already indwelling as the innermost 
> > core of a being.
> I'd love to see the textual support for the last sentence.
It's a deduction.  I'll try and dig out some evidence for you anon.

> Dhaatu is a very interesting word that gets used in combination
> with a wide variety of words, that certainly do not suggest thingness
> in any sort of absolute manner.
How are you sure of this ?  Have you perhaps unwittingly decided this in 
advance.  The basis meaning of dhaatu is actually very concrete and thingy.

> Maybe, but this sort of argument looks familiar and has never been 
> terribly convincing in its various guises that I have seen before.
Trying to ascertain the shape of pre-canonical Buddhsim is quite a reputable 
pastime.  Have you read Tilmann Vetter's "Ideas and Meditational Practices 
of Early Buddhism" ?   I am not too worried if you have not been 
convinced -- I've read lots of books that try to convince me that Prasangika 
Madhyamika is the pinnacle of Buddhsit thought but I remain totally 
unconvinced of that.

> Yes; Gombrich talks about it in his HOW BUDDHISM BEGAN, but it does not 
> look quite like Schayer's version.
It doesn't matter whether Gombrich presents a similar version to Schayer or 
not.  Just because Gombrich says something, do you think that makes it ipso 
facto true ?  Different scholars have different insights and agendas.  I am 
interested in Schayer because his hypothesis makes good sense as a working 
model to explain arious features we can find elsewhere in Buddhism.

> That is assuming one can make a reasonable case for a Schayer version of 
> the Dhamma.
Well, Schayer was not the only one to come to this conclusion.

> > One of the repeated claims of the MPNS is that the Buddhism of its
> > day is a distorted, misunderstood version of the Buddha's true 
> > teachings.
> Sounds like Dark Zen.
What's Dark Zen ?  That kind of claim is standard for many Mahayana sutras 
if you care to read them.  I am interested to see if we can account for this 
claim historically -- regardless of whether we accept its validity or not..

> There is no compelling reason why we need to take the Mahayana (which 
> Mahayana?) claims seriously at the expense of the traditional claims of 
> the "orthodox" schools.
But such claims do not materialize out of the blue -- most people have 
motives for dong or saying things.  That is to say, I do not necessarily 
take the contents of the claims seriously but I take seriously the fact that 
they were made. It would be interesting to know more of the social 
background to the emergence of Mahayana as a self-styled movement. Again the 
MPNS is interesting because it supplies some of this background: apart from 
the lifestyle of the wandering dharmakathikas, it describes in fairly 
concrete and explicit terms violent clashes between these dharmakathika 
bodhisattvas and "orthodox" monks -- the bodhisattvas get beaten up or even 
killed, it criticizes the laxity of monastic standards, it does not oppose 
the sravakas and bodhisattvas per se as some sravakas are also bodhisattvas 
etc etc.  It also contains possibly the earliest critique of the Nagarjunian 
interpretation of sunyata,

 > Which is, or course, a self-serving claim that does not hold up well 
[snip].
Almost all claims by anybody are in some sense self-serving.  Again my 
interest here is the social etc background  -- the why and not the what.

> No doubt that the forest dwellers living in the peripheries of the 
> Buddhist world gave us what we now call the Mahayana.
Ah, we are in agreement here.  If you accept this, then you next need to 
work out a model of how this happened.  I have made a suggestion which also 
allows us some way of making sense of Mahayana sutras claims that they were 
taught by the Buddha -- not literally in their current format, but as a 
tradition of doctrines handed down outside the mainstreamversion that is 
just as archaic as the so-called orthodox versions.  I would have though 
that you as a Mahayani would be pleased about that -- otherwise what 
possible validity could the Mahayana sutras and their doctrines have for 
your geshes and their followers ?

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge