[Buddha-l] Anomalous doctrines [Lusthaus I]

[Stephen Hodge]

Dear Dan,

>I won't respond to everything [snip]  Some quick observations instead.
I'll respond to your various points piecemeal in sub-threads that can, 
hopefully, be closed down when they cease to be productive.

> 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 [snip]
> there must have been a fuller blown early XYZ -- or at least Y -- 
> dimension to early Buddhism
This is not my position.  However, I do think that there is a greater 
continuity with what went before than some people recognize.  I would not, 
therefore, immediately assume that the bulk of Mahayana is innovative in 
content.  The materials are somewhat sparse in some respects, but I think 
that the various Mahayanas were part of an on-going religious and 
philosophical "dialogue" within the Buddhist movement.

> so early it has been erased from explicit memory by agendas driven
> elsewhere, though, nonetheless, miraculously preserved and resurrected
> by later Mahayana figures.
This again is not my position.  I am suggesting that we at least consider 
the possibility that different groups in early Buddhism had differing 
preferences and interpretations with regards the core teachings assembled in 
the immediate aftermath of the Buddha's life.  It does not seem to me 
entirely unreasonable to suspect that at least one type of group did 
maintain a variant understanding of the core teachings that escaped the 
abhidharmization process which which centred in the monasteries.  I have now 
alluded several times to these non-monastic / non-lay individuals as one 
possibility.  It would be a useful task to see if there are any other traces 
of these people and the origins in other early Mahayana texts, not that we 
know what we are looking for.  If the MPNS is anything to go by, these 
people had carried on basically independently from the monasteries but for 
some unexplained reason later moved into the monasteries some time between 
100 - 200CE.and began promoting their doctrines and reforms.  That 
peripheral groups can survive and transmit some doctrines over a long period 
is well known:  the example of the Japanese "kakure kirishitan" or some of 
the Beni Israel groups (India, Ethiopia, Southern Africa etc) spring to 
mind.

> 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.
The way you phrase this is dismissive but there could be a grain of truth in 
these claims.  Again, due to the comoplexity of the matter and the paucity 
of helpful material perhaps makes either position speculative and difficult 
to falsify either way.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge