[Buddha-l] Monk/nun or lay person

[Bruce Burrill]

 >>But the particularity of laymen attaining 
Nibbana is a later development within the Canon. 
This shift can be regarded both as doctrinal 
(Enlightenment outside the Sangha!) and historical.<<

And how late are we speaking off here? After the suttas? Evidence?

 >>Most suttas dealing with layfolks have them 
eventually go forth, entering the sangha. There, 
again, you have this condition that one must 
first become monk/nun (and be it for as long as 
it takes) in order to realize Nibbana.<<

It is easier to attain nibbana as a monastic in 
that is it what the monastics are able to spend 
their time so doing, but being a monastic is not 
a prerequisite to attaining the status of ariya according to the suttas.

 >>I'm not sure I understand your point. Jan 
Nattier's study actually proves my point: 
layfolks realizing Nibbana is a later Mahayana 
development. ( http://www.indiana.edu/~rcapub/v21n1/p23.html )<<

And I have not a clue as to your point in your 
initial msgs or in this one. Layfolk could 
realize the status of ariya in the Pali suttas. 
As for the Mahayana, in order to make sense of 
the bodhisattva notion as a path of practice they 
had to repeatedly redefine the core concepts of 
what the Buddha taught. So, what is your point? 
Also, Nattier points out that the earliest of the 
early Mahayana sutras, the emphasis was on monastic practice for men.

 >>I take the LS as an early Mahayana scripture.<<

The early parts are relatively early but its 
composition went on for at least two hundred years.

 >>It has to do with the Theravada , because it's 
an implicit critique of its emphasis on the monastic life. Hinayana,<,

Hinayana is an ugly, disgusting word (and 
concept) that was put into the LS’s Buddha’s 
mouth by the worst sort of sectarian mind set. No 
school ever referred to themselves as hinayana. 
The straw man concept of the hinayana notion are 
just that and not applicable to the Theravada, 
nor is the Mahayana some sort of champion of the 
laity over the monastic point of view. The 
Mahayana’s development was strictly a monastic 
endeavor. Again, what is your point here?

 >>for that matter, is not a substitute for 
Theravada but a compendium name for pre-Mahayana 
schools, who are Sangha-centered.<<

Goodness. So Theravada is a term to collectively 
to refer to the whole of the Mainstream Indian 
Buddhist schools. Theravada is the name of an 
ordination lineage and of a particular doctrinal 
school. It is not a “compendium” name to refer to 
the Mainstream schools. It is not a substitute 
for the ugly term coined by Mahayana sectarians. 
Given that the Mahayana was no less Sangha centered, what is your point?

 >>It's not ugly. It's a historical word just as 
we use 'the Third World' to mean the whole of 
economically and socially un(-der)developped countries.<<

Only a Mahayanist sectarian would say that. In 
Sanskrit and Pali, >>hina<< comes from the 
root >>ha<<: to abandon, to forsake, to avoid, to 
leave behind which gives us >>hina<<: inferior, 
low, poor, miserable, vile, base, abject, 
contemptible, despicable, rejected, thrown away, 
scorned. In idiomatic English hinayana would be 
the "piss-poor vehicle" or the "garbage vehicle." 
In and of itself, the word hinayana is an ugly 
derogatory, divisive, derisive epithet. It is a 
put down term, which is then coupled with a nasty us-versus-them polemic.

 >>Maybe most folks didn't understand the 
Vimalakirti Sutra, but the fact that a layman (an 
ill layman, come to think of it) can be superior 
to a monk or a nun must've surely made it 
attractive and must have given the hope that in 
order to get released from suffering, one doesn't 
have to go through the whole curriculum of monastic life.<<

Except that the Mahayana’s doctrinal developments 
by the time the Vimala was composed has become 
quite rococo, really only accessible to the 
professionals (the monastics) who would have time 
and resources to study them, which is to say that 
layman Vimala was a way of tweaking the noses of 
the Mainstream Buddhist, not a way of recruiting laity.

 >>And it's here, too, that layfolks attaining Nirvana was a nice incentive.<<

The goal (eye-rolling here) of the Mahayana is 
not nibbana, but buddhahood, which is part of the 
Mahayana redefinition of Buddhism

 >>But this is, again, something one shouldn't 
expect from the Theravada - the name of which 
already implies a certain meritocracy in contrast 
to the 'Get yur Nirvana here and now, 
folks!'-mentality of especially Mahayana texts.<<

Again, Theravada is not a generic term for those 
who are not Mahayanists, nor does the 
Mahayana/hinayana polemics apply to the 
Theravada. As Reginald Ray states in his >>Indestructible Truth<<:

 >>In fact, as we shall see presently, "Hinayana" 
refers to a critical but strictly limited set of 
views, practices, and results. The pre-Mahayana 
historical traditions such as the Theravada are 
far richer, more complex, and more profound than 
the definition of "Hinayana" would allow. ...The 
tern "Hinayana" is thus a stereotype that is 
useful in talking about a particular stage on the 
Tibetan Buddhist path, but it is really not 
appropriate to assume that the Tibetan definition 
of Hinayana identifies a venerable living 
tradition as the Theravada or any other historical school.."<< Page 240.

Also, the Mahayana was not offering nibbana now. 
It was in the shift after the Ugra that for the 
Mahayana Buddhhood as a goal. Nibbana of the 
arhat became a ruse according to the Lotus Sutra, 
or at best, a temporary place for those too 
stupid to understand the Mahayana, but who 
eventually get smart (after a few blissed out 
eons) and become good Mahayanist in the march towards buddhahood.

Me: ”As for the vulgarization of the Dhamma, the 
pretty much sums up the Lotus Sutra.”

Thee: >>Correct. Faith has made its intro into 
the Teachings. Mappo avant la lettre, perhaps. A 
people's revolution, toppling the bourgeoisie.<<

"... even after its initial appearance in the 
public domain in the 2nd century [Mahayana] 
appears to have remained an extremely limited 
minority movement – if it remained at all - that 
attracted absolutely no documented public or 
popular support for at least two more centuries. 
It is again a demonstrable fact that anything 
even approaching popular support for the Mahayana 
cannot be documented until 4th/5th century AD, 
and even then the support is overwhelmingly 
monastic, not lay donors ... although was - as we 
know from Chinese translations - a large and 
early Mahayana literature there was no early, 
organized, independent, publicly supported 
movement that it could have belonged to."

-- G. Schopen "The Inscription on the Ku.san image of Amitabha and the
character of the early Mahayana in India." JIABS 10, 2 pgs 124-5

People’s revolution? Seems not. That theory of 
the Mahayana has been shown to be a more than a bit problematic.

 >>Maybe the continuity was interrupted when 
Theravada monastics realized that the Dhamma was 
beginning to become populist, urging them to 
swiftly write the whole thing done and close it.<<

Again, this has nothing to do with the Theravada, 
nor is there any real evidence that the Mahayana, 
a movement that was highly bound by extremely 
complex doctrinal structures, was a populist 
movement. And let us not forget that the earliest 
of the early Mahayana sutra (pre-introduction of 
the ugly term hinayana) the path was for a few good (monastic) men.

 >>One should be careful to generalize from one 
instance ('there's a layman attaining Nibbana, SO 
it is characteristic of the whole of the Theravada teachings')<<

He said, generalizing, using a specific term 
inappropriately as a general term. The attainment 
of ariya status was evident in both the suttas 
and in the commentaries. That the majority of the 
suttas focuses on monastics is not surprising, 
but it is also not surprising to see, for 
example, the commentary to the Satipatthana 
Suttas gloss “monks” as referring to also the laity.