[Buddha-l] Monk/nun or lay person

[Stephen Hodge]

Bruce Burrill wrote:

> Damdifino which text first used "garbage vehicle," but it is one of the 
> very first.
But if it was the first, this might say something about the social context 
of the small group of people who compiled it. (See below also)

> Nattier makes the point that the very earliest Mahayana bodhisattva texts 
> did not use that word.
True.  You might have a look at Joseph Walser stimulating recent book 
"Nagarjuna in Context" (Colombia 2005) for some ideas about how (and why) 
the early Mahayanists operated.

> I don't think there was any exaggeration on my part given that I made no 
> claim as to how often it was used.
Did I say you had ??   I was just making the general point that the supposed 
depth of LS hostility to those it describes as Hinayanists seems a bit 
exaggerated.  Other parts of it seem to exhort quite conciliatory and 
non-confrontational attitudes.

>>even if the LS people introduced the word, do we know enough about the 
>>social context to say how they actually intended the word to be taken ?
> It seems fairly obvious that it was directed at those who did not accept 
> the teachings of the LS, as we see with use of an idiom for trash 
> referring to the monks who got up and left when the LS Buddha was going to 
> speak on emptiness.
You miss my point.  I wondered what the social context was.  I'm asking you 
to do a  bit of thinking.  Why might they have used the term ?  Who were 
they writing for ?  Who were their specific targets ?  Initially the 
proponents of the LS would have comprised a very small handful of people --  
perhaps even based at just one or two viharas.    And do you, for example, 
think there is any historical basis to the accounts in the LS and certain 
other Mahayana sutras of Mahayanists being physically attacked, beaten up 
and even killed by other monks ?  Might incidents such as these affected 
their rhetoric ?

> meant as a put-down of those who did not accept the Mahayana? Was this a 
> word directed at other Mahayanists, though that seems unlikely?
Probably not, but curiously the LS group also seems to have been in conflict 
with other Mahayana groups and is critical of them too.

> A fairly late text, even in the early stratum, if we are to believe the 
> Japanese scholars, which I am inclined to do.
Actually, taking the MPNS group as a whole, the texts can be dated fairly 
precisely on the basis of specific internal evidence.  They were largely 
compiled during the reign of Gautamiputra Shatakarni (106-130CE) and shortly 
afterwards -- probably between 120CE and 180CE at the latest -- in the west 
of the Shatavahana kingdom. Not what I would call "fairly late" -- would you 
also say that Nagarjuna was fairly late ?   We have Dr Masahiro Shimoda, the 
acknowledged Japanese authority on the MPNS, here at present and his dating 
largely coincides with mine.

> As for the possibility of non-monastics that's nice, but that hardly 
> changes the issue that the Mahayana was primarily a monastic endeavor.
Yes, for good reason.  Read Walser.  One could rephrase your statement to 
say that the only Mahayana we know about was primarily a monastic affair. 
There are hints that there were other Mahayana groups, but they have not 
left substantial literary or artistic traces.  Going back to the LS, there 
are also hints there that its earliest proponents were not vihara-based 
either -- read the Dharmakathika chapter carefully.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge