[Buddha-l] Monk/nun or lay person, again (or, still)

[L.S. Cousins]

Alex,

Thank you for taking the time to post this.

>     Oh dear. I didn't really want to get into this, but in view of 
>the expressed interest on the part of some other worthies on this 
>list, and in view of the ongoing samadhi of our more prolific 
>contributors, here are some more comments along these lines, dealing 
>with the concept of omniscience in early Buddhist texts, and the 
>development that I see in regard to this idea.
>     What I would claim to be the earliest reference to omniscience 
>in Pali sources comes in the Maha Parinibbana Sutta,

I would see the Mahaaparinibbaana-sutta as a compilation of earlier 
small discourses, mostly mentioning something associated with the 
last period of the Buddha's life. Many of these are still extant in 
e.g. the Anguttara-nikaaya. So I would see the oldest version of this 
passage as being that in the Naalandasutta (S V 158ff.) where a group 
of discourses related to Saariputta is found. The same passage has 
been taken into the Sampasaadaniiya-sutta (D III 98ff.), also found 
now in a slightly expanded Sanskrit version. It will be the location 
in Naalandaa which has led to this discourse being included in the 
Mahaaparinibbaana.

>  where Sariputta praises the Buddha by comparing him favorably to 
>the other teachers of the day, saying that the Buddha's insight and 
>attainment are much more wonderful, etc. Buddha responds to this in 
>a way that I would characterize as idiosyncratic, asking Sariputta 
>what his basis is for such exalted praise. Has he, Sariputta, in 
>fact studied with these other teachers, duplicated their attainment, 
>and thus making this comparison on the basis of his own direct 
>experience? Well of course Sariputta has done no such thing, and 
>this is why the Buddha is critical of his encomiums (encomia?), 
>because Sariputta is speaking beyond his experience, a tendency 
>which the Buddha regards as bound to lead to trouble of one sort or 
>another.

This interpretation is quite widespread. I remember meeting it in the 
1960s in an Indian government film on the life of the Buddha. I would 
see it, however, as a typical example of a Protestantizing 
interpretation. It looks very plausible if you do not immerse 
yourself sufficiently in the culture and values of the time. I 
suspect it is also quite new. Did anyone before the 19th or 20th 
centuries ever interpret it in this way ?

I would see the point of the sutta as being intended to show the 
nature of dhammanvaya i.e. what follows from a knowledge of dhamma is 
an understanding of the necessary consequences. So Saariputta has 
declared that no fully-awakened one (past, present or future) has 
ever had a deeper higher knowledge as concerns Full Awakening 
(sambodhi) than the Lord. He could equally have said that none of 
them ever had higher knowledge less deep, but that would not have 
been rhetorically as effective.

The Buddha then questions him to set the scene for Saariputta to have 
the last word. He does so with the simile of the strongly-fortified 
royal city that has only one entrance. The keeper of that entrance is 
intelligent and has carefully investigated the fortifications. He 
knows that there is no way for even a small animal to get in through 
them. Any creature of significant size must enter by the gateway. 
Similarly, Saariputta has understood the dhammanvaya. (In Sanskrit: 
dharmaparyaayo  me vidita<.h>.) He knows that all who come to 
awakening do so by abandoning the five hindrances and developing the 
seven factors of awakening with their minds well grounded/established 
in the four grounds for/ establishings of mindfulness.

The Naalandasutta concludes with a paragraph in which Saariputta's 
words are approved by the Buddha. This is not found in the 
Mahaaparinibbaana-sutta, but it is found in the 
Sampasaadaniiya-sutta, albeit at the very end of that discourse. So 
either (as I believe) the Naalandaasutta is the source and the 
complete discourse (including the last paragraph) precedes the 
Sampasaadaniiya-sutta or the short Naalandaa-sutta is an extract from 
the Sampasaadaniiya-sutta.

I omit the other interesting passages for now.

>     References for all this stuff are in the article I wrote a while 
>back, "Buddhist Omniscience" in The Eastern Buddhist, Vol. XXIV, No. 
>1, Spring 1991, pp. 28-51. Maybe now you can see why I didn't want 
>to get into it.

Thanks for the reference. The Eastern Buddhist is not widely 
available in UK libraries and I don't think I have seen it previously.

>     And just to make more use of this virtual soapbox while I'm 
>occupying it, here's a quote I found from that wonderful Buddhist 
>Maxim Gorky:
>A belief which is based on force of habit is one of the saddest and 
>most harmful phenomena of our time – as in the shade of a stone wall 
>everything new grows slowly, becoming stunted, lacking the sap of 
>life.   Maxim Gorky, My Apprenticeship, first published 1915

My turn on the soapbox:

And even scepticism can become a belief based on force of habit.

Lance Cousins