[Buddha-l] Are we sick of dogma yet? (2nd of 2)

[Dan Lusthaus]

> This discussion has gotten pretty esoteric......how about more detail,
> folks?
> Joanna

The basic issues are straightforward, but the implications get complex and
can be far-reaching.

1. Pudgalavadins have been reviled and criticized by the Buddhist schools we
are familiar with (Theravada, Sarvastivadin, Madhyamaka, etc.) for allegedly
holding a view that a pudgala ("person") exists, which is taken by their
opponents to be the idea that there is a self. Since "no-self" is a sine qua
non for being a legitimate Buddhist, the Pudgalavadins are treated as
virtual heretics, holding to a deviant view of self.

2. The majority of the literature concerning Pudgalavadins that has survived
is that of their opponents, which strives to show the fallacies in their
views. Actual Pudgalavadin works by Pudgalavadins themselves seem to have
survived only in some early Chinese translations.

3. Due to the above, scholars and historians have considered them a small,
deviant form of Buddhism, holding some view(s) clearly out of step with the
rest of Buddhism.

4. When the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang traveled to India from 629-645, he
recorded all the monasteries he visited or was informed about, giving how
many clerics lived in each, and their doctrinal affiliation. For India, if
one tabulates the results, there are more Sammitiya monks (Sammitiya is one
of the Pudgalavada schools), throughout India, than all other sects
(Theravada, Mahayana, Vaibhasika, etc.) put together. For instance, Xuanzang
counts over 66,500 Sammitiya clerics in 1351 monasteries. By way of
contrast, for instnace, Sthaviras have 36,800 clerics in 401 monasteries,
and Mahasanghikas have 1,100 clerics in just 24 monasteries. In short,
rather than being a deviant minority sect, they were the majority in most
places.

5. They didn't call themselves "Pudgalavadins" -- that was a label applied
to them by others. The earliest version of Pudgalavada called themselves
Vaatsiiputriiyas -- being named after their founder, Vaatsiiputra ("son of a
heifer"). According to Kuiji, he was a student of Rahula (Buddha's son), who
was a student of "Saariputra, so Vaatsiiputra was transmitting "Saariputra's
version of Buddha's Dharma. Other texts suggest he was not a contemporary of
Buddha, but came a century or two after Buddha. In any case, the
Vatsiputriyas eventually split into four distinct schools:: Sammitiyas
(which appears to have been the largest group), Dharmottariyas,
Bhadrayaniyas, and Sannagarikas. As little as we know with certainty about
the Vatsiputriyas and Sammitiyas, we know even less about the last three
groups. They are basically names, ciphers. The Pudgalavadins had their own
extensive Tripitaka (Sutras, Abhidharma, Vinaya) of which nothing survives.
The proof passages from the Tripitaka that appears in the surviving
"saastras are also found in the Nikayas, so, at least in terms of arguing
with their fellow Buddhists, they followed a commonly recognized Agama.

6. Their influence (and numbers) continued to grow, replacing other sects in
many places, and this continued until Buddhism disappeared from India.

7. While the other Buddhist schools disparaged them for holding to a pudgala
as some sort of substantial self, their own texts (as have survived) insist
from the start that the pudgala is a praj~napti. The Pudgala, they said, is
neither the same nor different from the skandhas (cf. Nagarjuna's
Mula-Madhyamaka-karika ch. 10 on fire and fuel, which owes much to the
Pudgalavadins). Priestley renders prajnapti as "concept"; here is his
(somewhat awkward) translation of Bhavaviveka's version of the Sammitiya
position:

"The pudgala is inexpressible as either the same as the aggregates to be
appropriated or not the same...The possessor of the appropriation of what is
to be appropriated is a CONCEPT." (Priestley, p. 53)

In other words, the pudgala that appropriates the skandha-upadanas
(aggregates of appropriation) is a prajnapti.

[As an aside, when mentioning the Dazhidulun -- the Prajnaparamita
commentary in Chinese attributed to Nagarjuna -- Priestley writes: "It has
been traditionally ascribed to Nagarjuna... but it seems clear that it is in
fact a later Madhyamika work, written probably in the early fourth century."
(p. 50) If, as he claims, it is a Madhyamakan work, it represents a form of
Madhyamaka not generally familiar to us apart from this text.]

8. The import for how we think about Buddhism today is, briefly, the forms
of Buddhism that have survived and have been transmitted to the West (aside
from Theravada), are transplants brought to various places outside India by
missionaries. While there is some evidence that Sammitiyas had small
communities in Java and elsewhere outside India, they basically dominated
the Indian scene for many centuries, while missionaries belonging to OTHER
Buddhist sects -- i.e., actual minorities -- are the ones who planted the
forms that we receive today as authoritative (Tibetan Buddhism, Chinese
Buddhism, etc.). Outside India, these minorities became majorities. We might
even wonder exactly which sort of Indian Buddhists became missionaries? Why
did they go abroad, rather than some other sect? How representative of the
actual Indian scene are (a) our imagined history of Buddhism in India, with
the imagined prominence of non-heterodox, non-pudgalavadin schools, and (b)
our sense of what constituted the acceptable Buddhist doctrine embraced by
the majority of clerics and laypeople in India?

9. The reasons the Pudgalavadins give for why this prajnapti is useful and
necessary, are exactly the issues that Siderits and Hayes are raising, re:
keeping Buddhist thought coherent, maintaining a reasonable and effective
karmic theory, ethics, etc.

10. My opinion is that the Pudgalavadins posed a major institutional and
doctrinal challenge to the other schools, who, in responding to them,
devised many of the doctrines that we have come to associate with Buddhism
(I mentioned upaya previously, but there are more, and Nagarjuna's debt to
them has long been recognized. The intermediate state between lives -- the
Tibetan bardos -- are another; the reincarnation doctrine underlying the
Dalai Lama system, tulkus, etc., i.e., rebirth of "personalities". are still
another. Yogacara's three nature theory is another. There are others.)

Dan Lusthaus