[Buddha-l] Re: there he goes again (sam harris)

[L.S. Cousins]

Joy,

There are two different issues here.

1. The claim that the four establishings of mindfulness are the 'only 
way' based on mistranslating this particular passage.

I don't at the moment find any support for that anywhere. I suppose 
it would be surprising if no-one in the history of Buddhism ever made 
such a claim, but it certainly is not normal in ancient literature.

2. The notion that only the Buddha's teaching enables access to the 
final stages of the path.

There is plenty of evidence for this - the four ascetics are not 
found outside and so on. It is not clear whether this is something 
taught by the Buddha or something which arose later. This certainly 
does not mean that one could not follow some other path and change to 
this one at the last stage. There are many obvious examples.

>  >Nor does tradition so interpret it. The Mahaaniddesa says that 
>>ekaayano maggo is a name for: the four establishings of mindfulness, 
>>the four right efforts, the four bases of iddhi, the five faculties, 
>>the five powers, sevenfold awakening and the eightfold path.
>>
>>Later commentaries by Buddhaghosa and others add various other 
>>interpretations such as the path which one treads alone or the path 
>>taught by the Buddha alone. Rather conspicuous is the absence of any 
>>idea that this is the only way.
>
>Yes. But a notion of exclusivity is still present. One could offer 
>the hyptohesis that the Buddha was preoccupied with proving that his 
>was the only way, whereas at Buddhaghosa's time, when the Buddha's 
>authority was well established, it was generally assumed among those 
>reading Buddhaghosa that the Buddha's was indeed the only way, and 
>that the more important question was what exactly was the Buddha's 
>way.

I don't understand why you say this. Treading the path alone simply 
means that no-one else can do it for you, while the claim that only 
the Buddha taught the four establishings of mindfulness may well have 
been correct at the time.

Lance Cousins