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

[Joy Vriens]

Lance wrote:
>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. 

 I take your point. 
 
>2. The notion that only the Buddha's teaching enables access to the 
>final stages of the path. 
 
>>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,

I have no problem with this point.

> while the claim that only 
>the Buddha taught the four establishings of mindfulness may well have 
>been correct at the time. 

I am wary of claims to exclusivity (proselytism?) in and by Buddhist schools. Not that I necessarily doubt the fact that something is exclusive to a specific school, but rather what surprises me is the fact that the claim is made itself, or that the need to make the claim is felt. Apart from that, there may be many ways to achieve jhana, transe, but I can't believe that the basic principle of mindfulness/focussing/autogenous training (whether it is called withdrawal of the external senses or disengagement from mental processes etc.) wasn't known and practised before the time of the Buddha. So what was new about the four establishings of mindfulness the Buddha taught? Were all four of them taught by the Buddha alone, some of them, was it the specific combination of these four etc.? 
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