[Buddha-l] Back to the core values?

[Christopher Fynn]

Bob Zeuschner wrote:

> ... I certainly would like to go back to what I 
> imagine early Buddhism was like ... and my image is probably an 
> erroneous image.

As an entity, early Buddhism was clearly in large part an order of monks. The 
monastic rules are nearly identical in every version of the Buddhist canon we 
have. Unless you gloss over this fact, it's pretty hard to imagine any kind of 
Buddhism that is anything like a return to "what early Buddhism was like" which 
doesn't have an ordained monastic sangha, trying to follow these rules at it's 
heart.

In the past Buddhism hasn't survived for long in many places without an ordained 
sangha. But it is pretty hard to see a monastic sangha at the heart of any of 
the adaptations or de-evolutions of Buddhism being proposed for the west.

(I guess you could have some "adaptation" of this as in the FWB - but that 
particular group has never inspired me at all.)

I don't know whether or not any thing of the kind will ever take root in the 
west, but I do wonder about the long term viability of any Buddhism without
some kind of sangha which has sufficient support to devote most of it's
time to study and practice of dharma.

- Chris

> I guess what I want is to go back to how early Buddhism SHOULD have been 
> ... in my eyes.
> Bob