[Buddha-l] Back to the core values?

[L.S. Cousins]

Joy,

>What is your idea about theories like these ones that one reads here 
>and there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinoceros_Sutra

The Rhinoceros Horn Sutta is part of the Apadaana in Pali as well as 
the Suttanipaata, and also part of the Mahaavastu as well as being 
found in Gaandhaarii.

If you think the fact of it depicting a more solitary kind of ascetic 
life is evidence of it being early, then it would be early. But you 
cannot then use it as evidence that a more solitary and ascetic type 
of practice was the earliest type of Buddhism.

Otherwise, the fact that it has a canonical commentary is not 
evidence that it is specially early. The Kathaavatthu, for example, 
discusses passages from many earlier texts.

In fact, the case is far weaker than for e.g. the Paaraayana or the 
A.t.thakavaggiya. It is not mentioned by Asoka. It is not referred to 
in the Sa.myutta- or Anguttara-nikaayas.

In sum, I don't find this line of thinking at all convincing.

Note that Asoka refers to a text he calls 'the Summary of Vinaya'. 
There is no way of determining whether this is a name for a text we 
know under another name or a completely unknown text. It does seem to 
be evidence that a body of Vinaya literature already existed. 
Likewise, the use of what may be technical Vinaya language in the 
edict Asoka addresses to the Sangha suggests that some form of Vinaya 
is well-developed by this time.

>What was really new in the idea of a Buddhist Sangha to which people 
>"converted"? As has been mentioned, most Bhikkhus were already 
>"Bhikkhus". Couldn't the first conversions have simply been the 
>decision to travel together (congregate)? In that sens the Sangha 
>(the fact to be together) is indeed central to the development and 
>survival of the thusly constituted group. But was there anything 
>else to its centrality (in early early Buddhism)? I can easily see 
>how it becomes central as soon as a lay community constitutes itself 
>around a community of Bhikkus, for whom the service and support of 
>the community becomes central as a practice. Am I missing anythin 
>here?

But surely a lay community of some sort must have existed from the 
moment the Buddha began teaching a group. Otherwise what could they 
eat ?

But the Sangha as we know it must be a development of the Buddha's 
later life, when he had a significant following. Of course, it 
certainly had predecessors.

Lance Cousins