[Buddha-l] Back to the core values?

[L.S. Cousins]

Joy,

>Yet at the same time isn't it Asoka who sends the bhikkus to all 
>corners of the world (known by then) on a mission? How did he 
>conceive that mission, individual monks or monks in very small 
>groups?

This is from much later sources. From his inscriptions he sent out 
envoys. He may well have supported monastic missions as well, but 
many scholars do not accept this.

>  >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 ?
>
>The same as all the other sanyasins, bhikkus, avadhutas etc.

So they all had a close relationship to the laity.

>  In the Buddha's legend the Buddha himself started almost on his own.

He studied under teachers - we don't know what kind of following they 
had. Also he was apparently leading the group of five as their 
teacher before his Awakening.

>Why would that change after his awakening? I don't believe the 
>stories about groups of 500 monks and more traveling through small 
>villages and hamlets begging for food for practical reasons. It 
>would have been a terrible drain on the people.

500 simply means 'a large number'. In fact, in such cases it must 
mean that exact numbers were not remembered.

>Although de Vallee poussin does mentions Buddhist monks (I believe, 
>if memory serves me right, it may have been "fakirs") fasting 
>*against* villages (in Gandhi style) in order to blackmail them.

I am not sure what this refers to.

>  Once viharas were built there may have been larger communities, but 
>I expect that in the very beginning the groups were very small, if 
>there were any. They may simply have agreed to meet up in specific 
>places for their fortnight practices.

I think the uposatha practices were only introduced later. But if the 
tradition is correct, some of the early converts already had a large 
following. In any case, it is obviously possible that by the time the 
Buddha had been teaching for ten years he had a very large following. 
That has been the case for plenty of other teachers in history.

Lance