[Buddha-l] Back to the core values?

[Joy Vriens]

Lance,

>>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. 

I find this hard to believe. As often, I haven't studied any direct sources :-) but if something isn't pragmatic, it needs a good explanation. Buddhism was still a fairly young movement. Its best and perhaps only representatives at that time must have been monastics. Why would one send out anyone else than a professional Buddhist to promote Buddhism elsewhere? How can those envoys have been anything else than missions conferred to monastics?
 
>>  >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. 

I may have the wrong idea, but I see them as traveling alone or in small groups. I don't know whether they had a personal close relationship to the laity, but when practicing mendicity there must have been contacts. I see it a bit as the laws of hospitality, one receives and helps anyone, even those one doesn't have a close relationship with and especially if they are religious practitioners and your religion or customs encourage you to be generous towards them. Since they travel from village to village in a relatively small area, one may of course end up recognising some, becoming familiar with others and even establish close relations with others again. But this is not the only possibility.   
 
>>  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. 

Even in the legend he had to start from scratch. The legend may have laid his charisma and successes on a bit thicker though.
 
>>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. 

Again I think so for pragmatic reasons. Think of a group of bhikkus traveling from place top place, from hamlet to hamlet. It's easier to travel and to find food in small groups. It is cute to believe in a very charismatic person, the Buddha, to whom everybody wants to be close to and everybody wants to travel with. But how could that work in practice? I understand that the legends like to mention the many followers the Buddha had for obvious reasons, but at the same time that must have created some practical problems. Multiplication of loafs and breads and fish is a nice deus ex machina, but that's in the legends of another religion that did give some thought to practicality.  
 
>>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. 

I will quote him below. He was talking about the general Indian climat. Note that his point is about individual sanyasins. Imagine what it must have felt like to see a whole gang of them appear at the entrance of your village. I don't think the people must have distinguished between religious sects. For them they all simply were sanyasins begging for food. 

"2° Milieu magique. 
L'Inde ancienne considérait souvent le péché comme une impureté d'ordre physique, une matière qui se colle à l'âme, un fluide qui se communique par contact, une maladie qu'on prend sans le savoir. Donc le péché peut être lavé par le bain ou « cuit » par la pénitence'. Les actes sacrificiels agissent mécaniquement et par leur vertu propre. La pénitence confère des pouvoirs surnaturels. La malédiction des ascètes fait tomber des pluies de cendres; le mendiant jeûne « contre le village » où il n'a pas été accueilli, et la force de son jeûne attire sur les avares les pires catastrophes (2). 
Le Bouddhisme nettoie ce « magisme ». etc.

(2). Notes bouddhiques, dans Bulletin de l'Académie de Belgique 7 mars 1921. 
 
Joy