[Buddha-l] A question for Jewish Buddhists

[Dan Lusthaus]

Lance,

> They may be, but some are also largely largely constructions based upon
> careless and unhistorical reading of the sources.

History is in the eye of the imagination. Nothing in the "record" stands as
indisputable history. We have to apply reasonable methods to speculate
wisely on historical probabilities, but given the nature of the materials,
it would be hard to go beyond strong probabilities to any certainties.


> If you have read about it, can you give references, please ? I have not.

Wish I could. It was so long ago I have no idea where I read it; just filed
it away as another one of those peculiar "facts." Again, if there are any
Theravadin monks reading this, perhaps they can shed some light.

> I think eggs are a special case.

How so?

> And a lot of effort goes on in a certain type of scholarship to
> desanitize i.e. to invent things which aren't actually in the sources.

Sure enough. That's not my game, however.

> > It wasn't pork, it was a mushroom,
> > goes one alibi.
>
> Utter rubbish. Neither you nor anyone else has any idea what the
> expression sūkaramaddava means. That's precisely why the ancient sources
> give a number of possibilities. It could be pork. It could equally be
> something that was a delicacy for pigs. Or, a fungus. Or something else.

And there is a parallel debate in modern sources as to whether the symptoms
Buddha displayed after eating the mystery meal were or were not consistent
with trichonosis. For some reason, some people seem very uncomfortable with
the idea that Buddha may have died from some bad pork. Not very elegant, I
guess. Despite those attempts at denial, pork seems to be the reasonable
choice, consistent with the facts as recounted in the texts.

> Scholarly fantasy. If you read the text carefully, there is nothing
> there to indicate that.

Well, I have read the texts, and I think they do suggest that. Without going
into a long discussion of the "evidence," what it boils down to is this, I
think. The canon clearly went through redactions. When sifting through
redactional strata, there are the elements one would expect a redactor to
add, such as things that idealize or smooth over uncomfortable elements. On
the other hand, when something incongruous with a redactor's agenda appear,
which, in fact, have little reason to be there, except that something of the
sort must have happened, then it is unlikely someone at a later point
interpolated it, but that, for some reason of preservation, it remained in
the record. Buddha's bad meal is such a story. That some effort was made
redactionally to minimize the meal as causal (blaming Ananda instead, etc.)
indicates that while the story could not be dispensed with entirely, since
it happened, it had to be recontextualized, since this was not a respectable
death for a Buddha. In other words, precisely because it is an incongruous
story, I would see it as more probable as an actual historic occurrence than
probably most of the other events recorded about Buddha's final days.

Perhaps there is some myth or local legend it draws from that we no longer
know anything about (and the commentaries and other Indian literature don't
disclose anything of the sort of which I am aware), in which case it could
be a redactional rather than historical element. But that is not probable,
given what we (don't) know.

> Old age is suffering. So you will get your turn, young feller-me-lad.

Bones are already creaking, but then I'm not a Buddha who supposedly can
extend my life if my dumb cousin would just put in the request.

> I don't believe there was any such increasing difficulty, except for the
> tiny minority of Mahāyānists.

Here I can't agree. Early Buddhism seemed to (ambivalently) advocate facing
impermanence (= death) without denial, without transcendental promises of an
eternity to come. Buddhist pretty quickly fall off that wagon, and Mahayana
does so with a vengeance. That's one of the ironies of Buddhist history.
Buddhists often make bad Buddhists.

> It is clear that there was great interest in the precise process of
> enlightenment and over such issues as  whether there are exceptional
> cases where an arahat or stream-enterer can fall back. Debates on such
> questions are quite old. But stories that try to relate this to the
> failings of individuals are only attested from many centuries later and
> have no historical reliability.

I didn't specify a century. It certainly heated up within a century or two
of Buddha's time (and the one's of his time, including some involving him,
or Ananda, etc., are presented as false accusations against innocents; even
so, the vinaya suggests Ananda may have been a little too close to the
womenfolk, which can imply many things [feminists today see him as being
punished for being a sympathizer to their cause, but there are other ways to
understand his predicament and the displeasure of the other sangha
leaders]) -- but the controversies on Arhats were focused on matters
practical and basic, not just theoretical speculations about how many arhats
you can fit on the usnisa of a pin. The language is harsh and dismissive -- 
wanting to distance themselves from scandalous Arhats, and, when looked at
clearly, basically come down to a few opposing positions: 1. Those who
wanted to maintain the sanctity of Arhathood; 2. Those who wanted to
redefine Arhats in a way that lowered expectations, increasing the distance
between an Arhat's condition and the condition of a Buddha (arhathood only
means x, not Buddha's PQR); 3. Those who felt the whole institution of
arhathood was a sham, and wanted nothing more to do with it. Theravada
tended toward the first position, tempered by a bit of the second. Many of
the other schools tended toward the second mixed with the third. The third
position eventually is embraced by Mahayana.

Dan