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The Bodhisattva Path - (From Sutra Study at TBH)
Introduction
This is the first of a series of five seminars on the bodhisattva path. I feel I need to start by explaining why so much attention has been devoted in the first seminar to the factors which led, sometime between the 1st cent. BCE, and the 1st cent. CE, to a change in how the bodhisattva path was viewed. Up to that point it had primarily a descriptive sense as enumerating the deeds of the Buddha in his past lives. After that point it acquired a prescriptive sense amongst a growing number of Buddhists as open to all and as supplanting the previous path towards arhatship.
I was myself unclear why I felt it so important to look at the historical background to this change. After some soul searching, I realised that I myself had been greatly moved, while a resident at Plum Village, by the approach taken by Thich Nhat Hanh, who emphasised the great compassion of those generations of Buddhists in India who strove to bring out the Buddha’s deep meaning. I realised that my unconscious motivation had been to convey some of the admiration and faith I had experienced in the continuity of compassionate concern for others which had characterised the development of Buddhist teaching in India. I also hoped that by exploring the factors which led to the change in how the bodhisattva path was viewed the underlying reason for that change would help to illuminate its significance, as well as the relationship of the bodhisattva path to the rest of the Buddha’s teaching.
As a result of taking this approach I have had to rely as much on academic sources as on Buddhist sources. Later, in looking at the outline of the path itself, I will be relying primarily on Gampopa’s ‘Jewel Ornament of Liberation’ a 12th cent. compendium, outlining the Indian Mahayana tradition which has acted as the basic text of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism on the bodhisattva path since the inception of that school.
My exploration of the academic sources has turned up some unexpected findings: that the Buddha’s own approach to teaching was not what I had thought, that the synthesis that was his teaching carried within it the seeds of its later development, that that development was almost constant from the time of the Buddha onwards, and that the Mahayana was a further stage in the same general direction of travel, rather than a dramatic disjunctive with what had gone before. What I will be attempting to demonstrate is that the view of the bodhisattva path, with its innumerable Buddhas and bodhisattvas, which sees it as an alien intrusion into a previously uncomplicated early Buddhism misunderstands the nature of early Buddhism.
In choosing this approach of seeing the bodhisattva path in terms of its historical development I also wish to counter the tendency for it to be reified as a timeless sacred truth, as a wrong reading of much of the Mahayana textural material could easily do. Even if the Path is the highest of conditioned dharmas it is still conditioned. So before going on I would like to ground the discussion in actual bodhisattva behaviour, using a concrete example that has been much on my mind. It was only through the activity of preparing for these seminars that I became aware of the parallels between their subject mater and their original inception. When Dharmavidya asked me to do them, his confidence in me gave me the confidence to agree. In other words, I was carried by his confidence through the whole process of agreeing and preparing for them. In this way he was instrumental in creating spiritually beneficial conditions for us all here tonight. There is something about how this was done which points to a very fundamental quality of bodhisattva activity. This is something I intend to come back to later in the series. I will conclude with a quote, which I feel is particularly relevant. It is taken from the s¢iksa samuccaya, by s¢antideva.
"The bodhisattva gives himself amongst all creatures by aiding all roots of good, regarding all creatures in their roots of good."[1]
The Indian Heritage
In this section I want to show how early Buddhism was a complex synthesis of the unique insights of the Buddha with elements taken from the common heritage of India.
The Buddha was a s¢ramana, a renunciant, technically ‘one who strives’, who, after his enlightenment, became a teacher of other s¢ramana. To this extent he was unremarkable; he did not, for instance, warrant any mention in the Jaina or Brahmanical material we have from his time. The s¢ramana tradition is believed to be a few centuries old by the time of the Buddha, and there were many s¢ramana teachers expounding different teachings. They generally share the same aim of renouncing the householder’s life to seek release from the rounds of rebirth. Even the model of an organised monastic sangha was a common feature which may have predated the Buddha.
As to the Buddha’s teachings, although there is a large corpus of teachings that are highly original centred around causation, Gethin [2] says that we cannot be certain how much the Buddha was indebted to earlier tradition. Even the earliest strata of the Nikayas "may already represent a quite developed synthesis of early Indian Yogic tradition". We know that the Buddha learned the Jhanas from his own teachers and Gethin says much of the mythic aspects of Buddhism are common to other traditions; such as the concept of a universal monarch and the cosmology, both of which Buddhism adapted. Rebirth and karma were also common teachings, which Buddhism adapted. Buddhism’s openness to other teachings may therefore go back to its origins in the Buddha himself.
The impression that is gained is that the Buddha had a central insight into the nature of things through which he was able to see existing tradition in a new way. A striking example of this tendency to invest pre-existing tradition with new meaning is provided by the example of Indra’s Pole, the name of the sacrificial post to which animals were tethered in the Brahmanical rituals. This was incorporated into Buddhist ritual by being placed in the centre of the earliest Buddhist temples. We can only surmise its new significance, perhaps as representing the sacrifice of self.
The Buddha’s standard approach to those who were new to his teaching sheds further light on how more and less specifically Buddhist teachings were combined. Lance Cousins [3] has referred to a passage which occurs about twenty times in the Pali Canon.
"Then the Lord gave a step by step discourse as follows: discourse on giving, discourse on precepts, discourse on the heaven worlds: he made known the danger, the inferior nature and the tendency to defilement of sense desire and sense objects and the advantage of being without them.
When the lord knew that the heart of the listener was fit, open, free from hindrances, happy and at ease, he revealed the elevated dhamma, teachings of the Buddhas, suffering, arising, ceasing, path."
Cousins identifies different levels in this standard teaching format.
1. The step by step discourse divided also into two parts. 1st giving, precepts and heavens, 2nd the defects of sensuality and positive gains in freedom from it.
2. The particular teachings of a Buddha i.e. the Four Noble Truths.
Cousins says the step by step discourse does not contain anything specifically Buddhist. It was the common ground of ancient Indian religion. For those interested in spiritual practice it would be highly inspiring and lead to a transformed state of mind. Only in such a state is the hearer ready for the more profound elevated teachings, usually known as the Four Noble Truths.
Cousins also suggests a fluidity for lay followers between their Buddhist affiliation and traditional folk religion/Brahmanic practices.
"It is an error to think of a pure Buddhism that has become syncretistically mixed with other religions. Such a pure Buddhism has never existed. Buddhism has always coexisted with other religious beliefs and practices. It has not usually sought to involve itself in every sphere of human ritual activity, since many such things are not considered conducive to the path. Its strength perhaps lies in this very incompleteness. [These other practises, such as contacting local gods,] may be practised if desired so long as the main aim is not lost. [As far as the main goal, liberation, is concerned they] are irrelevant. [4]
The picture we gain of early Buddhism is of openness to the earlier Indian Yogic tradition, and to the mythology and cosmology associated with Brahmanism. These can be seen both as integrated elements in the teachings and in terms of a tolerance of alternative religious practices on the part of lay adherents. For later generations of Buddhist monastics, who had no personal experience of the historic Buddha, the dominant concern which underlay the constant process of development was how to understand the unique aspects of his legacy. This can be traced in three broad areas of development.
1. The expansion of the oral tradition of Jataka tales and the related later elevation of the Buddha to reflect the enormity of his spiritual maturity. This takes its most pronounced form in a text called the Mahavastu, belonging to the Lokattaravada a sub-school of the Mahasanghikas. This text includes many Jataka tales but also presents the Buddha as fully transcendent, appearing in the world already perfected and only feigning mistakes such as his asceticism as a teaching for other’s benefit.
2. Tensions around the relative status of an arhat as opposed to a Buddha. This issue underlay the first split in the Sangha, when the Mahasanghikas, who downgraded the status of the arhat, split off. [it should be noted that in both these developments the process of separating the Buddha from the limited career and goal of the traditional s¢ramana can be seen at work].
3. The development of the Abhidharma. At the time of the First Council shortly after the Buddha’s parinirvana the Abhidharma is thought to have consisted solely of a series of headings to be worked on further. This process of systematising the Buddha’s teachings threw up thorny issues due to its originality such as; how is continuity over time possible in the absence of an agent, what is the exact relation of the Buddha’s teachings regarded as absolute truth to those regarded as conventionally true etc. With the Buddha no longer available to decide these issues more splits followed usually over points in the Abhidharma, and different schools therefore developed different Abhidharmas. The Sautrantikas are of interest because they appealed directly to the sutras, rejecting the whole Abhidharma project of the Sarvastivada. They nevertheless came up with a system which included something similar to the alaya-vijnana, or 8th consciousness, of later Mahayana thought.
In conclusion, we could say that the Buddha had to present his teaching in the idiom of his time. Perhaps we could say that it would not have been possible for the Buddha to have presented the radical and subtle insights central to his teaching without synthesising these with the religious tradition of his day. This could point to the underlying meaning of Brahma and Indra’s role in bringing the teachings out after the Buddha was initially at a loss as to how they could be communicated. Later Buddhists were not in this situation. Buddhism was by then well established with its own mass lay following. What was needed in this new context was a more coherent system that was less reliant on the inheritance of the s¢ramana and Brahmanical heritage.
The Mahayana
For this section I am going to quote directly from Cousins
"The development outlined so far is the heritage of all schools of Buddhism, but it was from this milieu that a new kind of Buddhism was to emerge and develop in a new direction. At first it was simply a convergence of existing tendencies. Although some scholars have seen the new direction, usually referred to the Mahayana, as a highly radical departure, this is clearly wrong. It is only true, if at all, of later fully developed Mahayana Buddhism. The early mahayana literature developed over a period of centuries and did not at first differ greatly from the forms of Buddhism that already existed. Since existing institutional forms were not altered by the early Mahayana, both the Sangha and its lay supporters continued to function in much the same way as before. Most of such changes as occurred came much later and as part of general trends affecting the whole of Indian Buddhism. Down to the twelfth century, at least, the great centres of Mahayana Buddhism tended to be centres for the schools adhering to the older traditions. Given Buddhism’s rather pragmatic orientation, it should not surprise us that many monks seem to have studied or practised both.
Indeed, as late as the fifth cent. C. E., the Chinese pilgrim Fa-hsien did not distinguish an exclusive Mahayana. Throughout India he describes either monasteries with monks studying only the older form of Buddhism, or those where monks studied both the old and the new. Only in the capital city of Pataliputra [modern Patna] did he find entirely separate colleges for the two, built by the king.
What, then, did the new departure involve? Three main tendencies can be identified: the full adoption of the heroic ideal; a new cosmology related to visualisation practices; and a new philosophical expression based on the experience of emptiness in insight meditation.
The heroic ideal of the bodhisattva path was not new. What was new was the claim, explicit or implicit, that this should be adopted by all. Immediate personal enlightenment (arahatship) was now to be seen as an inferior goal. Greater stress was laid on altruistic action based upon ‘skilful means’ and compassion. This too was not new, but was now emphasised more than ever before.
The background world picture of early Buddhism was that of Indian religion in general but modified to fit the Buddhist meditational ‘map’. [5]
Perhaps it would be useful here to follow the link Cousins gives at this point to material on the correspondence between heaven worlds and states of minds, as this kind of parallelism between psychology and cosmology is fundamental to Indian Buddhist thought. It may also be of particular interest in Pureland Buddhism as indicating the world view of those early practitioners i.e. the state of mind that is faithfully focused on Amitabha paralleling what it must be like to experience his pureland. Professor Cousins outlines the following classical presentation. In it there are twenty one heavenly realms and these would be the background to the Buddha’s teachings on the heavens in the ‘step by step’ presentation.
1. Six Deva realms characterised by enjoyment, corresponding to kus¢ ala [skilful or wholesome] states of mind, attained through the development of dana and s¢ ila. These are the lowest of the heavenly realms.
2. Ten Brahma heavens presided over by an overlord of a universe, each corresponding to the state of mind of the different levels of Jhana, attained though the development of s¢amatha meditation.
3. Five Pure Abodes inhabited by Brahmas of great spiritual attainments, corresponding to transcendent states of mind, attained through the development of s¢amatha and vipas¢yana meditasion. [6]
Returning to Cousins’ presentation.
Meditation practices included recollection of the qualities of the Buddha and various kinds of visualisation exercises. The Mahayana took these earlier cosmological and meditational elements and combined them in a new way. The final result was much more specifically Buddhist in form. Such earlier Indian deities as Brahma and Indra were overshadowed by new figures – Buddhas and spiritually advanced bodhisattvas. Their names and much of their nature derive from earlier devotional responses to the Buddha. They could and did become much more closely associated [than Brahma and Indra could] with the most spiritual and uniquely Buddhist teachings.
The philosophy of emptiness developed from earlier insight meditation and related abhidhamma thought. The main aim of both is to dissolve rigid views (ditthi) and bring about a fresher perception of the world. Apparent entities such as the mind are merely changing collections of evanescent events… Abhidamma developed detailed analyses of this ever-changing world. The main aim was to break down the apparent unity of things and to free the mind from rigidity.
The Mahayanists felt that these analyses had themselves created a prison similar to the old one: the constituent parts were being taken as fixed entities, and this was just as entrapping as older notions of soul or spirit. They emphasised the complete emptiness of all phenomena including all parts. Nothing has real existence in that nothing exists independently and nothing which comes into being has any permanence….it is this very non-fixity which makes liberation possible. Indeed, liberation is precisely the recognition of this emptiness. It is not an escape to somewhere else: rather it is a transformed understanding of this world itself. [7]
To digress from Cousins again. I think it is important to stress that this was also not new. The Mahayanists were probably referring back to teachings in the Agamas. [It should be added that all the versions of the Agamas and Nikayas of the different schools show a remarkable agreement so it is possible to cross-refer to the Pali Nikayas.] As well as drawing on the deeper meaning of dependent arising (pratitya-samutpada) they may well have been drawing on the many instances in the sutras of reference to Nirvana as: where solidity, liquidity, heat and motion, i.e. the four elements, do not pertain. Peter Harvey has drawn attention to a series of sutras in the Nissaya-vagga of the Anguttara Nikaya which clarified this further. At Anguttara V. 318-19
Ananda asks the Buddha:
"May it be, venerable sir, that a monk’s acquiring of concentration is of such a sort that: in solidity he is not cognisant of solidity (pa.thaviya.m pa.thavi-sanni) in chesion he is not cognisant of cohesion, in heat… in motion…; in the sphere of infinite space he is not cognisant of it, in the sphere of infinite consciousness…, in the sphere of nothingness…, the sphere of neither cognition-nor-non-cognition…; in this world he is not cognisant of it, in the world beyond…; in whatever is seen, heard, sensed, discerned, attained, sought after, thought round by the mind, he is not cognisant of them – and yet he is cognisant (sanni)?"
To this the Buddha replies that there is such a meditative concentration, in which a monk is cognisant that:
"This is the peaceful, this is the excellent, that is to say the calming of all constructing activities, the casting out of all possessiveness, the destruction of craving, non attachment, stopping (nirodho), Nirvana."
Here Nirvana is perceived not by looking away from the items of the world, such as solidity, but by looking ‘through’ them, so to speak. Even when applying the mind to various items, they are not perceived, as such: in solidity no solidity is recognised. Solidity is perceived, as it were, as empty of ‘solidity’: sanna – ‘cognition’ or ‘interpretation’, that which classifies or labels experience – does not latch onto the perceptual ‘sign’ (nimitta) as a basis for seeing solidity as solidity.
In a parallel passage at Anguttara Nikaya V. 324-6, the Buddha describes a monk who ‘meditates in such a way that his meditation is not dependent on any of the phenomena listed at A. V. 318-19, and yet he does meditate, seeing that, ‘in solidity, the cognition of solidity is vibhuta’. Now ‘Vibhuta’ can mean ‘made clear, or ‘destroyed’, again suggesting that an insight arises which renders solidity ‘transparent’, so to speak. [8]
Returning to Cousins, he refers to the three as main tendencies apparent in the Mahayana as a dynamic balance and says:
These three tendencies arise from different aspects of the earlier tradition, in which they were part of a dynamic whole; in the Mahayana, too, they are skilfully interconnected. The heroic ideal of the bodhisattva path begins with the undertaking of a resolve to attain buddhahood. The commitment required in such a resolve is seen as an act of great spiritual and karmic potency productive of enormous results. Hence the realms of wondrous paradises and awe-inspiring spiritual beings to be visualised. Conversely, such wondrous results can only reinforce the desirability of the bodhisattva path. To follow that path it is necessary to develop the perfections, last and greatest of which is the perfection of wisdom. That perfection of wisdom is nothing other than the realisation of emptiness.
Between the emotionally attractive realm of vision and the inspiring but detached knowledge of emptiness is a necessary complementarity. Each is needed to balance the other. Without devotion and visionary experience emptiness is cold and dry. Without perfect wisdom such marvellous visions can only entrap. In this way the Mahayana sought to preserve the balanced synthesis so characteristic of the Buddhist spiritual path from its beginning. [9]
[1] s¢iksa samuccaya, trans. C. Bendall, W.H.D. Rowse, Motilal Banarsiddass, page 24
[2] Gethin, R. 2001, The Buddhist Path of Awakening, page 12-13
[3] Cousins L., 1997, in A New Handbook of Living Religions, ed. J. R. Hinnells,
Chapter 8: Buddhism, page 293-294
[4] Ibid. page 372
[5] Ibid. page 385-386
[6] Ibid. page 397
[7] Ibid page 386-387
[8] Peter Harvey, University of Sunderland, MA Buddhist Studies Program, BUDMO1
Buddhist Traditions, Unit 11 The third Ennobling Truth: Nirvana page 8
[9] Cousins L., 1997, page 287
This is the first of a series of five seminars on the bodhisattva path. I feel I need to start by explaining why so much attention has been devoted in the first seminar to the factors which led, sometime between the 1st cent. BCE, and the 1st cent. CE, to a change in how the bodhisattva path was viewed. Up to that point it had primarily a descriptive sense as enumerating the deeds of the Buddha in his past lives. After that point it acquired a prescriptive sense amongst a growing number of Buddhists as open to all and as supplanting the previous path towards arhatship.
I was myself unclear why I felt it so important to look at the historical background to this change. After some soul searching, I realised that I myself had been greatly moved, while a resident at Plum Village, by the approach taken by Thich Nhat Hanh, who emphasised the great compassion of those generations of Buddhists in India who strove to bring out the Buddha’s deep meaning. I realised that my unconscious motivation had been to convey some of the admiration and faith I had experienced in the continuity of compassionate concern for others which had characterised the development of Buddhist teaching in India. I also hoped that by exploring the factors which led to the change in how the bodhisattva path was viewed the underlying reason for that change would help to illuminate its significance, as well as the relationship of the bodhisattva path to the rest of the Buddha’s teaching.
As a result of taking this approach I have had to rely as much on academic sources as on Buddhist sources. Later, in looking at the outline of the path itself, I will be relying primarily on Gampopa’s ‘Jewel Ornament of Liberation’ a 12th cent. compendium, outlining the Indian Mahayana tradition which has acted as the basic text of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism on the bodhisattva path since the inception of that school.
My exploration of the academic sources has turned up some unexpected findings: that the Buddha’s own approach to teaching was not what I had thought, that the synthesis that was his teaching carried within it the seeds of its later development, that that development was almost constant from the time of the Buddha onwards, and that the Mahayana was a further stage in the same general direction of travel, rather than a dramatic disjunctive with what had gone before. What I will be attempting to demonstrate is that the view of the bodhisattva path, with its innumerable Buddhas and bodhisattvas, which sees it as an alien intrusion into a previously uncomplicated early Buddhism misunderstands the nature of early Buddhism.
In choosing this approach of seeing the bodhisattva path in terms of its historical development I also wish to counter the tendency for it to be reified as a timeless sacred truth, as a wrong reading of much of the Mahayana textural material could easily do. Even if the Path is the highest of conditioned dharmas it is still conditioned. So before going on I would like to ground the discussion in actual bodhisattva behaviour, using a concrete example that has been much on my mind. It was only through the activity of preparing for these seminars that I became aware of the parallels between their subject mater and their original inception. When Dharmavidya asked me to do them, his confidence in me gave me the confidence to agree. In other words, I was carried by his confidence through the whole process of agreeing and preparing for them. In this way he was instrumental in creating spiritually beneficial conditions for us all here tonight. There is something about how this was done which points to a very fundamental quality of bodhisattva activity. This is something I intend to come back to later in the series. I will conclude with a quote, which I feel is particularly relevant. It is taken from the s¢iksa samuccaya, by s¢antideva.
"The bodhisattva gives himself amongst all creatures by aiding all roots of good, regarding all creatures in their roots of good."[1]
The Indian Heritage
In this section I want to show how early Buddhism was a complex synthesis of the unique insights of the Buddha with elements taken from the common heritage of India.
The Buddha was a s¢ramana, a renunciant, technically ‘one who strives’, who, after his enlightenment, became a teacher of other s¢ramana. To this extent he was unremarkable; he did not, for instance, warrant any mention in the Jaina or Brahmanical material we have from his time. The s¢ramana tradition is believed to be a few centuries old by the time of the Buddha, and there were many s¢ramana teachers expounding different teachings. They generally share the same aim of renouncing the householder’s life to seek release from the rounds of rebirth. Even the model of an organised monastic sangha was a common feature which may have predated the Buddha.
As to the Buddha’s teachings, although there is a large corpus of teachings that are highly original centred around causation, Gethin [2] says that we cannot be certain how much the Buddha was indebted to earlier tradition. Even the earliest strata of the Nikayas "may already represent a quite developed synthesis of early Indian Yogic tradition". We know that the Buddha learned the Jhanas from his own teachers and Gethin says much of the mythic aspects of Buddhism are common to other traditions; such as the concept of a universal monarch and the cosmology, both of which Buddhism adapted. Rebirth and karma were also common teachings, which Buddhism adapted. Buddhism’s openness to other teachings may therefore go back to its origins in the Buddha himself.
The impression that is gained is that the Buddha had a central insight into the nature of things through which he was able to see existing tradition in a new way. A striking example of this tendency to invest pre-existing tradition with new meaning is provided by the example of Indra’s Pole, the name of the sacrificial post to which animals were tethered in the Brahmanical rituals. This was incorporated into Buddhist ritual by being placed in the centre of the earliest Buddhist temples. We can only surmise its new significance, perhaps as representing the sacrifice of self.
The Buddha’s standard approach to those who were new to his teaching sheds further light on how more and less specifically Buddhist teachings were combined. Lance Cousins [3] has referred to a passage which occurs about twenty times in the Pali Canon.
"Then the Lord gave a step by step discourse as follows: discourse on giving, discourse on precepts, discourse on the heaven worlds: he made known the danger, the inferior nature and the tendency to defilement of sense desire and sense objects and the advantage of being without them.
When the lord knew that the heart of the listener was fit, open, free from hindrances, happy and at ease, he revealed the elevated dhamma, teachings of the Buddhas, suffering, arising, ceasing, path."
Cousins identifies different levels in this standard teaching format.
1. The step by step discourse divided also into two parts. 1st giving, precepts and heavens, 2nd the defects of sensuality and positive gains in freedom from it.
2. The particular teachings of a Buddha i.e. the Four Noble Truths.
Cousins says the step by step discourse does not contain anything specifically Buddhist. It was the common ground of ancient Indian religion. For those interested in spiritual practice it would be highly inspiring and lead to a transformed state of mind. Only in such a state is the hearer ready for the more profound elevated teachings, usually known as the Four Noble Truths.
Cousins also suggests a fluidity for lay followers between their Buddhist affiliation and traditional folk religion/Brahmanic practices.
"It is an error to think of a pure Buddhism that has become syncretistically mixed with other religions. Such a pure Buddhism has never existed. Buddhism has always coexisted with other religious beliefs and practices. It has not usually sought to involve itself in every sphere of human ritual activity, since many such things are not considered conducive to the path. Its strength perhaps lies in this very incompleteness. [These other practises, such as contacting local gods,] may be practised if desired so long as the main aim is not lost. [As far as the main goal, liberation, is concerned they] are irrelevant. [4]
The picture we gain of early Buddhism is of openness to the earlier Indian Yogic tradition, and to the mythology and cosmology associated with Brahmanism. These can be seen both as integrated elements in the teachings and in terms of a tolerance of alternative religious practices on the part of lay adherents. For later generations of Buddhist monastics, who had no personal experience of the historic Buddha, the dominant concern which underlay the constant process of development was how to understand the unique aspects of his legacy. This can be traced in three broad areas of development.
1. The expansion of the oral tradition of Jataka tales and the related later elevation of the Buddha to reflect the enormity of his spiritual maturity. This takes its most pronounced form in a text called the Mahavastu, belonging to the Lokattaravada a sub-school of the Mahasanghikas. This text includes many Jataka tales but also presents the Buddha as fully transcendent, appearing in the world already perfected and only feigning mistakes such as his asceticism as a teaching for other’s benefit.
2. Tensions around the relative status of an arhat as opposed to a Buddha. This issue underlay the first split in the Sangha, when the Mahasanghikas, who downgraded the status of the arhat, split off. [it should be noted that in both these developments the process of separating the Buddha from the limited career and goal of the traditional s¢ramana can be seen at work].
3. The development of the Abhidharma. At the time of the First Council shortly after the Buddha’s parinirvana the Abhidharma is thought to have consisted solely of a series of headings to be worked on further. This process of systematising the Buddha’s teachings threw up thorny issues due to its originality such as; how is continuity over time possible in the absence of an agent, what is the exact relation of the Buddha’s teachings regarded as absolute truth to those regarded as conventionally true etc. With the Buddha no longer available to decide these issues more splits followed usually over points in the Abhidharma, and different schools therefore developed different Abhidharmas. The Sautrantikas are of interest because they appealed directly to the sutras, rejecting the whole Abhidharma project of the Sarvastivada. They nevertheless came up with a system which included something similar to the alaya-vijnana, or 8th consciousness, of later Mahayana thought.
In conclusion, we could say that the Buddha had to present his teaching in the idiom of his time. Perhaps we could say that it would not have been possible for the Buddha to have presented the radical and subtle insights central to his teaching without synthesising these with the religious tradition of his day. This could point to the underlying meaning of Brahma and Indra’s role in bringing the teachings out after the Buddha was initially at a loss as to how they could be communicated. Later Buddhists were not in this situation. Buddhism was by then well established with its own mass lay following. What was needed in this new context was a more coherent system that was less reliant on the inheritance of the s¢ramana and Brahmanical heritage.
The Mahayana
For this section I am going to quote directly from Cousins
"The development outlined so far is the heritage of all schools of Buddhism, but it was from this milieu that a new kind of Buddhism was to emerge and develop in a new direction. At first it was simply a convergence of existing tendencies. Although some scholars have seen the new direction, usually referred to the Mahayana, as a highly radical departure, this is clearly wrong. It is only true, if at all, of later fully developed Mahayana Buddhism. The early mahayana literature developed over a period of centuries and did not at first differ greatly from the forms of Buddhism that already existed. Since existing institutional forms were not altered by the early Mahayana, both the Sangha and its lay supporters continued to function in much the same way as before. Most of such changes as occurred came much later and as part of general trends affecting the whole of Indian Buddhism. Down to the twelfth century, at least, the great centres of Mahayana Buddhism tended to be centres for the schools adhering to the older traditions. Given Buddhism’s rather pragmatic orientation, it should not surprise us that many monks seem to have studied or practised both.
Indeed, as late as the fifth cent. C. E., the Chinese pilgrim Fa-hsien did not distinguish an exclusive Mahayana. Throughout India he describes either monasteries with monks studying only the older form of Buddhism, or those where monks studied both the old and the new. Only in the capital city of Pataliputra [modern Patna] did he find entirely separate colleges for the two, built by the king.
What, then, did the new departure involve? Three main tendencies can be identified: the full adoption of the heroic ideal; a new cosmology related to visualisation practices; and a new philosophical expression based on the experience of emptiness in insight meditation.
The heroic ideal of the bodhisattva path was not new. What was new was the claim, explicit or implicit, that this should be adopted by all. Immediate personal enlightenment (arahatship) was now to be seen as an inferior goal. Greater stress was laid on altruistic action based upon ‘skilful means’ and compassion. This too was not new, but was now emphasised more than ever before.
The background world picture of early Buddhism was that of Indian religion in general but modified to fit the Buddhist meditational ‘map’. [5]
Perhaps it would be useful here to follow the link Cousins gives at this point to material on the correspondence between heaven worlds and states of minds, as this kind of parallelism between psychology and cosmology is fundamental to Indian Buddhist thought. It may also be of particular interest in Pureland Buddhism as indicating the world view of those early practitioners i.e. the state of mind that is faithfully focused on Amitabha paralleling what it must be like to experience his pureland. Professor Cousins outlines the following classical presentation. In it there are twenty one heavenly realms and these would be the background to the Buddha’s teachings on the heavens in the ‘step by step’ presentation.
1. Six Deva realms characterised by enjoyment, corresponding to kus¢ ala [skilful or wholesome] states of mind, attained through the development of dana and s¢ ila. These are the lowest of the heavenly realms.
2. Ten Brahma heavens presided over by an overlord of a universe, each corresponding to the state of mind of the different levels of Jhana, attained though the development of s¢amatha meditation.
3. Five Pure Abodes inhabited by Brahmas of great spiritual attainments, corresponding to transcendent states of mind, attained through the development of s¢amatha and vipas¢yana meditasion. [6]
Returning to Cousins’ presentation.
Meditation practices included recollection of the qualities of the Buddha and various kinds of visualisation exercises. The Mahayana took these earlier cosmological and meditational elements and combined them in a new way. The final result was much more specifically Buddhist in form. Such earlier Indian deities as Brahma and Indra were overshadowed by new figures – Buddhas and spiritually advanced bodhisattvas. Their names and much of their nature derive from earlier devotional responses to the Buddha. They could and did become much more closely associated [than Brahma and Indra could] with the most spiritual and uniquely Buddhist teachings.
The philosophy of emptiness developed from earlier insight meditation and related abhidhamma thought. The main aim of both is to dissolve rigid views (ditthi) and bring about a fresher perception of the world. Apparent entities such as the mind are merely changing collections of evanescent events… Abhidamma developed detailed analyses of this ever-changing world. The main aim was to break down the apparent unity of things and to free the mind from rigidity.
The Mahayanists felt that these analyses had themselves created a prison similar to the old one: the constituent parts were being taken as fixed entities, and this was just as entrapping as older notions of soul or spirit. They emphasised the complete emptiness of all phenomena including all parts. Nothing has real existence in that nothing exists independently and nothing which comes into being has any permanence….it is this very non-fixity which makes liberation possible. Indeed, liberation is precisely the recognition of this emptiness. It is not an escape to somewhere else: rather it is a transformed understanding of this world itself. [7]
To digress from Cousins again. I think it is important to stress that this was also not new. The Mahayanists were probably referring back to teachings in the Agamas. [It should be added that all the versions of the Agamas and Nikayas of the different schools show a remarkable agreement so it is possible to cross-refer to the Pali Nikayas.] As well as drawing on the deeper meaning of dependent arising (pratitya-samutpada) they may well have been drawing on the many instances in the sutras of reference to Nirvana as: where solidity, liquidity, heat and motion, i.e. the four elements, do not pertain. Peter Harvey has drawn attention to a series of sutras in the Nissaya-vagga of the Anguttara Nikaya which clarified this further. At Anguttara V. 318-19
Ananda asks the Buddha:
"May it be, venerable sir, that a monk’s acquiring of concentration is of such a sort that: in solidity he is not cognisant of solidity (pa.thaviya.m pa.thavi-sanni) in chesion he is not cognisant of cohesion, in heat… in motion…; in the sphere of infinite space he is not cognisant of it, in the sphere of infinite consciousness…, in the sphere of nothingness…, the sphere of neither cognition-nor-non-cognition…; in this world he is not cognisant of it, in the world beyond…; in whatever is seen, heard, sensed, discerned, attained, sought after, thought round by the mind, he is not cognisant of them – and yet he is cognisant (sanni)?"
To this the Buddha replies that there is such a meditative concentration, in which a monk is cognisant that:
"This is the peaceful, this is the excellent, that is to say the calming of all constructing activities, the casting out of all possessiveness, the destruction of craving, non attachment, stopping (nirodho), Nirvana."
Here Nirvana is perceived not by looking away from the items of the world, such as solidity, but by looking ‘through’ them, so to speak. Even when applying the mind to various items, they are not perceived, as such: in solidity no solidity is recognised. Solidity is perceived, as it were, as empty of ‘solidity’: sanna – ‘cognition’ or ‘interpretation’, that which classifies or labels experience – does not latch onto the perceptual ‘sign’ (nimitta) as a basis for seeing solidity as solidity.
In a parallel passage at Anguttara Nikaya V. 324-6, the Buddha describes a monk who ‘meditates in such a way that his meditation is not dependent on any of the phenomena listed at A. V. 318-19, and yet he does meditate, seeing that, ‘in solidity, the cognition of solidity is vibhuta’. Now ‘Vibhuta’ can mean ‘made clear, or ‘destroyed’, again suggesting that an insight arises which renders solidity ‘transparent’, so to speak. [8]
Returning to Cousins, he refers to the three as main tendencies apparent in the Mahayana as a dynamic balance and says:
These three tendencies arise from different aspects of the earlier tradition, in which they were part of a dynamic whole; in the Mahayana, too, they are skilfully interconnected. The heroic ideal of the bodhisattva path begins with the undertaking of a resolve to attain buddhahood. The commitment required in such a resolve is seen as an act of great spiritual and karmic potency productive of enormous results. Hence the realms of wondrous paradises and awe-inspiring spiritual beings to be visualised. Conversely, such wondrous results can only reinforce the desirability of the bodhisattva path. To follow that path it is necessary to develop the perfections, last and greatest of which is the perfection of wisdom. That perfection of wisdom is nothing other than the realisation of emptiness.
Between the emotionally attractive realm of vision and the inspiring but detached knowledge of emptiness is a necessary complementarity. Each is needed to balance the other. Without devotion and visionary experience emptiness is cold and dry. Without perfect wisdom such marvellous visions can only entrap. In this way the Mahayana sought to preserve the balanced synthesis so characteristic of the Buddhist spiritual path from its beginning. [9]
[1] s¢iksa samuccaya, trans. C. Bendall, W.H.D. Rowse, Motilal Banarsiddass, page 24
[2] Gethin, R. 2001, The Buddhist Path of Awakening, page 12-13
[3] Cousins L., 1997, in A New Handbook of Living Religions, ed. J. R. Hinnells,
Chapter 8: Buddhism, page 293-294
[4] Ibid. page 372
[5] Ibid. page 385-386
[6] Ibid. page 397
[7] Ibid page 386-387
[8] Peter Harvey, University of Sunderland, MA Buddhist Studies Program, BUDMO1
Buddhist Traditions, Unit 11 The third Ennobling Truth: Nirvana page 8
[9] Cousins L., 1997, page 287
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