I don’t think you truly can, but many claim they do.
You asked Thomas, but just to provide my own answer; the Buddha setup a fourfold assembly of monks, nuns, laymen, laywomen. Progress can be made as a layperson and the Suttas record that several made progress including up to at least anagami.
If there are followers of EBT / early Buddhism and some alive today who call themselves followers of EBT / early Buddhism, wouldn’t that mean that there is a living form of Buddhism based off of EBTs? Would you be saying they are following a “dead” tradition? Should they be excommunicated? If that was to be done, who would do it? As far as I know, there is no Buddhist version of the Vatican or a Buddhist pope.
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I could, and I will, but it will take some time. When I read the 4 Nikayas the first time (still working through the Khuddaka Nikaya) I took some notes, but not particularly what was “core” and what was not. TBH that seemed so obvious to me I didn’t find that interesting, but reading this Discourse forum I see that is not something that will reach consensus.
I am going to read the 4 Nikayas again (what I call the “EBT”), and take detailed notes as I havent found a clear analysis of what is core and what is not, but that will take years. I plan to record what parts of the “EBT” are about 4NT, 8-fold path, Nexus of Conditioned Origination, Karma, Rebirth, Women vs. men, Sexuality, meditative instructions, and everything else.
Pending that I would say
- That there are repeated references in the EBT to the Buddha admonishing different people (Brahmins, Bhikkhus/Bhikkhunis, laypeople, including royalty…and possibly non-people, Id have to refresh my memory) that it is not by birth that one’s quality is determined and then there are scant phrases that are disrespectful to women (e.g., only a single brief line that states that all Buddha’s are male). To me that is an inconsistency. There is no plausible explanation for that from my reading of the rest of the EBTs. Also, one of the things that amazed me about the EBT compared to my reading of other religions, is the Buddhism wasnt particularly about humans…it explains the entire universe and the existence or non-existence of human beings doesnt change any of the core teachings of how the Buddha explains the universe.
- The few records of the Wheel Turning Monarch doesnt fit with the rest of the teachings as far as I am concerned. I have asked a scholar bhikkhu about this and he thought there were other things he felt were added later but didnt have a problem with the Wheel Turning Monarch stuff, but it makes no sense to me and isnt consistent with our understanding of Evolution. However, I have no problem with it as an allegorical poetic description of the universe…I just have a problem with taking in literally. The rest of the EBT, even the bits I used to think were poetic, turned out to be literal when you investigate (e.g., the duration of the universe and the lifespans of deva realms and Rohitassa’s speed turning out to be the speed of light when you extrapolate the EBT!!))
There are others, including much in the book of numbered lists, that don’t seem to fit with the Buddha’s clear statement that he didn’t say everything he knew as he wanted to focus on just the things that would assist his followers to reach Nibbana…I cant see how some of those lists have anything to do with anything
What has all of this to do with the title? “Early Buddhism” in B. Analayo’s essay is the first 200 years, before the texts which were a few hundred years later, in written form. I think you can be a follower of the Early Buddhist Texts, without necessarily blindly accepting everything written there as gospel truth as the Buddha asked us to think for ourselves and check anything was consistent with his “core teachings” (yes that is a subjective decision what is and isnt core, but thats fine with me)
Sources for absences are difficult. The best way to make the point is if you go and find one of the videos showing how Brahmin children memorise the Veda (incorporating hand and head movements). You will quickly see that nothing like this occurs in any Buddhist milieu.
As I have noted the heuristic appears to be: if you can read it literally, it’s history; if you can’t read it literally, don’t read it at all.
One problem is that if you open the Nikāyas on any random page there’s a much better than even chance of encountering supernatural beings. If majority rules then Brahmā and Indra are real gods, Yakkhas and Nāgas abound, etc. So as a rule of thumb this seem to fail to produce objective knowledge.
And even so, this doesn’t address the issue of when written texts are witnesses. The guideline is that a text reflects the time in which is was written down. Although Mahāvihāra myth says Pāli was written down ca 20 BCE, this myth itself is first attested in the 5th century CE (at least 400 years after the fact).
So, according to the norms of historical research, what we find in these texts reflect beliefs of people in the 5th century, some 800-900 years after the events they purport to narrate. They are no doubt based on older traditions, but we don’t know those traditions because they were not written down.
I’m not talking in terms of chances that you might be right. That game doesn’t interest me because all such guesses tend to be self-serving: people choose the guesses that best fit their presuppositions (or which best justify their unfortunate life-choices). Rather let me float an alternative scenario that I think deserves to be taken seriously.
There’s quite good evidence that jhānas were not required for liberation. For example, the Cūḷasuññata Sutta (MN 121) describes a complete meditative path which does not include jhāna at all and which aims at suññatavihāra (in Chinese and Sanskrit translation this became śūnyatā samādhi). On this basis, Huifeng, Anālayo, and I have independently suggested that this is exactly the kind of thing being talked about in the early Prajñāpāramitā texts. This in turn suggests that far from being a breakaway movement, Prajñāpāramitā was a conservative group of meditators not caught up in the Abhidharma hoopla. Moreover, as Anālayo has pointed out, the Buddha seems to learn exactly this approach to meditation from Alāra and Ramaputta (in for example the Ariyapariyesanā Sutta).
And this is as good a candidate for “original Buddhism” as any. The oldest Prajñāpāramitā manuscript is carbon-14 dated to the late 1st century CE (with some widish error bars). The oldest Pāli manuscript is dated on palaeography and stratification (of the archaeological site) to the 5th century CE. So maybe Prajñāpāramitā is the original Buddhism. This is every bit as good as your conjecture and better supported in terms of physical evidence.
So now that we have two viable theories, on what objective criteria will we decide between them?
Now, I am not going here to enter discussion about ladies, only about what you perceive as inconsistency. Definitely it is our actions, which make us noble or immoral and women are included in that general rule.
But statement that for example women cannot be Buddhas doesn’t contradict this rule. By following proper line of action woman can equal Buddha in his liberation of mind, so this is perfectly according what Buddha said and what is general rule.
There is Joubert’s saying: You want to explain everything by the facts that are known to you. But the facts that are not known to you? What do they say?
Even in modern world we recognise that there are differences between sexes, for example you can put it this way: women are too intelligent to spend so much time playing and training chess, that is way they play chess weaker than men.
Also as a member of very advanced culture, you overlook that life is in fact very dangerous thing and possessing physical power is usually connected with authority. As I said, I don’t want to enter discussion, why it is so, but there may be some reasons (unperceived by you) which make it impossible for women to become Buddha. Well, I can give you one obvious reason as to the last Buddha. It is important that Dhamma would spread as much as possible. Now, do you really expect that even if teaching would be exactly the same, people 2500 years ago would listen to woman ascetic?
I don’t say that is the main reason, but that there are many facts unknown to you and so, your judgement cannot be perfect. Of course the same one can say about me, but we aren’t discussing who is right, but that what you perceived as inconsistency, isn’t really such.
Now, perhaps it is due to my intellectual limitations, as far as I am concerned, idea of Universal Monarch fits quite well with other Suttas. We just believe in different things, but it doesn’t shows any substantial inconsistency.
However, you say about our understanding of evolution. Here you are definitely wrong, using we. It is obviously mistaken assumption since I haven’t any understanding of evolution. It is just certain theory and it is inconsistent with Suttas. And so, I don’t believe it.
But perhaps when you talk about “your understanding of evolution” you really don’t express yourself properly and also should use rather word ",“believe” in the same way as I use it believing in Sutts?
It is a great epistemological mistake to take faith for knowledge.
I don’t think Abhidharma adds anything positive and it adds a great deal that is unhelpful and misleading. If nothing else it is part of the decisive move away from buddhavacana. I completely reject abhidharma as traditionally defined.
However you see to redefine “Abhidharma” against the grain of how any Buddhist has traditionally understood the term. Yours is an idiosyncratic modern rationalisation of a belief that has no foundation in any tradition. So much for the authority of tradition!
I don’t mind you attempting to reinvent Buddhism, after all I want to do the same, but one has to keep clear the distinction between what, historically, Buddhism was and is, and how we would like it to be. Our modern ideas are not traditional, clash with tradition, and upset traditionalists. Pretending that we are more traditional is simply not credible.
You have to beware of the mind projection fallacy. You imagine how the past might have been, in such a way as to justify your present beliefs, but in doing so you project your own views into the past. This ends up being a circular argument based on what you want to believe. And you seem quite far down this rabbit hole.
No, it is not.
There have been no Sautrantikas for something like 1000 years.
And what modern authors say that the Suatrantikas believed is largely based on polemics and denunciations written by their enemies. And having studied a few Buddhist polemics, my view is that Buddhists never took the trouble to accurately portray ideas that they were against. They were not beyond using strawman arguments. So the proposition that we have any clear notion of what Sautrantikas believed is itself not very credible.
My question to you (all of you) is this:
Why continue to look to the past for authentic Buddhism?
Why not, for example, follow one of the many awakened teachers who are around these days? Since they have already attained what you only talk about in the abstract?
If you are inspired by the early Buddhist texts, then why not become a bhikkhu? That’s what early Buddhism recommends in the strongest possible terms. That is the most authentic form of being Buddhist according to buddhavacana. If you are asserting the authenticity of these texts, but you are not a bhikkhu, then you are (unconsciously?) rejecting the principle authentic recommendation of those authentic texts. If this were really about being an authentic Buddhist according to ancient Buddhist texts, then you’d all be ordained by now.
I think it’s time you guys had the courage of your convictions. Go forth from the home life into homelessness!
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It explicitly explains Arupajhānās.
Furthermore, a mendicant—ignoring the perception of wilderness and the perception of earth—focuses on the oneness dependent on the perception of the dimension of infinite space.
Furthermore, a mendicant—ignoring the perception of earth and the perception of the dimension of infinite space—focuses on the oneness dependent on the perception of the dimension of infinite consciousness.
Furthermore, a mendicant—ignoring the perception of the dimension of infinite space and the perception of the dimension of infinite consciousness—focuses on the oneness dependent on the perception of the dimension of nothingness.
Furthermore, a mendicant—ignoring the perception of the dimension of infinite consciousness and the perception of the dimension of nothingness—focuses on the oneness dependent on the perception of the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception.
Those four are known as Arupajhānās. You could say “It doesn’t mention Jhānās” but that’s likely understood. It does say that Arupajhānās can be practiced without first immersing in rupajhānās though.
The term arūpajhāna never occurs in the suttas. And it does not occur in MN121.
So when you say “It explicitly explains Arupajhānās” this is certainly not true.
What this sutta “explicitly explains” is an approach to meditation which relies on amanasikāra (inattention [to sensory experience]) and results in “stages” (āyanata) rather than jhānas. The word jhāna is not used at all in MN121. Moreover the practice culminates in suññatavihāra, a term never associated with jhāna meditation.
Arūpajhāna is a Theravāda Abhidhamma term that was made up in to help subsume non-jhāna meditation into the jhāna scheme.
Yeah. It doesn’t say this either.
What you want the text to say is evidently quite different from what it does say.
Interesting that you argue we can’t know what Buddhavacana actually is, and then go on to reject the Abhidhamma as a move away from it. A contradiction, no?
It seems you do not really know what is buddhavacana based on Early Buddhism/EBTs?
I wonder if the word buddhavacana was used slightly factiously in the above quote?
From the context of the above discussion it seems unlikely that there is any consensus on what buddhavacana really is or if it’s possible to know.
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According to Ven. YinShun, the core teachings of Buddha Dharma/Dhamma (in the sense of buddhavacana) based on EBTs (i.e. the four principal Nikāyas/Āgamas) are found in the Sūtra-aṅga protion of SN/SA.
The essential teachings of SN/SA suttas (based on the Sūtra-aṅga protion) are mainly about knowing and seeing the four noble truths/conditioned arising (paṭiccasamuppāda), the notion of anicca, dukkha, anatta (or anicca, dukkha, suñña (empty), anatta), and of the middle way
(cf. Choong Mun-keat, The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism: A Comparative Study Based on the Sūtrāṅga portion of the Pāli Saṃyutta-Nikāya and the Chinese Saṃyuktāgama (Series: Beitrage zur Indologie Band 32; Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2000).
Early Buddhism is still a living tradition based on EBTs, particularly based on the essential teachings of SN/SA suttas.
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This comment seems quite a non-sequitur in the context of this thread.
Ah you got me thinking and I had to do some research with my Brill friends !
First I think there’s one point where we can’t really agree. When dating literature we can’t put epigraphical literature aside and Ashoka’s rock inscriptions dates back as far as 260 ish BCE. The minor rock inscription N°3 does mention 6 specific texts of which 4 were mapped to sutta extent in SN, Sn, AN and MN. So on this point we can confidently say that they were earlier than Prajnaparamita. Do you know if the sutta with mythological contents are indeed to be found throughout in all collections or are they more to be found in DN and MN alone which are collections usually considered as the containing later suttas ?
I totally agree with you on jhana ! People are attached, entranced, and blinded by them, thinking they practice Buddhism. They is no right concentration without Right view first, and I now favours Hillside Hermitage’s approach to jhana. It perfectly fits what’s being taught in the sutta without needing to change the meaning of words found everywhere i.e vitakka vacara, kaya…
Considering your proposition on Prajanaparamita I found it very interesting !! I mean, why not ! Because of what I said above, I would still think the canon is earlier but I don’t see why we should discard the PP texts as we can find its ideas in a nascent forms in the Nikayas ! Only one issue then, if we accept PP as authentic and representing part of the original teaching we might end up having to accept a lot more in its wake. Don’t you think ? How do you draw the line ?
By the way, if you haven’t already, I think you would like very much what’s being taught at Hillside Hermitage (Youtube channel, reddit and website). It basically runs contrary to 99% of what’s being taught as buddhism yet managed to adhere perfectly to the Nikayas. I’m going to stir the pot with your ideas about Prajanaparamita !
Yes. I should not have used buddhavacana in that sentence. A slip of the pen.
That said, the Abhidharma was a relatively late innovation and a decisive move away from existing forms of Buddhist thought and practice.
Sure, because Buddhist legend clearly shows the Buddha starting a lay movement which was characterised by nitpicking arguments over words. LMAO.
Over the years, many intelligent people have played this game of selectively reading the Mahāvihāra canon to discover the core of Buddhism. And they all come to different conclusions. It is more popular these days to point to the “old” parts of the Suttapiṭaka—especially parts of the Suttanipāta for example as representing “early Buddhism”.
For the record, Yinshun is a Chinese bhikṣu. Again, I urge you to follow his excellent example and go forth from the homelife into homelessness, as Buddha of the Mahāvihāra canon recommended to all his followers.
New book to read !
Thank you !
I’ve just finished reading your excellent 2022 article about PP and I thought you would really enjoy reading this :
There are now a lot of research in the different states reached through different religious practices and I think phenomenology and science data might helps us to reconcile a lot of things. For example, experiences in one practice/religion might be explained on totally different grounds from another one yet experientially and physically they might be perfectly similar.
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Most of what people think they know about Asoka comes from the Sri Lankan Vaṃsa literature, curated by the Mahāvihāra. The edicts themselves contain minimal information. Most of it is not corroborated and much of it disagrees with the Vaṃsa accounts.
Asoka’s reign is widely agreed to have started in 268 BCE (based on the names of neighbouring kings whose dates are known). The first rock edicts appeared ca 255-254 BCE (year 11 and 12 of his reign). The last phase of his program, the major pillar edicts were completed in year 26 of his reign, ca 242 CE.
mRE 3 does mention some titles of texts, but it gives no information about the content of them. Moreover, the identity of the named texts with extant Pāli texts is not entirely clear and far less straightforward than you suggest. In the end, all you have are some titles: and from this you extrapolate the existence of the entire Mahāvihāra canon. Sorry, but no, that’s not credible. You don’t even know whether extant texts of the same title are the texts mentioned. Titles were reused.
All that Asoka tells us is that Buddhists referred to half-a-dozen texts ca 254 BCE. And no one disputes this. I certainly do not. I have always made a point of citing Asoka’s edicts as the beginning of history in India. In fact, since I have been doing that a lot lately, I have been reading and thinking about the edicts and what we can learn about Buddhism from them.
And, of course, Roy Norman got there long ago. His chapter on Asoka in A Philological Approach to Buddhism is a good source to consult on why we learn little about Buddhism from Asoka, who is mostly concerned with perceptions of himself and his own ideas about dhamma (Asoka is a politician).
The titles of 6 texts does not make a canon, let alone “the canon”. There is no evidence for the Mahāvihāra canon until the 5th century CE. From fragments in Gāndhāra and the entire Chinese canon, we can be fairly sure that there was no canon of Buddhist texts outside of Sri Lanka. The Chinese had to make their own. So did the Tibetans. The idea that Buddhist texts naturally form a canon, is based on privileging the Mahāvihāra canon. Mahāyāna texts were never canonised in India and indeed they continued to be “composed” over many centuries (which we can tell because multiple translations into Chinese over time attest to it).
We also know that part of the Mahāvihāra hegemony in Sri Lanka involved purging Sri Lankan Buddhism of Mahāyāna and Tantric Buddhist practices. That they might have purged “the canon” is an obvious possibility.
Yes. If not “a lot more”, then at least a range of different stories about the buddhist past. Pluralism is a characteristic of Buddhism from the earliest records down to the present. No two Buddhists have ever agreed on what Buddhism is.
I don’t draw the line. I look at what is available by way of primary sources (as defined by historians) and I work with what there is. Everything that can be dated to a particular time and place is automatically inside the line. That is how evidence-based historical research works. I’m not trying to justify this or that religious article of faith. I’m not trying to align history with scripture. Because that would be disingenuous. Also history is not simply listing things that happened, historians aim to explain what happened in terms of human motivations. This is why historians privilege writing.
Anyway, the thread is about so-called “early Buddhism” a concept for which we have no primary sources. As I said on my blog recently, early Buddhism is an orientalist construct.
Worse, within the last 10-15 years or so, the very idea of “early Buddhism” has been hijacked by European (or colonial) Buddhist Modernists so that some Europeans or colonial guys (overwhelmingly male) can claim to be practising “the most authentic form Buddhism”. Although they don’t actively make the case, the implied comparison is with our oriental Buddhist cousins: oriental Buddhists all seem to practice the wrong kind of Buddhism; not the pure kind, not the original kind, not the white kind. Oriental Buddhists are not sources of authenticity or authority. And this helps explain why authenticity has to come from texts rather than living awakened practitioners. The fact that Sujato and Brahmali were rejected and disowned by their Thai preceptors over the ordination of women only reinforces the narrative that oriental Buddhists are backwards.
This is European imperialism in action, my friends. This narrative of the modern white saviour restoring the original purity of an ancient Indian religion is exactly the kind of thing that Edward Said railed against in 1978. That this narrative is being pushed as orthodoxy in this forum, chills my blood.
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Jacques spoke to this briefly the other day.
I search for ways to describe to others in a secular setting what I’m now specializing in vis-ā-vis Buddhist studies. I mean, I need something to describe something that takes a considerable amount of time in my life at the moment (i.e., pāli study, apart from time spent in meditation, professional consulting, planting flowers, taking walks with my husband, etc.).
So I feel the OP question is a good one, as it opens the door to multiple perspectives depending on whether one’s a monastic (or not), a meditation teacher, an academic, etc. People ask people to call themselves something. I haven’t found a way around this if I’m going to be a functioning member of society.
To date, I’m satisfied with:
I specialize right now in studying pāli, which is the language that the earliest Buddhist texts were written in.
When I am with other lay people who practice Buddhist meditation, I say:
I practice Buddhism and currently specialize in studying pāli…
Occasionally, in whatever setting here in the global north, I will say “I am a practicing Buddhist” which is my way of describing my religious affiliation. It means I am not a professing Christian. It also means I am a dedicated religious practitioner. (Some may also think I’m saying I’m an atheist but that’s not really the case. Of course, some likely think Well, there’s an anti-Christ person and let’s pray for her but that’s another topic not for this forum.)
My goal is always to refine and clarify to reach a common understanding. I figure it can never be more than that. Now, if my livelihood were in academia, I understand the “name-calling” is fraught with repercussions. Alas, I’m not in academia.
To @Jayarava’s point about renunciation and taking on robes, I agree in principle. I read the Suttapiṭaka and don’t see a whole lot that suggests that following that path fully requires anything less than renunciation and taking on robes.
But I do see allowance for lay-person practice and some achievements therein. I am confident that many like-minded lay people concur with this – yes, we realize the limitations of householder life. And no, I don’t think that I’m being deluded in my Buddhist practice by a fascination with pāli study and Buddhist origins. I consider it a window that’s opened and I want to learn from direct sources as a rule, when possible.
(In the same way, I don’t think I’m being deluded by my side-hobby of studying ancient Aramaic as a way of learning more directly about the historical Jesus – or whatever we want to call this presumed spiritual teacher.)
Signed,
A practicing Buddhist who specializes right now in studying pāli (and taking into account all the mis-appropriations throughout the centuries and well, here I am now)
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