Early Buddhism: An Article by Bhikkhu Anālayo

Discussion
83

You take no prisoners heh !
Thank you for your thorough answer. May I press further ? You spent a considerable amount of time researching/writing a lot of buddhist areas and thought and produce a lot of high quality content. Is this solely out of a passion for researching this particular field or are you trying to get to the bottom of it all to practice as close as possible to what was the original teaching (if there was any) ? In fewer words, are you a Buddhist scholar or a scholar of Buddhism ?
I ask because if you consider yourself a buddhist I wonder out of all your research which practices ended up fitting your criteria, ticks the most boxes, so that you implemented it ?
I see a potential danger/flaw in your attitude (english is not my native language so just know that “attitude” here carries absolutely no antagonism from me) Indeed, looking for answers and questioning everything takes an awful lot of time and seems like a never ending project. So the risk of staying side-lined increases exponentially as times goes by. Is it something you worry about ?
I think there is probably a reason why the Buddha describe faith as one of the five spiritual powers. Without it, you can’t really make the jump, there is a certain anguish in that. At some point I guess a pinch of blind faith is needed. Either that or you need to come face to face with an enlightened being, displaying mind bending siddhis which would dispels all doubts.

If you’re not interested in Buddhism and are in fact a scholar of Buddhist, then thank you very much for your top notch research !
As of me, as a tibetan translator, i spent a lot of time pondering matters of authenticity, lineage and traditions. After a lot of time spent (wasted?) I decided to give a fair chance to the pali canon and its teaching. I of course saw that there was a lot of competing interpretive apparatus, and ended up choosing the one which (imho) was the closest to what I could read in the Nikaya and was coherent without needing to bend words to account for textual difficulties or apparent contradictions within the suttas. I must say this has been extremely rewarding but I’m still fighting non stop my doubting nature, you’re not helping on this part :wink:

2 Likes
84

Are you able to read Japanese? If so, you may read:

Mizuno Kōgen 水野 弘元 1988: “Zōagonkyō no kenkyū to shuppan 雑阿含経の研究と出版 [Studies and Publications on the Saṃyukta-āgama]”, Bukkyō kenkyū 佛教研究, 17: 1–45.

85

The Buddha in sūtra-aṅga protion of SN/SA does not recommend to all his followers to become bhikṣu for the ending of suffering.

But the SN/SA texts agree that the ending of suffering requires that one knows (jānāti) and sees (passati) things as they really are (yathābhūta). That is, the core teachings of SN/SA suttas.

87

Hi Beth,

Sorry, I don’t know what comment of mine you are referring to. That I suggested neo-sautrantika or neo-suttavada or neo- sutravadin as a possibility for EBT Buddhism? If so, then were you intending me to make a connection between Jacques’ description of neo-advaita as hocus pocus? I am not from either the New Age generation, nor from the neo-New Age generation, but I did get dragged to this crazy prairie hippie winter solstice shin dig once and found myself “rolling oms” to get my dinner, learning iterative art methods that incorporated l’herbe into meditative reflection on digitally generated pattern, and then gracing everyone with a fabulous acoustic version of Sinead O’Connor’s Black Boys on Mopeds at a “passion play,” before I realized that the grande finale of this astounding gathering was a gigantic orgy. At that point, I grabbed my friend and got the heck out of there. That’s about all I can tell you when it comes to newfangled New Age confusions. But thanks for giving me a moment to share.

1 Like
88

All I do is write about ideas. I like some ideas more than others.

Maybe it’s true that I take no prisoners, but I also leave no bodies. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever been killed by reading something I wrote.

My motivations for doing research have changed over the years. It’s not one thing.

But yes, I am a Buddhist. I’m a member of a Buddhist Order with lifelong vows to uphold (not that I’m a shining example to anyone, but vows were made and I’m conscious of them).

Yeah. This “seeing the danger” is an old trope. It used to be that everyone who expressed an opinion about Buddhism would be confronted by someone pointing out “the danger” in that view. It’s less common now, so you are making me nostalgic.

My approach to faith has also changed. If you look at some of my early blog posts, from ca 2005, you will see a naive religious totally in love with Buddhism and striving to express that. I taught myself Pāli and Chinese and had a couple of years of auditing Sanskrit classes. I read many texts and that led me to see the discontinuities and contradictions inherent in Buddhist philosophy. It was learning Sanskrit that led me into Heart Sutra research: there’s no feeling quite like finding a mistake in someone else’s Sanskrit edition and publishing a correction. Thanks to Richard Gombrich for his support in that phase of my life.

At the same time, partly thanks to people like Michael Taft and Kenneth Folk, I began to see that the absence of sensory experience was a real state and that this state was the whole topic of the Prajñāpāramitā. From this followed numerous insights. There are much deeper continuities between Pāli and Prajñāpāramitā than most people realise. The Madhyamaka interpretation of Prajñāpāramitā is misleading and not closely related to the content of Prajñāpāramitā texts. Many living people are/were capable of attaining this state.

I’m a kind of pragmatic realist, so once I got a sense of Buddhism that was not reliant on mysticism (although mysticism remains a popular way of communicating Buddhist insight) I found I had a much deeper sense of faith. Awakening is a real thing that some people attain. There are loads of them walking around.

It’s very kind of you to say. I do my best and hope that one day my work will be more generally known and appreciated. But I have to say that you’re attitude is unusual.

I think doubt in matters of doctrine is essential. But I have no doubt that some living people have attained awakening. Once I got to the latter realisation, the former mattered less to me. As Michael Taft has said: belief is an emotion about an idea. This is one of the most profound encapsulations of Dharma that I know. Belief is relatively unimportant to me.

With the secure knowledge that awakening is a real thing, I can let my doubts have free reign and it doesn’t bother me at all. The most disappointing thing about Buddhism was realising that most Buddhists are extremely conservative and don’t want anything to change.

4 Likes
89

Thomas, this is a view. And it is a modern view, even a modernist view. This was never the view of any Buddhist tradition that I’ve encountered. And I don’t see anyone else jumping in to agree with you. I don’t know of any other scholars who take this view of the canon. So it’s also an idiosyncratic view.

You are more than welcome to your view. However, you write as though I have no option but to agree with your premise. And I definitely do not agree with it.

90

Thank you for this thorough and personal answer !
I can say my current view on buddhism is not really far from yours so I’ll keep reading you and your research with even more pleasure and interest now that I know what you’re trying to elucidate with Prajnaparamita, Pali and Madhyamaka. I hope you’ll gain the recognition you deserve at some point too !
Have a nice day.

1 Like
91

This seems like the crux of @Jayarava 's response to the idea of “Early Buddhism”:

"The focus on Early Buddhism has led to a hypostatisation of the idea. This gives agency to an idea and removes it from Buddhists themselves.

There is no “early Buddhism” apart from what actual Buddhists did and said in that period. Knowledge of this type requires writing. And there was no writing at that time. And of this period we can know little and do know less."

Link.

On a personal note, I find a lot of @Jayarava opinions on these kinds of topics cathartic. I don’t know if we have the same ideas about prajna paramita other than we both hold the writings and ideas therein in high regard, but it does make perfect sense to me that someone who holds them in high regard is more than comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity with very little room left for the conceit of pretending to know something one doesn’t actually know.

And that is what “Early Buddhism” seems to me: the conceit that we do know or even can know - with any kind of certainty - what humans living thousands of years ago - who left no surviving contemporaneous written records - were doing and thinking.

Pretending to this knowledge out of conceit or for fear of the unknown or due to misidentifying what faith is, seems very far from what I would regard as any kind of Buddhism worth practicing.

:pray:

1 Like
92

It has nothing to do with conceit or PP or level of education or intelligence, but only with honesty, openness and a developed awareness of one’s own lack of knowledge and understanding and the presence of doubt - it is all about being able to recognise and accept one’s own delusion. If anything, ambiguity and uncertainty are the perfect breeding ground for mystification, magical thinking and, well, delusion.

The only problem here is that the whole goal of the teaching is to develop and adapt exactly the same way of doing and thinking as those people who lived thousands of years ago. And this is how, and this is the only how, you can know for yourself, and only for yourself, with absolute certainty, what these people were doing and thinking. - See DN28.

93

But what about buddhists, who are inspired with Pāli canon and for one reason or another find mahayana suttas less than inspirational, should call themselves? Theravadan?

But we might not be part of Theravada dogma as it lives today, or like the bhikkhuni split, or any other reason (Theravada is certainly not limited to Pāli). Pālivada?

Ultimately, why do you care if people call themselves Early Buddhists? Does it discredit your faith? Do you feel a chauvinistic attack on your own Buddhism? I’ve read his blog post, and agree partially with European colonialism influences - even so, why do you care? If people think “Early Buddhism” is good enough a fabrication (as is all Dhamma) to distinguish their Pāli sutta inspirations, more power to them.

1 Like
94

I share this sentiment. It goes without speaking that it is not fun to realize that the contemporary traditions are in need of principial reforms, that everybody knows it but nobody is saying it outright, instead everybody is trying to put their fingers on the scale as to nudge the development of culture according to their subjective drives & opinions.

1 Like
95

I don’t really have any qualms with what folks wish to call themselves and myself am heavily inspired by the Pāli canon. EBT is a fine name without the conceits and not everyone who so self-labels has such conceits nor do I wish to suggest otherwise.

I don’t mind at all! It was my understanding that most use the label EBT as a kind of tounge-in-cheek moniker not meant to suggest the disparagement of other Buddhist writings nor as a means to suggest historical authenticity in contrast. For those without these conceits I don’t perceive any problems. :pray:

1 Like
96

Well I think most of us knew it was so obvious the Buddha did not instruct everyone to renounce the lay life it didnt require a response…but yes. My reading of the EBT agree with thomaslaw, it was not the case that the Buddha instructed all his followers that they should leave the lay life. The EBT are full of the Buddha praising this or that layperson and generic advice for laypeople, and various laypeople achieving various stages of enlightenment, including arahatship.

I am fascinated to see this given your previous posts about rebirth and karma. The EBT are full of direct or indirect references to rebirth and karma. It is hard to see how the Buddha dharma sticks together without rebirth and karma and what you consider to be enlightenment (given you say there are many who have reached this state from your experience) without direct knowledge of rebirth and karma???

1 Like
97

…after all if everyone renounced, every renunciate would starve to death for a start :slight_smile:

98

I taught myself Pāli many years ago (from Warder) and I have no great interest in Mahāyāna generally, so I am one of those Buddhists. I wonder why we have to call ourselves anything? What’s wrong in our lives that a label is going to fix? How does being mislabelled cause us any problems at all? Is it anything more than a Shibboleth for people who don’t have a Buddhist teacher but have done an introduction to Pāli class?

There is an existing Buddhist label for people who reject Mahāyāna: Hīnayānist (*hainayānika?). (LOL). Or what about Kumārajīva’s euphemism: Xiǎoshèng rén 小乘人?

Prevention is better than cure. Introducing yet another false narrative of Buddhist history is counterproductive when historians are just beginning to separate fact from fiction. It’s much easier to state a fallacy than to refute one. So it’s better for everyone that novel fallacies go unstated.

I have yet to see anything of any real value emerge from this nava-hainayānika movement. Their interpretation of Pāli is quite pedestrian and still largely concerned with asserting Mahāvihāra orthodoxy.

How could any Buddhist not care about the future of Buddhism?

It was Dōgen, the 13th century Japanese Buddhist, who so famously declared texts to be superfluous. So one might be tempted to ask why do you care?

99

Well, yes, if you read very selectively amongst only the suttas, then any lay person might arrive at this self-serving conclusion. But “full of” such stories? No. That’s simply not the case. The lay follower who can attain arahantship is the exception, not the rule. The vast majority of followers of the Buddha in the traditional stories are bhikkhus and bhikkhunis. Lay followers are certainly catered for, but this is an afterthought.

The Vinaya is also part of early Buddhist literature and it would be weird to exclude it from consideration.

I have long acknowledged these facts:

  1. Traditionally rebirth and karma were central to traditional Buddhist thought.
  2. Rebirth and karma are simply not possible in the world we inhabit.

One cannot resolve a dilemma if one refuses to accept that it exists. And the idea that Iron Age religieux got some things about the world wrong seems hardly worth commenting on. We have learned a thing or two, especially in the last 450 years.

As far as I can tell, cessation, absence, and the other stuff that happens in deep meditation is intrinsically interesting and valuable.

Well, I don’t say that everyone must be a renouncer. I only suggest that it would be inconsistent for those who claim to be an “early Buddhist” on the model of the suttas and not go forth into homelessness.

100

Don’t agree.

But, thats OK, I see better where you are coming from now. I remember you didn’t want to discuss this previously so wont go on here :slight_smile:

Agree.

I think every religious belief, including those extolling atheism with born-again ferocity are wrong…except the Buddha Dharma. The other things ‘hanging on’ to that core Buddha Dharma are wrong, added later or mangled over the centuries, and all we can do is read everything with a critical and analytical eye.

True, but what was said back then was also something we could have learned from and haven’t (or at least have forgotten if we ever learned IMHO). Jivaka, Buddha’s doctor ‘bulk billed’ poor patients 2.5 thousand years before Hawke established it, while advising patients to eat healthily and exercise…at least thats what Wikipedia said when I looked it up a few years ago, haven’t gotten around to reading the scarce original sources yet. Environmentalism, Women’s rights, Democracy, Anti-homophobia, is all there in the early texts.

The Theravadan thesis is that the Buddha was enlightened. It doesnt matter the time, planet, species, the Buddha dhamma is an accurate explanation of how the world works. It isn’t like poetry or physics where we learn more and more and build on the knowledge- the accoutrements of the religion, the cultural stuff, ceremonies etc etc yes absolutely, but not the ‘core’ teaching. That is timeless. I know you and I dont agree on ‘core’…fair enough.

Glad I can end on another Agree!

Not claiming any attainment, but there is no doubt in my personal experience that the Buddha nailed it in his discussion about meditation and what happens up to where I am at least and I look forward to seeing if this confirmation continues as I progress (assuming I do :slight_smile: )

101

Because even Mahayana texts explain in depths how and why they are “later texts” than what Shakyamuni taught, even if our oldest Mahayana texts are older than Pali Canons.

People understand easily when saying “Early Buddhist Texts” to mean Pāli Canon (and probably even excluding Abhidhamma, and commentaries).

It’s a fabrication, one that is semi-useful. EBTs are a fine way to refer to Vinaya/Sutta. And people are probably not going to stop using the term anytime soon.

Regardless, people are going to dig for EBTs just by the nature of semantics, with Mahayana texts introducing alien concepts and direct contradictions to Pāli canon, Pāli canon directly mentioning “Counterfeit Dhamma” will come at some point, these beg the question “So what was Buddha’s original message?”. That’ll always end up in search of “authentic” (highly problematic idea in itself) Buddhavacana.

So far we believe Sutta/Vinaya to be the closest thing that Early Buddhism was based on. If there’s a discovery that challenges this idea, then those texts will be EBT.

102

I’m not sure what gave you that impression. I’ve made my case in Karma and Rebirth Reconsidered. To my knowledge no one has ever responded to that book.

No. This is the mind projection fallacy. You think that they were just like us. They were not. These ideas didn’t exist at the time. You may interpret certain passages in this way, but the authors would not understand you.

Well you are required by your faith to say this. So to me it carries no weight whatever. A belief is a feeling about an idea. I’m certainly not interested in arguing over feelings.

You’ve just told me that you read selectively and that you read seeking confirmation of your beliefs, i.e. that you do not read critically or analytically. Maybe this is why I declined previous discussion?

My point recently is that we have to pay attention to what historians say about doing history.

It’s more than a simple matter of opinion. No two Buddhists agree on what is “core”. No two scholars agree either. “Core” almost always simply means, things that confirm my belief, while “non-core” means anything I don’t believe. So rationalists don’t see Brahmā and Indra as core, and yet there they are in dozens of early suttas, loving preserved across 20 centuries. How are they not core to the Pāli suttas?

It’s not that I’m proposing a different core. I’m saying that it’s impossible to divide the Pāli suttas into core and non-core. The Mahāvihāra already decided what was core in the 5th century and included it all in the Nikāyas. We have little idea what was excluded from the Mahāvihāra canon. But for example, Asoka mentions text titles that cannot be connected to extant Buddhist texts.

Any contribution that ends with an assertion of confirmation bias I take with a grain of salt.

I don’t think we agree on anything of substance. Even where you think you agree with me, you seem not to have understood.

103

I asked why you care and you’ve given me some abstract reasoning about what some texts say and what some other people might do or believe. No reasons to care are included.

Taking you at face value, I can only conclude that you don’t know why you care. Do you want to have another go?