Historical Evidence for the Buddha

As @Gabriel already mentioned, this topic has been derailed. Let’s please get back to historical evidence for the Buddha!

:pray:

7 Likes

@Kensho That’s not exactly correct though. Whether to read texts literally or not depends on the context of each text, so there are things that must be read literally, some aren’t.

Piya Tan actually has an article about celestial Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in Mahayana Buddhism, and how they are not in conformity with the early texts, perhaps you should read that as well.

I’m not some kind of Anti-Mahayana/Vajrayana Buddhisms (I was actually a Mahayana Buddhist myself), it’s just that the claim of the historical Budda teaching Mahayana/Vajrayana Buddhims is simply incorrect. Studies of the Mahayana/Vajrayana texts’ vocabularies, structures, narratives, etc are among many of the best evidence in proving that the historical Buddha didn’t teach them. Thus they can’t be used as evidence for the existence of the historical Buddha.

If Mahayana/Vajrayana teachings (texts) are really good, you don’t need the “stamp” of the historical Buddha to lend authenticity to them. Let those texts speak for themselves. Have confidence in the Mahayana/Vajrayana Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Don’t let the fact that the historical Buddha didn’t teach those texts cast doubt on you. In fact, if they were indeed taught by Buddhas and Bodhisattvas that appear in Mahayana/Vajrayana Buddhisms, then claiming that the historical Buddha taught them instead of the actual teachers (Mahayana/Vajrayana Buddhas and Bodhisattvas) does them a great disservice in my opinion.


@Coemgenu Haha, when I said in one of my previous posts not to use Wikipedia as a source for specific Buddhist studies like Early Buddhism and the formation of Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhims, I really mean it.

If it’s Early Buddhism, I study Venerable Analayo’s and Venerable Sujato’s researches.
If it’s Mahayana Buddhism, I study Seishi Karashima’s.
If it’s Gandharan Buddhist Manuscripts, I study Richard Salomon’s and Mark Allon’s.
If it’s Gandhari Dharmapada, I study John Brough’s and Timothy Lenz’s


@Timothy Sorry for derailing, but I believe that my posts are still within the topic since I discussed the history of the early Buddhist texts, which are one of the evidence for the historical Buddha, and Mahayana/Vajrana Buddhist texts, which on the other hand, are not.

Remember you can split of a related topic into a new thread and make a link with it.

The ‘curating’ of threads means that they are easier to search and categorize, as well as easier to keep coherent and targetted.

6 Likes

When it comes to how the Pure Land scriptures should be interpreted, at least from a Jodo Shinshu perspective, I recommend The Essential Shinran by Alfred Bloom:

Shinran Shonin referred to Amida as “Dharmakaya-as-upaya,” making the point that Amida, the Pure Land, and the Nembutsu are a skillful device for Dharma-body to make itself known and complete its work of leading all beings to enlightenment.

Shinran wrote that “the supreme Buddha is formless,” just as Amida “attained Buddhahood in the infinite past,” rather than Amida as a literal flesh and blood Buddha from galaxies away, eons before the Big Bang. Shinran also saw the Pure Land as the realm of Nirvana, not a literal place.

In the words of Shinran’s teacher and master Honen, “One with aberrant views may recite Nembutsu as a person with aberrant views. Each should recite Nembutsu in his own manner. This is because Amida Buddha awakened his all-encompassing essential vow for all sentient beings in the ten directions.” If Amida saves even the one with “aberrant views,” then it doesn’t matter whether or not we believe Amida to be a literal flesh and blood Buddha from ten kalpas ago.

Please also keep in mind that Jodo Shinshu is the largest sect of Buddhism in Japan, as well as one of the oldest and most established forms of Buddhism in the American religious landscape. The Buddha taught 84,000 paths to enlightenment, so your’s will not be the same as mine.

@Kensho I have already derailed enough so I will say the following one last time:

The historical Buddha never taught Mahayana/Vajrayana Buddhisms, so he never taught 84,000 paths to awakening. Overwhelming amounts of studies and evidence clearly prove that. In fact, Mahayana/Vajrayana texts themselves are among such evidence where their vocabularies, narratives, structures, and literary styles can only belong to later periods after the passing of the historical Buddha. They can’t be proved otherwise. Thus, they can’t be used as evidence for his existence.

*Edit: With both @gnlaera’s and @Mat’s helpful posts below, I decided to clarify the number 84,000’s meaning by checking both the main four Chinese Agamas and the Pali Nikayas, and found that the number 84,000 is used metaphorically to refer to things that are multitude in number like leagues (yojana) and people, but even then, whatever context its usage is in, it’s strictly in the realm of the early Buddhist texts; it’s never used to refer to things that are outside Early Buddhism like the Abhidhamma, commentaries, Mahayana/Vajrayana texts, or any group or religion that claims to have connection with this number.

Being practised by a lot of people, being the oldest, most established, and largest sect doesn’t change the fact that the historical Buddha didn’t teach Mahayana/Vajrayana Buddhisms. Whatever Shinran or his teachers think is irrelevant, it clearly contradicts the source texts. No Mahayana/Vajrayana texts refer to extinguishment (Nirvana) like that. As long as “the supreme Buddha” in your context is not the historical Buddha, then that is fine. Otherwise, it will simply contradict the fact the the historical Buddha never taught Mahayana/Vajrayana Buddhisms.

As I said, you don’t need the stamp of the historical Buddha to lend Mahayana/Vajrayana Buddhisms authenticity if they are actually good. It is a great disservice to the Mahayana/Vajrayana Buddhas and Bodhisattvas by claiming that someone else taught Mahayana/Vajrayana Buddhisms instead of them in my opinion.

4 Likes

I think it is worth clarifying that this story of 84,000 paths is a very unfortunate case of Indian whispers in Buddhism. The topics below addressed this subject and I recommend checking them if anyone is interested in having a broader perspective of what it means at least from the perspective of the first textual occurrence of the figure in relation to teachings:

5 Likes

I think this is the correct answer to this number:

with metta

6 Likes

The historical existence of a person who became the Buddha, the Perfected One, the Fully Enlightened One, matters to me. It matters, that he lived, taught, died, as a human being. That he fully extinguished what can be extinguished, and was freed from the cycle of rebirth.

Without him, it’s just Mara and gods and religions without end, isn’t it?

i have found the evidence i have already “seen” persuasive to me. Part of that evidence to me is a coherency and stamp of what seems to be of an Original Teaching and a mind and life that manifested it.

I absolutely respect the original question, however.

7 Likes

My feelings exactly!

:anjal:

6 Likes

I recently worked on another aspect of historical evidence which is to be found in the suttas only: the relationship of the Buddha and the brahmin elite of Kosala.

Pretty consistently certain characters appear in all Nikayas: Pokkharasāti, Todeyya, Jāṇussoṇī, Caṅkī. We can be relatively sure that these are historical figures because they are described as having ranks and official positions (in contrast to many other brahmins who just appear without any mention of their social standing).

The case of Pokkharasāti is particularly interesting: He was living on a property that was given to him by King Pasenadi of Kosala (DN 3). In MN 99 one of his students debates against the Buddha. In DN 13 we hear that he teaches a path to the Brahmaworld (the ‘enlightenment’ before the Buddha). Then in DN 3 he gets converted and becomes a lay follower (in the parallel of DA 20 he apologizes that he cannot show his devotion in public due to his social standing). And finally we have three suttas (MN 95, DN 4, DN 5) which describe him as an eminent lay follower next to King Bimbisāra of Magadha and King Pasenadi of Kosala.

So we have a ‘character development’ that if invented would have been much more in-your-face, in one sutta. But as it is, it’s spread out and somewhat hidden, yet quite consistent.

Another interesting character is Todeyya who must have been quite an old Brahmin compared to the Buddha. In Snp 5 he is one of the brahmin meditation masters visiting the Buddha. In AN 4.187 the Buddha remembers how Todeyya was defending the Buddha’s former teacher Ramaputta - who was dead at the time of the Buddha’s enlightenment (MN 26). And in two suttas the Buddha has discussions even with Todeyya’s son Subha (MN 99, DN 10).

Again, if these would have been merely pseudo-biographical then we would have gotten the details nicely packaged and garnished with a conversion at the end. But we have to scramble the information from several Nikayas which to me at least authenticates the existence of these people and their connection to the Buddha.

18 Likes

I am fascinated by the presence of brahmins and brahmanism throughout the suttas, but particularly by the contrast between the relatively wealthy brahmin priestly elite, who inherit their status through parentage and perform sacrifices for worldly gain, and the renouncing, ascetic brahmin tradition which the Buddha is presented as teaching to be an older and more authentic tradition. The former are treated rather contemptuously, while the latter are generally treated respectfully.

7 Likes

I can recommend two works about the EBT approach to Brahmins:

Joseph Walser. When Did Buddhism Become Anti-Brahmanical? The Case of the Missing Soul.

McGovern. Buddhists, Brahmans, and Buddhist Brahmans: Negotiating Identities in Indian Antiquity (PhD)

The first one is interesting because Walser, among other things, reveals that the Buddha was less likely to teach Brahmins anatta, and more likely to teach them Samadhi. Apart from that we have a few hints here and there that also within the Sangha there was friction between former Brahmins and former non-Brahmins, so that his idea of ‘canons-within-the-canon’ before the time of consolidation doesn’t seem too far fetched.

6 Likes

This is one of the Buddha’s most important quotes on the nature of final Nirvana:

There is an Unborn, Unoriginated, Uncreated, Unformed. If there were not this Unborn, this Unoriginated, this Uncreated, this Unformed, escape from the world of the born, the originated, the created, the formed, would not be possible.
But since there is an Unborn, Unoriginated, Uncreated, Unformed, therefore is escape possible from the world of the born, the originated, the created, the formed.
Words of Buddha

Please compare the above to Shinran quoting the Chinese Pure Land master Shan-tao on the nature of the Pure Land:

The land of bliss is the realm of nirvana, the uncreated;
I fear it is hard to be born there by doing sundry good acts according to our diverse conditions.
Hence, the Tathagata selected the essential dharma,
Instructing beings to say Amida’s Name with singleness, again singleness.
Chapter on True Buddha and Land - The Collected Works of Shinran

The Pure Land is the realm of Nirvana, the “escape from the born, the originated, the created, the formed.” This is why Shinran described rebirth into the Pure Land as “the birth of non-birth,” just as the Buddha described Nirvana as “the unborn.”

The Buddha selected the name of Amida, Namu-Amida-Butsu, as a skillful device (upaya) for bringing ordinary beings like ourselves into the realm of Nirvana. Whether Amida is a literal historical being from galaxies away, eons before the Big Bang, is beside the point.

1 Like

Under the hermeneutic of a specific interpretation, yes, certainly.

@Kensho You made this topic, yet you actually talk about things that have nothing to do with the historical Buddha and keep insisting that they are when it’s contradictory to the fact that the historical Buddha never taught Mahayana/Vajrayana Buddhisms (or anything outside Early Buddhism). So this post will be my last conversation with you.

The discourse that you quoted, Ud 8.3, simply says that there is an end of rebirth; it is an emphatic assertion of a series of negations. It is an early discourse, so don’t insert any non-Early Buddhist doctrine into it (or into any early discourse ever).

When you study Mahayana/Vajrayana Buddhisms, you must study their source texts (either in Gandhari/Prakrit/Sanskrit or translations from the mentioned Indians in Chinese or other languages), not apocryphal texts, commentaries or traditional beliefs, especially if they contradict the source texts. All the “masters” that you quote obviously say things that are contrary to the source texts. Commentaries and/or traditional beliefs that have no basis in the source texts are absolutely meaningless.

There isn’t any Mahayana/Vajrayana (source) text that equates the Land of Bliss with extinguishment (Nirvana), so you and whoever you quote are obviously wrong. The oldest Larger Sukhavati Sutra that is extant in a Chinese translation of Lokaksema clearly says that the Land of Bliss is created with the power of Amitabha Buddha so that people can be reborn in it; it is created, born, become, made, and conditioned by the vow of Amitabha Buddha. It has all the characteristics that extinguishment doesn’t, and it’s crystal clear that the Land of Bliss has never been considered the same as extinguishment to begin with. Your beliefs that are, in turn, based on the “masters” are based on things that are contradictory to the source texts.

The historical Buddha never taught Mahayana/Vajrayana Buddhisms, so he never selected the name of Amitabha, and never taught the doctrine of skillful means.

Besides, propagating that the historical Buddha taught Mahayana/Vajrayana Buddhisms (or anything outside Early Buddhism) in a forum that is first and foremost about Early Buddhism is really inconsiderate. Not to mention that such belief/propaganda is again and again proven factually incorrect.

You can ignore all my posts and the overwhelming amounts of evidence which show unequivocally that the historical Buddha never taught Mahayana/Vajrayana Buddhisms (or anything outside Early Buddhism) all you want, but you can never change the fact that the historical Buddha never taught anything that is outside Early Buddhism, ever. Of all the Buddhist texts, only the early discourses: the Agamas and the Pali Nikayas (no, the Pali Nikayas don’t mean the same thing as the Pali Canon) can be evidence for the historical Buddha’s existence.

9 Likes

Yes, it does sometimes seem like we are being propangandised here with these barrage of Mahayana quotes by this individual. Fortunately it’s pretty obvious that these later teachings are quite a different kettle of fish from the EBTs, and trying to map them to them can be like fitting a square peg etc.

The ancient Mahayana Buddhists were obviously aware of this too, they weren’t naive enough to not understand the disconnect doctrinally and historically. This is why they had to create myths like the nagas hiding the mahayana sutras, the myth of the three turnings and revelatory stories like the Maitreya Asanga myth. East Asian Buddhists also created the panchiao systems as a way to resolve the contradictions introduced by all these new texts , hierarchically placing sutras they liked at the top while placing the EBT material at the bottom as “hinayana”, thereby obscuring the earliest textual material. In the Indo Tibetan material, the situation is even more dire, EBTs are simply not studied at all, and whatever is left is a few texts which somehow survived the ravages of time.

Ultimately the kind of attitude that priviliges the novel, the more exciting and the flashier doctrines over the more subdued and subtle teachings of the Buddha is something we have to deal with. But thankfully suttacentral is an oasis from this.

4 Likes

@Javier Early Mahayana texts weren’t actually even called “sutra”, they were called “vedulla/vaitulya” which mean “irregular” (the term weren’t considered in a negative way by the early Mahayana Buddhists, but still).

It is as you said, ancient Mahayana Buddhists were well aware that their new texts were (and always have been) different from and later than the Agamas and the Pali Nikayas. Hence, the original designation of their early Mahayana texts as vedulla/vaitulya (irregular).

I didn’t know that the early discourses are not studied in Tibetan Buddhism, that’s really unfortunate. I sometimes watch Tibetan Buddhist teachings on a youtube channel by a Tibetan monk, and another by an American Buddhist nun who practises Tibetan Buddhism since I’m curious about what they (Tibetan Buddhist monastics) usually teach. They seem to know about some of the early teachings (especially the Tibetan monk), so I thought that the early discourses were studied alongside their main texts, even if it’s just a little.

1 Like

I practice in a TB Sangha, so let me be clear of what I am saying here.

I am not saying that basic teachings like four Noble truths, 8 fold path etc are not present in TB, they absolutely are and their perspective is as valuable as that it any other tradition.

But what I am saying is that they do not study these teachings by using EBT material, rather they use much later texts like the Abhidharmakosha of Vasubandhu and the Yogacarabhumi.

Hopefully here in the West there can be a rediscovery of the earliest teachings among those who no longer study them. This is why I see suttacentral as so important, especially for traditions which have lost the tradition of studying these early texts.

4 Likes

@Javier Yes, that is what I meant: that the Tibetan Buddhist monastics learn the early, fundamental teachings from later texts, not from the early discourses themselves.

Dear @Kensho, indeed this post is off topic. If you’d like to discuss these issues further I suggest you start a new thread. We can either move a number of the posts from this thread, or you can just link them.

Thanking you in anticipation of your assistance in this matter

Metta :anjal::dharmawheel:

3 Likes