Yes that’s the one I had in mind
In case anyone is interested in the primary sources for these dictionary entries, there are few passages in Tiantai commentaries that give some examples of these four kinds of Small Vehicle teachings. Below are the two most informative ones that I found.
The 大方廣佛華嚴經隨疏演義鈔 (T1736) is an auto-subcommentary by Changguan. He apparently felt his first commentary on the Avataṃsaka Sutra wasn’t large enough. The 非有非空門 is mentioned at T1736.36.43c20, where he says that it is the teaching that caused Chandaka to enter the Way.
I believe this must mean SĀ 262, where Ānanda recounts a teaching the Buddha gave to Mahākātyāyana, which is nearly identical with SĀ 301 (SN 12.15). He recounted it for Chandaka when the standard teachings of impermanence and selflessness didn’t work for him. As @Vaddha has pointed out, SĀ 262 and SĀ 301 seem to treat Sandha Kātyāyana and Mahā Kātyāyana as the same person.
A little later in the same passage in T1736, Chengguan also notes that the Madhyamakakārikā commentary (and/or perhaps the Hundred Verse Treatise) translated by Kumārajīva (presumably) often discerns this fourth entrance of the Small Vehicle as well. So, there, we have a classical commentator making the same connection as we are.
Zhiyi himself gives us a discussion of the four entrances in his commentary to the Vimalakīrti Sutra, which begins at T1777.38.557b08. He follows the DZDL in saying that the third entrance is represented by Kātyāyana’s Peṭakopadesa. And he agrees with Chengguan that the fourth entrance is the teaching given to Chandaka.
Zhiyi also notes that some people associate the fourth entrance with the Vatsa[putriya] Abhidharma, where a self is posited that does not belong to the three realms of existence and therefore is neither existent or non-existent but also not empty. This possible connection to Pudgalavādin views probably shouldn’t be entirely ignored for our EBT texts, but I doubt that they apply to Nāgārjuna and his teachings.
Thank you @cdpatton, I didn’t have time to look for the primary sources.
Quick correction, though: @Vaddha actually found SĀ 262 (摩訶迦旃延=*Mahākātyāyana/-kaccāna), I found SF 169 (Sandhākātyāyana), and you yourself are the one who finally mentioned the latter’s parallel, SĀ 301 ([跳-兆+散]陀迦旃延=*Sandhākātyāyana/Sandhākaccāna/Saddhākaccāna).
Kaccānagotta–unlike Saddhākaccāna or, especially, Mahākaccāna–appears nowhere else that I know of outside of SN 12.15. (If anyone knows of a reference, please point it out.) Could this very non-specific name (there’re about four separate Vacchagottas) possibly reflect an ancient confusion we see traces of in the conflation of the identity of the protagonist of this discourse? “Who asked the Buddha about right view? ‘Kaccāna-somebody,’ wasn’t it?” Again, maybe a bit of a stretch; I just wonder. Or perhaps the other way around? The two identifiable Kaccānas being supplied to fill in a blank left by the somewhat anonymous Kaccānagotta?
Or, might @Jayarava be right in attributing things to total acausality in the ascription of names in suttas? Possibly, but I still think the association of the Peṭakopadesa/*Peṭaka with Mahākaccāna and this apparent possible conflation of “both existence and non-” and “neither existence nor non-” argues against it.
Hello everyone, and thank you all for reading and discussing my recently published article. Since Ven. Sujato drew this thread to my attention, I thought I would make a few points to clarify what I think the main points of the article are:
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Based on Luis O. Gomez’s notion of ‘proto-mādhyamika in the Pāli canon’, I sketched out what I think are the basic ideas and principles of the Aṭṭhakavagga, further arguing that they are fairly widespread in the Pāli suttas. (I note that this reading of the text is quite different from Ven. Sujato’s introduction to his translation of the Aṭṭhakavagga on this website - something which I hope will receive some academic attention going forward).
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I then note the close connection between the Aṭṭhakavagga and the figure of Mahā-Kaccāna, and propose that ‘Kaccāna’ should be understood as a lineage, based in Madhurā/Avanti in the late 4th century BC, associated with transmitting the Aṭṭhakavagga and the creation of texts based on the same apophatic perspective (e.g. MN 18).
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When Sthavira Buddhist traditions moved further W/NW, this lineage (or its offshoots) was responsible for composing early Prajñāpāramitā texts, which express the same apophatic thought in a slightly different idiom.
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The Prajñāpāramitā tradition was in debate with mythic Buddhist spirituality, and Bodhisattva realism; Abhidharma realism was not initially a concern, but became so over time.
Lots more can obviously be said about this thesis. One point that has arisen is who exactly is meant by ‘Kaccānagotta’ in SN 12.15. In my article I decided not to elaborate on this, because the person is not so important. What matters is lineage identification, and we clearly have a text of the broader Kaccāna lineage, that deals in a more advanced way with the same themes that lineage was concerned with.
I find what knotty36 has noted about the parallel at SF 168, and SĀ 301 as noted by cdpatton, which both use the name Sandhā-Kātyāyana, very interesting. Grzegorz Polak has given a very interesting analysis of the Sandha/Saddha Sutta (AN 11.10) in his 2009 book (p.51ff of Re-examining Jhāna…, 2009, a vitally important book on Buddhist meditation in my opinion), which bears on the problem of the oldest form of Buddhist meditation. I would tentatively conclude from this that there a close relationship between Sandha/Saddha and the Kaccāna lineage re. meditation, but this requires further thought and research.
In SN 12.15, the use of the name ‘Kaccānagotta’, rather than Kaccāna, has to be significant. It must be a deliberate move to admit a difference between it and other texts that involve Kaccāna. I suspect it is a later work within the Kaccāna lineage, i.e. that referring to ‘he whose gotta is Kaccāna’, the authors were obliquely pointing to those who belonged to the Kaccāna lineage, i.e. themselves. This is a speculation that I did not think worth noting in my article, but will be something I consider further in the future.
A main innovation in the article is my attempt to localise persons and places named in canonical sources (point 2 of my 4 points above); to this end, it cites a 2014 paper by Richard Salomon and Joseph Marino:
I think it follows from this article that canonical Pali suttas which place Anuruddha in the Ceti region must have been composed by Buddhists from that region, who identified as belonging to the ‘Anuruddha lineage’ (that is my extrapolation from their work). In other words, I think the localisation of persons in the canonical texts should be taken seriously – it is historically significant. If so, I think it is valid to propose the thesis that ‘Kaccāna texts’ were composed within a Kaccāna lineage located in the region of Madhurā/Avanti.
Obviously this sort of analysis is very different from Jayarava’s understanding of what constitutes historical studies. In Jayarava’s world, people like Gombrich, von Hinüber, myself etc. are ‘wrong’, whereas he is by implication ‘right’. But does anyone seriously think that Jayarava has a firmer grasp of historical studies or early Buddhist texts than Richard Gombrich, or Richard Salomon?
Towards the end of their 2014 article (linked above), Salomon and Marino warn against excessive scepticism in early Buddhist Studies, and advise on keeping one’s mind open to new possibilities. I doubt Jayarava would have heeded this warning and advice ten years ago, let alone now, but the point remains.
Happy new year to all!
Alex Wynne
I think both sides of the conversation make valid points and contributions.
Investigating these texts is indeed not the same as looking at carbon-dated written documents that profess to be primary sources, evaluating and corroborating them with one another and other forms of evidence, etc. Of course there is the question of methodology which has been brought up. I have heard that original editions of the Rgveda can be more confidently established than the plays of Shakespeare. But this of course would not establish that the Rgveda is a trustworthy record of historical events. As it currently stands, the application of this genre of texts would require investigation, debate, and so on from various experts to develop some kind of methodology for working with the EBTs.
But in terms of analyzing the texts for the sake of understanding the texts themselves, these kinds of literary details and connections may still very much be present. To perform literary analysis of the persons in the texts and how they relate to the various places mentioned, ideas presented, and so on, is perfectly valid and of no harm. This type of analysis is important, necessary in fact, to understand what the texts themselves are saying.
Whether or not those texts represent a historical reality in the sense that we would think of it is a different issue. But such literary analysis would certainly be a crucial contribution for putting together different forms of evidence that can be brought together. For example, if we found writing that mentioned Mahākaccāna in Avanti, the mentions of this in the EBTs would be a relevant factor to consider and relate to that discovery. In order to use and apply these to a research methodology, researchers must investigate what information they could contribute.
Even in the case of a work of fiction for example, literary analysis of the details of life present in Jane Austen’s novels may help shed light on certain practices of the time and place that are depicted there, especially when corroborated with other information. ‘Over confidence’ could be to say that the characters in the novel must represent real people in some way. Whereas ‘over skepticism’ could be to profess that, for example, anything in oral tradition or any information presented in mythologically significant texts is absolutely useless and worthless for establishing facts about “reality.” Such an attitude is certainly not true, as evidenced even in known works of fiction, or even archaeological confirmation of certain geographical details found in some oral mythology.
But as of now, to believe that the texts represent a largely accurate depiction of historical reality is more a matter of spiritual concern and personal faith. The Buddha himself is on record to have said not to rely on the transmission of scripture for infallible truth. Ironically, this is a quote found in scripture, but nonetheless. The Buddhist texts in question do not claim to my knowledge that one should consider them as infallible history. Rather, they do claim that someone who practices appropriately and fully applies the teachings to their own life may realize the nature of the spiritual claims made in the texts for themself. That and the faith in that possibility of realization should be the dominant axiom that the faithful uphold, I would say. That is the methodology that the texts present. And such faith and methodology is not the domain of historians, and therefore not something people should expect historians to confirm for them with historiographic methods.
At the end of the day, from a Buddhist perspective — the one in these texts themselves — what matters is not whether Mahākaccāna was a person who had such a name and lived in Avanti or not, but whether or not the teachings presented are actually able to yield liberation to those who follow them. The historicity of the events in the EBTs is of a different nature than, e.g., the crucifixion of Jesus, for faithful Buddhists. Expectations about academic research should be realistic and self-honest with this fact.
This is true, but a major difference here is that we know when Austen’s novels were written and published with great precision.
Not sure what is meant by ‘original editions’ of the Rgveda, but surely the text was transmitted orally for a very long time before an edition appeared.
By ‘original edition’ I mean of an recited text, yes, not written. And there were in fact probably several. But my point is that the analysis of the RgVeda is based on more modern editions of the text passed down orally, but is believed to reliably go back to much older forms of the same text. I did not quote a source though, so feel free to ignore that without further investigation.
Of course when we talk about “texts” in this context, we have to adjust our notions of that a bit if it is not a written document produced by one person at a specific place and time.
Hi everyone,
Just wanted to point out that an actual historian had critically commented on Jayarava’s post on history here some time ago, and the latter never replied.
Just to be clear - I’m not a historian. I have a longstanding interest in history, (/ pre and proto history), have taken classes in it, read academic articles in it for fun / interest, etc. but do not have a degree in it or professional experience in the field. The only original research I’ve ever done in history is at the level of Internet forum posts. I’m not even a blogger.
Also, while I am comfortable with this post remaining up, at this point I really have no interest in engaging with Jayasara or this topic any more, other than perhaps to provide further disclaimers like this. No offense meant by that - just shifting priorities
Thanks for this correction.
Still, your post demonstrates a very sound acquaintance with history and historical methodology, and I highly recommend it to everyone in this thread.
The prototype of the notion of emptiness of the Mahāyāna Mādhyamika tradition is found in the sūtra-aṅga portion of SA/SN.
For example, the middle way of emptiness, such as “neither existence (arising) nor non-existence (ceasing), neither eternalism nor annihilationism, neither sameness nor difference, neither coming nor going” of the Mādhyamika tradition, is found in the texts of SA and SN:
Choong Mun-keat:
The Notion of Emptiness in Early Buddhism (1999), pp. 32-40;
The Fundamental Teachings of Ealy Buddhism (2000), pp. 60-66, 192-199, 239.
“neither existence (arising) nor non-existence (ceasing), neither eternalism nor annihilationism, neither sameness nor difference, neither coming nor going”:
不生亦不滅 不常亦不斷
不一亦不異 不來亦不出
anirodham anutpādam anucchedam aśāśvatam/
anekārtham anānārtham anāgamam anirgamam// (Taishō vol. 30, no. 1564, p. 1a and note 16).
p.62 Problems and Prospects of the Chinese Saṃyuktāgama (2010) Choong Mun-keat.pdf (670.0 KB)
My, my, my! Who knew what casting the net a little wider would bring to pass?
Please, if no one else has, allow me to welcome you, @Alex-Wynne, to my/our humble, little thread. Many thanks to Bhante @sujato for inviting you.
(I don’t know what heaven corresponds to imps and pucks, but I’m quite certain that’s the one the good Bhante’s descended from!)
I enjoyed your article very much, as I believe I mentioned in the original post. Had I known you were a member of this forum, I would have reached out to you directly. Nevertheless, I am quite glad that you were so late in joining the festivities, as it allowed us (or me, at least) to come around on our/my own to tentative agreement with your basic points. I don’t have your article before presently, so I couldn’t say for sure exactly how you postured your stance; however, with the caveat that this is all quite speculative (perhaps necessarily so), I think everything you/I/we’ve said thus far is all quite reasonable.
Grzegorz and I know each other quite well, as I spent the better part of a year at UMCS. (I know you two do also: he speaks quite highly of you.) It was indeed his first book which caused me to seek him out and travel to meet him. (And I remember your high appraisal of it from your OCBS lecture series.) Though he himself says he’s since evolved beyond much of its content, I agree that it is quite important–as have been his string of articles over the last four or so years. (I’m waiting on him for a copy of his latest book.) He, in fact, is the one who caused me to see the unity in the several apophatic practices/states in the early corpus.
I don’t know that I agree with your assessment of the motive behind the (likely concocted) name Kaccānagotta in SN 12.15. At this point, I could only see myself going so far as to say that it appears to be somehow intertwined with a purposely obfuscated allusion to a nebulous lineage (your term) or transmission (my term) associated with a Kaccāna.
Where I’m still puzzled or curious (and would be most interested in hearing your opinion) is the bridge both existence and non-existence and neither existence nor non-existence. Your article speaks of a historical transition from one to the other; however, in light of the association of both with two different Kaccānas, I wonder if we’re not looking instead at conflation due to hazy historical memories (the two [three?] names are almost identical) on the one hand, and a conceptual proximity between the two philosophical stances on the other.
You don’t say! I’ve actually been feeling the exact same way for quite some time about someone else on this thread. Great minds certainly do think alike!
Once again, “thank you” to all for your contributions in making this an eventful year-end for me: one which far exceeded my expectations.
My approach to any such historical queries is to consider the range of possibilities, and then try to identify the best possible answer. Early Buddhist composers used the name ‘Kaccānagotta’ in a particular manner in a single Pāl Sutta. Why did they do this — what point were they trying to make? We have to bear in mind that the text is also one of the most philosophically complex and obscure Suttas of the Pāli canon, something of an outlier. The best solution I have to these facts is that the Sutta is quite late, and its authors were intentionally trying to tell us something about themselves.
Actually, my article doesn’t say anything about a transition from ‘both existence and non-existence’ to ‘neither existence nor non-existence’. And I didn’t go very far into the issue of what the Kaccānagotta Sutta actually means, because I’m still not entirely sure — this is very difficult stuff. Although I would say that the text stands broadly within the early apophatic tradition’s negation of existential categories. The early Buddhists received a fairly sophisticated set of ontological tools, probably derived ultimately from speculation within early brahminic/Upaniṣadic circles, and the tetralemma allowed for a more complete negation of ontology than the simpler dyad ‘existence’ and ‘non-existence’.
I only just joined the forum to comment on this thread, and am happy to be here — there are lots of well-informed comments and many useful references. And also a few fireworks lobbed in now and then by certain parties, which only adds to the general gaity of life! But keeping things on subject, my article does not deal with the historicity of the Buddha; that’s another matter entirely. I am more concerned with the historicity of the compositional traditions responsible for all our texts (without whom ‘Buddhism’ would not exist). So I think it’s useful to try to locate the Kaccāna tradition/lineage in space and time, and see how this affects our understanding of the early Buddhist period.
Hi @Alex-Wynne ,
It’s nice to see you join in on this thread! I just wanted to share a tip about our textboxes. If you want to quote someone, you can use >
symbol and whatever you copy or type after that will appear in a quote box.
sort of like this… To exit this and resume regular text, just a couple of return/enter should do the trick, essentially starting a new paragraph.
Hope this helps. It is easier than screenshots.
Thank you for this tip @trusolo !
It’s nice to see you join in on this thread! I just wanted to share a tip about our textboxes. If you want to quote someone, you can use
>
symbol and whatever you copy or type after that will appear in a quote box.
I have just tested it and hopefully it will work.
One other thing I don’t get is how to copy and paste text with the appropriate user’s identity included at the top, all going within a quote box.
Like this? You need to copy the text from the post and pick the option “Quote”.
You might be interested to check out our Bhante @Sunyo’s extensive research into the sutta here:
With my (quite abridged) notes on his research:
Seems like this sutta’s making rounds lately!
Hi all, and welcome to @Alex-Wynne. Nice to see you here! I enjoy your works. What I’ve read, the ideas and arguments are always very clear.
I’ll see if I have the time (and skill!) to read this discussion and quoted articles in detail later. I just skimmed over it all, and it all seems a little out of my wheelhouse. In my essay which Dogen just linked, I take quite a different approach as well.
So to potentially save people some time, in context of this discussion, my thinking may be summed up as follows:
Venerable Nāgārjuna indeed quotes a version of the Kaccānagotta Sutta: this is well-known. But that alone doesn’t make the text proto-Madhyamaka, of course. I (Sunyo) could quote any sutta and reinterpret it in my own idiosyncratic way—either consciously or accidentally—yet that wouldn’t make the text “proto-Sunyo-vāda” (pun intended!)
And nobody would argue in this way. But I think the question we should answer first is: did Nāgārjuna actually interpret the Kaccānagotta Sutta correctly? That’s what I try to do in the essay. And I conclude, “no”. No typical (proto)Madhyamaka or Prajñāpāramitā concepts are actually being discussed in this sutta. That is a later reinterpretation (either consciously or accidentally).
Based on various early sources I conclude that the two wrong notions in the sutta don’t refer to abstract notions of existence and nonexistence but specifically to notions of the afterlife. I find the most interesting source the Sanskrit Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya, where nāstitā (i.e. natthitā) describes the materialist view that there is no life after death.
I plan to write more on this in the future. For now, I personally failed to find any typical Madhyamaka (or proto-Madhyamaka, whatever that is) ideas in the Pali canon. In the Pali canon, the middle view always avoids eternalism and annihilationism, being notions of the afterlife, not abstract notions of existence.
In contrast, a text that does have a proto-Madhyamaka flavor to me is EA15.2.
I translated ayasmā kaccānagotto, perhaps a little liberally, as “a venerable one from the Kaccāna clan”.
To support your argument from lineage, perhaps it’s worth considering other name-gotta’s as well. Take Vacchagotta. Was he a single person or was the Vaccha clan turned into some kind of archetype in the suttas? I also translate vacchagotto paribbājako as ‘a wanderer from the Vaccha clan’; see my footnote 33 here (clickable).
Thank you for restating this.
This quote, by Jayarava in a different thread, may shed some additional light on the ‘all exists’ meaning externalism. Perhaps we don’t find ‘this soul doesn’t continue to exist’ as it would seem to point more to a Christian rather than Vedic conception?