It has taken many experts to determine that the Dhamma of the Buddha is dead, but they confirm it: he died and his body does not appear. What is clear is the hour of his death, dating to a few months after his parinibbāna.
The proofs of his death, despite being evident, have been slow to check them: the Dhamma does not give signs of life, it does not illuminate. Many efforts that have been made by thousands of people have not been revived. The Dhamma does not illuminate. The Dhamma is dead.
The moment of death goes back to the meetings prior to the First Council. Even as the ashes of the Buddha are warm.
At the time of his death, Mahakassapa was considered by all the chief disciple of the Buddha to have died both Moggallana and Sariputta, two arahants whom the Buddha considered to be his best friends.
As the Buddha, in his final instructions did not leave anyone his Sangha, it is not unthinkable to consider that the greatest affected could not be more than Mahakassapa. The movements he made the following days seem to support this hypothesis. All he can think of is to quickly assemble a sect, to lead him. To do this, he summons all the disciples of the Buddha that he can. At hand it only has about 500, missing more than half.
All that is necessary to set up a sect is five things: adherents, a doctrine and a discipline, economic support and political support. If he had a sufficient number of followers, so that the resulting sect could be passed down by the disciples of the Buddha himself, the economic and political support of King Ajatasattu would have it.
Therefore, what was to be assembled, and quickly, a dhamma and a discipline.
Who could help you? Who would be the material authors of the murder of the Dhamma? He thought of Ananda for the suttas and Upala for the Vinaya. It was not the best choice, but it could work. Ananda was working as an assistant to the Buddha for years, remembering speeches, remembering anecdotes, serving the Buddha well. It was very popular, which was interesting for the sake of getting the support of all bhikkhus. There was a problem: Ananda was a perfect incompetent. It was popular and had a good memory, but I had no idea how it was done to light up. In fact, is there more incompetence than being years and years by the side of the Buddha, witnessing how people are enlightened, and not being able to enlighten?
This led to two problems. The first, of a technical nature, was that the result of mounting a dhamma from manifest ignorance could not be good. But that was not important.
Mahakassapa devised an assembly of arahants, to package his plan, so that they would back whatever came out of it. The problem was that the speakers were not. Upāli was a head of the family and he gained entry into the stream. He was just an apprentice.
But that could be fixed.
Overnight, the miracle arose: Ananda lights up completely just before entering the cave. And, moreover, he did it without resorting to anything that the Buddha advised him to do …
Resolved the matter of Ananda, now it was necessary to look for Upāli, since they say that the Buddha said that he knew a lot about the Vinaya (in fact, on one occasion Upala asked him what the Patimokkha was for), and he was not even bhikkhu, He was a lay head of household
I mean, a fudge.
In a record time, Mahakassapa gets a large group of bhikkhus to enter the cave to hear what Upāli and Ananda were going to propose.
Mahakassapa himself asked all the questions related to the Vinaya and the Dhamma to both Upala and Ananda. This council was held about seven months in the cave of the hill Vebhara (or Vaihara) near Rajagaha.
Once closed the chapter of the elaboration of the dhamma and discipline of the sect, now it touched to submit all the old disciples of Buddha to her. The venerable Gavampati, Purana and more than 500 more monks, who stood aside from the maneuvers of Mahakassapa, being urged to submit to their new dhamma, rejected him by saying that they remained with the Dhamma of the Buddha, which they heard from his mouth And kept in his memory.
Mahakassapa provokes the first schism in the Sangha and remains with less than half of the Buddha’s followers.
Gavampati, Purana and the others were lost with the word of the Buddha in their minds, a word pronounced for them, behind the scenes of History to never know more about them.
However, Mahakassapa with the help and cooperation of King Ajatasattu manages to secure his new dhamma. After Ajatasattu several kings like Udayibhadda, Anuruddha and Nagadasaka ascended to the throne of Magadha and governed simultaneously during fifty years. But we heard nothing about the progress of Buddhism in the reigns of these kings who were not religious or made any contribution to its propagation. He could not get any support in the surroundings, he probably lost his popularity and the schismatic dhamma fell on the decline during these years.
With the death of Nagadasaka, Sisunaga, his minister, took the throne and Vesali was his capital. His son, Alaska, became king. He was the king of Magadha for about twenty-eight years. It was during his reign the Second Buddhist Council was held at Vesali.
While there were kings who supported this dhamma, it would expand and become popular. Not containing any seed of enlightenment made it much more useful since it could be malleable to the wishes and needs of the monarch and his time.
Thus it was adapted and expanded.
But in those places where state support ceased, declined and disappeared, as in India itself as soon as the Gupta dynasty seized power.
If you thought that you followed the Buddha, your texts, your Dhamma, you were wrong. These “sacred” texts, at most, approach the black dhamma of Mahakassapa and his historical revenge on the Buddha for not having made him his successor.
The advantage of the living is that the dead can not defend themselves.
