The most interesting thing to me is the remarkable similarity between the two. There are obviously major doctrinal positions that they totally missed and thankfully the Buddha came along and corrected, but their meditative practice is really quite impressive considering. They give different names to certain terms, and use some others differently, but quite often you can do less than strenuously mental gymnastics to reconcile the two. They also seem to practice meditation much more heroically than most buddhist today. It makes me wonder, if some of them would see their faults and start practicing in the way the Buddha taught, they might reach awakening more than most of us!
I am totally unaware of what Jaina meditation actually is. Do you have any reliable source for that?
As far as I know, the logic of their contemplative efforts is mostly based on the numbing effects of pain. They do then take that numbness as an indicator that the soul is being stripped of the kamma particles/substance which effectively stops it from floating up to the roof of the universe and sticking there. Yep, this is what liberation means to them: 
According to Jain texts, the liberated pure soul (Siddha) goes up to the summit of universe (Siddhashila) and dwells there in eternal bliss.
– Wikipedia
I see no way to reconcile this crazy world view to the dependent origination-centered spiritual path Buddhism is all about.
Hence, I do really doubt any Jaina “meditator” (or masochist?!) has any chance to prosper in terms of Buddhist meditation without giving up completely their path of pain and heroic endurance.
By the way, we see in MN36 that this is exactly what the Boddhisattva did and allowed awakening to take place within himself:
“I thought: ‘Whatever recluses or brahmins in the past have experienced painful, racking, piercing feelings due to exertion, this is the utmost, there is none beyond this.
And whatever recluses and brahmins in the future will experience painful, racking, piercing feelings due to exertion, this is the utmost, there is none beyond this.
And whatever recluses and brahmins at present experience painful, racking, piercing feelings due to exertion, this is the utmost, there is none beyond this.
But by this racking practice of austerities I have not attained any superhuman states, any distinction in knowledge and vision worthy of the noble ones. Could there be another path to enlightenment?’“I considered: ‘I recall that when my father the Sakyan was occupied, while I was sitting in the cool shade of a rose-apple tree, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, I entered upon and abided in the first jhāna, which is accompanied by applied and sustained thought, with rapture and pleasure born of seclusion. Could that be the path to enlightenment?’ Then, following on that memory, came the realisation: ‘That is indeed the path to enlightenment.’
“I thought: ‘Why am I afraid of that pleasure that has nothing to do with sensual pleasures and unwholesome states?’ I thought: ‘I am not afraid of that pleasure since it has nothing to do with sensual pleasures and unwholesome states.’
“I considered: ‘It is not easy to attain that pleasure with a body so excessively emaciated. Suppose I ate some solid food—some boiled rice and porridge.’ And I ate some solid food—some boiled rice and porridge.
(…)
“Now when I had eaten solid food and regained my strength, then quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, I entered upon and abided in the first jhāna, which is accompanied by applied and sustained thought, with rapture and pleasure born of seclusion. But such pleasant feeling that arose in me did not invade my mind and remain.“With the stilling of applied and sustained thought, I entered upon and abided in the second jhāna…With the fading away as well of rapture…I entered upon and abided in the third jhāna…With the abandoning of pleasure and pain…I entered upon and abided in the fourth jhāna…But such pleasant feeling that arose in me did not invade my mind and remain.
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The old Jaina sources unfortunately don’t have much of meditation instructions in the Buddhist sense. Later texts have the notion of vitarka & vicara, but it might well come from Buddhism. Still whatever the two precisely mean, everyone who attempts meditation deals from the beginning with thoughts and the seemingly endless movements of the mind so it’s not necessary that the Buddha came up with these notions of the very first Jhana. So even if I wanted to numb myself I would come across them without necessarily developing bliss.
I’m highly skeptical about this passage (just an opinion), because these biographical claims here and in MN 12 are not backed up by other sources and for my taste it carries a bit too much the argument of ‘been-there, done-that’. So Buddhist followers wouldn’t need to worry about these practices, because the Buddha did it all to no avail.
Asceticism in Buddhism is awkward. We revere Mahakassapa for it, and are in awe hearing the feat of Japanese and Korean monks sitting for ten hours straight. On the other hand there is the strong notion of its pointlessness and ‘why should I do this to myself?’
What we tend to forget here is that whatever asceticism someone practices they tackle one of the big obstacles for progress, i.e. ‘I am the body’ and our almost hopeless exposure to pleasure-seeking and displeasure-avoidance. In a good case scenario an ascetic might come to the conclusion that s/he is not the body, nor the feelings just from that practice. So I tend to agree with @jimisommer that ascetics who switch to Buddhist views might progress faster than others if they are mentally flexible.
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Thanks for sharing your point of view. I above just created a separate topic to discuss this.
Please kindly share with us your reasons for skepticism and as well, if possible, what could be the argument to take those accounts as legit.
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IMO the Buddha shredded their doctrines but actually said to keep supporting the persons, even after their supporters turned to the Buddha’s teachings. 
with metta
I was reading about Jainism and came across the fact that when referring to the practice of Jains Buddhist scriptures only mention four key spiritual principles, while current Jain tradition has five principles.
This is taken by some scholars as evidence that the Jainism in practice in the time of Buddha was still traditionally linked to the teachings of Pārśvanātha / Pārśva, which was framed around four restraints: ahimsa, aparigraha, achaurya/asteya and satya. And it was only with time that the fifth principle of brahmacharya introduced by Mahavira became mainstream.
Nevertheless, when I re-read the essay above written by bhante @sujato, I am puzzled by how are scholars able to come up with the aforementioned hypothesis given that the fourfold restraints mentioned in DN2 are not exactly aligned with the hypothetical pre-mahavira vows of non-violence, non-greediness, non-stealing and non-lying.
Is it the case scholars just match the number of vows and overlook the weirdly unique way those are detailed in the Buddhist scriptures?
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Thanks, that’s a really helpful explanation.
Thanks for you detailed answer.
I wasn’t unaware of how the Pali DN2 is unique in the listing of the four restraints. To me this gives strength to the satirical reading of that mention in the scriptures.
Do you maybe know where on the internet one can find the prakrit originals of the jain texts`?
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This reminded me of the called-eccentric stance of Tendai-shū regarding the Buddha-nature of insentient things.
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Counterfeit implies it was copies, which would be strange since the timeline would have to be running backwards. However, it’s not strange that people has religious systems before the Buddha that were not as good as the one the Buddha made. And the similarities between the two could be explained by the fact that the Buddha used to be a Jain. He had only recently left Jainism before he found his own way and started teaching it, after all.
He attacked the Vedas and Upanishads and so on - why not Jainism? Even ridiculed the reciters of the vedas saying the etymology of… what was it… ajhāyaka? was from the meaning of someone who doesn’t (a-) do jhāna. Made fun of the creation myths (which Buddhists for centuries took literally, not getting the joke). Even the nibbāna doctrine seems to be an attack on Brahmanism, since it extinguishes the three fires (of critical sacred importance to Brahmin, who keep them alight).
Does my memory serve me correctly that the Sangha has to filter water, specifically to avoid acidentally killing (by drinking) tiny forms of life? Do you think the Buddha took this practice straight from his Jain code of discipline? He seemed to adopt the rules about accepting any food even if meat (if they don’t make any cause for killing), from the Jains, unless he accepted it from the broader samana tradition of which they were both a part. Though it seems the Jains adapted that to exclude meat a very long time ago already.
My understanding is that vitakka and vicāra are not anything about ‘thoughts and the seemingly endless movements of the mind’, but rather two functions of the mind that direct, and place, attention on an object, neither of which require any thought to function. Anālayo gives reasoning on this, and I don’t remember all the details but when we went through some MĀ suttas, it seemed clear from the Chinese (覺 and 觀) that it was not giving it the meaning of thought, but rather what indicating/supporting what I’m saying now. This seemed significant since the translator of that āgama is said to have been particularly good (a Kashmiri I think). And so if there is ambiguity in the understanding of the Pāli words today, it seems useful to see what experts at that time took the Pāli or other Prakrit to mean. So it’s lucky we have the Chinese.
So the translation of Anālayo’s on this basis is the one I have accepted: vitakka as ‘initial mental application’ and vicāra as ‘sustained mental application’.
Interesting. So then can I check if this is right so far?
- We have a real list of the four restrains of the Jains, non-violence, non-greediness, non-stealing and non-lying.
- We have a list of four restraints attributed ot the Jains, which we think might possibly be making fun of them.
- They have a thing for water.
Is it possible that this list is not even bothering to reference any real list, just referencing it by name, making it sound kind of plausible because it can be read to mean about water, but is actually all designed to make fun of how they look from the Buddhist point of view - it looks like the really most important thing for them is their restraints. I mean, and I don’t mean to be rude, but even as you see them, they are sweeping the road before you, and with their mouths covered, even refusing to bathe and so on. As if paranoid, afraid to move for fear of what their view has done to their minds. Their view is binding them, restraining them. They even want to commit suicide - it’s like they are so restrained they want to implode.
That’s not meant to be a totally objective assessment, but many may have looked upon them like that. And I think the Buddhist view would be they won’t complete the path like that. Restraint is not enough. You can’t just obsess about not harming others. It’s not even practical, you cannot avoid killing while still being alive - but more to the point, it doesn’t lead to awakening. So they really are obstructed by (their obsession with) restraint.
So in this way could it have been a satirical summary of their practice, borrowing their genuine title only?
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I wouldn’t really call this a statement that sits on solid ground. It is not clear that the Buddha’s cosmologies are to be read as satirical. I have an idea who you would be citing to make the claim, but who’s argumentation is the above?
From Gombrich’s ‘How Buddhism Began’ (sorry if there are any OCR errors):
There can be no doubt that the Buddha used allegory satirically. I have published analyses (Gombrich, 1990, 1992b) of two passages in the Pali Canon, one short and one long, which make fun of brahminical accounts of how the world began. The short one is about Brahma. In one of the accounts of the creation in the Brhadarajyaka Upanisad (1, 4, 1–3), in the beginning there was only atman in human form. I have explained in chapter 2 that atman and brahman in the Upanisad are synonymous at the cosmic level, and that brahman (neuter) in turn may be personified as Brahma (masculine). Here it is the atman which is being personified, and as the word is already masculine no change of gender is required. ‘He was afraid. So a person alone is afraid. He considered: since nothing but me exists, what am I afraid of? So his fear went away, for it is of something else that one is afraid. He really had no fun. So a person alone has no fun. He wanted another person. He was as big as a man and a woman in embrace, so he split that very self of his into two, so that husband and wife came into being.’
In the Buddhist passage, which occurs several times in the Canon (e.g. DN I, 17–18), the world is assumed to be eternal but to go through cycles of destruction and re-formation. We can say provisionally that the destruction takes place below the level of some very rarefied heavens, well above the plane of desire, and that while nothing exists lower down, transmigrating beings are reborn in those very high heavens. But existence in all heavens, however high and rarefied, is of course temporary. When it is time for a new world-cycle (vivatta-kalpa), the celestial palace which Brahma occupies reappears, empty. In due course, a being whose life span or merit has been exhausted dies in the higher heaven and is reborn in that palace – so he is reborn as Brahma. After he has been there alone for a long time he gets frightened and feels he is having no fun, so he wishes that other beings would come to exist in the mode that he does. Simply in the course of nature, other beings too leave the higher heaven and are reborn alongside Brahma. Then he nourishes the delusion that they are there because of his wish, and fancies himself an omnipotent creator.
The long passage in the Pali Canon which makes fun of brahminical cosmogony is the Aggañña Sutta (DN sutta xxvii) (see Gombrich, 1992b for details). The whole story of the origin of society, which forms the bulk of the text, is a parody of brahminical texts, especially the ¸g Vedic ‘Hymn of Creation’ (RV X, 129) and the cosmogony at BAU 1, 2. The formation of the earth at the beginning of a world-cycle, its population by beings, their gradual social differentiation, the origins of sex and property, and finally the invention of kingship and the creation of the four brahminical varja (social classes) – all are a parodistic re-working of brahminical speculations, and at the same time an allegory of the malign workings of desire.
This is no minor matter for the history of the Buddhist view of the world. Strictly speaking, the Aggañña Sutta is not a cosmogony, since for Buddhists an absolute beginning is inconceivable (SN II,178ff.); but it explains how the world came into being this time round, so with this caveat I shall use the word. Buddhists have since the earliest times taken it seriously as an account of the origins of society and kingship, and even traced the Buddha’s own royal origins back to Maha-sammata, the person chosen to be the first king; they have interpreted the word as a proper name, though it originally meant ‘agreed to be great’. But now we see that the Buddha never intended to propound a cosmogony.
If we take a close look at the Aggañña Sutta, there are considerable incoherencies if it is taken seriously as an explanatory account – though once it is perceived to be a parody these inconsistencies are of no account. Already in the Canon this text provided part of the basis of Buddhist cosmology, and these inconsistencies provided the systematisers with problems, some of which were never properly solved. I mentioned above that we could ‘provisionally’ say that the world is periodically destroyed below a certain very high level; and this assumption was the essential background to the humorous attack on the idea that Brahma created the world. The resultant cosmology, with complicated cycles of destruction up to various levels, is meticulously worked out in the Visuddhi-magga (XII, paras. 30ff. ! pp. 349ff.). 16 But a moment’s reflection will show that this can hardly fit the basic Buddhist theory of how the law of karma operates. In order to be reborn so high in the universe, above even Brahma and far above the plane of desire, one must have overcome desire in one’s previous life and be spiritually so advanced that one is unlikely to come back to earth even once, let alone to recommence a long series of lowly lives. The theory could, with a little squeezing, be made to allow a few such cases; but it could not allow for every single karmic continuum simultaneously to result in such an elevated rebirth, only to be followed by mass relapse.
Also see his article ‘The Buddha’s Book of Genesis?’ from pg 129 of this publication:
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Yeah, I figured it would be him. I don’t think he does a good enough job of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that these stories are necessarily satirical, but I don’t have time for an in-depth exploration of why I feel so right now. Hopefully I will have time tomorrow. Until then I don’t have anything to offer other than this unsupported objection to the necessity of these stories having been proved to have been intended satirically.
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I don’t know about this rule, but the rule that forbids digging in the ground has been introduced because the bhikkhus digging didn’t take into consideration that they were in a lay jain environment when they did it. So the rule was introduced in order to not upset the local (jain oriented) population - plants are insentient in Buddhism.
This topic has been dissected and analyzed in this forum in much more detail than in any publication I’ve seen - and opinions still differ. It’s great to read up on these, but in the end the jhana formulas might not be as fruitful as they could have been if there was more context in the suttas (others have found their peace with a specific interpretation, which you can also find in the numerous threads about it).
I agree with @Coemgenu on this. Gombrich likes to make us think and see things in a new light, but as with all ideas we should check them first. To me, the story is not to make the audience laugh but to ridicule a Brahmin cosmogony. In that sense it’s not unusual since there are many late suttas which resort to rhetorics of denigration to achieve an effect with the audience - namely to elevate Buddhism and to make other teachings look bad.
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I think it’s not unreasonable to answer a made up cosmology, with another made up cosmology. .!
Sorry that was a typo, meant to read filter water. I corrected the original now.
I thought it was because you may kill worms and other creatures by digging. And indeed this does happen. I’m fairly sure it’s not about plants. From Bhikkhu Ariyesako’s ‘The Bhikkhus’ Rules: A Guide for Laypeople’:
“Should any bhikkhu dig soil or have it dug, it is [an offence of Confession.]” (Paac. 10; BMC p.292)
Digging, breaking the surface of the earth, lighting a fire on it, pounding a stake into it are all disallowed. (If such ‘earth’ is more gravel or sand than ‘soil’ — and has no living creatures in it — it may then be dug.)
Now back to the water filtration. Bhikkhu Ariyesako:
One of the bhikkhu’s requisites is a water filter. This is employed to prevent the killing of (visible) waterborne creatures when making use of water from a well or stream. Practically, this also leads bhikkhus to take extra care that they cover water jars or regularly change water so that mosquito larvae do not have opportunity to breed.
Ariyesako seems to think that the mosquito larvae thing is about the monks, preventing them getting bitten more. However seeing the principle of filtering being about not killing, and also the digging thing, and also the rule against sprinking water on the ground that has living beings in it (because they may dry up and die), it seems more likely that preventing mosquitos from laying larvae in the water was because you would then be killing them by drinking it. So again this seems to be about the protection of life.
He goes on:
There are two rules concerned with bhikkhus and their use of water:
One of these offences was originally perpetrated by the notorious ‘group-of-six’ monks who used water that contained living beings. It can be summarized:
“Using water, knowing that it contains living beings that will die from one’s use, is [an offence of Confession.]” (Paac. 62; BMC p.424)
In the second offence the monks of AA.lavii were doing repairs and ‘sprinkled grass and clay’ with water that they knew contained life. It is summarized:
“If a bhikkhu knows that water contains living beings but still pours it out onto grass or earth it is [an offence of Confession.] Also pouring — or having it poured — into such water anything that would kill the beings therein is [an offence of Confession.]” (Paac. 20; See BMC p.319)
If this is the Jain attitude, and we know that the Buddha used to be a Jain, it is reasonable to consider the possibility that he adopted these rules, or at least the principle of them, from Jain practice.
Well if Gombrich’s view is that it ridicules Brahmanic cosmology and also maybe make some people laugh, that doesn’t sound very far off your opinion that it ridicules Brahmanic cosmology and also maybe doesn’t make anyone laugh. No?
I agree that this is very likely, but I wouldn’t trust MN 12 on this, as the language is formulaic and not confirmed by SN or AN to my knowledge. I also assume that the Jains were not the only ahimsa-samanas at that time. After all, going forth in any tradition must have meant a radical departure from mundane life, and Jains surely didn’t have a monopoly on karma considerations.
The humor was Gombrich’s whole point though 
That Jains, Brahmins, etc were ridiculed in suttas is long known. Also note that Gombrich sees the Buddha as the originator of the ‘humor’, whereas my assessment is that the ‘ridiculing suttas’ have marks of later compositions - of a time with a harsher competition among teachings, vying for royal patronage. Against common conception the Buddha had mostly a very respectful relationship with even traditional Brahmins - which makes the ridiculing ones stand out even more.
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Not sure what you’re referring to. Is that the only place he’s reported to have been with the Jains? Or some other thing?
Yes I also consider that to be a possibility - adopting general samana culture rather than necessarily Jain culture specifically. Although, if he really was a Jain formerly, then that would seem to be his introduction to samana culture, so, if he gets samana culture mainly from his time with the Jains anyway, then there’s no defined line there to be able to say he got it only from the wider culture, since his exposure to the culture may have come primarily directly through Jainism anyway.
What are those marks?
Also, do you have an explanation for nibbāna extinguishing the 3 fires? That seems overtly anti-Brahmanism. Do you feel that that doctrine also is found only in later passages?
I do know some people who are usually very polite and respectful, but then also at times make jokes about a different view, including some Buddhist teachers, either to outline how absurd it is (and therefore why it is to be rejected and the Buddhist doctrine to be acccepted), or to give the truth in a way that can also lighten the mood. Teachings ought not always be solemn - we need joy on the path also. So, we ought not necessarily doubt teachings where the Buddha behaves a little differently to how he does in most suttas.
And another point - some lay people might have been to humorous refutation of the teachings they had always taken for granted, since the humour can make things a bit fun. Also it makes it memorable, and that is really quite important.
I’m not saying I know which side is right. Just offering a counter-argument to what has been said.
I think the problem is deeper than that. It’s the assumption that satire cannot be serious.
We’re dealing with mythology, and myth, like any deep and resonant story, contains worlds. We can look into it and see all kinds of different things. Imagine, for example, someone telling the story of the Aggañña Sutta, sitting around a campfire at night, with an audience in rapt attention. With just a shift of inflection or timing, certain scenes might become a comedy or a tragedy. Which is real? Which is the “true” telling? Well, both; or neither.
Unlike doctrine, myth doesn’t have a single true interpretation (although it may have many false ones). It is suggestive and evocative, allusive and playful. The very fact that the audience is laughing at one line makes them feel the pathos of the next line even more keenly.
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