Well, some of us do want to have this discussion, on these terms. Your attempts to sabotage our discussion are just unnecessary.
Yes. Historians insist on this in every introduction to history.
The “efficacy of practice” is what matters to religious Buddhists but it doesn’t matter that much, if at all, to historians or any non-Buddhists. History does not serve Buddhism. Those who try to make it do so, inevitably introduce severe distortions.
I’m reminded here of Joseph Walser’s idea of Buddhism without Buddhist. The zoom talk he gave on this is more accessible than the subsequent article. When you go to Asia and ask Buddhists, most of them have never heard of the anātman doctrine, for example, and many of them hold ātmavāda beliefs. So the idea that “Buddhism” is all about anātman is simply false in practice. The view is based on a literalist reading of ancient Buddhist texts, rather than on any attempt to understand what living Buddhists believe. Most Westerners who believe in karma clearly also have an ātmavāda as well.
Anyway, I’m guessing you make this mistake because you haven’t read the document referred to in the OP. While I didn’t find it easy to read, it was my intention to stimulate discussion of the content of that essay. As much as anything, the essay is difficult to understand and I was interested to see if other people had opinions on it (so far no one seems to have bothered to read it, so commenting is largely off-topic and inaccurate).
Your statement promoting inductive inferences as the way forward is incorrect.
Induction is the method of inference that starts with known facts and seeks to produce generalisations about those facts. This method is popular amongst positivists. But this is not what modern day historians do. Hence, the invocation of “induction” here (and in Wynne 2019) looks anachronistic despite referencing Bayes.
The relevant form of inference here is abductive. In abduction we start with observations and try to produce causal explanations. This, incidentally, is why we need access to the thoughts of people in the past, via writing. Because without some grasp of their motivations, we can’t say why they acted the way that they did; we can only say with archaeologists, that they did act that way.
Modern history, like modern science, is principally concerned with producing causal explanations of observed phenomena. Generalisations are a secondary concern, at best. In fact, historical facts tend to resist generalisation, unlike scientific facts. Contra, say, Newton’s laws, we cannot predict the future based on the historical past, but nor can we retrodict the past based on the present. The past is a poor guide to the future.
This topic has nothing to do with “the practice of Buddhism” in the Buddhist sense of consciously adopting formal Buddhist “practices”. Rather we are inquiring as to why some Buddhists insist on describing their belief system in terms such as: “The efficacy of the practice is what really matters.” We might inquire, for example, into the historical precedents for such a religious view. In the best case we might be able to explain how this kind of view emerged and how changed over time; and why it dominates Modernist Buddhist rhetoric.
For example, Buddhist karma doctrines change over time and from sect to sect. For historians, the interesting thing is not the question of the veracity of karma doctrines, or which Buddhists were right about karma. Contra local attempts at disinformation, historians are distinctly disinterested in the “truth” of Buddhism. Rather, historians are interested in how Buddhists have argued about karma, and what kinds of actions have been justified by belief in karma doctrines. And how all this interacts with what was going on in the societies within which Buddhists lived.
Walters spends a great deal of time on this.
The topic is not even the Buddha and his historicity, since for historians this is a simple issue: there was no writing at the time of the Buddha and he is not an historical person for this reason. The topic is more like, how did the various Buddhist narratives about the Buddha inform how different Buddhists describe their religion internally and to outsiders. This is the approach of Bernard Faure in his new book.
What matters, in this view, is that some Buddhists believe in the historicity of the Buddha and some do not; some think it is important and some do not. Historians aim to explain why we see opposing views, with reference to documents that provide insights into such beliefs. Ultimately, our aim (according to Walters) is to explain how the actions of Buddhists fit into global history.
Thank for sharing. But if someone does not believe in the historicy of the Buddha why talk about buddhism or even call oneself a buddhist?
1 Like
Sorry if this isn’t exactly on topic… What exactly does it mean to believe in the historicity of the Buddha? Does it mean to believe that there are contemporary written accounts of the Buddha? Because no one believes that, do they? Or would someone who believed in the historicity of the Buddha believe that the Pali canon is actually a contemporary written document?
Or does it mean that someone believes that if there were contemporary written documents then they would confirm the beliefs Buddhists hold about the Buddha.
1 Like
Replying both to @Green and @Snowbird
Historicity (i.e. the abstract fact of being historical) is about what we can know, not about what existed or was real. That is to say it’s an epistemic issue, not a metaphysical issue (since Nāgārjuna, Buddhists often seem confused about this distinction).
Sanskrit and Pāli lack any word that corresponds to “history”, or “historicity”, or “historical”. These are all relatively modern concepts that are alien to Buddhist texts. So we have to be aware that this is a purely modern and artificial discussion point.
Traditionally there was never any doubt on two points: (A) that the Buddha really lived, and (B) the Buddha was a buddha who did miracles, saw your rebirths, conversed with gods, had 40 teeth and flat feet, etc. Traditionally, Buddhists never had any sense that these two views were incompatible. They didn’t make a mythic/historic distinction at all.
Those who advocate for the idea of an “historical Buddha” are often trying to force a distinction between these two views and to banish the mythic side (just as materialists and idealists alike divide the world in two and declare one half to be real and the other to be unreal). I think the problem is that, in the West, a magical Buddha is a barrier to proselytisation in an increasing secular world; one which has seen secular mindfulness be wildly more popular than religious Buddhism. On the other hand, a historical Buddha is necessarily a demythologized Buddha.
To me you have this question backwards. To me the question must be: “If you don’t believe in the mythic Buddha, why would you call yourself a Buddhist?” What makes the Buddha a buddha is not his humanity or historicity, but precisely the transcendence of his humanity and history. And what’s important, in retrospect, is precisely the mythology that built up around this idea. No one ever became a Buddhist because they thought the Buddha was just a regular human being.
As far as I know, no historian of Buddhism in the last 50 years has said “the Buddha never existed”. David Drewes, for example, was quite explicit in saying: “the Buddha is universally agreed to have lived” (in a forthcoming paper I’ve seen, he confirms that this is his view also). Actually, all the historians of Buddhism who argue against the historicity of the Buddha seem to be happy to admit that a human founder for Buddhism is possible, plausible, and likely. It’s just that what we know about him takes the form of mythology, it does not take the form of history (i.e. causal explanations for what happened based on primary sources).
It’s only Westerners, and then only a small clique of positivists amongst Western Buddhists, who insist that the Buddha had to be real.
As a Buddhist, I have always taken the stories about the Buddha to be mythological. Just like most other Buddhists in history have. I was primed to consider the importance of myth by my prior reading of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. So the word “myth” never bothered me. It was partly the possibility of transcending the human condition that made me want to go deeper into Buddhism.
I went on pilgrimage in India, twice. But I didn’t meet the historical Buddha in India because he’s been dead at least 2000 years and was not reborn. Even if he was real ~2000 years ago, so what? What I encountered more deeply on pilgrimage was precisely the mythic Buddha.
To me, if any Buddha might be “irrelevant to Buddhism”, it is the historical Buddha, not the mythological Buddha. I struggle to see why Buddhists have made a fuss about the other possibility.
Re: “contemporary accounts”, I believe that the point of Sujato and Brahmali’s book on the “authenticity of the Pāli suttas” was to assert that the suttas can be treated as if they are contemporary first-hand written accounts of the Buddha (i.e. primary sources as described by historians). And they appear to believe that this positivistically confirms the articles of their faith; which is a much bigger deal for bhikkhus (if anyone who has renounced Theravāda can be said to be a bhikkhu) because they have given up so much on the basis of their belief in those articles (lifelong chastity being only the most obvious example).
Their book obviously involved a lot of hard work on their part and was no doubt a sincere expression of their religious faith but, sadly, no historians take (or ever will take) their approach seriously because, like so many other Buddhists who dabble in scholarship, they simply ignore the theories and methods of historical inquiry developed over centuries by historians.
Until 2024, that was me also. Learning about historical methods has been a game changer for me. I wish I’d made the effort 20 years ago. The downside of being self-taught is that one often has large blindspots. I didn’t know that not knowing about historical methods was a major handicap. Now I do know. And for me, this discovery and my current exploration of the implications of it, are exhilarating. In writing about it, I hoped to find some like-hearted people: yet again, optimism triumphs over experience.
7 Likes
Ii am grateful that you share it. I am sorry that i am, indeed, not really like-hearted about this theme. It has not been really on my mind. But i appreciate all you write about this, and your willingness to share what you have learned. Also how this all lives for you.
I personally see Buddha also as a normal human being who became painful aware of the truth of suffering, painful aware that also he would become sick, grow old and die. Although he was not a Buddha at that time, that part is for me also important. But this is off topic.
Thanks!
2 Likes
I disagree.
Your definition of ‘history’ appears very Hegelian. ‘India has no history’, he claimed.
But modern disciplinary history has broken with Hegel and is much broader in its conception than you seem to suggest.
Can you give some examples? In the absence of contemporaneous primary sources what do such historians base their understanding of such history on?
I fear that continuing to debate this point about what history is risks just talking past each other. It isn’t the case that people who define history more narrowly to necessarily include contemporaneous primary sources believe that India has no past. Rather, it is a conservative statement about the scope of what can be known about that past and the theater in which we engage that knowledge. 
The Orientalist and Hegelian claim is not that it has no past, but no history.
This article goes some way in explaining the background to such claims, and why they are problematic:
TRAUTMANN, THOMAS R. “Does India Have History? Does History Have India?” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 54, no. 1, 2012, pp. 174–205. JSTOR, Does India Have History? Does History Have India? on JSTOR. Accessed 2 Apr. 2024.
This is an interesting point. I have the same struggle with seeing the point of the “scientist Buddha”.
I’m rather clueless about history and historical methods, but regarding the tension between history and mythology/practice I found Rita Gross’s talks and articles interesting. She would have had some agreement with the statement of yours that I quoted above.
1 Like
You hit this one, and I find this debate fascinating and positive. So I keep my mouth shut, and let it roll without me becoming too “happy” 
Thank you so much
2 Likes
The motte-and-bailey fallacy is a form of argument and an informal fallacy where an arguer conflates two positions that share similarities, one modest and easy to defend (the “motte”) and one much more controversial and harder to defend (the “bailey”). The arguer advances the controversial position, but when challenged, insists that only the more modest position is being advanced.
If you disagree I’m happy to be persuaded. But you won’t persuade me that Pāli has a word for history without citing such a word. Nor will you persuade me by invoking Hegel. Nor by suggesting that you have an ideological objection to what I wrote.
Moreover, I’ve never read Hegel, never been interested in Hegel. I’ve never read anything good or interesting about Hegel even. So your invocation of Hegel seems to be a red herring. And moreover, he and I appear have different views of India history (based on your four word summary of the most verbose philosopher in history).
My entirely uncontroversial claim, re India, is that Indian history begins with documents, and the first documents in Indian were the Asokan inscriptions. Evidence for writing is a little earlier, but they don’t quite make documents. See for example the article I posted about just 23 days ago: Aśoka and the Use of Writing in Ancient India
No modern historian disagrees with this. Hegel might, but I wouldn’t know about that.
Moreover, there is a great deal we can say about various Indian cultures in pre-history via archaeology, for example, I regularly make use of the concept of the “two cultures” which is based on the changing distribution of pottery styles in North India.
3 Likes
The passage you cite quite very obviously does not fit the Wikipedia definition of the motte-and-bailey fallacy. Notably, it only involves one position, and that based on a rather banal observation about Buddhist plurality. Your time on Wikipedia seems to have been wasted, āvuso. In fact your interjection is today’s second example of the red-herring fallacy:
This fallacy consists in diverting attention from the real issue by focusing instead on an issue having only a surface relevance to the first. –Red Herring : Department of Philosophy : Texas State University
1 Like
I meant that your “motte” is taking “historical/mythical” as in “contemporaneous with versus before writing” and that your “bailey” is implying “historical/mythical” in their usual sense of “real versus imaginary”.
Are you at all curious to understand why? Or are you happy not seeing?
Without getting into the contention over logical fallacies, it is interesting to note that it is possible for myth and history to be contemporaneous. There are primary sources documenting the history of Israel around the time of Jesus. That is, the time period of Jesus’ life in Israel firmly belongs in the sphere of historical inquiry. However, outside of Christian faith you’ll find broad agreement that the story of the resurrection belongs to myth, no?
I’m not so interested in debating fallacies, but I am interested in understanding your point here Venerable. As I understand @Jayarava’s quote, the historical Buddha is a non sequitur given the dearth of primary sources from the time period where he purportedly lived. What is left are the primary sources of people attesting to the real life of the Buddha from much later periods. These entail many prima facie mythical elements for those who do not harbor any faith in Buddhism.
You seem to be contending that it is incorrect to describe these as mythical in an academic sense because it precludes the possibility that the mythical was in fact actual? However, I don’t think that this preclusion is necessarily being presented by those who assert to label the Buddha as mythological. The point is that if one is to believe in this actuality, it is necessarily as a matter of faith and not through the evidential record of history nor archeology nor any other scientific study of the past.
So, why have Buddhists made a fuss about the other possibility - of the possibility to know the historical/archeological Buddha through evidence and not just faith? To my mind, the answer is an emotional fixation on the inadequacy of faith and the craving for belief in the possibility of certainty even if that possibility is illusion.
What is possible to know in the here and now is the dhamma. That is, the actual practices that have purportedly been passed down through the ages and are embodied in the surviving people and communities who engage those practices. One facet of those practices, for me, is to give up and let go of an emotional fixation and craving for belief in the possibility of certainty with regard to the mythological characteristics of the Buddha’s personage as recounted through oral tradition. It doesn’t mean that I don’t believe or have faith in those characteristics, but it does mean that I don’t look for made-up historical/archeological evidence to bolster that emotional fixation.
Another point of the dhamma for me in the here and now, is to also give up belief in any certainty on the non-actuality of various purported mythological characteristics of the Buddha’s personage. To put up the question of whether the purported mythological characteristics of the Buddha’s personage are real or not real is a category error and not conducive or beneficial to the path as I understand it. It is to concentrate the mind on something that cannot be known in order to feed that emotional fixation craving after certainty. Which just feeds it and grows this defilement leading to future suffering. That’s how my limited mind sees it at least.
1 Like
Fair enough. Have a nice day!
1 Like
What do you think this indicates?
I ask because, at least since Bīrūnī, this kind of reasoning has been used to bolster the claim that Indian culture possessed no History, that its people were ahistorical in their outlook or lacking a historical consciousness. This view is demonstrably wrong and pernicious, being motivated on the one hand by cultural self-aggrandisement and, on the other, plain old racism.
Here the question is rather the other way round: if for a person the fact of having doubts about the historicity of the Buddha (which, incidentally, are absolutely justified in the absence of relevant facts) is a disqualifying sign for being considered a Buddhist, then what is for such a person the ‘Buddha’ in whom one takes refuge? And what does the person understand to be the ‘Buddha’ in the phrase ‘he who sees the Dhamma sees the Buddha’? Is taking refuge in the Buddha a taking refuge in historicity? To see the Buddha is to see the facts of the Buddha’s historicity? And if ‘seeing the Dhamma’ is essentially having the right views, is seeing the facts supporting the Buddha’s historicity the same as seeing the Dhamma, having the right views?
The Buddha’s non-historicity is a fact, a truth. To deny truth and facts, any truth and facts, is delusion and ignorance. Is there anything more disqualifying to be called a Buddhist than to deny truth and facts?
1 Like
Is there any way to close this thread? It has stopped being fun.