Why can't LBTs be Authentic?

Discussion
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Thanks, @Javier. I think we see the issue differently, but that’s OK. Part of what makes D&D great are these discussions; if we all agreed with each other, it’d be terribly boring. :slight_smile:

So, here’s my really crude thought after your post. The Buddha taught his monks and nuns. After the Buddha’s passing, his monks gathered as a council and agreed on the body of his teachings. These were kept and recited, with the reciters being monks that memorized the teachings verbatim. Then some monks were sent off to Sri Lanka, and others (their paths never crossing) went off to China. These teachings were then written down once writing was formalized in these regions. We now compare the Sri Lankan canon and the Agamas, and they line up amazingly accurately and consistently. We now can say that these texts that mirror each other, despite being “game-of-telephoned” over time and distance, reasonably accurately capture the Dhamma and the teachings of the early Sangha that succeeded the Buddha.

My above summary would get me a solid D- in any competent Buddhist History course. But, this evidence really does give us the ability to have a lot of confidence in the core, consistent early teachings. And, we have scholars like Vens. Sujato, Brahmali, Analayo, and Prof. Gombrich to help us now sort all of this out. We can have this confidence that a decent proportion of the EBTs reflect the actual Dhamma, of the Buddha, whereas later texts may not or do not.

Thankfully, what the Buddha established was a path of practice. Thankfully, we don’t have a creed that we need to recite and cling to in order to be a Buddhist. This allows for a wide umbrella, and the ability for all of us as kalyana mitta to practice this Path as we deem fit, and to support each other, even if we don’t always agree on what authenticity or weight to give to various teachings.

I wish you a good weekend, with Metta, Javier. I learned a lot today…

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Hello friend Javier,

You know, it was only with difficulty that anyone could beat me in a game of chess! And I have played with grandmasters! Such was the natural power of my mind in deductive syllogism that, it seemed as if Coeus had bestowed it upon me at birth; a gift to wield readily and freely without toil or effort! In other words, it is possible to ponder whether I have turned the matter at hand into a question of epistemology, or whether you have not been wary of the impact of dualism on your very evaluation of my contribution to the discussion, and whether your and my reference to and use of not only the word “fact”, but even the word “the”, might mean different things in conventional and ultimate terms, and go about wondering what do we really intend to mean by its utilisation in each others speech. Further we would ponder whether the distinction between what’s conventional and what’s ultimate is perhaps itself conventional, or perhaps ultimate, and whether this very thought:

The distinction between what’s conventional and what’s ultimate is itself conventional.

… involves a recurssive self-reference paradox that couldn’t possibly be solved through verbal logic alone, which is itself recurresive, and whether this eventually justifies the shoe that the Chinese master will throw in your face in the middle of conversation, so that you may thereby become suddenly enlightened!

We can do all that; but I will have to apologise to you, friend Javier, because I can’t do it; not any more! For I have firmly renounced that very element of mind, to the extent that I can hardly even remember it, and I no longer seek to grasp reality and the meaning of things, in the same way a carpenter grasps hold of a piece of wood! I no longer depend on such type of thinking to connect the dots together. For Coeus turns out to be far more devilish than benevolent, and I have taken refuge in the Buddha, to whom I now bow; I bow to the Buddha for showing me the alternative; the experiential, intuitive awareness of reality; and for showing me how to rid of this heavy load of logic and thought and thinking, and of the doubt on whether something is Madhyamaka or not, and for teaching me how to practise and train so as to reach this self-justifying freedom and intuitive wisdom of the heart.

I bow to the Buddha.

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Hi Gabriel,

Would you mind quoting some of these differences in doctrine? My impression from a few years ago when I read the entirety of SN and AN (speedreading the obviously repetitive suttas) was that nothing struck me as specific to one or the other. Of the 4 main Nikayas, only DN stands apart IMO and even then contains overall kosher teachings.

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Interesting discussion.

Defining “authentic” was a good idea. Smart to agree on the terms of a debate/discussion to avoid the obvious, but there is something more…

Should mention that I have read Bhante Sujato & Brahmali’s book on the authenticity of the EBTs, twice. It’s a great read and should provide a leg up to those whom read it. Highly recommend it!

But.

The entire mass of Buddhist scripture, all of it, has the acute issue of being a hypothesis that can’t be disproven(broadly). Intellectual dissection is wonderful, easpically using recent Western academic standards, but this isn’t mathematics, which has proofs, nor physics, which has laboratory and field based experimentation/observation. Literary and historic analytics are highly problematic, even if well done and convincing.

Confirmation-bias is an interesting phenomenon.

Without direct personal experience as the basis for knowledge and insight into the true nature of the teaching and the reality it alludes too, at best the majority of the scriptures(Pali or not) are mostly conjecture(a handful of leaves compared to the whole forest; the bare-constituents can never be comprehensive or authoritative except to the individual) which forms a basis for a purely individual understanding of a hypothesis to be proven/disproven by oneself alone.

Westerners are often turned off by talk of devas, heaven realms, hell realms, spiritual powers, rebirth, etc. Makes sense given the context of the culture at large, however, if someone has direct experience with any one of these details the doubters/naysayers would seemingly appear naïve. Silly. So too, a 15th century Chan monk whose attained the highest knowledges isn’t likely to go around the country side proclaiming the issues in the scriptures and current practices. Maybe he’d do so quietly with individuals. Maybe. And that goes for any Noble disciple of any school, in any region in the world. It would be unsavory and foolhardy. The awakened disciple is quiet and modest, not a trouble maker or rabble rouser. Anyone whom declares/alludes-to higher knowledges/attainments whether quietly inside the monastic order or outside publicly should be immediately suspect by default.

The Pali EBTs are likely the best starting point for a serious practitioner, but just that, a good place to establish a solid foundation from which one can move forward on their way along the metaphorical path.
:anjal:

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Well i can vouch for Sheldon’s mother, she definitely isn’t madhyamaka, nor arguing here on the basis of ultimate truth!!

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To me personally the differences became clearer when I did detailed research. It probably doesn’t pop up just by reading the SN and AN, the material is just too vast.

Again, a relatively simple method would be to take DN 33 and to trace the concepts back in SN & AN with a few categories “exclusively AN/SN”, “mostly AN/SN” “similarly in both”.

Since the SN is more structured it would also be worthwhile to note in which Vagga the concept appears, for many important concepts can be found mostly in the Mahavagga. So it might turn out that certain Vaggas (e.g. Mahavagga) had more cross-influences with the AN than others. This might reveal some transmission aspects.

But for a few examples:
DN 33.4.19 is only AN - same with DN 33.4.21, etc.
If you take the formula “esa bhagavato sāvakasaṅgho, āhuneyyo pāhuneyyo dakkhiṇeyyo añjalikaraṇīyo anuttaraṃ puññakkhettaṃ lokassā’ti” you’ll find it 5xSN and 29xAN, so it’d be more pronounced in the AN etc.

It probably doesn’t sound convincing, but if you investigate in detail you’ll see transmission tendencies.

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What I meant in by “nothing struck me as specific to one or the other” is that the general thrust of the teachings is the same between SN and AN, i.e. I noticed no gross contradictions. As you pointed out, there will be passages found more in one in the other or uniquely in just one and this reflects transmission tendencies. However, the gist remains the same AFAICT.

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I’m up for it: Define the gist and let’s forget all the rest. And I’m only half joking.

Wittgenstein remarked that raisins might be the best thing about a cake, but that to eat only raisins is not as tasty as to eat cake… We might have a similar case with the EBT.

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What got this conversation started was my interest in what you claimed to see as differences in doctrine between SN and AN and my asking you to provide them. Because I didn’t see any glaring differences. I’m interested to see if you can argue otherwise with specific quotes. As you correctly surmised, a few passages from DN repeating in AN and not in SN doesn’t convince me that AN is doctrinally difference from SN in any meaningful way.

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Depends on what you see as ‘meaningful’. To me the occurrence of the formula “ esa bhagavato sāvakasaṅgho… puññakkhettaṃ…" for example is meaningful for it partly constitutes the relationship with laity. A doctrine which propagates the end of rebirth for monastics and a futile divine rebirth for laity (which we find more in the AN) is relevant for my perspective of early Buddhism.

Many of the (early) poems in the first SN Vagga and the Snp seem to be composed by Brahmin-Buddhists because of the vocabulary they use. They set the tone for a devotional Buddhism.

The idea of an original nine-fold classification in “Sutta , geyya , veyyākaraṇa…” is only AN.

The polemic against the one who mortifies himself and others is only AN (it’s an intransparent reference to the Brahmin diksa-ritual). This feeds into the doctrine that original Buddhism was against self-mortification and influences how we interpret “the middle path”.

And there is more. Again, I know it’s not convincing to just read it from me. It becomes relevant if you dig into it. Do you know where in SN and AN the all-buddhist term “Four Noble Truths” appears? Only in the SN Mahavagga (with one exception only in SN 56), AN 3.61 and AN 5.15. That is relevant I find. We take a term from SN 56 and apply it to be the fundamental structure of all Early Buddhism. What we make of it is another topic, but I find it relevant.

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I’m just linking this here, in case some of you didn’t see in in the AV category.

https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/bswa-dhamma-talk-why-ebts-are-important-for-practice/11889

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I can’t recall a passage where divine rebirth is said to be “futile” for a disciple of the Buddha, lay or monastic. For a Buddhist disciple, dIvine rebirth is always described in positive terms unless it’s compared to Nibbana, in which case it is described at worst as falling short rather than a futile exercise.

But do any of these unique AN quirks actually contradict SN? That’s my contention. I don’t see SN saying “the sky is blue” vs. AN saying “the sky is red.” I don’t think AN and SN contradict each other in any doctrinally (let alone practically) meaningful way whereas it appears you think they do - perhaps not to the extent of red vs blue, but certainly to some meaningful extent. And that’s fine: as you said, what’s meaningful to me may not be for you and vice-versa.

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This is true of the word ariyasacca. But when the four truths are expounded they are not always named as such. You will find quite a few more references in the SN and AN if you search for dukkhasamudayo, dukkhanirodho and dukkhanirodhagāminī paṭipadā.

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Sorry, I didn’t make clear that this is my take on it. On the one hand you have a doctrine that says “The only way out is nibbana (+sotapatti etc), anything else is just another birth” and then lay people are lured with a carrot “here’s how your next life will be nice”? Against the background of endless rebirths up and down this seems to me inconsistent. In that respect I understand how in Mahayana there was a need to envision a heaven other than nirvana.

That’s probably correct. Contradiction would be a hard criterion. We probably don’t find a nikaya contradicting another. It still might matter for people to find different concepts in different nikayas/chapters. Early Buddhism is just not as homogeneous as one would usually think (in the sense of ‘teaching the same thing everywhere’).

That is right of course. There is no doubt that dukkha and reducing/ending it is a main topic of the nikayas.

Just to atone for my digression: can anyone say if in the LBT the end of duhkha is still the most important-desirable-attainable spiritual goal?

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Depends on which LBT we are talking about and how the end of dukkha is defined.

For example, I was just reading the Bodhisambhara sastra by Nagarjuna, he says that a bodhisattva fears the grounds of the arhats and the pratyekabuddhas “more than the hells” and for him they constitute death. So clearly he has a different view of what the end of dukkha is, since in EBT end of dukkha is arhatship which is not ontologically different than the state of a buddha.

Also Yogacara texts teach “apratistha nirvana” which is said to be a metaphysically different kind of nirvana than the nirvana of an arhat that allows a buddha to be in nirvana but not pass into a state of cessation but continue to be reborn/stay active in the world helping others. Again, this twofold view of nirvana is not kosher as per EBTs and is clearly a later view.

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It would be neat to get a picture about the texts up until the 2nd or 3rd century. Also the individuals (eg Nagarjuna) vs the Sutras.

If it turns out that the main register changed from end of dukkha to cosmic compassion (so that compassion overrides cessation) then that’s probably another ground for assessing the texts as ‘inauthentic’ - namely, the change in spirit.

But that’s certainly not the whole story as we have another theme of Śūnyatā and the Prajñāpāramitā. Interestingly this (voidness, emptiness) is described more radically than in the EBT, and even EBT followers argue with this strong ontological position. So, maybe without knowing EBTers slip into LBT-mode when arguing for ‘what the Buddha really meant to say’ :slight_smile:

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Maybe we could discuss a specific example…? I’m not familiar with Nagarjuna’s teaching to have a sense of the overall view.

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Here is Falk’s publication of the earliest Mahayana-Prajnaparamita manuscript: prajnaparamita-5 | Harry Falk - Academia.edu

It is one of the Gandhara manuscripts, radiocarbon-dated to the second half of the first century and thus one of the oldest Buddhist manuscripts. It was part of a collection of mostly EBT suttas, hence the still valid theory that Mahayana developed within EBT communities.

You will find the content to be relateable: Khandhas are empty and also our practice should not reinforce the khandhas. And, they are all empty - which is an essential aspect of prajnaparamita literature.

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As far as I know, in all stages in the evolution of non-Mahāyāna Indian Buddhism dukkhanirodha remains the highest good.

Having said that, the rise of the notion of the six or ten perfections marks a major change in how the path to dukkhanirodha came to be conceived. I’m not referring solely to bodhisattvas here, but rather to the notion in Apadānic literature that for everybody — would-be sammāsambuddhas, paccekabuddhas and arahants alike — a pivotal encounter with a Buddha followed by a multi-kalpa development of the perfections is a prerequisite to enlightenment. One consequence of this is that for those who believe in the Apadānic conception, the EBT emphasis on striving for dukkhanirodha in the present life will not be viewed as applying to them unless they’re confident that they’ve already had a pivotal encounter with a Buddha and 100,000 kalpas (or whatever) of paramitā development successfully completed.

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Could you be more specific on how we could evaluate that? Maybe it is hard to talk in general of such a vast literature as all LBTs, but it would be good if we could discuss here some specifics about evidence and reasoning that establish what the Buddha did or didn’t teach.

I’ve been reading Edward Conze’s translation of the Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom and noted some points that seemed to me as indications that it wasn’t taught by Buddha Shakyamuni:

  • it makes reference to itself as a written text, which wasn’t usual during Buddha’s time.
  • In it, Buddha appears making reference to the practice of worshiping relics (which arose after Buddha’s parinirvana)
  • it refers to organized lists of dharmas such as the 37 limbs of enlightenment and 18 special qualities of the Buddha which, as far I know, although appear individually in EBTs, were organized in such fashion in Abhidharma texts.

Taking that as an example, do we have enough ground to be certain about that text not being taught by the Buddha? It seems like we have strong evidence if we look from a particular perspective.

Another perspective: there are stories about such LBTs as Abhidharma or this one having been taught to and preserved by non-human beings such as devas and nagas, which are from the perspective of EBTs as much a fact as what we normally now consider as historical facts.

I tend to see LBTs as interpretations of the material present in EBTs, but I’d like to have more certainty in my approach to the issue and maybe you could help me out with evidence and reasonings :-).

I’ve read once an interpretation that prajnaparamita literature arose as a reaction against Abhidharmic ontology. That seems to make sense, since creating a universal systematized scheme of real dharmas might lead some to grasp the dharma wrongly like in MN22, having lost sight of the purpose of the path, which is liberation from suffering. Prajnaparamita literature emphasizes that the Dharma is medicine to grasping, not something to be grasped upon.
But if that is the case, it baffles me why this criticism would be done through attributing a text to the Buddha, rather than writing commentaries on EBTs. But I’m sure ancient Indian thinking worked quite differently from ours, and historical accuracy wasn’t as valued and as important as it is to us “Abrahamic” people.

Anyway, might it be the case that some of LBTs were taught by the Buddha? Or are they all innovations/reinterpretations attributed to the Buddha while in fact not having been taught by him? How can we be sure of anything in this regard?

Thank you for your thoughts on the matter!