Tag Archives: early Buddhism

White Bones Red Rot Black Snakes

Enchant­ing, power­ful, hor­rific, beau­ti­ful, wise, deadly, com­pas­sion­ate, seduct­ive. Women in Buddhist story and image are all these things and more. She takes the signs of the ancient god­dess – the lotus, the sac­red grove, the ser­pent, the sac­ri­fice – and uses them in aston­ish­ing new ways. Her story is one of suf­fer­ing and great tri­als, and through it all an unquench­able long­ing to be free. This beau­ti­fully illus­trated work is as layered and sub­vers­ive as myth­o­logy itself. Based dir­ectly on authen­tic Buddhist texts, and informed with insights from psy­cho­logy and com­par­at­ive myth­o­logy, it takes a fresh look at how Buddhist women have been depic­ted by men and how they have depic­ted themselves.

July 18, 2011 – 8:14 am | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Books, Study | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

The Ironic Assumptions of Gregory Schopen

Gen­er­a­tions of schol­ars, from the incep­tion of the mod­ern study of Buddhism, have estab­lished a long-lasting and rel­at­ively stable con­sensus regard­ing the texts and his­tory of early Buddhism. While inev­it­ably sub­ject to the usual kinds of uncer­tainty, incom­plete­ness, and evol­u­tion, this con­sensus has provided a frame­work for the pos­it­ive devel­op­ment of our under­stand­ing of the Buddha, his teach­ings, and his com­munity. This con­sensus has been chal­lenged by the prom­in­ent Amer­cian aca­demic, Gregory Schopen. His essays have been the most influ­en­tial reas­sess­ment in the his­tory of Buddhist stud­ies. Many of his ideas are regarded as vir­tu­ally canon­ical in mod­ern aca­demia, and have per­meated far bey­ond the nor­mal reach of Buddhist aca­demic work. How­ever, his argu­ments are far bet­ter regarded among non-specialists than among those who actu­ally study early Buddhism. This essay shows a num­ber of flaws and prob­lems with Schopen’s work on early Buddhism, by implic­a­tion sup­port­ing the tra­di­tional consensus.

October 29, 2012 – 11:51 pm | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Essays, Study | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Why Devadatta Was No Saint

Devad­atta is depic­ted as the archetypal vil­lain in all Buddhist tra­di­tions. Regin­ald Ray has argued for a rad­ical reas­sess­ment of Devad­atta as a forest saint who was unfairly maligned in later mon­astic Buddhism. His work has been influ­en­tial, but it relies on omis­sions and mis­taken read­ings of the sources. Ray’s claim that ‘there is no over­lap between the Mahāsaṅghika treat­ment [of Devad­atta] and that of the five [Sthavira] schools’ is untrue. On the con­trary, the man­ner in which Devad­atta is depic­ted in the Mahāsaṅghika is broadly sim­ilar to the Sthavira accounts. Such dif­fer­ences as do exist are lit­er­ary rather than doc­trinal. The stor­ies of Devadatta’s deprav­ity became increas­ingly lurid in later Buddhism, but this is a nor­mal fea­ture of the myth­o­lo­giz­ing pro­cess, and has noth­ing to do with any ant­ag­on­ism against forest ascet­ics. In any case, the early sources are unan­im­ous in con­demning Devad­atta as the instig­ator of the first schism in the Buddhist community.

October 24, 2012 – 9:53 pm | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Essays, Study | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Rebirth and the In-between State in Early Buddhism

Does Early Buddhism cat­egor­ic­ally reject or, on the con­trary, tacitly admit the pos­sib­il­ity of an inter­me­di­ate state between two adja­cent lives? How can these descrip­tions and views be used to make sense of research find­ings on ‘Near Death Exper­i­ences’ bring us closer to a more accur­ate under­stand­ing of death and beyond?

May 27, 2010 – 11:26 pm | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Essays, Study | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

The First Mahāsaṅghikas

For what it is worth, we present here the details con­cern­ing the names of the ori­gin­at­ors of the Mahāsaṅghika heresy, accord­ing to the vari­ous trans­la­tions of Vasum­itra. Kumāra­jīva (T 2032) men­tions three names only, which he iden­ti­fies as bhikkhus, not groups. In the Tibetan trans­la­tion by Dharmākara (Tan­jur, Mdo. XC, 11) the same three names …

October 24, 2012 – 10:17 pm | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Sects & Sectarianism, Study | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Sekhiya Rules Reconsidered

Pachow and Preb­ish both regard the dif­fer­ences in the sekhiya (train­ing) rules of the pāṭimokkha as evid­ence for the antiquity of the Mahāsaṅghika Vinaya. Preb­ish fur­ther argues, based on the Śāriputraparipṛcchā, that the dif­fer­ences in sekhiya rules were the decis­ive factor in caus­ing the first schism between the Mahāsaṅghikas and Sthaviras. I have else­where given reason …

October 24, 2012 – 10:16 pm | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Sects & Sectarianism, Study | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Sasaki and Schism

Shizuken Sasaki has pub­lished a series of eight papers on the state of Buddhist sects dur­ing the reign of Aśoka, con­sti­tut­ing one of the most sus­tained bod­ies of ori­ginal research on the topic. His work com­bines extens­ive trans­la­tions and sys­tem­atic present­a­tions of a range of works, par­tic­u­larly the under­u­til­ized sources in the Chinese Vinayas, sub­jec­ted to elab­or­ate …

October 24, 2012 – 10:15 pm | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Sects & Sectarianism, Study | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Names and Dates at Vedisa

Goti­puta Wil­lis attempts to determ­ine the likely time of Gotiputa’s death. Assum­ing that the stupa was built soon after the death of Gotiputa’s stu­dents, and that there was a 25–30 year gap between Gotiputa’s death and the death of his stu­dents, he estim­ates that Goti­puta died around 140 BCE. But these assump­tions are highly tenu­ous. If we …

October 24, 2012 – 10:14 pm | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Sects & Sectarianism, Study | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Mahāsaṅghika—the Earliest Vinaya?

The search goes on for some­thing that we can identify as the earli­est Vinaya, the prin­ciples of mon­astic con­duct that have set the stand­ard for Buddhist mon­ast­ics from the Buddha until now. For schol­ars this is part of the enig­mat­ic­ally mean­ing­ful need to search for the ori­gins of things. For myself as a prac­ti­cing monk, it …

October 24, 2012 – 10:13 pm | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Essays, Sects & Sectarianism, Study | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Dharmaguptakas and the Stupa

Vasum­itra men­tions that the Dharmagup­ta­kas held that stupa wor­ship was mer­it­ori­ous, which is hardly unusual. But the school also pre­serves a unique list of 26 sekhiya rules per­tain­ing to con­duct around the stupa. The obvi­ous read­ing of these two bits of inform­a­tion is that the Dharmagup­ta­kas had a spe­cial emphasis on the stupa cult. But the more …

October 24, 2012 – 10:12 pm | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Sects & Sectarianism, Study | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)