Tag Archives: Nikāyas

A Swift Pair of Messengers

Serenity and insight are the two great wings of Buddhist med­it­a­tion. They each have a spe­cial role to play in the path to Awaken­ing. While some mod­ern approaches seek to mar­gin­al­ize serenity in favor of ‘dry’ insight, the Buddha’s own dis­courses place serenity right at the cen­ter of the path. This book col­lects vir­tu­ally all the sig­ni­fic­ant pas­sages on this topic that are found in the early dis­courses, care­fully elu­cid­ated for the mod­ern reader.

July 20, 2010 – 11:42 pm | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Books, Study, Translations | 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)

Satipaṭṭhāna and the Evolution of the Dhamma Theory

While the Satipaṭṭhana Sutta is often claimed to be the most import­ant of the Buddha’s teach­ings, close tex­tual ana­lysis reveals that it is a com­pos­ite text, with sub­stan­tial dif­fer­ences between the many exist­ing ver­sions. The use of the fun­da­mental term dhamma in fact reveals the text to be part of the early Abhid­hamma movement.

May 20, 2010 – 10:21 am | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Essays, Study | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Without Delay

The term akā­lika, ‘time­less’, is one of the most famil­iar in the whole Dhamma. It is recited as part of the daily chant­ing as a fun­da­mental aspect of the Dhamma. And yet its mean­ing is far from clear, and so it has attrac­ted many inter­pret­a­tions. Rather than being a philo­soph­ical notion, it seems that is a call to action: if you prac­tice, you can see the res­ults for yourself.

May 20, 2010 – 9:20 am | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Essays, Study | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off

It’s Time

It’s time. We need a new paradigm. For 2500 years Buddhism has been con­stantly chan­ging, adapt­ing, evolving; yet the myths of the schools insist that the Dhamma remains the same.

May 20, 2010 – 9:08 am | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Essays, Study | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

What the Buddha Really Taught

Through care­ful atten­tion to the earli­est Buddhist teach­ings, pre­served in scrip­tures in Pali, Chinese, Tibetan, and Sanskrit, we can not only come closer to the Buddha’s ori­ginal mes­sage, but can dis­cern the teach­ings shared among all Buddhist traditions.

May 16, 2010 – 8:12 am | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Essays, Study | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Saṅghabheda and Nikāyabheda

When writ­ing Sects & Sec­tari­an­ism, I tried to account for the mod­ern crit­ical assess­ments of the evid­ence as best I could. How­ever, since this is a part-time pro­ject done amid a busy sched­ule, it’s dif­fi­cult to keep up with everything. Just recently I came across an art­icle by Heinz Bech­ert deal­ing with Aśoka’s ‘so-called’ schism edict. (Heinz Bech­ert, ‘The Import­ance …

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