Tag Archives: schism

Sects & Sectarianism

Why are there so many schools of Buddhism? Are the dif­fer­ences just cul­tural, or do they have fun­da­ment­ally dif­fer­ent vis­ions of Dhamma? This work assesses the claims of the tra­di­tions, and takes into account to find­ings of mod­ern schol­ar­ship. It pays spe­cial atten­tion to the ori­gins of the mon­astic orders. If we are to under­stand the dif­fer­ences, and some­times ten­sions, between the schools of Buddhism today, we must exam­ine more closely the forces that spurred their formation.

August 23, 2012 – 11:15 pm | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Books, 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)

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)

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)

Dhamma or Vinaya?

We have examined at some length the more import­ant sources deal­ing with the first schism, and it is evid­ent that it is not pos­sible to fully resolve the dif­fer­ences. Clearly there were mul­tiple forces act­ing to break the Sangha apart, and it is not easy to tell which may have been the decis­ive factor in …

October 24, 2012 – 10:11 pm | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Sects & Sectarianism, Study | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

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)