Tag Archives: scholarship

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)

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)

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

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

Dark Matter

While dis­cus­sion on women’s role in the Sangha pro­ceeds, those who most need to take part in the dis­cus­sion — the monks — are con­spicu­ously absent. The issue is not so much a dia­logue as a call to the dark­ness, for a sym­path­etic hear­ing that is just not there.

May 18, 2010 – 11:59 pm | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Essays | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Bhikkhunis in Theravāda

In pre­par­a­tion for the 2007 Con­gress on Buddhist Women’s Role in the Sangha, the Com­mit­tee of West­ern Bhikkhunis asked for a his­tor­ical present­a­tion from a Theravāda point of view. I pre­pared the fol­low­ing to show that, while bhikkhunis are absent from the main­stream Theravādin insti­tu­tions, they are very much present in the texts and history.

May 17, 2010 – 9:49 pm | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Essays, Study | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

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

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)