Tag Archives: text

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)

Sikkhamana: The Two Years Training for Buddhist Nuns

The Buddhist mon­astic codes (Vinayas) include a pro­vi­sion for a train­ing period of two years for can­did­ates for bhikkhuni ordin­a­tion. This is one of the few aspects of bhikkhuni ordin­a­tion that has no par­al­lel in the ordin­a­tion for monks. The sikkham­ana train­ing period is con­tro­ver­sial, and is often not fol­lowed in mod­ern prac­tice. San­ti­pada under­took a research pro­ject to bring together, trans­late, and ana­lyze the major pas­sages from all Vinayas that deal with the sikkham­ana. While incom­plete, this pro­ject still com­prises the largest resource avail­able on this topic.

October 1, 2012 – 12:17 am | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Study, Translations | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Just A Little Peace

The Buddha’s words exem­plify peace, teach us peace, and lead to the ulti­mate peace of Nib­bana. It is a sad thing that in the com­plex­it­ies and con­tra­dic­tions of Buddhist his­tory, peace has some­times been sac­ri­ficed on the altar of Buddhist nation­al­ism. By ask­ing the hard ques­tions and accept­ing the answers fear­lessly we can arrive at the essen­tial, the true state of peace, for the sake of which all Buddhist eth­ics, med­it­a­tion, and wis­dom are taught.

May 20, 2010 – 10:29 pm | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Essays, Study | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

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

A Painful Ambiguity

The depic­tion of women in Buddhist texts is deeply ambigu­ous. We are told that women can become fully awakened; and then in the next breath, that they will des­troy Buddhism. This ambi­gu­ity is deeply reveal­ing. Even though we tra­di­tion­ally see our texts as the products of pure awakened beings, the real­ity is far more com­plex, and hence, far more interesting.

May 17, 2010 – 11:39 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

The First Chinese Bhikkhunis

Fif­teen hun­dred years ago, Buddhist nuns from Sri Lanka braved the long sea voy­age to China in order to intro­duce the authen­tic bhikkhuni ordin­a­tion lin­eage. Here are their stor­ies, trans­lated from the ancient Chinese histories.

May 16, 2010 – 12:45 am | By Bhikkhu Sujato | Posted in Translations | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off