The Ideas and Meditative Practices of Early Buddhism

Abstract

Since 1983 there have been several revisions of this book in the Dutch language. My original intention was to introduce university students to the ideas and meditative practices of early Buddhism. As I was familiar with recent literature which is highly critical of the presupposed unity of canonical tradition, I could no longer just reiterate the synthesizing interpretations handed down to us mainly from the Theravada school. Consequently I had to evolve my own way of describing the tenets. It seemed worth the effort to bring the results of this attempt to the attention of Buddhologists outside the Netherlands by translating it into English. Compared to the last Dutch version of the book, some parts have been improved" in the course of this process. Not many details are discussed as the book is still intended to be an introduction to early Buddhism. I hope that Buddhist scholars will accept this limitation and concentrate on the main lines. I have demonstrated that things are sometimes much more complicated in a paper for the VIIth World Sanskrit Conference (Leiden August, 1987) entitled "Some remarks on older parts of the Suttanipata" (forthcoming). It also contains my answer to the opinion that the most ancient form of Buddhism can be found in the Suttanipata. A portion of this paper is, in a slightly adapted form and without notes, appended to this book under the title "Mysticism in the Atthakavagga". The section in this book entitled "An Outline of the Most Ancient Form of Buddhism" tries to describe the method I applied and its results. It is the revised version of an article that has already been published under the title "Recent Research on the Most Ancient Form of Buddhism: A Possible Approach and its Results" in Buddhism and its Relation to Other Religions. Essays in Honour oj Dr. Shozen Kumoi on His Seventieth Birthday" (Kyoto 1985, 67-85). In this preface I should like to briefly describe my approach to Buddhist canonical texts in general. In my opinion these texts do not indubitably report the words of the Buddha and his first disciples even though they purport to be a true account. But we must also not discard the possibility that sometimes, in the nucleus of a text, the words of the Buddha may be found. If one does not accept that all the words in these texts are words of the Buddha and his disciples, it does not mean that then one accuses the authors or editors of being liars. There are, indeed, certain passages where one is inclined to use such a strong word or a milder one to describe. the attribution of the contents to the Buddha. In many cases, however, the best explanation of what happened seems to be that if a particular idea had become accepted, one could scarcely imagine that it had not been preached by the Buddha himself. An interesting example of how this question could be treated is found in W. Pannenberg, Das Irreale des Glaubens, in: Funktionen des Fiktiven edited by D. Henrich & W. Iser, Poetik und Hermeneutik Bd. X, Miinchen 1983. There is one point in the ancient Buddhist sermons and dialogues where a glimmering of this emerges. In Anguttara Nika.ya 8.1.8 the venerable Uttara says, "It is good that a monk every now and then examines the failures of himself and others as well as the successes of himself and others". Then the god Indra appears and asks him "Is this doctrine your inspiration or is it the word of the Buddha?" Uttara does not give a direct answeL He says, "It is like a great heap of grain from which one takes a few kernels; all that has been well spoken (subhiisitam) is the Buddha's word". I can also use this text to comment on the methodology I apply in approaching these sermons and dialogues which in Pali are called sutta (as R. Gombrich recently observed, the term sutta seems to have corresponded to Sanskrit siikta "well spoken", synonymous with subhii~ita, and to have been incorrectly translated into Sanskrit as siitra some centuries later). Further on in this same sermon we read that Uttara's statement on the examination of the failures and successes of himself and others was once used by the Buddha in connection with the judgement of the monk Devadatta. It is stated that none of those present had remembered the statement except Uttara because he was given the task of preserving it. One could ask why Uttara had not related this incident to the god Indra. I can only explain this story of Uttara's preserving the text as the work of another author. Consequently I feel no obligation to take this second story into consideration when I quote the first story to illustrate the problematics of the true and false Buddha word. We now arrive at the observation that many transmitted texts are more or less inconsistent. This holds for a single sentence, for a sermon and for the entire collection of sermons (P .sutta-pi.taka). This inconsistency is quite different from that of daily discourse and writing. There was , respect for transmission and that is why we may assume that generally nothing was ever discarded, only perhaps forgotten. But the texts were continuously expanded. The inconsistences resulting from this are not easily discernible because they deal mainly with abstract concepts which are difficult to grasp; also an attempt at synthesis is often made~ People have learned to live with inconsistencies in almost every religious tradition because they have to accept a transmission as a whole. This also holds true for Buddhists as well as most Western scholars who accepted everything as the word of the Buddha, at least when presented as such in the" sober" Pali texts. Historical research has now arrived at the stage when a large number of contradictions and deviations have clearly become apparent. Unless one takes inconsistency as a characteristic of each religious consciousness, one may look for a way out ofthe dilemmas by assuming a development of thought. In ancient Buddhism the structure of the separate tenets does not give any reason for proposing the first solution, i.e. accepting inconsistency as a characteristic of it. A step towards a more acute observation of inconsistent doctrines has especially been made by L. Schmithausen in a recent article (1981). Subsequently J. Bronkhorst and others have also made some important discoveries. In the meantime the facts have become so varied that we can no longer explain everything by attributing it to a development in the thinking of the Buddha himself as E. Frauwallner (1953) tried to do. But this does not mean to imply that we should give up such an approach altogether. It is now also evident that the method considered so trustworthy by Frauwallner and others which consists of a comparison of the different extant versions of a text (Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese) does not just simply lead to the oldest nucleus of the doctrine. The only thing that can be established is that in this way one arrives at a Sthavira canon dating from c. 270 B.C. when the missionary activities during Asoka's reign as well as dogmatic disputes had not yet created divisions within the Sthavira tradition. But even then one is not completely certain of reaching an old canon, because the different schools exchanged tenets after this period (see G. Schopen, Two Problems in the History ofIndian Buddhism, in: Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik, Heft 10 [1984] 9-47). I do not want to exclude the possibility that a doctrine which is not found in a common tradition could also be very ancient. But in general by uncovering a common core one does come closer to finding the oldest doctrines than when one does not use such a method. As I have already indicated whatever inconsistences do remain, one must try to unravel by using a different method. Striving to reach a common core which can then be examined for inconsistencies is an arduous task and certainly one which has not yet been completed. In this context, with due respect, I should like to mention the work of A. Bareau: Recherches sur la Biographie du Buddha, (since 1963). Finally I should like to thank those people who have read parts or all of an earlier Dutch version of this book and who have commented on its contents. I am also obliged to Marianne Oort for her efforts in translating this version into English and to Lambert Schmithausen for making some suggestion to improve the contents of the English version.