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Pijonsnodt posted:There's a specific story that made me ask this question. I read this book about Zen calligraphy and there were several places where it made note that such and such a monk was known to drink alcohol. Probably Ikkyu, who was a bit of an iconoclast. There is plenty of other writing out there that'll probably explain it better than I'm attempting to. But essentially the idea is that a lot of times the formalisms that we tie ourselves up in become barriers to approaching emptiness and non-conditioned living. Ikkyu railed heavily against a lot of the institutions of Buddhism during his time and context which he saw as a sham. One element of this was this system in place for verifying/validating enlightenment and the transmission of zen experience from one's own master, Teisho. He felt in many instances that the dharma emblems people attached themselves to and sought out were a farce, so he tore his in half and eventually burned it when his students tried to glue it back together. He also would flout convention, often drinking and going to whorehouses. A similar trend was seen in the development of Tantric Shaivism, where many wandering ascetics would flout taboo by entering cremation grounds, and smothering themselves with ashes. Something you still see many Indian babas doing today. Yiggy fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Mar 14, 2014 |
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Mar 14, 2014 23:00
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PrinceRandom posted:Zen in Japan is basically a family funeral business thanks to the Imperial Governments during and after the Meiji. They handle around 90% of funerals but something around 8% (or 2%? It is some single digit number) of Japanese people consider a Zen Monk as someone who is worth approaching for life advice or instruction. This may be so, but the allusion his book is making is to a person that predates the degeneration you're referring to by about four to five centuries and wasn't just some funeral officiator with life advice, but rather a fully ordained monastic. Which is generally a reason why Ikkyu was so controversial.
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Mar 14, 2014 23:17
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Claiming you have supernatural powers is one of the four offenses (the Parajika rules) you commonly encounter in vinayas which are punishable by expulsion from the sangha. It is grouped with chastity, stealing and murder. Going back over my notes and comparing it with what I'm finding after some cursory searching, I see the fourth parajika rule as sometimes described as merely referring to jhanas and attainment or arahantship, but at the time I was learning about this my professor was explicit about it having to do with other supernatural claims as well (as this was a pretty common claim among the variety of religious practitioners on the Indian scene). Basically when someone is telling you about powers, abilities or sidhis they have obtained, it should set off an alarm bell for you. Edit: Found the source we studied on it. From Oskar Von Hinuber, "Buddhist Law According to the Theravada-Vinaya: A Survey of Theory and Practice quote:The Patimokkhasutta contains 227 rules in the Theravada tradition and slightly different numbers in other extant vinaya traditions. These rules are arranged according to the gravity of the respective offense. So basically, its not that early buddhists didn't believe these things were possible, but it sort of looks like a "Fight Club"-esque injunction. Yiggy fucked around with this message at 19:54 on May 8, 2014 |
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May 8, 2014 19:42
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If anyone is interested in academic writings on buddhism particularly with regards to historical and textual analysis, here is a link to an engrossing & seminal work of (relatively) recent scholarship by Steven Collins. He examines the concept of nirvana and what that has meant in the texts, how the pali cannon addresses it, how you see notions of nirvana change in later periods and how this relates to historical contexts. Its a large book to read on ebook, but you'd want to preview before throwing down on a copy anyway. http://www.ahandfulofleaves.org/documents/Nirvana%20and%20Other%20Buddhist%20Felicities_Collins.pdf Their library link on that site also has a ton of other reading. http://www.ahandfulofleaves.org/Library.html Cheers
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Oct 20, 2015 09:51
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NikkolasKing posted:Well, shouldn't everything the Buddha said matte to anyone who calls themselves a Buddhist? Even my very surface-level knowledge says that, while there are a billion different schools of Buddhism (Eastern religions don't put me off on moral grounds like some Western faiths but damned their lack of a Bible counterpart is frustrating) they still all believe in a few core tenets. Aren't those tenets laid out in these texts? I can't imagine every sutra talks about Nirvana/Nibana for example. Loaded question. It helps if you can picture the history of the buddhist tradition like stratigraphy with layers of tradition deposited earlier and later. These different doctrinal and institutional layers are not relevant to all buddhists for various reasons. Of important distinction is that even the bottom layer Pali Texts are not texts in the conventional sense of a traditionally received body of written work. They were orally transmitted for several hundred years before being written down, and even then Pali is not (and many think was never) a spoken vernacular language, it was a formal language used to fix defined terms across a region where Buddhism existed among several different vernaculars. Even in parts of the Theravadan tradition for example in Thailand, many monks do not speak or understand a word of Pali, even the ones who make it a point to memorize and recite parts of the Pali cannon. Furthermore, early on in Buddhism's history even though many schools had access to reciters for all parts of the Pali cannon (vinaya, sutra and abhidharma), not all branches of the tradition saw equal relevance in the disparate parts of the cannon. Some schools thought the Buddha's truth was in his system of seeing reality as it truly was, the "abhidharma" system of philosophy which is generally thought to be composed after the Buddha's death. Some thought the Buddha's truth was really in the Sutras, some in the Vinaya. It is unclear to what extent these divergences were merely the result of the fact the reciters who specialized in reciting and memorizing in different parts ended up teaching in different regions and so therefore specializing in different parts of the Dharma. These schools had split up and started drifting and specializing long before the tradition in Ceylon (then already on the fringe of the Buddhist world) decided to write down the entire pali cannon, of which certain parts of the tradition spreading out of India over land were already de-emphasizing. For most of the Buddhist tradition which spread out through Gandhara (modern day Pakistan/Afghanistan) onto the Eurasian Steppes and into China, pali texts and pali reciters were not a relevant thing (to use sloppy internet slang). Rather what was spreading were traditions and cults centered around Mahayana texts, largely composed several hundred years after the death of the Buddha replete with stylistic differences and doctrinal emphases and arguably ignorant of the gritty details of the Pali cannon. And so like a game of telephone subtly alters the message, what is Pivotal to these Buddhists taking their traditions from later layers of the Buddhist tradition is necessarily going to be different from what was "Pivotal" to early Buddhists that were "ministered" to from content either from the Pali cannon or that would go on to influence the creation of the Pali cannon. The sort of idea you're drifting towards is in modern times called Protestant Buddhism, a notion that the Essential Truths of Buddhism can be located in the earliest texts and that identifying what these Essential Truths are is merely a hermeneutic exercise. The most recent manifestations of this are a reaction and result of British Colonialism, however, it is a trend which has emerged multiple times in Buddhist history. Chinese buddhism would go through a crisis of legitimacy about basic tenets of the religion and these issues are of course heart and central to the tradition of Zen Buddhism which later sprang from Chinese Buddhism. Deep in the midst of scholastic buddhism in Tibet, all of these issues resurfaced then as well. Generally this perspective has not "Won out" over time among the large body of self-identified Buddhists, either in the East or the West. Yiggy fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Mar 5, 2017 |
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Mar 5, 2017 18:29
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If a vase breaks and there is no self around to witness, did it achieve moksha? Did it need to?
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Mar 13, 2017 19:37
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Any good books providing context about the Buddha and India in 500 BC? Preferably not 50$ university textbooks. Been digging into exactly this topic. A lot of the early and ancient Indian history I've read is super glossy with regards to pre-mauryan India. Furthermore, the emphasis is generally on vedic influenced society and contributions to Indian history which are distinct culturally and geographically from the second Indian urbanization taking place on the ganges, right up until roughly the Buddha's time. I've been having to piece the context together from a few different works but here is some of the reading list I've been working on: *Most relevant would be Greater Magadha: Studies in the Culture of Early India by Johannes Bronkhorst. You have three options on this one. Its posted in its entirety up at ahandfulofleaves.org/library.html along with a lot of other great scholarly sources. If you must have a paper copy the Western edition is like 196.00 new, the Indian printing is available for like 36.00 through Amazon. *An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism by Lars Fogelin is a good history based strictly on material remains that have been documented as a sort of counterbalance to textually based studies. It has brief discussion of one of the most recent archaeological finds pertaining to early Buddhism and what we can infer based off of architectural tropes we see in early caityas. *By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia by Barry Cunliffe. You wouldn't want to read all of this I'm certain though its very engaging. Its a world history based on systems theory and explores the dynamics between steppe cultures and their peripheries, which is all very pertinent to Indian history. It would give you an idea of the larger context affecting the burgeoning city states like Magadha, which dynamics lead to their rise, etc. More specifically chapters 5 and 6 deal with the time periods under question. Largely this book is helpful in explaining how various steppe nomad cultures spread through out Eurasia particularly into places like India. This is relevant since many aspects of Buddhism are a reaction to Brahminical culture, which is not native to India. So if you want to understand how that got there, some broader history is helpful. Yiggy fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Mar 14, 2017 |
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Mar 13, 2017 23:37
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I just noticed that also available on handfulofleaves is Romila Thapar's Early India from the Origins to AD 1300 and that is also very good. The first half of the book is relevant to your interests. I found my copy at a half priced books I imagine you can find plenty of used ones around.
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Mar 14, 2017 00:05
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Early normative buddhism was actually in dispute as to the merits of vegetarianism and other extreme austerities. Much of this is from "Early Buddhism, Asceticism, and the Politics of the Middle Way" by Oliver Freiberger which appears in Asceticism and its Critics: Historical Accounts and Comparative Perspectives. Based on studies of Vinaya and early sutras, there is plenty of textual support for severe austerities including practices such as vegetarianism and extreme fasting (traditionally referred to as dhutanga/dhutaguna practices). To the extent we can date and periodize the development of vinayas, support for these tenets declines over time due to the inherent tensions between asceticism and monastic orders. We see similar trends in other monastic orders & religions; fasting and extreme austerities are counterproductive to the aims of institutions which usually need to both employ labor from monks and simultaneously minimize competitive impulses and spiritual one-upmanship. Furthermore, much of Gregory Schopen's work demonstrates that early the mahayana movement was revivalist in intent, seeking a return to a more austere, forest-monk archetype which arguably never existed apart from a lionized ideal. SO, arguably, pre monastic buddhism was forced to deal with a large number of sramanas that adopted these dhutanga practices such as vegetarianism while criticizing mendicants who did not. With the advent of monastic buddhism (which arguably took place within the Buddhas lifetime) you see these practices become deemphasized and eventually ridiculed in the texts. With the rise of Mahayana buddhism and thirst for a more hardcore Bodhisattva ideal and celebration of the forest-monk archetype, severe austerities are viewed in a more favorable light as a reaction to the relatively more worldly town and monastery sramanas. There is interesting discussion in the literature as to whether or not this forest-monk ideal had a real basis in reality or was an aspiration that monastics longed for but could not practically achieve.
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Jun 9, 2017 00:07
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There was a renowned Korean calligrapher Jung Do-Jun that was recently flown in by the Portland Art Museum to give a short talk and demonstration a few months back. He spoke to this briefly, this is from the notes I took. China, Japan and Korea each have their own calligraphic traditions which have subtly different inflections on their values which show some influence of their religious and cultural traditions. The oldest is Chinese calligraphy, Shufa. It embodies strong Confucian values, emphasizing strict methods of using brush stroke, ink and composition to express scholarly values. He also discussed the development of Chinese calligraphic styles over time and this emphasis on scholarly values is born out towards styles that are more legible, more easily writable with the development of cursive scripts etc. The Japanese style of calligraphy embodies more Buddhist influences. Shodo is the way of calligraphy and is utilized as a tool for self cultivation and attaining the state of dao. There is a greater emphasis on meditation, self discipline and growth. The Korean art of calligraphy is Seoye, and emphasizes a language of aesthetics shared b/w artist and audience as a form of visual communication. It seemed more deeply literary, referring back to classic texts and passages to make aesthetic points. Jung Do-Jun said modern calligraphers try to utilize aspects of all the calligraphic traditions. Departing from Jung Do-Jun's lecture, when you set these traditions side by side you see some with stronger buddhist influences. In the more Buddhist japanese traditions rather than just preserving texts and communicating scholarly ideas you see calligraphy as a vehicle for meditation. When you examine some of the exemplary works of japanese buddhist painters and calligraphers you will also see calligraphy juxtaposed with ink style paintings of various buddhist scenes and parables of enlightenment, such as a monkey gazing into a reflection of the moon on the water. Three blind men crossing a branch over a ravine. This as compared with, for example, the Korean calligraphic tradition. Many of the examples and demonstrations that Jung Do-Jun made or displayed were representations and copies of classic texts or poems, painted in such a way to embody an image of the subject. So a passage that says "You can only experience a rainbow by surviving the rain storm" is painted/written in an arc like a rainbow but also in such a way that suggests the character for Hope. Yiggy fucked around with this message at 22:14 on May 20, 2018 |
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May 20, 2018 22:08
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One of the best resources on Mahayana I've come across is Paul Williams Mahayana Buddhism the Doctrinal Foundations and here is a link to the second edition http://www.ahandfulofleaves.org/documents/Mahayana%20Buddhism_Williams.pdf For more critical approaches and articles Gregory Schopen has some good stuff on early mahayana. Yiggy fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Jun 25, 2018 |
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Jun 25, 2018 22:01
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Digital Dictionary of Buddhism, covers terms from several languages and traditions. http://www.buddhism-dict.net/ddb/ Another invaluable resource is a Handful of Leaves. Look at the more general titles (or ones particular to your focus, if you’re interested in say meditation, dhyana etc.) and look up your terms in the index or text glossaries. For instance a good starting point would be Hajime Nakamura’s Indian Buddhism, the whole text is in the link below. http://www.ahandfulofleaves.org/Library.html That library is such an incredible resource I backed up a mirror and have it on a few different thumb drives.
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Nov 14, 2018 00:51
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Tias posted:What precisely is a naga? It’s a multifaceted term with a long history. In modern Indian context it refers to: 1) Indians from Nagaland, 2) a type of sadhu/wandering ascetic that generally renounces clothes and goes nude 3) snakes. Historically you see Naga as a term referring to tribal peoples, and Nagaland likely derived from this usage referring to the tribals that lived in this area. In context of Buddhism I would refer to a passage from Richard Gombrich’s How Buddhism Began quote:The word naga in Sanskrit and Pali has three distinct meanings: supernatural cobra (the meaning discussed so far), elephant, and ironwood tree. At the seminar, Mr Sumana Ratnayaka quoted a saying that the naga is the greatest among trees, among serpents, and among the laity. He added that the naga was a symbol of wealth, like the Chinese dragon. This seems to take the question of the ordination candidate a step further, though it remains unclear how this symbolism arose. So in short some of the thinking seems to be that one of the Pre-Buddhist religions floating around the Greater Magadha Area was a cult of snake and tree worship and the practitioners were known as Nagas. In the course of the Buddha’s tours around Magadha he converted several groups to his following, the snake worshippers being one such group. In the course of time the term naga morphed and would be cooped and applied to advanced spiritual practitioners. It is in this sense you see the term still alive today in india when describing the more extreme ascetics that don’t even wear clothes as Nagas. They are generally afforded respect by other aspects of the ascetic community in situation like the Kumbh Mela where I think they receive priority during one of the ritual baths.
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Nov 20, 2018 18:36
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Hell of a question for a final. The tradition is old enough you can find contradictory positions represented within it. One way to consider the basic gist of anatman is that we are a collection of processes rather than some sort of discrete entity with an enduring, essential essence. We are a bundle of aggregates, none of which has its own essential nature separate from the process and web of causality/karma that precedes us, shapes us, and echoes out from us when we disintegrate. The more complicated answer is that in the history of Buddhism on multiple occasions you can identify periods of scholasticism where on the other side Buddhists will come out of these intellectual ferments with newly reified concepts which function like an ontological entity we would colloquially think of as a soul. It’s a recurrent tension in the religion, you see cycles of realist and idealist philosophy go back and forth. A great example of this is in truth Tibetan Buddhism and other forms of tantric Buddhism. Doctrinally you could argue there’s not a soul, but the entire tradition has a carved out a space where they keep an ontological entity/concept that most people would consider a soul and to them functions essentially like one. So, quick answer would be “no soul” but as soon as you scratch the surface you see that it’s been a complicated point for Buddhists stretching back to the redactors of the Pali cannon. Edit: To put a finer point on it, it’s difficult to know how your prof wants you to answer that question without the benefit of your experience.. If it’s an essay I guess just be sure to argue your position. Yiggy fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Dec 13, 2018 |
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Dec 13, 2018 17:52
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:This thread has been very sleepy! I’ve gone through a few different phases, I would sit and dabble in meditation when my life had the routine and stability for it but I wasn’t able to sustain it. When life was a little more chaotic I had an altar with a Buddha statue and would occasionally light votives and sit periodically with a mala and just do a quick practice with that. Our family has a toddler now and the altar got put away with the child proofing. Our little Buddha statue still has a prominent place in the home but we don’t interact with it really. What I have kept up with most regularly and for the longest period of time is just regular study of the Buddha, the dharma and the sangha. Reading about texts, their history, the historical context, archaeology, modern contexts and traditions etc brings me a lot of peace from the... unsatisfactory storms of daily life. I feel like the better understanding of the tradition’s sweep, history and change that I am able to reach the better I can see the Buddha in spite of my poor vantage point.
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Dec 15, 2018 01:46
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buglord posted:They put a significant amount of emphasis on the importance of chanting, and they explained the origin and importance of each word. I can't really bring myself to buy into it though? How is it different from simply meditating/mindfulness exercises in the more or less cognitive-behavioral-therapy way? So this is an explanation from outside of nichiren Buddhism per se from academic Buddhism trying to explain what you’re seeing in terms of the praxis of the chanting of the lotus sutras name. I’ll try to be brief. First off it’s important to know that despite the rhetoric you see now about Mahāyāna vs Hinayana and their exegetical emphases, what we know about the emergence of Mahāyāna is that it seems to be a reaction towards the institutional Buddhism of its time (around the turn of the common era, centered in and around Gandhara, modern day Afghanistan). For that period, one of the main drives of monastic Buddhists was the support of the stupa cult and the usage of stupa worship by the laity to both legitimate and support the monastic communities. A common practice and formula you see dictated in Vinaya texts (meant to organize monastic law and life) is that by building a stupa you generate so much merit and this will usually be juxtaposed with other merit generating practices. The innovation you start to see in the Mahayana texts is a decentering of stupa culture and a centering of texts as the centripetal force of the sangha. You see a cooption of then contemporary main stream practices regarding the generation of merit and you see the Mahāyāna text placed at the top. Academically this is referred to as a Cult of the Book. Practices said to generate the most merit would be reciting the Mahāyāna sutra. Even more so writing it down and propagating it. This discourse is embedded in several of the oldest Mahāyāna texts, of maximum merit being generated by the propagation of not even Mahāyāna doctrine per se but explicitly the text. Now there is about ~1900 years between early Mahāyāna and Nichiren (a very late form of Buddhism) and there have been many shifts in rhetorical emphases and doctrinal innovations emerging in the interim. A common theme you see in the development of Japanese Buddhisms are periodic crises in exegesis and understanding of the core tenets of Buddhism. It can be easy to understand why, as by the time it was catching on in Japan it was already dead in India and only seen as through a glass darkly in the Buddhism that had developed in China. One consequence of that you see is that there are strong anti-intellectual and anti-textual strains in forms of Japanese Buddhism and a recentering of concentration and meditation practices which place less emphasis on doctrine and text (which early Mahāyāna v much cared about) in lieu of practices which depend less on what would be difficult for any but a few monastic elites to understand (if at all, given issues of transmission and translation). So what you’re seeing in Nichiren Buddhism is a sort of rediscovery and recentering of a foundational and very early tenet of Mahāyāna Buddhism. That the path to generating the most merit and the path towards obtaining a better rebirth is best obtained through the spread and propagation of the Mahāyāna text (not even the understanding, just the recitation/writing/spread thereof), in this case the Lotus Sutra. Nichiren Buddhism essentializes this practice one step further by saying you don’t even need to spread or say the whole lotus sutra, merely the name. And you see this bear out in the rest of Nichiren Buddhism’s posture towards the world, which is very much in the missionary mode. Only time I’ve ever had a Buddhist walk up to me out of nowhere (in the states) and talk to me about the Buddha and the dharma was a Nichiren Buddhist handing me a card with nyam mojo renge kyon on it, shaking my hand then heading off the other direction. Didn’t even want to go too deep into it like Christian missionaries that occasionally want to talk in book stores. Drop the nembutsu and deuces. Yiggy fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Apr 4, 2019 |
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Apr 4, 2019 16:15
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I guess I find it all to be just another typical example of what’s been happening throughout the long history of Buddhism. Which is that people adapt Buddhism to their context and their needs. You see it happen every time it hops cultures both in our time and throughout history. Every branch of Buddhism is rife with idiosyncrasies and adherents vehemently insisting that their culture’s innovations are sound and justified whereas the others are crossing the line. It’s old man yells at clouds/ dog bites man in a religious context.
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Apr 8, 2019 17:20
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Canonically too high of a birth or too low of a birth can be a barrier to progress and can prevent enlightenment. In the extreme a birth as a deva or a yaksha or some other powerful being can obscure suffering but all things are impermanent and even devas and yakshas fall prey to samsara. In the texts the Buddha states that because of this the optimum birth for attaining enlightenment and progress is (conveniently) a human birth; you are not so far from suffering that you cannot see the utility and truth of the dharma and you’re not so buried in suffering and the three delusions that you can’t work your way out as presumably many animals or a hungry ghost might be. This can be seen in a grand sense and in a closer, more mundane sense. A high birth into a life of wealth and privilege obscures much suffering and places a person farther from a vantage where they can grasp their suffering, yet they suffer none the less. The work becomes more immediate and important for those in the thick of it and you see this spoken to in many parts of the Buddhist cannon of literature particularly the Buddha’s hagiography. Only when Siddartha leaves his privileged existence and sees the world as it is for the bulk of us is he even able to begin on the path. Yiggy fucked around with this message at 06:38 on May 17, 2019 |
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May 17, 2019 06:32
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Thirteen Orphans posted:Any suggestions on good texts for Mahayana philosophy? I’m especially looking for books that explain Yogacara and Madhyamaka for people without much exposure to them and put them in context. https://www.amazon.com/Mahayana-Bud...la-451894190056 I felt like this covered the broad range of Mahayana topics well and has plenty of inroads deeper into the literature.
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Sep 19, 2019 17:57
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Thirteen Orphans posted:This makes me so angry. All things are impermanent.
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Sep 27, 2019 18:57
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RandomPauI posted:I have a follow-up. I'm a secular humanist. I see things I can use from many aspects of Buddhism. But I don't like the idea of appropriating from the faith selectively; especially if I don't intend to accept the spiritual aspects of Buddhism. I feel like in a lot of ways I started from a similar place as you. Well if you’re a secular humanist look at it through humanistic lenses. Take a more philological approach. Try to understand (what one even can from our late vantage, which is not nothing) the Buddha as a human being as opposed to the character we see after thousands of years of accumulated cultural baggage and reification. Read about Buddhism from Buddhists yes but also broaden your scope to include sources of information outside of the received texts and commentaries. After a certain point of reading through translations and commentaries you start to feel a sort of tunnel vision effect on what you’re seeing. I think part of that is because the cannon is so large that you’re necessarily reading one individual or another’s focused, abridged view of the dharma and missing lots of the intervening context. So I find myself trying to supplement that with more historically focused texts. What was life like for a human at that time? What were the historical events shaping things? To what extent does our late idealization of Buddhist monastics line up to late, middle and early Buddhist texts? To the archaeological record? The divergences can often be illuminating: Buddhism has changed throughout time to suit the needs of its practitioners and this is as true now as it was in ancient Magadha. Which forms of Buddhism have reached us across the vast distances of time and which haven’t? How does that change our perspective? Should it? This approach can leave you with more questions than answers but frankly the traditional convert path really only left me with questions. We are, regrettably, so far from the Buddha in space and time that we can only see him as through a glass darkly. But we also enjoy a unique vantage. Even accounting for what has been lost, we still enjoy access to a range and variety of textual and physical records unmatched by most monastics throughout history with experts both inside and outside the Buddhist monastic world able to read and speak to them. There is so much good literature available that you can read for awhile and only scratch the surfaces so I won’t presume which angle you’re taking on your questioning but you can find a ton of good literature to read at http://www.ahandfulofleaves.org/Library.html (but please ask if there is something in particular you’re curious on, maybe I’ve read something on it) And just to recommend one book to get started; From Stone to Flesh by Donald S Lopez is a short review of the historiography of the Buddha and how the western world came to understand and know about the Buddha over time, first through direct cultural contacts and then later through the discovery and deciphering of ancient texts (which, ironically, many if not the overwhelming majority of monastics throughout time couldn’t read or understand for themselves).
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Oct 1, 2019 13:39
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Mushika posted:Plenty of early Buddhist scriptures have been available to Tibetan monastic scholars for centuries, surely? Yes. I haven’t read a granular breakdown of what exactly they knew and when but Tibetan Buddhist monastic institutions were preserving and studying the vinaya, the abhidamma, the perfection of wisdom texts (Mahāyāna sutras) and tantras prior and through Tibet’s dark age. The extent to which these texts and the conceptual frameworks impacted the Tibetan intellectual elite is evident in how buddhist ideas transmitted and crystallized in bon po religious texts which start appropriating some Buddhist concepts. So yes, the basic stuff most definitely. However, the dhammapada is a relatively later text, anything in the khuddaka nikaya is kind of extra, later stuff that the sangha tradition tossed into the Pali cannon. What began as the “minor collection” for random texts eventually grows to be the largest basket. It would not be beyond belief for bits and pieces of this nikaya to have not made it to Tibet. Although I don’t know for certain that they didn’t have it earlier than the 20th century. Good read: The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism: Conversion, Contestation and Memory by Matthew T. Kapstein Yiggy fucked around with this message at 09:57 on Oct 2, 2019 |
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Oct 2, 2019 09:42
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Tias posted:We even have an osho sect offshoot, last I checked. The persistence of that one always blows my mind. A guy I know got roped into one of their cult cells and now goes around trying to help people get in touch with the divine feminine by joining communes. My wife works with a woman that actually got poisoned at that whole salad bar incident in the 80s.
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Oct 3, 2019 17:22
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NikkolasKing posted:I figure now is as good a time as any to ask this. I think when you look back historically at some of the compromises and adjustments made to sangha life the answer is simply because these activities preserve the existence of the sangha, which propagates the dharma which is the end unto itself. One of the main reasons the Buddha is celebrated is not just for discovering the dharma (which is timeless and discovered anew eternally, according to Buddhist cosmology) but teaching it in spite of how the dharma could motivate someone not to (which becomes a point of doctrinal focus for the Mahayana). No one celebrates pratyekabuddhas because retreating from the world is not the ultimate point of buddhahood. Arguably the early arhats were not concerned with buddhahood, but that changes with spread of Mahayana and Buddhists over time and into today are v much concerned with buddhahood. When you look into the history of stupa cults and how the sangha developed, and what the role of laity is supposed to be the point is to preserve the sangha so that it is around to propagate dharma. And so all sorts of things are justified in that they preserve the sangha so that it may propagate the dharma. So for an example, Huge sections of vinaya law concern financial instruments like loans and rules for monks lending and banking, and this is always justified because it helps support viharas/monasteries. Ostensibly those engaged in retreating from the world would not concern themselves with banking, but the sangha is engaged in dharma propagation which cannot be done if everyone retreats. If the Buddha retreated in such a way, no Buddhism etc. A lot of times the idealization we have for what makes a monk a “good Buddhist monk” doesn’t synch up with the reality of monastic and religious institutions or the Buddhist religion out in the wild.
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Oct 28, 2019 01:03
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reading over my answer my response felt a little oblique so I just wanted to clarify. quote:There's nothing to gain from trying to establish a political order in a world of unending instability and pain. The best thing we can all do is retreat from the world . If I had to go for a more doctrinaire answer I’d say that yes, this is a world of unending instability and pain, first noble truth dead to rights. But I think to then stop and say “therefore retreat from the world” is to stop at the first noble truth. If we progressed through the dharma like a Buddhist might try to the second truth would identify a reason for pain we feel from the world’s instability and that is our attachment to it. And we address this pain not by a total retreat from the world but by addressing our attachment to it from within the world, which we begin to do by following the Buddha’s dharma. From there I’d say that when you look at even some of the oldest Pali sutras a major thrust and point of the dharma is not just that it is the path head to nirvana but just as importantly it can reduce suffering in this life, and that this can be a goal worth pursuing apart from (but even so still In service to) nirvana as the ultimate end. And so a Buddhist would engage in politics for the simple reason that making this life better for others is also a noble goal and that compassion would motivate us to do so. Yiggy fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Oct 28, 2019 |
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Oct 28, 2019 01:46
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Tosk posted:Hi, I'm interested in Buddhism. Is there any good reference book for a historical overview of Buddhist tradition? I always find that kind of thing helps me contextualize myself to understand what I'm reading afterwards. Seconding thirteen orphans recommendations I’ve had the first one assigned as a text in a uni history of Buddhism course. Another solid reference is A History of Indian Buddhism from Sakyamuni to early Mahayana by Hirakawa Akira http://www.ahandfulofleaves.org/documents/A%20History%20of%20Indian%20Buddhism_From%20Sakyamuni%20to%20Early%20Mahayana_Akira.pdf
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Jan 15, 2020 03:33
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Yorkshire Pudding posted:I would like to read some of the “canon” of Buddhism, where should I start? https://www.amazon.com/Sayings-Buddha-Translations-Nikayas-Classics/dp/019283925X/ref=nodl_ https://www.amazon.com/Buddhas-Word...79836894&sr=8-1 Those are good starts. Lotus Sutra would be relevant if you think you’ll contact or study up on any sort of East Asian Buddhism or Tibetan Buddhism.
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Jan 24, 2020 04:38
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Nessus posted:I guess it depends what your goal is. I don't think there are many schools of Buddhism that approach the sutras in the same way that Torah or the Quran get approached, although Nichiren more or less worships the Lotus Sutra directly, if I understand them right... I think this is also complicated by a perennial tension within the Buddhist tradition between emphasizing teaching and canonical works vs emphasizing direct experience and realization, which can be seen both in the historical developments of Buddhism but also in some of the earliest sutras in the Pali nikaya. So which canonical works to emphasize and whether those are ultimately the most fruitful means to realization is an evergreen argument which can make things confusing for aspiring students and the generally curious. Though much of the perception of Tibetan Buddhism is wrapped up in the more esoteric elements of tantric & vajrayana practice, the Gelug sect has historically taken a scholastic approach to the Buddhist cannon, viewing each earlier set of canonical texts as foundational to the next set of higher teachings where the “lower” goals do not interfere with the later ones. So in that respect, though they would have primarily dealt with the Sanskrit versions of the canon they still largely dealt with it in ways similar to how the Torah and Quran are approached, with an emphasis on doxography, understanding and interpreting the texts, etc. Within the Gelug tradition a popular genre of literature are treatises on stages of the path with a classic example being Atisha’s A Lamp for the Path to Full Awakening. So one thing this genre does is lays out the scope of the Buddhist tradition and canon in successive stages which build upon each other, with the work of early stages not undermining the later ones and viewing the Buddhist cannon and tradition as building upon itself. So viewed this way if you were to accept these sort of stages you could also single out keystone canonical works which speak with relevance to their particular goals. Viewing the early stage of reducing suffering and obtaining arhatship an important sutra to consider would probably be the fire sutra/fire sermon discourse etc. Many other sutras cover similar ground from different angles but the fire sermon would be a big one. These early works are about the reduction of suffering for the individual. Later the emphasis is on obtaining buddhahood, an early and key work would be the lions roar sutra of queen srimala/the simhanada sutra. Of course the further we get into the Buddhist tradition the more texts are going to be a reflection of the idiosyncrasies of that particular branch of the tradition. Texts abound within the canon but what is relevant is always going to beg the question of to whom it would be relevant for and why. And when. For the curious student of Buddhism it can be easier to work backwards from the part of the tradition you’re most interested in. For the zen Buddhist the platform sutra of the sixth patriarch is cannon but not for the theravadin.
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Feb 2, 2020 15:40
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Mushika posted:Wouldn't it better to start at the beginning and trace how differing schools of thought evolved and study in that direction rather than backwards? Sure and I’d tend to agree. I think the sutras are the best place to start. This approach is not without certain issues. I appreciate that there can be a daunting amount of ground/text to cover and that there can be exegetical difficulties for the beginner that can take a lot of thought/meditation/study to work through. We’re also in a weird place as lay practitioners because for many of us despite persistent efforts it’s slow going study when balanced against our other responsibilities, so I see the appeal of things like the dhammapada which is a later, more ecumenical text. And you see the tradition respond to this very difficulty in a number of ways. For one you see summary works like the dhammapada or the later stages of the path texts that try to amalgamate the teachings in a digestible way. On the other hand at multiple points in the history of Buddhism the response has been anti-intellectual and negative on too much emphasis on texts and their study. That can lead a student down various cul de sacs where they study a particular series of texts and then run into one school or another that invalidates that approach.
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Feb 2, 2020 22:31
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Mushika posted:Well, that sounds rather fatalistic. Especially when considering that we are able to follow the Dhamma regardless of how "decayed" our world may be. We live in a later time with a unique vantage on the wide scope, breadth and depth of Buddhism as a whole. It can be easy for us to center what we now know to be the oldest teachings closest to the Buddha because we have a broad access to compilations of texts, translations, commentaries, etc. Historically this is a privilege that many Buddhists and lay followers did not have. When the dharma transmitted into different cultures we know that eventually monks go to great lengths to obtain and then attempt to translate and understand seminal texts and commentaries, but often times even just having the texts isn’t enough. We know that this problem is age old because texts across several periods discuss issues of exegesis. Condemnations of reciters that had memorized and could recite dharma and formula but who did not understand it. In the extreme form you have monks in the Thai forest tradition who will memorize and recite the dharma in Pali as a merit gaining exercise that do not speak or understand Pali. So in this context one can see how certain branches of the tradition might have sort of throw their hands up and just said “there’s no way we can do this, best to just hope for a next life where we can.” In my opinion the general fog obscuring the dharma is no longer quite as thick as it was in those times. Though in other ways even if we have access to the dharma, arguably our world and society have developed to a point where it is difficult to impossible to embody the dharma, especially if you’re a lay practitioner.
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Feb 11, 2020 19:43
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Mushika posted:isn't Buddhism as much, if not more than, about relieving suffering for all sentient beings in this life as it is about how we may fare in subsequent lives? It's not all going beyond-Self and conditional existence and breathing through your taint, it's also about suffering, about dukkha. About how alleviating dukkha benefits all beings... because we all are in this crazy cycle of samsara together and we can all do something about it right here and now and not just wait for a better go the next time. Sure and I think again I tend to agree with you. How does it go? “The dharma is good in the beginning, in the middle and in the end.” In particular a lot of the earlier sutras emphasize that the dharma is good for reducing suffering in the here and now. Arguably and ironically that starts to change with the advent of Mahāyāna. Despite rhetoric and the later formula regarding work for the enlightenment of all living beings, the emphasis of early Mahāyāna was more of a revivalist movement of monks seeking buddhahood for its own sake, rather than arhantship and the extinguishing of suffering for its own sake. From the viewpoint of early Buddhism the ultimate goal is just that, release from suffering. For later Buddhism that sort of gets left behind and chastised as a lesser vehicle; becoming a Buddha becomes the ultimate goal, sort of out of the sense of “let’s try and do what the Buddha did and not necessarily just what he says to do.” If the Buddha is the highest why not try and be a Buddha? Hence the Bodhisatva vow. And at that point to be a Buddha, canonically, you aren’t going to get a shot at that in this life because being a Buddha requires rediscovery of the dharma once it’s been lost again. Which sort of goes hand and hand with a classic tension you see in many lay Buddhists from Sri Lanka to Thailand to China that for many self ascribed Buddhists what’s important actually isn’t reduction of suffering, or even enlightenment or becoming a buddha (which is often said to be “for the monks”) but rather a Good Rebirth. Either in a materially good life in this world (https://www.amazon.com/Nirvana-Sale-Buddhism-Dhammakaya-Contemporary/dp/1438427840/ref=nodl_) or in some other world with a cosmic Buddha that will teach you the true dharma.
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Feb 11, 2020 21:39
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Josef bugman posted:Is annihilation of the self as big a thing in all buddhist traditions? quote:Alongside that, why do Zen monks keep punching each other in the stories I read? Is it a sort of Diogenes esc attempt to make people think differently? The Rinzai tradition stresses sudden enlightenment. In practice, the thinking goes, this can be precipitated in an individual that has cultivated themself through meditation and then in stillness is jolted. In stories you’ll often see how a meditator experiences kensho when hearing the sound of a stick banging against a board (kept for these purposes) or the sound of a bell or a whack from a monk overseeing meditation sessions to correct posture/sleepiness. There is a neurologist named James H Austin that wrote a sprawling work Zen and the Brain where he tried to make an understanding as best he could of this and other aspects of the zen tradition and what he thought was underlying this practice was something to the effect of advanced meditators cultivate a brain state that leaves the brain calm and synchronized and that these abrupt stimuli could then send a shockwave through associative parts of the brain that would allow the individual to make connections and insights which to the individual felt like enlightenment as their peers would describe it to them.
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Feb 12, 2020 01:01
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