Mahayana Buddhism

The Mahayana, or “Great Vehicle”, changes the style, the tone and the content of Buddhist practice in profound ways. It opens up the practice of Buddhahood to lay people as well as to monks and nuns. It also involves a far more extended vision of the cosmos than anything that came before.

The Mahayana movement emerged in the Indian Buddhist community around the beginning of the Common Era. Eventually, the Mahayana spread to China, Tibet, Japan, Korea and Vietnam.

In the following articles we are going to study the core beliefs of this tradition and its history:

  1. Mahayana: The Great Vehicle: The name Mahayana is used to distinguish itself from what it saw as the Buddhism that came before. Mahayana texts refer to themselves as a great vehicle, in contrast to what they call the Hinayana, or lesser vehicle, that preceded it.

  2. The One Vehicle and the Skillful Means: One of the most important doctrines in the Lotus Sutra is the doctrine of the One Vehicle, the Buddha teaches in the end one particular way to salvation. Another concept that is important here that runs all the way through the Mahayana tradition is the concept of Skillful Means. It raises the question about whether the Buddha lies to people by presenting these preliminary teachings.

  3. The Origin of Mahayana Buddhism: Where such a radical reform movement arises in the community of the early Sangha? The Mahayana texts claim to be the teaching of the Buddha himself delivered to a special assembly of boddhisattvas. Was it really like that? Some scholars have suggested that the Mahayana arose among circles of lay people, who were worshipers at particular Shrines where the relics of the Buddha were the focus of devotion.

  4. Mahayana and the Boddhisattva Ideal: The fundamental teaching of Mahayana Buddhism is what is called the Boddhisattva Ideal.A Boddhisattva is a Buddha-to-be, somebody who isn’t a Buddha yet but plans to be one in a future life.

  5. Mahayana and the Lay Boddhisattva: Boddhisattvas described in Mahayana literature are often human beings just like ourselves. In earlier Buddhism, the ideal practitioners of the Buddhist path were monks and nuns who engaged in an act of renunciation and pursued a monastic life. Now, this tradition was opening up explicitly for lay people.

  6. The Extended Vision of the Mahayana: The Mahayana brought Buddhism into realms and practices very different from anything we saw before.

  7. Bodhicitta and the Boddhisattva Path: The most important concept to express the Boddhisattva ideal is the concept of the Bodhicitta, a word we translate as the “mind of enlightenment” or you might say the mind that seeks enlightenment.



Theravada Buddhism

The word “Theravada” simply means the “Doctrine of the Elders”. This tradition represents, quite deliberately, a conservative option. It maintains today many aspects of the Buddhist tradition that were practiced in India during those early centuries after the death of the Buddha. It expanded into Sri Lanka and the to the rest of South East Asia.

I will try to give you a taste of the history and beliefs of the Theravada by looking at three representative figures who have shaped the development of the Theravada tradition:

  1. Theravada Buddhism Through its Figures
  2. Ashoka, the Righteous King
  3. Mongkut: King and Monk
  4. Aung San Suu Kyi: A Buddhist Hero



Bodhicitta and the Boddhisattva Path

How is the Boddhisattva ideal expressed in ritual and in philosophy? The most important concept to express the Boddhisattva ideal is the concept of the Bodhicitta, a word we translate as the “mind of enlightenment” or you might say the mind that seeks enlightenment.


The Mind of Enlightnement


To enter the Boddhisattva path, it’s important to generate this mind of enlightenment. What is it? Simply the aspiration to seek enlightenment for the sake of all other beings. Boddhisattvas who enter the Boddhisattva path start with some kind of gut feeling. “I want to be enlightened in order to bring that enlightenment to others”. This mind of enlightenment is generated and cultivated as the Boddhisattva path proceeds.

A Moral Aspiration


As you see this evolving in Mahayana literature and practice, it becomes a quite complex and subtle concept. You can see at the beginning that is a moral aspiration. “I want to help others, I want to develop myself in a way that is going to be helpful to other people”. You can see also that it involves a perception of yourself as being connected in a relationship of interdependence with all other beings. So, you become aware of yourself in a different way at the same time that you express this moral aspiration.

A Personal Transformation


It also has what might be called an ontological component in the sense that it has to do with the awareness of your own being. In Buddhism, your mind is you. Whatever you are, is the cultivation and evolution of your own mind. When you feel this aspiration to help others, what you feel is an expression of your own Buddha nature arising from within you. This concept has to do with the transformation of your personality and your own being as well as a moral aspiration to help others.

A Simple Yet Subtle Concept


I think that this concept is complex in one further aspect. To arise the mind of enlightenment is a pretty simple thing. We can do it today. In fact, we probably have aspirations similar to that in the flow of our daily lives. It is pretty easy to have this feeling, and yet, it contains implicitly the full enlightenment of the Buddha. It is the starting point of your own Buddhahood.

The Bodhicitta is an important concept in the Mahayana tradition, but we should consider also that the Boddhisattva path is divided into a series of formal stages. One way to divide it is in six perfections: the perfection of generosity, moral conduct, patience, courage, mental concentration and wisdom. A lot of Mahayana texts discuss a passage through six stages to reach the experience of full Buddhahood.

There are other accounts that divide the path into ten stages, but they are not very different than the path that I just outlined for you. They always start with generosity and end with wisdom.

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The Extended Vision of the Mahayana

Vimalakirti is a pretty good example of the Boddhisattva ideal, but there are others that are important to mention just to see how broadly the Mahayana ideal was extended.

Queen Srimala


There is an important queen by the name of Srimala who is the focus of another Mahayana text. She is a queen and has a lot of responsibilities that bears in the ordinary life in the palace, and yet, she is portrayed as being one of the wisest followers of the Buddha. She is the source of one of the most important Mahayana doctrines.

Even queen Srimala, who in many respects seems to be engaged in a life that is very different from the life of a traditional monk or nun, can be an exemplary practitioner of the Mahayana ideal.

Sudhana: The Curious Young Man


Another figure who is worth knowing and becomes important in later Chinese and Japanese Buddhism is a young man by the name of Sudhana. He goes out on a long quest in order to achieve some kind of religious insight. He visits fifty different teachers. At the very end, he comes to a Boddhisattva by the name of Samantabhadra and is given a vision of the universe vastly more complex and complete than anything we found earlier in this tradition. Let me quote a passage from the text that describes Sudhana’s concluding vision:

“Then Sudhana, the teenager, reflecting upon the body of the final Boddhisattva in his quest, the Boddhisattva Samantabhadra, saw in every pore of that body untold quadrillions of Buddha fields being entirely filled up with Buddhas, and in every single one of those Buddha fields, he saw Buddha surrounded by countless assemblies of Boddhisattvas. Gradually he came to equal the Boddhisattva Samantabhadra. He came to equal all the Buddhas.”

This is a vision of reality vastly greater than anything we’ve seen in the earlier tradition. This has to do with an expansion of the imagination that brought the Mahayana into realms and practices very different from anything we saw before.

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Mahayana and the Lay Boddhisattva

Boddhisattvas described in Mahayana literature are often human beings just like ourselves. I’d like to give you a couple of examples of Mahayana descriptions of Boddhisattvas so that you can get a sense of the kind of persons who were described as Boddhisattvas in this classical literature.

Vimalakirti: The Lay Boddhisattva


One of my favorite in the early literature of the Mahayana is the Boddhisattva known as Vimalakirti. He was a wise lay person who pretended that he was ill in order to teach a lesson to the Buddha’s monastic disciples. Let me paraphrase just a short account of Vimalakirti from the beginning of the Mahayana Sutra:

“In the city lived an Elder named Vimalakirti who dwelled there as Skillful Means for the salvation of other beings. For he used his measureless wealth to convert the poor and his own pure virtue to convert those who broke the precept. He controlled himself with patience to convert the scornful and strove with diligence to convert the lazy. He used this calm meditation to convert the confused and his wisdom to convert the ignorant. He used the white robes of a lay man, but he observed the pure conduct of a recluse.

He lived the household life but he wasn’t attached to the world. He had a wife and children, but always practiced the religious life. He wore jewels and ornaments, but adorned his body with the signs of greatness. He ate and drank but delighted with the taste of meditation. He went to the gambling halls, but he worked for the salvation of men. He knew all the worldly texts, but he always delighted in the teaching of the Buddha."


You Can Have an Ordinary Life



It is hard to see from this text how radical a shift of values this is. In the earlier tradition we always were talking largely about monks and nuns. The ideal practitioners of the Buddhist path were monks and nuns who engaged in an act of renunciation and pursued a monastic life. Now, this tradition was opening up explicitly for lay people. This is a way of saying that lay Buddhist values and the lay Buddhist life is a place where you can pursue the fundamental teaching of the Buddha. You can become a Boddhisattva and bring to ordinary lay life all the values of Buddhist life.

You can go out and have a couple of beers, you may live with your family, you may even go to a gambling hall, but you always do it in a way that is going to bring Buddhist values into that place. The Boddhisattva is engaged in the world. This is a crucial shift of the basic understanding of Buddhist life and it had a radical effect on Buddhism throughout Asia.

The Chinese world is very suspicious of monastic life because it seems to turn its back on the values of the family, but here on the figure of Vimalakirti you’ve got somebody who lives the Buddhist values within a context of ordinary lay life. The Buddhist tradition here is shifting in a way that takes it out of that strictly monastic ideal that was present in the early tradition.

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Mahayana and the Boddhisattva Ideal

If we are uncertain about the origin of the Mahayana, what can we say about its teaching? The answer to that question is a lot more clear. The fundamental teaching of Mahayana Buddhism is what is called the Boddhisattva Ideal.


What is a Boddhisattva?


A Boddhisattva is a Buddha-to-be, somebody who isn’t a Buddha yet but plans to be one in a future life. A Boddhisattva in the Mahayana tradition doesn’t attempt to go straight to Nirvana but he turns to this world and attempts to help others along the path to salvation. This means that Boddhisattvas can include lay men as well as monks and nuns, because all of us can be understood as being part of the path to Buddhahood.

Boddhisattvas that come back like this to this world to help others cultivate two important virtues. One is wisdom, that great virtue that was discussed in the early accounts of the Buddhist path that leads you to Nirvana. In addition to that, Boddhisattvas explicitly develop the virtue of compassion. The word is Karuna, a crucial Mahayana word.

So, Boddhisattvas cultivate two virtues. Wisdom, a contemplative and quiet virtue, that has to do with understanding the nature of the self and the nature of the world. And compassion, a virtue that has to do with actively seeking the welfare of others. The Mahayana always has this double aspect: contemplation and action. You have to understand the self and bring that understanding into the world to make it available for other people.

The Circular Path of the Boddhisattva


The Boddhisattva path can be talked of as a two-way street. You can think of it also as a circle. Samsara is at the beginning of the circle, Nirvana somewhere along the way, and then the circle brings you back into Samsara. A Boddhisattva is constantly coming back to this world to help others.

The Boddhisattva ideal is contrasted to the ideal of earlier Buddhism. In the earlier community the ideal was a person who sought Nirvana in his life for himself, he follows the one-way traffic to Nirvana and doesn’t come back into Samsara.

Some people say that Boddhisattvas renounce Nirvana in order to lead all other beings to Nirvana. If you follow this, a Boddhisattva doesn’t become a Buddha until everybody is ready to become a Buddha with him or her. The truth is that this is not strictly accurate. Boddhisattvas can’t become Buddhas, they simply aspire to become a Buddha for the sake of all other beings. When they can become a Buddha in a way that serves the needs of other people, then that Boddhisattva will become a Buddha.

The Mahayana world is full of Buddhas as well as Boddhisattvas, people who had pursued the Boddhisattva path and brought it to perfection.

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The Origin of Mahayana Buddhism

Now we are asking a pretty good and natural question. Where this rare tradition comes from? Where such a radical reform movement arises in the community of the early Sangha?


The Second Turning of the Wheel


One place to go for an answer to this question is to the Mahayana texts themselves. The texts trace the origin of the Mahayana to what is called the Second Turning of the Wheel of the Dharma during the life of the Buddha himself. In other words, the Mahayana texts claim to be the teaching of the Buddha himself delivered to a special assembly of boddhisattvas.

The Mahayana texts then go on to say that the Mahayana was concealed during several centuries until the world was ready to receive it. Then the Sutras, the texts of the Mahayana, were brought forth and spread across India.

There is an awareness in the Mahayana itself that the tradition is new. It’s not something that was known in the traditional community.

A Revelated Tradition


All of this is very nice, but scholars are quite uncertain what the actual origin of the Mahayana is. There are suggestions in the Mahayana tradition that practitioners perhaps fasted and meditated in order to receive visions and revelations from great Buddhists of the past. It is conceivable that the early texts of the Mahayana came to people in this way, as visions interpreted as revelations from past Buddhas. This can’t be true of the most elaborate literary Sutras of the Mahayana. Many of them don’t have the quality of visionary experiences but of literary texts.

Some scholars have suggested that the Mahayana arose among circles of lay people, who were worshipers at particular Shrines where the relics of the Buddha were the focus of devotion. This view has now been discredited by scholars. It seems clear that the Mahayana had a strong monastic component right from the beginning. It’s not accurate to say that the Mahayana was a lay movement. It included components of both lay and monastic life.

So, a scholarly consensus about the origin of the Mahayana has not yet been reached, but most believe that Mahayana scriptures are rooted in the earliest teachings of Buddhism.

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The One Vehicle and the Skillful Means

In the last article we’ve talked about the “Parable of the Burning House” and its basic implications: the Buddha is like this father, the little cards were the lesser vehicles that were preached before and that the Mahayana is the real teaching of the Buddha.

The One Vehicle: The Real Teaching


In the text, many concepts are elaborated that are important for us to notice. First of all, the story says that this card, the Mahayana, is the one great vehicle, the real teaching of the Buddha. All those other teachings that came before are preliminary exercises that are meant to get a person started on the path to salvation, but are not meant to constitute the Buddha’s final teaching.

One of the most important doctrines in the Lotus Sutra is the doctrine of the One Vehicle, the Buddha teaches in the end one particular way to salvation.

Skillful Means


Another concept that is important here that runs all the way through the Mahayana tradition is the concept of Skillful Means. It raises the question about whether the Buddha lies to people by presenting these preliminary teachings. Did the father lie to the children? The answer that the text gives is that is not really a falsehood to skillfully lure someone along the way to salvation.

This is called Skillful Means. It has to do with the ability of creatively using the categories of this world to move along the way to salvation.

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Mahayana: The Great Vehicle

It is time for us to look at a reform movement that made a radical change in the way people enacted the Buddhist ideal. It changes the style, the tone and the content of Buddhist practice in profound ways, only a few centuries after the lifetime of the Buddha. We call this movement the “Mahayana”, or the “Great Vehicle”.

A Reform Movement


Theravada Buddhism
in South East Asia is in some ways very different from Buddhist practice at the time of the Buddha, but still represents, quite deliberately, a conservative option. It looks back at the example of the early community. We saw that in King Mongkut’s reform movement, that deliberately attempted to reapply the ideal of the Pali Canon.

The Mahayana movement emerged in the Indian Buddhist community around the beginning of the Common Era. Eventually, the Mahayana spread to China, Tibet, Japan, Korea and Vietnam. Of course there are many varieties of Mahayana Buddhism.

The name Mahayana comes from the literature of the movement itself. It is a name that is used to distinguish itself from what it saw as the Buddhism that came before. Mahayana texts refer to themselves as a great vehicle, in contrast to what they call the Hinayana, or lesser vehicle, that preceded it.

The Meaning of The Mahayana


The best place for us to look in an scriptural source for an account of the contrast between the Mahayana and the Hinayana is the Lotus Sutra. This is a text we will refer to quite often in our study of Buddhism in China and Japan. The key passage in the Lotus Sutra that talks about the Mahayana is a passage that is known as the “Parable of the Burning House”. I will tell you the story and then comment on the distinctive features of it, so we can get a sense of the shape not just of the Mahayana itself, but also how it distinguished itself from the earlier tradition.

The story goes something like this. There is a father who lives in a large house with a large number of children. When the father was outside, the house catches on fire. He looks up at the house, the children are playing and are not aware of the fact that the house is on fire. The father looks up at the children and says: “Kids, come out of the house! All is burning!” The kids say: “Why? We are having such a great time here. Why should we come out?” The fathers says: “I’ve got cards here for you to play with. If you come out of the house, you can play with these.” The children, excited by this, come running out of the house. They go to look for the cards the father offered them and then he says: “Well, it’s great that you’re outside, but I don’t have those cards. I’ve got an even greater card: a vehicle. So, hop on and take it for a ride”.

The text begins to offer some commentary about the story. It obviously makes the connection that you expected it would make. It says that the Buddha is like this father. The little cards that he first promised were those lesser vehicles that were preached before the coming of the Mahayana. They were meant to lure the people who were caught in the burning house of Samsara out, in order to receive the real teaching the Buddha has to offer them.

What’s that real teaching? It’s the Mahayana. This is the great and beautiful card the Buddha finally offers the children once they escaped the burning house.

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Aung San Suu Kyi: A Buddhist Hero

Aung San Suu Kyi is another striking example of the intersection between religious and political values in the Theravada Buddhist countries of South East Asia. Aung San Suu Kyi was born in 1945, as the daughter of Burma’s national hero: General Aung San. He was the leader of the Burma’s liberation movement in World War II, who was assassinated in 1947, just after the end of the Second World War and just when Burma was going to receive its independence from British and Japanese domination.

A Symbol of Democracy


Aung San Suu Kyi was educated in Rangoon, Delhi and Oxford. She settled down to raise a family in Oxford. He married an Englishman, had two sons and was living a rather comfortable life as an academic in England, quite far away from all the concerns of Burma and South East Asia.

Her mother became ill. She went back to visit her mother in 1988, to offer her some companionship. Just during that time, the military government in Burma had declared the possibility of an election. As the daughter of the discrete hero of Burmese national liberation movement, she was drawn naturally into the movement for democratic reform. Eventually, she became the symbol of that movement.

Despite being placed under house arrest, her movement won a colossal election victory in May 1990. The military government dismissed the results of the election and imprisoned its leaders. Aung San Suu Kyi has been held under house arrest since 1990 in Rangoon but he has continued to speak out in favor of the democratic movement.

In 1991, she was given the Nobel Peace Price for what the Nobel Committee called her “unflagging efforts for democracy, human rights and ethnic reconciliation by peaceful means”.

A Buddhist Political Philosophy


Aung San Suu Kyi’s political philosophy seems to be pretty simple but there is force and eloquence in her words as there was in the teaching of the Buddha. Simple and strong words. One of his most famous speeches is called simply “Freedom from Fear”. The speech begins by saying “It is not power that corrupts, but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.”

Near the end of the speech, after she had explored this theme for a while, she refers to Mahatma Gandhi’s statement that the greatest gift for an individual or a nation is fearlessness, the absence of fear from the mind. When Gandhi talked about the gift of fearlessness, he was doing something in which he was very skillful at, he was referring to an ancient practice of the Buddha.

She said that fearlessness may be a gift, as Mahatma Gandhi said, but perhaps more precious is the courage that is acquired through endeavor, through your own efforts, courage that cultivates the habit of refusing let fear dictate your actions. As you read these words, you can see how Aung San Suu Kyi’s career brings together modern democratic values and the fundamental Buddhist values of courage, patience, tolerance and non-violence. It is a powerful mix that should draw the attention of anyone who thinks Buddhist values belong only in the monastery. Here they play an active role in political life, as they have in the Buddhist tradition all the way through its history, from the time of Ashoka to the present.

This article is part of the series about Theravada Buddhism.



Mongkut: King and Monk

King Mongkut reigned Thailand from 1851 to 1868. He is one of the most striking examples of a righteous king in modern history. He is remarkable because combines the roles of monk and king. He served as a monk for over twenty-five years before he ascended to the throne. He came to his position of king as a person who already had been deeply infused in monastic practice, something that is not common in the Buddhist world. It is striking that King Mongkut brought that background with him to the throne.

A Modernist


As king, he believed that Thai monastic life needed to be reformed, purged of superstitious practices and return to the pristine model of the early canonical scriptures, the scriptures that we call the Pali Canon.

In addition to being a monk and a king, he was also a modernist. He wanted to reform the Sangha, to bring it back to what he thought was the pristine ancient practice of the Buddha as it was reflected in the Pali Canon. This is an important aspect of contemporary Buddhism you would encounter throughout South East Asia, and in fact, throughout the world. There is a modernizing impulse, an impulse to strip away what people think of as being superstitious practices, things that have been added to the tradition over the course of his history and return to the ancient practice of the Buddha.

The Reform Movement


He gave institutional expression to these ideas by creating the Thammayut movement. During the reign of his son, king Chulalongkorn, this reform movement was extended throughout the Thai Sangha and was given the status of an official orthodoxy. So, King Mogkut created a reform movement that eventually was extended to the whole Sangha and became the modernizing matrix of Thai monastic life. This is one of the reasons why the Thai monastic system has been able to adapt to the challenges of modernity.

Thailand continues to be an example, even today, of the close alliance between king and Sangha in the extension and protection of Buddhist values. This is something you should keep in mind if you ever have the chance of visiting in Bangkok the Royal Shrine, called the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. In that place, you will see clearly the intersection of royal and Buddhist values. It is a Shrine that honors the monarchy, and also at the same time, the central place of the Buddha within the structure of the Thai national identity.

This article is part of the series about Theravada Buddhism.



Ashoka, the Righteous King

When King Ashoka assumed the throne in the year 269 BCE as Emperor of the Maurya dynasty in India, he inherited a kingdom that had already been substantially expanded by his predecessors. He already dominated a large portion of India, but there was a particular kingdom that resisted domination, the Kingdom of Kalinga.

The Convertion


Ashoka took as his responsibility to bring the people of Kalinga into the empire. He waged a very bloody and cruel military campaign to bring the Kalinga people under his domination. The brutality of this campaign apparently provoked Ashoka to convert to Buddhism. He accepted the Buddha’s Dharma with its implicit idea of no violence.

King Ashoka

After his conversion, Ashoka proclaimed himself a Righteous King, a protector of the Dharma. Ashoka advocated a policy of conquest by Dharma. Ashoka’s position has been recorded on a series of rock carvings that were placed in strategic locations around his empire. This is nice for us, we can take all of them and read them.

The Edict 30 gives an account of his conversion. It is interesting to read about Ashoka’s convertion in his own words:

“Eight years after his coronation, King Devanampriya Priyadarsi (a way of designating himself) conquered the country of Kalinga. One hundred and fifty thousand people were deported. One hundred thousand were killed, and many times that number perished. Now that the Kalingans have been taken, Devanampriya came to feel a strong inclination towards the Dharma, a love for the Dharma and for instruction in Dharma. Devanampriya feels sorrow at having conquered the Kalingans. Indeed, Devanampriya considers conquest by Dhamma to be the best conquest.”

The Promotion of The Dharma


This is the basic theme of conquest by the Dharma rather than conquest by force of arms. Other Edicts talk about his policy to promote the Dharma. You can see that his view of Dharma is not complicated. It has to do with rather simple Buddhist values. It has to do with respect for others and their welfare:

“King Devanampriya Priyadarsi says: I have had banyan trees planted along the road to provide shade for beasts and people and I have had mango groves planted. I have had wells dug, rest-houses built in every mile. I have had watering-holes made for the use of animals and men. Of course previous Kings have sought as well to please the people with such facilities, but I’m doing this so people may follow the Path of Dharma.”

This explicitly links his concern for the welfare of the people with his policy to promote the Buddha’s Dharma. As part of this policy, King Ashoka sent missionaries out to spread the Buddhist teaching in India and elsewhere in South East Asia. His actions have served as models for righteous kings throughout the Buddhist world.

The Righteous King


What a Righteous King would be like? A Righteous King protects and promotes the Dharma. In return, the king is recognized and legitimated by the religious authorities. There is a ritual way monks can designate this guy as somebody whom people should respect and trust. This is an important two-way relationship. The king supports the monks, the monks support the king. This makes it possible for the king to develop a sense of trust and loyalty among his people.

In some situations, the king disciplines and reforms the Sangha, to make sure that it doesn’t interfere in the affairs of the state. Ashoka himself set an example for this reformist function when he says in one of his edicts: “Any monk or nun who causes a schism in the Sangha would have to wear the white robes of a lay person and would no longer be able to dwell in a monastic residence.”

We will see this ideal of the Righteous King throughout the Buddhist world, not just in South East Asia, but also in China, Tibet and Japan. It is an important component in the complex structure of Buddhist society.

This article is part of the series about Theravada Buddhism.



Theravada Buddhism Through its Figures

Buddhism changed in two ways as it expanded out of its original homeland in Northern India. Disputes within the Buddhist community generated a series of sectarian movements. All this started after the Second Buddhist Council.

The Doctrine of The Elders


Many of these early sects are really historical objects at this point. We can study them or we can read about them in texts, but we can’t meet them on the street. They don’t represent the Buddhist tradition today.

One of these early sects, however, is still active today. This is the Theravada tradition. The word “Theravada” simply means the “Doctrine of the Elders”. It is in its designation a conservative tradition. It expanded into Sri Lanka and the to the rest of South East Asia. It maintains today many aspects of the Buddhist tradition that would had been practiced in India during those early centuries after the death of the Buddha.

Three Essential Figures


I will try to give you a taste of the history of the Theravada by looking at three representative figures who have shaped the development of the Theravada tradition as we know it today.

The first figure I have in mind is King Ashoka, the ancient king of the Maurya dynasty who became a prototype of the righteous king and who’s son, according to Buddhist legend, became the first missionary to carry the Buddhist tradition down into South East Asia.

The second figure is King Mongkut of Thailand. He reigned from 1851 to 1868. Before he became king, he spent twenty-five years in the monastery as a monk. When he was instituted as king he began a reform movement to modernize the Thai Sangha. As king, he had an enormous impact on Buddhist life in Thailand. He crystallizes an important aspect of modern Theravada Buddhism.

The third figure is one of the most intriguing modern figures in the Buddhist tradition. A woman named Aung San Suu Kyi. She is the leader of the democratic protest movement in Burma and was the recipient of the Nobel Peace Price in 1991. She also shows us the Buddhist tradition in a fascinating and modern way.

Why These?


You might ask why of all the possible figures of Theravada Buddhist history I’ve chosen to focus on these three political leaders. There are two reasons for this. One is to raise the issue of the relationship between Buddhism and Politics. It is not something you normally think of as being consistent with traditional Buddhist values. You see the Buddha as a monk, it is hard to imagine him as a politician.

The relationship between Buddhist values and politics has been a deeply rooted theme in Buddhist life. It is important for us to consider it in order to develop a full understanding of Buddhist society and to see how Buddhism wove its way into the life of other civilizations in Asia.

The second reason for choosing these figures is to raise the question of modernity. It is very easy to imagine that the Buddhist tradition is only an historical artifact, something associated with the teaching of the Buddha in a distant civilization, distant from us not just geographically but also historically. The truth is that Buddhism and Buddhist people had been involved in the process of modernization just the way religious people had been in other cultures. It is useful for us to see in King Mongkut and Aung San Suu Kyi some of the subtle and powerful ways that Buddhism has been brought into relationship with the challenges of modernity.

This article is part of the series about Theravada Buddhism.



Buddhist Art

If I ask many of you how you came in contact with Buddhism and how you began to develop some kind of impression about the tradition, I suspect that for many of you, the first contact with this tradition has been through Buddhist art.

Many times I see little images of the Buddha in the offices of people who are not particularly religious. Sometimes the fat little images you see in China. Sometimes the more elegant images that come from India. Whatever the style of the images, they show that they have some kind of respect or connection to the Buddhist tradition and they show it through Buddhist art.

Our job in these series of articles is to comment on this tradition of Buddhist art. We will understand how Buddhists have expressed the Buddha through visual media. We will see what is the function of these images in Buddhist life. We will also study the different types of images so that we can begin to recognize them when we encounter them.

  • Buddhist Shrines: Early in the Buddhist tradition, we don't find statues or images of the Buddha, but holy places that are connected with the presence of the Buddha.
  • Buddhist Worship: How are you going to worship at a Buddhist Shrine?
  • The Power of Images in Buddhism: What is the meaning of these images of the Buddha? In what sense do these images represent the Buddha?
  • Images of the Buddha: What are the types of Buddhist images?



Images of the Buddha

What are the types of Buddhist images? Some of the early ones are called aniconic images. They represent the Buddha through symbols, places associated with his life or simply by his absence. We often see images of people bowing down in devotion to the Bodhi Tree and to the empty Throne of the Buddha’s awakening. These images are quite common early in the Buddhist tradition. These are found in many great American Museums and the British Museum.

Footprint of the Buddha with the inscription of the Eight-Spoked Wheel

You can see similar images on one of the most important early Buddhist monuments: The Great Stupa at Sanchi. In these cases, the Buddha would be represented by a symbol or by a place that the Buddha once occupied but now is absent.

The Meaning of the Early Images


There is a debate about the meaning of these aniconic images. Some scholars say that these images are evidence of the tradition that prohibited representation of the Buddha in physical form. Others say that they don’t represent the Buddha but represent Shrines associated with the Buddha after his death. I’m somewhat sympathetic to the second argument because I think many Buddhist Shrines do function as reminders of the Buddha’s absence.

The interpretation of these images is uncertain, but they constitute for us an important category of early representation of the Buddha.

The Mathura Style


Near the beginning of the common era, craftsmen began to create images of the Buddha’s physical form. These images appeared in a number of distinctive sculptural styles.

One of the first is the so called Mathura style, associated with the region of Mathura in the Ganges basin. Buddha images in the Mathura style often have a large and fleshy body, typical of an indigenous Indian way of expressing the form of the human body.

Buddha in the Mathura Style

The Gandhara Style


Another style that you’ll see quite commonly is the style associated with the region of Gandhara, a region on the boundary between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Here, the Buddha images show the influence of Greek craftsmanship. Alexander The Great, who invaded the Persian Empire and managed to travel all the way to the plains of Northern India, left behind in Afghanistan a series of Hellenistic kingdoms that had Greek craftsmen. These were enlisted to provide images of the Buddha.

These images show Greek influence in the muscular and anatomical quality of the image itself. You are much more aware in a Gandhara image of the gracefulness and strength of the Buddha as a physical being. You can see a lot of Gandhara images representing different stages in the Buddha’s life. You’ll often see images of the Buddha’s victory over Mara.

Buddha in the Gandhara Style

The Gupta or Classical Style


The Mathura and Gandhara came together to create what became eventually the classical style of Buddhist art. This style developed during the Gupta period in Indian history. In this style, the Buddha images are more fluid, graceful, and in a sense, more abstract. The Buddha’s body is more slender. The expression on his face often is more delicate and refined.


Buddha in the Gupta Style

This article is part of the series about Buddhist Art.



The Power of Images in Buddhism

In the last article we talked about how Buddhist worship in a Shrine. Another questions you might ask about Shrines are: In what sense do these images represent the Buddha? Is the Buddha present in the image? Is the image the Buddha himself?


The Sustaining Power


For Hindus, the answer to these questions would be relatively easy. In Hindu worship, the deity is called to become present in the image. You can say quite appropriately that when you worship an image of a god like Shiva or Vishnu, you are worshiping the god that is present in that image.

In the Buddhist case, the Buddha has achieved Nirvana and is no longer available. It is no longer present in that image. The image stands in a somewhat more complex relationship to the Buddha.

How does that relationship take place? It is understood historically that when the Buddha died, he left behind, in his relics and in the objects that he used, a certain power, a sustaining power. This power resides in that object in such a way that can make that object effective for you when you worship it. So, to pay homage to something like the Buddha’s begging ball allows you to plug into the lingering power of the Buddha’s presence. The Buddha himself may be gone, but there is a power that he has left behind which you can access by engaging in an act of worship.

What Do We Get From It?


You might ask one more question. In what sense do you touch the power of the Buddha? On one level it is physical power that is present. On another important level, for Buddhists specially, it is a power that grows out of your own response to that object. So, you might say that it is a meditative connection that you make, that reminds you of the Buddha’s presense.

All that is meant to describe the sophisticated vocabulary of Buddhist worship. You don’t just worship the Buddha in a particular Shrine, you get access to his power in a way that reminds you of the Dharma and helps you to embody it in your own experience.

This article is part of the series about Buddhist Art.



Buddhist Worship

How are you going to worship at a Buddhist Shrine? The Indian word for worship is Puja. In many respects, Buddhist worship is very similar to the worship you would find in the Hindu tradition. You make offerings to the image: fruit, flowers, incense, sometimes a candle. In South East Asia, one of the most important things you can do for an image, is to stake in just a little bit of gold leaf and add it to the image.


Visual Contact


Another important thing to do is simply to see the image. This is where the worship of an image becomes the static contemplation of an image. In classical Indian worship, one of the things that you do is to go to the image, look at it, and get the sensation that it is looking at you. An emotional connection it is established by this visual relationship between you and the image.

In a Shrine in India, there are very few of them in operation there, the image sits in an enclosed area right on the center of the temple, there is a curtain over the place where the image resides. Inside that enclosed area there will be a group of Brahmins performing some rituals. You hear some drumming and chanting, you can smell the incense. And then, there is a moment when there is a burst of drumming, a bell rings, somebody pulls the curtain aside, and there it is staring at you. You feel the hair stand up on the back of your neck. It is a strong experience and not comparable to anything in Western religious traditions.

Why Worship?


When lay people go to an image and worship it, the principal goal would be to make merit. That is to perform good karma so it would be possible for them to have a better rebirth in a future life. The vocabulary of worship is connected with prosperity and good luck, not merely with the pursuit of Nirvana.

Strictly speaking, a monk or a nun would not use the Shrines in this way. They would use the Shrines as a focus of meditation, to be reminded of the Buddha’s teaching in order to prosper themselves on the way to Nirvana. The distinction between the lay person’s use and the monk or nun’s use of an image is like the distinction of the Form Body and the Dharma Body.

The lay person would worship the Form Body to get good karma. The monk or nun meditates on the image or on the Shrine in order to understand the Buddhist Dharma and appropriate it in their own experience.

Not so Simple


The practice of lay people and monks is more complicated than that and it doesn’t fall so easily into such a simple distinction.

Lay people often use the Shrine to meditate on the Buddhist teaching, it is not just a way of getting merit, but it is a way of reminding themselves of what the Buddha teaches them about their own life.

It is also true to say that, practically speaking, monks and nuns are not at all averse at gaining merit in some kinds of situations. One obvious reason for this is that not all monks and nuns are going to achieve Nirvana in this life. It is not inappropriate to act with for purposes of merit making.

This article is part of the series about Buddhist Art.



Buddhist Shrines

If we look back historically at the very earliest representations of the Buddha, we find not statues or images of the Buddha, but Shrines. Holy places that are connected with the presence of the Buddha. The earliest of these Shrines contained relics of the Buddha’s cremation. Later ones were associated with events or objects that were connected with the Buddha’s life.

Places of Worship


In the early Shrines, the ones that were established shortly after the death of the Buddha, the relics of the Buddha’s cremation were taken to funerary mounds. Big, solid, round mounds that had a square structure on the top. The relic of the Buddha’s cremation was put inside that square structure.

As time went on, the relics of the cremation of the Buddha were taken out, redivided and further distributed. What was originally a set of only about six different holy places became a vast profusion of places associated with the relics that lingered from the Buddha’s creamation.

But this wasn’t the only option, there were objects that the Buddha owned, in one way or another. I mentioned in other article that an important Shrine held the Buddha’s begging ball. There are other Shrines like that, associated with objects that were part of his life.

A common form of Shrine is the Shrine associated with the Buddha’s footprints. You can find footprints just about anywhere. All sorts of stories could be spawned to explain how the Buddha might landed there.

Pilgrimage


How do they work in Buddhist devotion? One of the things that these Shrines made possible was the early Buddhist tradition of pilgrimage. Some of the early reliquary mounds were set up in places that were associated with particularly important events in the Buddha’s life, like the great reliquary mound near the Deer Park where the Buddha gave his first sermon.

When you visit a pilgrimage site like this or come into the presence of one of these Shrines, you engage in what we would call an action of worship. It is important to be aware to some degree of the vocabulary of Buddhist worship. How are you going to worship at a Buddhist Shrine? We will see that in the next article.

This article is part of the series about Buddhist Art



The Early Sangha

At the very beginning, the Sangha(Buddhist community) was quite small and consisted of just an informal group of followers. They wandered with the Buddha, as he wandered through the roads of Northern India. It was a diverse community. It is often spoken of as having four parts: monks, nuns, male lay followers, and female lay followers.

  1. Buddhist Lay Followers
  2. Buddhist Nuns
  3. The First Monasteries
  4. The First Buddhist Scriptures



Buddhist Proverbs

We find that the Buddhist tradition is expressed in very simple and memorable verses. Proverbs are one of the ways traditional teachings are conveyed, specially in an oral one like this. I’ll write a couple of them to give you a flavor of what these proverbs sound like. They come from the text called the Dhammapada, one of the very early collections of the Buddha’s spoken teaching.

“Not to do any evil, to cultivate good, and to purify one’s mind. This is the teaching of the Buddha.”

It seems extremely simple. I suppose if somebody told you: “Well, what’s my teaching?”. “Don’t do evil, do good”. It is hard to disagree with that. But note that little bit added at the end: “Purify your mind”. That’s Buddhist. That’s the Buddha speaking. You’ve got to find some way to purify the mind of ignorance and desire. Then you can really strike the root of the issues of evil and good.

In its simplicity it also conveys a distinctive message. Another proverb like this:

“You are your own protector. What other protector can there be? With your self fully controlled, you obtain a protection that is hard to obtain.”

We know that Buddhists are self-reliant. We know their concern about achieving Nirvana for themselves and not depending on others. This seems simply to be an affirmation of that. This word protector has a little hook in it. It is also a word you can use to refer to God. The Buddha is saying here: “You are your own god”. Strong teaching. It stands the Buddhist tradition in open opposition to what was happening in Hindu life at that time.

You get a flavor here of some of the distinctive aspects of the teaching of the Buddha.



Doctrine and Action in Buddhism

An story that is very important for the understanding of Buddhists in the modern world is the story of a man named Malunkyaputta. Malunkyaputta was a possible convert. He comes to the Buddha and says something like this:”You know, I really kind of like some of the things you are saying, but you haven’t answered all the questions I want answered.” And he lists a series of ten questions: Is the world eternal or not? Does it have an origin or not? Is the Buddha going to survive after death or not?, etc.

The Buddha says: “Malunkyaputta, when you ask these questions, you remind me of a guy who has just been shot with a poisoned arrow. He is lying on the ground, somebody walks up and offers to pull the arrow out, and he refuses. He says he wants to know who shot that arrow, to what cast that person belongs to, what kind of bow did he use, who made the arrow. He won’t let the man pull out the arrow until he has those questions answered.”

This is a way of saying not to be concerned with a lot of doctrinal issues that have to do particularly with the origin of things. What we are concerned about in the Buddhist tradition is the pragmatic removal of suffering. We want to get that arrow out and not to speculate much about where the arrow came from.



The First Buddhist Scriptures

After the Buddha’s death, one of the issues was the problem of authority. When he was alive, if you had a dispute, you could go to him and he would sort the dispute out for you. In his absence, where do you turn? Where do you go to settle any kind of dispute?

The Sutta Pitaka: The Doctrine


Shortly after the Buddha died, the community banded together and called what is called the First Buddhist Council, to recall and codify his teaching, so the Dharma itself could be used to resolve disputes.

At this gathering, a disciple by the name of Ananda, who was the Buddha’s trusted sidekick and the person who knew him best, recited the Buddhist doctrine. This became what is known as the Sutta Pitaka, the collection of Buddhist doctrine.

Another monk by the name of Upali recited the Buddhists rules and regulations. These became the Vinaya Pitaka or the collection of discipline. Eventually, not right at the beginning, another collection was added to this group of texts, called the Abhidhamma, that included a body of sophisticated reflection on the categories of the Dharma.

These three together constitute the three baskets of Buddhist teaching. It is common to call these three baskets the canon of Buddhist scripture. They are, as you can imagine, quite extensive.

The Buddhist tradition became a scriptural tradition. We will see that in Tibet, China and Japan, as you confront a new situation, the most important thing to do is to generate a new scripture, or to generate a new commentary or explanation of older scripture.

Scriptures Drawn From an Oral Tradition


What are the contents of the Buddhist scriptures? Traditional discourses of the Buddha began with a formula that is clearly drawn from the oral tradition. They always start out “Thus, have I heard, at one time the Buddha was dwelling in such place, etc.”. They reflect, specially in the early suttas, this influence from the oral tradition.

The old discourses of the Buddha often have a very simple and down to earth style that a lot of people find quite attractive. They present a very pragmatic approach to religious truth. They are concerned about experience, not in spending out all sorts of doctrinal distinctions.

The discourse on the turning of the wheel of the Dharma, for example. It starts out simply by commenting on the Middle Path:

“These two extremes are not to be practiced. What are these two? There is devotion to the indulgence of the senses, which is low and common. And there is devotion to self-mortification, which is painful and not worthy. Avoiding these two extremes, the Buddha has realized the Middle Path. It gives vision, it gives knowledge. It leads to calm, insight and to awakening, to Nirvana.”

He goes on from there to give the outline of the Four Noble Truths.

One of the simplest of the early sermons, and in my view one of the most intriguing is called the “Fire Sermon”. The Buddha starts out and says this: “Everything is burning. What is it that is burning? The eye is burning. Visible forms are burning. Visual consciousness is burning.” And he goes like that through all the senses. “Burning with what? Burning with the fire of lust, the fire of hate, and the fire of delusion.”

This sermon repeats the same formula again and again, applying it to different aspects of experience. Part of that is an artifact of the oral nature of preaching. These early sermons grow out of oral settings and have the same kind of repetitive qualities that you hear in a good preaching.

This article is part of the series about The Early Sangha



Start Page

In this start page I present all the content you will find on this blog in an ordered manner. You can also navigate through the site using the Navigation Bar at the right column. Here you have a thematic index, all the articles in the blog belong to one of these categories:

For Starters

The Buddha

History of Buddhism

  • The Early Sangha: The formation of the early Buddhist community.
  • Buddhist Art: I suspect that for many of you, the first contact with this tradition has been through Buddhist art. What is the meaning of these images of the Buddha? What types of images are there?

Schools of Buddhism

  • Theravada Buddhism: The “Doctrine of the Elders”. This tradition represents a conservative option.  It maintains today many aspects of the Buddhist tradition that were practiced in India during the early centuries after the death of the Buddha. It is practiced mainly in South East Asia: Thailand, Sri Lanka and Burma. 
  • Mahayana Buddhism: The “Great Vehicle”. This is a reform movement that emerged in the Indian Buddhist community around the beginning of the Common Era. It changes the style, the tone and the content of Buddhist practice in profound ways. The Mahayana spread to China, Tibet, Japan, Korea and Vietnam in different varieties.

Buddhism and Politics

We see the Buddha as a monk, it is hard to imagine him as a politician, but politics has been a deeply rooted theme in Buddhist life. These are figures that represent the intersection between traditional Buddhist and political values:



The Buddha's Teachings

In this series of articles I present the basic teachings of the Buddha. With these texts, you will have plenty of reading material, and when finished, you will have a clear idea of what the Buddha tried to convey to his followers.

  1. The Dharma and the Form Body: During his life, the Buddha had been a source of authority for the Buddhist community. What was left to fill the void when he left? For those who wanted to venerate or to worship the Buddha, the Buddha left behind what was called the form body, comprised simply of the relics of his cremation. For people who wanted to follow the Buddha’s example, he left behind what was called his Dharma. His teaching.

  2. The Four Noble Truths: The traditional summary of the teaching is given in four categories, the so called Four Noble Truths.

  3. The Three Kinds of Suffering: The Buddha claimed that All is Suffering. The ancient tradition of Buddhist teaching interprets the phrase “all is suffering” in three separate ways. Everything is suffering in one or more of three ways.

  4. The Marks of Existence: We are going to further unravel the significance of these three kinds of suffering in Buddhism by relating these three categories to three more concepts. The so called marks of existence.

  5. What am I?: What is our personality? What are we? The answer that Buddhists give typically is that the personality is made up of bundles of momentary phenomena.

  6. Is Buddhism Pessimistic?: Are Buddhists pessimistic when they say that there is no self? Tt doesn’t take much thought to realize that Buddhism is not so much pessimistic as it is realistic.

  7. The Arising of Suffering: The origin of suffering is explained by a causal sequence known as the twelve fold chain of dependent arising. Ignorance leads to desire, desire leads to birth.

  8. What is Nirvana?: What do we mean by Nirvana? What is this concept? You can speak of all sorts of things as being as Nirvana and generally they are quite positive and pleasurable. That is the popular idea about Nirvana, but the truth is that it is not positive in a quite obvious way.

  9. Nirvana as the Solution of Samsara: If you don’t want to come back again and again in some future life, then really what you want to do, what you seek is the stopping of that. And the Buddha found how to do that. That’s the great thing he discovered.

  10. Nirvana as Freedom: Nirvana wasn’t just the moment of death for the Buddha, his Parinirvana. It was also that moment of his awakening that took place when he was a young man. He realizes at that moment that he was free from all the ignorance that drove the cycle of transmigration, and then he lived for forty years. A long, productive life.

  11. The Path of Nirvana: What a Buddhist has to do to achieve Nirvana? What do I have to do if I want to seek that great ideal?



The First Monasteries

The early Buddhist community began as a group of wanderers. It soon involved a settled pattern of life, at least during a portion of the year. In Northern India, there is a rainy season that arrives during the months of June or July that makes the roads (specially of fourth century BC India) impassable for a group of wandering monks.

The Rain Retreat


It was important for these monks to find a place to settle down during the rainy season, for what is called the rain retreat. Sometimes, in the very early texts, they say they stayed in caves or even at the base of a big tree. Eventually, when lay supporters were around, it was possible for them to establish regular dwelling places where they could live during the rainy season.

Originally, these were temporary places, monks would get up and wander for the rest of the year and then come back to these places for the rains. As the community became more complex and sophisticated, these places evolved into regular settled monastic communities, known as Biharas.

The Golden Age of Monasticism


Monasteries had been particularly important in Tibet. In fact, one of the best places to go to see traditional monastic practice in action would be one of the great monasteries in Central Tibet. Monastic practice is important in China, Japan and throughout South East Asia.

In its heyday, around the year six or seven hundred of the common era, the great Buddhist monasteries in India were extraordinarily sophisticated and complex centers of learning. They were really like modern universities. They taught not just religious discipline and religious ritual, but a lot of secular disciplines: literature, the arts and medicine were part of the sophisticated intellectual life of the communities.

These monasteries permitted the development of a sophisticated Buddhist civilization, it would have been difficult without them. They also, strangely enough, made the Buddhist community vulnerable to persecution.

Persecution


These monasteries were the major centers of Buddhist life. If public support for these monasteries began to wane, or if you have a group of invaders coming in suppressing the practice of monasticism like this, they were extremely vulnerable to persecution.

That is what happened eventually in India. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, there were a series of invasions that swept across Northern India from Afghanistan that devastated many of the sophisticated cultural institutions in Northern India.

One of the major focal points of persecution was this group of monasteries strung down along the Ganges basin. When they were suppressed, when they were burned and destroyed, and the monks were dispersed, it was very difficult for Buddhism to regenerate in India.

One of the ironies of Buddhist history is that Buddhism has virtually died out in the land of its origin. It was due, at least in part, to the vulnerability of the monastic institutions.

This article is part of the series about The Early Sangha



Buddhist Nuns

Nuns were an important part of the early Buddhist community. The story about the formation of the community of nuns is somewhat problematic to our eyes. I’ll tell it anyway and comment and ponder on it together.

The Origin of the Order


The Buddha’s aunt, Mahapajapati, asked one of the Buddha’s trusted followers if he will be willing to ordain her as a nun. Until this time he had only ordained men in his monastic organization. The Buddha initially refused. She pressed him again and again. He finally agreed to do it, but with a couple of restrictive stipulations.

One was that the nuns would have to abide by an additional series of regulations, over and above the regulations that applied to the monks. Another stipulation was that even the most senior nun would be junior to the most junior monk. The monastic system is hierarchically based on age. This meant that even the most senior nun would rank lower than the most newly ordained monk.

This tradition of nuns thrived in this early community and was an important part of the expansion of Buddhism on to South East Asia and into the rest of the world. There are now active communities of nuns, particularly in China, but the traditional practice of Buddhist nuns has died out now in South East Asia, although there are in some places attempts to reestablish that lineage.

If you want to study Buddhist nuns, it is probably easier to look at that community in the traditional Chinese context, such as Taiwan, or in Tibet, where Buddhist nuns are active.

The Stipulations


What should we think about these additional stipulations that the Buddha imposed on this early community of nuns? Was he doing a good thing?

I suppose it is difficult for us to judge this historical phenomenon that developed in a context very different from our own, but I think we should say two things. One is that in its time it seems this was quite radical, to open up the possibility of renunciation in a formal context to women.

The possibility of monasticism for women has been an important part of the Buddhist community, and it represents the commitment to the possibility of Nirvana for women within the community. It is important not to characterize the early Buddhist tradition as diminishing the ability of women to achieve awakening.

It is true that there had been these additional restrictions on the status nuns can acquire in the Buddhist community. They reflect, I suspect, the restrictions on the behavior and the status of women in the context of the time.

In any case, nuns were an important part of the early community. The monastic practice of women continues to be significant in the Buddhist community today.

This article is part of the series about The Early Sangha



Buddhist Lay Followers

At the very beginning, the Sangha(Buddhist community) was quite small and consisted of just an informal group of followers. They wandered with the Buddha, as he wandered through the roads of Northern India. It was a diverse community. It is often spoken of as having four parts: monks, nuns, male lay followers, and female lay followers.

You can ask yourself: What are the different types of people who would be found in the Buddhist community? The best place to start is with the role of lay supporters, because obviously these monks and nuns couldn’t continue for very long unless they’ve got a lot of devoted lay people to support them.

A Great Donor


When we talk about the lay supporter I like to take as an example the story of a great donor, a Danapati. The word “dana” comes from the same root as our word donor. A Danapati is a “Lord of Generosity”.

The story is that this man felt that the community needed to have a place to live. There was a particularly desirable place in the territory that surrounded the town. He offered to buy it from its owner. The owner said that he wouldn’t sell it unless he was paid with gold. The story says that he spread gold coins across the land and bought it.

You can say that great donors have been models of generosity for the lay supporters of the community. This is pretty obvious. It is pretty clear that you couldn’t have these monks unless there were devoted and generous lay followers.

Generosity


There are a couple of implications of this practice worth considering. First of all, when we talked about the practice of the Path, I told you that the five moral precepts of lay people were rather negative virtues. They are important virtues. It is important not to kill, not to lie and all those things, but they involve restrains on conduct. They don’t allow you to do anything that positively asserts your concern for others or the community.

You can get the impression from that, that Buddhism is a negative tradition in its discipline. Of course, it isn’t. One way we see that is by considering this question of generosity. To be a good lay person is to be generous. To donate as much as you can for the support of the Sangha and for the preservation of the Dharma.

In fact, you can probably say that generosity is in some respects the most basic form of lay meditation. It involves giving up. It expresses a concern for others in a way that allows to no longer focus so much on yourself. It is a very simple but effective way of meditating on the fundamental value of no-self.

Each One His Due


It is also interesting to note that it is one of the duties of a monk to give a lay person an opportunity to give. In some kinds of situations you could characterize this with the image of a greedy monk, who is constantly asking for donations. There are some monks who look like this in many situations. The truth is that they are showing another important aspect of the Buddhist ideal: a lay person has the duty to give. How can a lay person give if there is not a monk who is there at the door, humbly receiving the donation that the lay person has to offer?

In this complicated system of Buddhist institutional life, you could say that it is important to receive as it is to give. To give others the opportunity to express their generosity.

This article is part of the series about The Early Sangha



The Three Refuges of Buddhist Faith

There is a fundamental formula that is used in the Buddhist tradition to express faith in the tradition itself. It is called the Three Refuges. Some people have said that it functions in Buddhism a little bit like The Lord’s Prayer or some other very common affirmation of faith in others religious traditions.

In English it would sound simply like this: “I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Dharma, I take refuge in the Sangha.” The Sangha is the Buddhist community.

These are the three focal points of faith in the Buddhist tradition. People would recite this as part of an ordinary daily ritual. Some people use it as a formula when they want to assert their own Buddhist identity.



The Path of Nirvana

The Fourth Noble Truth is the Path of Nirvana. It is important for us to know something about the discipline that leads people to Nirvana, both for lay people and also the monks and nuns.

The Noble Eightfold Path


The Path of Nirvana is often divided in eight categories, like the eight spokes of the wheel of the Buddha’s teaching. The Noble Eightfold Path. It includes the concept of right understanding, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration.

I think that the logic of the Path becomes a little bit more clear if we take these eight categories and reduce them or group them together into three. This is often done in traditional Buddhist teaching. Sila, or moral conduct. Samadhi, mental concentration. And Panna, or wisdom.

What a Buddhist has to do to achieve Nirvana? What do I have to do if I want to seek that great ideal?

First, Moral Conduct


Well, first of all, you should abide basic rules of moral conduct. Why? Because if you perform actions that are going to be dangerous and destructive for other people or for yourself, you may end coming back like one of those worms or mosquitoes that we talked about when we were discussing the Upanishads. It is not that easy, if you are a mosquito, to try to achieve Nirvana. It would be a good idea to start by engaging in the proper modes of conduct that would make it possible for you to come back in a way that would be conducive to Nirvana. What are those?

No killing, no stealing, no lying, no abuse of sex and not drinking intoxicants. The five basic moral precepts of the traditional Buddhist practice. This applies to lay people as well to monks.

Monks observe other precepts and a number of other regulations that have to do specifically with the monastic life. These include the restriction that they cannot eat after twelve of noon. All monks beg their food in the morning and have a sufficient meal before noon.

They are not supposed to sleep on soft beds. They can’t handle gold or silver. So, if a monastery has financial dealings, they have to have a lay person who would take care of their accounts and engage in the purchases that keep the monastic life in motion.

Mental Concentration


Another thing that Buddhist practitioners do is to engage in mental concentration. The term here is Samadhi, to concentrate the mind. Maybe you think that meditation is the most fundamental thing that Buddhists do, and that’s certainly true in many parts of the Buddhist tradition. You might even begin yourselves to imagine what meditation might be like. It is not impossible to do it even in ordinary situations in life.

What you try to do is to situate yourself very stably, sit in a chair. You can even do it standing if you can be stable. Keep your back straight. The Dalai Lama insists on this when he teaches meditation. It is important to do it because it allows you to breath freely, allows you diaphragm to be free. And then you might want to fold your hands in front of you. And then just breath. Concentrate your attention as much as you can on that place where your breathing centers, and allow your body and your mind to become calm.

One of my old Yoga teachers used to say that in an experience of Samadhi like this, you allow your thoughts in your head to simply drain out of your mind. That’s what it is, allowing the mind to become calm and allowing the thoughts to clarify themselves by allowing all that busy activity in your head simply to stop.

You can imagine that this discipline of mental concentration is a way of doing for the mind, what the discipline of moral conduct does for the body. It is a way to stop all of those distractions and all of that negative tendencies that tie you to the experience of death and rebirth.

This form of meditation, of mental concentration, is one of the most basic forms of Buddhist discipline. It is found in the early scriptures of the Buddhist community, and of course continues on in practice among Buddhists today.

Wisdom


Finally, the third and most important thing that you would want to do, is to cultivate wisdom. Here the word is Panna. It actually comes from the Sanskrit root Prajñā. It is to know the nature of the world and to know where it is going, so you can become detached from it and begin the process that leads to Nirvana.

These three things: Sila, Samadhi, and Panna; will lead you to the experience of Nirvana.

This article is part of the series about The Buddha's Teachings.



Nirvana as Freedom

Nirvana is sought because it the solution to the problem of Samsara, but it seems to me, as with the concept of Suffering, that this is not the whole story. It is not the full picture. Nirvana wasn’t just the moment of death for the Buddha, his Parinirvana. It was also that moment of his awakening that took place when he was a young man.

A Positive Life After Nirvana


He realizes at that moment that he was free from all the ignorance that drove the cycle of transmigration, and then he lived for forty years. A long, productive life. He moved through the roads of Northern India, reacting to the experiences of people around him, teaching them the Dharma, begging his food, building a community of disciples and setting in motion this remarkable religious tradition.

If you want to understand what is positive about Nirvana, the most important thing to do is to try to imagine what he was like. Try to know what that Buddha was like as he glided through the landscape of Northern India for forty years after his awakening.

What Was the Buddha Like?


I think that he was exquisitely free. He was free from desire, he was free from ignorance and there was nothing that troubled him or disturbed his heart. As the result of that, he was able to respond freely to the interests and needs of the people around him.

The story of Angulimala shows a remarkable image of the Buddha as a teacher and as somebody who was able to respond to the distinctive needs of a person, who for other people would be extraordinarily frightening. He was able to touch his heart and to convert him to a different way of understanding himself and the nature of the world.

He is free, he is unattached. He is able to touch people in a powerful and distinctive way. I think that you also have to say that he is wise. He understands what the world brings. There is nothing that is going to shake him in that sense. We can speak about the Buddha as being wise, as being unattached, as being free and able to act with spontaneity and clarity of mind in his relationship to others.

Compassion


I think that also it is appropriate to say that he embodies a certain quality of compassion as well. A certain kind of compassion and ability to respond to other people’s needs. Although the concept of compassion is not one which we’ll begin to discuss in a technical sense, it would be extremely unwise to imagine that this Buddha was so rarified and so detached from the experience of suffering in the ordinary world, that he could not respond to the suffering of other people.

Nirvana is Freedom


It is important for us to understand Nirvana as a negative idea. In understanding it as a negative idea, we understand it in its Indian way, as a concept that responds to the particular challenges and needs of Indian civilization. But it is not a negative concept in its totality. It is negative in form, but positive in content.

The experience that you have of Nirvana is an experience of freedom, of detachment, of wisdom, and the ability to respond with clarity of mind to all the difficulties that life presents you. In that sense, you can really imagine that it is the Buddhist image of the perfection of a human person, because that is what the Buddha is.

This article is part of the series about The Buddha's Teachings.



Nirvana as the Solution of Samsara

With the concept of Nirvana we face a dilemma. Why would you ever want to seek Nirvana if it involves the extintion of all these things that are desirable?

Samsara


The first answer to this question has to be one in which we look again very carefully at the Indian assumption about the nature of reincarnation. I think that the concept of Nirvana forces us to take quite seriously the negative aspect of the concept of reincarnation.

If you don’t want to come back again and again in some future life, then really what you want to do, what you seek is the stopping of that. And the Buddha found how to do that. That’s the great thing he discovered. If Samsara is something you want to escape, the Buddha showed the way.

So, Nirvana is negative in an appropìate way in the Indian tradition, because Samsara is something that you would like to avoid and you would like to escape. I think it’s interesting to think a little bit about how the concept of Nirvana can compare to concepts of the ultimate goal of human life, it might be closer to home.

Achieve Nothingness


Many who are Jewish or Christian have in their minds an image of God, looking at the chaos of creation, looking in a certain sense at Nothing, and making something coming to existence. Christian doctrine of creation is called creatio ex nihilo, creation from nothing.

God looked at nothing and made something coming to being. I think that is fair to say that for Christian people, and maybe for Jewish people also, that when you imagine or do something, it is something that is essentially creative. You look at the chaos of the day and you try to make something beautiful come into existence. Creativity is something we strongly value. We search for being. We search to bring new things into existence.

It is really fascinating to note that the Buddhist tradition is almost exactly the opposite. The Buddha faced the situation in his own life in which things were being going on from beginningless time. In the Buddhist tradition there really is not time when creation begins, it has just always been there. They speak often of beginningless ignorance, of the beginningless flow of human existence. The beginningless Samsara.

The Buddha understood how to stop one piece of it. What he teaches us is that when we wake up in the morning, when we begin a day or we experience the flow from one moment to another, the challenge is not to take that and create something new out of it, but to allow it to quiet. To allow some of it to slip away. That’s not Nirvana, but it is a pretty good analogy of Nirvana. To take this busy flow of experience and let some of it become quiet. That’s what the Buddha discovered how to do.

In some respects this is diametrically opposed to the image of human life that grows out of the traditions of the West, and yet it serves as a remarkable counterpoint, a supplement, a challenge to the approaches many of us bring to the experiences of our ordinary every day lives.

The first way to answer the question is to recognize quite seriously that Samsara is a problem that needs to be solved. It is solved by allowing the busy flow of experience to become quiet and come to an end.

But it seems to me, as with the concept of Suffering, that this is not the whole story. It is not the full picture. We will continue discussing in the next article the second reason why Nirvana is desirable.

This article is part of the series about The Buddha's Teachings.



What is Nirvana?

What do we mean by Nirvana? What is this concept? It is talked about a lot and it is a part of our vocabulary. You can speak of all sorts of things as being as Nirvana and generally they are quite positive and pleasurable. That is the popular idea about Nirvana.

Nirvana as a Negative Concept


The truth is that it is not positive in a quite obvious way. Actually, if you think about the meaning of the word, the etymology of the word it’s quite a negative concept. Nirvana means literally to blow out. To extinguish the flame of a candle.

So, you might say that Nirvana is the cessation, is the extinction of the fire that burns constantly from one life to the next. It is important to realize that Nirvana is a hard image and in many respects quite a cold image.

Silence


The comparison that I use when I talk about this comes from a experience I had quite a while ago. Once when I was on vacation, I went to a great Roman church, the Thursday night before Easter, when the lights inside the church were extinguished.

I have to say that that experience was very moving for me. We were in this great dark church, it was nighttime, it was early in the spring. There was a line of Italian choir boys walking out of the service when it was over, each one of them carrying a big candle. As they walked out, each one blew out the candle. One after another. And when the last candle went out, the church was plunged into darkness.

Then everyone left the church, in silence. It was quiet, it was dark, it was deeply moving. That’s not unlike Nirvana. Nirvana is the extinction of the flame of desire, the flame of existence.

Two Nirvanas


For us to understand the technical concept, to dig more deeply into what’s going on here, we have to understand that Nirvana comes at two moments in the Buddha’s life. It comes first in the moment of his awakening. That’s the first moment of extinguishing, the first time when he realizes that the fire will eventually go out.

At the moment of his awakening, he understands thoroughly what the causes are of the process of death and rebirth that he knows he is not fueling anymore. That’s Nirvana number one. It is called Nirvana with residues, because there is still karma from past lives that needs to be worked out.

Eventually, forty years or so later, he has the experience of Parinirvana at the end of his life. The complete extinction, when all of it burns out. The Buddha is released completely from the cycle of death and rebirth.

These two moments are called Nirvana with residues and Nirvana without residues. Nirvana without residues is also called Parinirvana.

What's so Great About This?


With the concept of Nirvana we now face a dilemma that is similar to the dilemma we faced earlier with the concept of suffering. Nirvana is spoken of in the Buddhist tradition as being extremely desirable, something we would really like to seek. And yet we have to confront it initially as being a rather harsh concept, a concept that has to do with the extinction of things that for many of us are pretty desirable in the normal understanding of human life.

We have to ask ourselves a basic question. Why the Buddhists treat this as being a desirable goal? What’s so great about this? Why would you ever want to seek Nirvana if it involves the extinction of all these things that are desirable?

This article is part of the series about The Buddha's Teachings.



The Arising of Suffering

We had a long discussion of the important and problematic Buddhist concept of no-self. The point of that discussion was to explore one of the basic dilemmas in the Buddhist tradition. To try to understand how they can make such an apparently pessimistic claim about the nature of life and consider it as an experience of freedom, to live it with a sense of lightness, of buoyancy and detachment from the difficulties of this world.

Where Does Suffering Come From?


Our job in this article is to continue the discussion of the Four Noble Truths and start to talk about the second one. The second noble truth is called the truth of the arising of suffering. According to this noble truth, the origin of suffering is explained by a causal sequence known as the twelve fold chain of dependent arising. The word “dependent arising” is probably the longest of the technical terms used in introductory courses on Buddhism. In Pali it is pratītyasamutpāda.

So, suffering comes from a twelve fold process of dependent conditioning. We could spend a little time if we wanted in each of the twelve links in the chain, but it is not very productive.

It is better for us to pluck two or three crucial links out of the chain just to see how the chain works. If we do that, we see suffering arising essentially from ignorance. From that ignorance comes desire or craving. And then, out of that craving or desire comes birth.

So, ignorance leads to desire, desire leads to birth.

Desire


This might seem counterintuitive at first, but it is not difficult to understand what Buddhists have in mind when they say this. Just take a glossy advertisement from a magazine or imagine one on the TV, and ask what kind of illusion that advertisement is meant to foster. What kinds of desires it’s meant to arouse? And what comes into being as a result of those desires?

Most of the desires are pretty benign. I’m not talking about anything deeply troubling or problematic. But they feed the creative process, the process of constantly acquiring new things and letting them slip away, and getting more things that from a Buddhist point of view would feed the process of death and rebirth. It simply fuels Samsara. This is the fuel that is added to the fire of the personality that drives this continuous process of death and rebirth.

The most fundamental form of ignorance is the idea that “I”, this personality, is something permanent that needs to be protected, to be fed with desirable experiences. This is the basic form of ignorance that fuels the fire of existence.

The End of Ignorance


If you simply focus on these three links that lead from ignorance to desire and to birth, you’ve got implicitly a roadmap of how you can reverse the process, if what you want to do is to stop rebirth as Buddhists do. If you want to stop rebirth, what you do then is to remove ignorance. Somehow chip away at that basic misconception that people have about the world, and as a result diminish desire.

Slowly some of those desires begin to slip away, and as a result of that, the process of birth will begin to unravel. It may not happen quickly, it may not even happen in this lifetime. In fact, according to this tradition, it’s very likely that it won’t happen in this lifetime. But at least you can set the process moving in a more positive direction.

If you do that, what eventually happens is that you find yourself on the path of Nirvana. It is Nirvana, the third Noble Truth, the definitive cessation of suffering.

This article is part of the series about The Buddha's Teachings.



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