Buddha dharma in hindi language

Zen Buddhism

One paragraph per each question.

1) It is likely that this week’s material was new and different for you. Take about 20 minutes to simply think about some of the core ontological claims (or, claims having to do with what it means to exist) made by the Buddha. Write a paragraph that describes your state of feeling while thinking about these claims. Do they make you comfortable? Do not distribute without prior permission 8 Uncomfortable? Are they confusing? Do they feel familiar? Note in a few sentences the process of rearticulating these claims in your own words--is it easy?

2) Rephrase, in ONE WORD ONLY, each of the Three Marks as you understand them without using “suffering,” “impermanence,” and “no-self.” Note in a few sentences the process and challenge of capturing complex meaning in a single word and explain why you chose your words used to rephrase.

The Word of the Buddha Buddhist Scriptures and Schools

Dharma: texts, practice, and realization

The Buddha is author of no books or treatises. Moreover it is extremely unlikely that any of his immediate disciples wrote any- thing of his teachings down. And yet we are told that the Buddha devoted some forty-five years of his life entirely to teaching and that by the end of his life he was quite satisfied that he had succeeded in passing on his teachings carefully and exactly, such that they would long be of benefit and help to the world.1 This state of affairs is worth reflecting on, for it reveals something of the nature of Buddhism.

Buddhism cannot be reduced to a collection of theoretical writ- ings nor a philosophical system of thought-although both these form an important part of its tradition. What lies at the heart of Buddhism, according to its own understanding of the matter, is dharma. Dharma is not an exclusively Buddhist concept, but one which is common to Indian philosophical, religious, social, and political thought in its entirety. According to Indian thought Dharma is that which is the basis of things, the underlying nature of things, the way things are; in short, it is the truth about things, the truth about the world. More than this, Dharma is the way we should act, for if we are to avoid bringing harm to both ourselves and others we should strive to act in a way that is true to the way things are, that accords with the underlying truth ()f things. Ulti- mately the only true way to act is in conformity with Dharma.

The notion of Dharma in Indian thought thus has both a descriptive and a prescriptive aspect: it is the way things are and the way to act. The various schools of Indian religious and philo- sophical thought and practice all offer slightly different visions

36 The Word of Buddha: Scriptures and Schools

( darsana) of Dharma-different visions of the way things are and the way to act. Of course, when we examine the teachings of the various schools, we find that there is often substantial common ground and much borrowing from each other. Yet the.Buddha's vision and understanding of Dharma must be reckoned to have had a profound influence on Indian culture and, to an extent unpar- alleled by other visions of Dharma, on cultures beyond India.

The Buddha regarded the Dharma he had found as 'profound, hard to see, hard to understand, peaceful, sublime, beyond the sphere of mere reasoning, subtle, to be experienced by the wise'. Thus knowledge of Dharma is not something that is acquired simply by being told the necessary information or by reading the appropriate texts. Knowledge of Dharma is not a matter of scholarly and ~ntellectual study. This does mean that such study may not have a part to play, yet it can never be the whole story. In fact according to an ancient and authoritative view of the matter knowledge of Dharma comes about as a result of the interplay between three kinds of understanding (prajnii/pannii): that which arises from listening (sruta/suta ), that which arises from reflection (cintii), and that which arises from spiritual practice (bhiivanii).2 The aim of Buddhism is to put into practice a par- ticular way of living the 'holy life' or 'spiritual life' (brahma-cariya) that involves training in ethical conduct (fila/slla) and meditative and contemplative techniques (samiidhi) and which culminates in the direct realization of the very knowledge (prajnii/paniiii) the B·uddha himself reached under the tree of awakening. There- fore what the Buddha taught is often referred to in the early texts as a system of 'training' (sik~ii/sikkha), and his disciples may be referred to as being 'in training' (saik~a/sekha) or 'not in need of further training' (asaik~a/asekha). Thus in certain important respects the nature of the knowledge that the Buddha was trying to convey to his pupils is more akin to a skill, like knowing how to play a musical instrument, than a piece of information, such as what time the Manchester train leaves tomorrow.

That knowledge of Dharma was conceived of in this way explains in part why the written word was not originally the medium for its communication. Practical training is difficult to

The Word of Buddha: Scriptures and Schools 37

impart and acquire simply on the basis of theoretical manuals; one needs a teacher who can demonstrate the training and also comment on and encourage one in one's own attempts to put the instructions into practice.3 In fact a sense that knowledge is not properly communicated by the written word colours the traditional Indian attitude to learning in general: knowledge must be passed from teacher to pupil directly. This does not mean that at the time of the Buddha India had no literature. On the contrary, in the form of the 8-g Veda India has a literature that predates the Buddha by perhaps as much as a thousand years. But this literature is 'oral'. It was composed orally, memorized, and then passed from teacher to pupil directly by a process of oral recitation for centuries, without ever being committed to writ- ing. India'~ is, of course, not the only culture to have an ancient oral literature; the Iliad and the Odyssey, for example, grew out of a tradition of oral composition, yet the oral origins of tradi- tional Indian learning continued to inform its structure long after texts had begun to be committed to writing.4

In presenting its teachings to the world, the Buddhist tradition would thus point towards an unbroken lineage or succession of teachers and pupils: just as the Buddha took care to instruct his pupils, so they in turn took care to instruct theirs. The visible and concrete manifestation of this succession is in the first place the Sangha, the community of ordained monks (bhikkhu) and nuns (bhikkhunz). Becoming a Buddhist monk or nun requires a particular ceremony that is legitimate only if properly carried out according to prescribed rules, which apparently go right back to the time of the Buddha himself. In particular the pre- scriptions for the ceremony require the presence of a minimum of five fully ordained bhikkhus of at least ten years' standing. Thus when someone ordains as a Buddhist monk there is in effect a direct link back to the presence of the Buddha himself. Of course, the principle of the passing of the teachings directly from per- son to person may also operate outside the Sangha, for members of the Sangha do not only teach other members of the Sangha, they teach lay people as well. Yet the Sangha remains the tan- gible thread of the tradition.

38 The Word of Buddha: Scriptures and Schools

So the Buddha's Dharma is mediated to us via the Satigha- a community that ideally does not tnerely hand down some vague recollection of what the Buddha taught but actually lives the teaching. In the Pali commentaries written down in Sri Lanka in the fifth century CE a distinction was made between two kinds of monastic duty: that of books and that of practice (see below, pp. 104-5).5 The former is concerned with the study of the theory as preserved in Buddhist writings. The latter is the stniightforward attempt to put the Buddha's system of training into practice, to live the spiritual life as prescribed by the Buddha and his followers. Although this formal distinction is found in the writings of a particular Buddhist school, the point being high- lighted holds good for Buddhism as a whole. Throughout the his- tory of Buddhism there has existed a certain tension ~etween the monk who is a great scholar and theoretician and the monk who is a realized practitioner. Something of the same tension is in- dicated in the sixth and seventh centuries in China with the arising of the Ch'an (Japanese Zen) school of Buddhism, whose well-known suspicion of theoretical formulations of the teach- ing is summed up by the traditional stanza:

A special tradition outside the scriptures; Not founded on words and letters; Pointing directly to the heart of man; Seeing into one's own nature and attainingBuddhahood.6

The same kind of tension is in part reflected in a threefold characterization of Dharma itself as textual tradition (pariyatti), practice (patipatti), and realization (pafivedha) once again found in the Pali commentaries.7 The first refers to the sum of Buddhist theory as contained in Buddhist scriptures, the second to the put- ting into practice of those teachings, while the third to the direct understanding acquired consequent upon the practice. The rest of this chapter will primarily be concerned with Dharma as textual tradition.

Dharma as textual tradition goes back to the teachings heard directly from the Buddha. These teachings were, it seems, mem- orized by the immediate followers of the Buddha. For several

The Word of Buddha: Scriptures and Schools 39

generations perhaps, the teachings of the Buddha were preserved and handed down directly from master to pupil orally without ever being committed to writing. It is tempting for us in the modern world to be sceptical about the reliability of this method of transmission, but it was the norm in ancient India; the use of mnemonic techniques such as the numbered list and frequent repetition of certain portions of the material within a given text aided reliable transmission.8 Indeed the evidence of the trans- mission of the Vedic texts, for example, is that oral transmission can be more reliable than a tradition of written texts involving the copying of manuscripts.9

In the early phase of their transmission then the only access to Buddhist 'texts' was by hearing them directly from someone who had heard and learnt them from someone else, this oral trans- mission of the 'texts being an activity that went on primarily within the community of monks. Even after these texts began to be com- mitted to writing their study was primarily a monastic concern. Thus the ordinary lay Buddhist's access to Buddhist teachings was always through the Sangha: he or she learnt the Dharma by sitting in the presence of a monk or nun and listening to their exposition of the teachings. Thus, in so far as a monk or nun neces- sarily follows a way of life defined by the prescriptions and rules of Buddhist monasticism, the study of Buddhist theory always took place in a context of practice. It is only in the twentieth century-with the arrival of the modern printed book in tr.adi- tional Buddhist societies, and the demand in the West for books and information on Buddhism-that this state of affairs has begun to change. That is, for· over two millennia it was only by some form of contact with the living tradition of practice that there could be any knowledge of Buddhism.

The first recitation of scriptures: the four Nikayas/Agamas and the Vinaya

According to a generally accepted ancient tradition, the first attempt to agree the form of the Buddhist textual tradition, what was remembered as the authoritative 'word of the Buddha',

40 The Word of Buddha: Scriptures and Schools

took place some three months after the Buddha's death at the town of Rajagrha (Pali Rajagaha) in northern India when soo arhats took part in a 'communal recitation' (sar[lglti). This event is commonly referred to in modern writings as 'the first Buddhist council'. Significantly the earliest Buddhist tradition attempts to resolve any tension between theory and practice by insisting that the first commmial recitation of scriptures was carried out by soo individuals who had each realized direct and perfect know- ledge of Dharma. According to the accounts of this communal recitation, what was remembered of the Buddha's teachings fell into two classes: the general discourses of the Buddha, the siitra.s (Pali sutta ), and his prescriptions for the lifestyle of the Buddhist monk, the 'discipline' or vinaya. Some accounts suggest there was a third category, miitrkiis (Pali miitikii) or summary mne- monic lists of significant points of the teaching. At any rate, later canonical collections of Buddhist writings were subsequently often referred to as 'the three baskets' (tri-pi{akalti-pi{aka): the basket of discipline, the basket of discourses, and the basket of 'further dharma' (abhidharma/abhidhamma), whose development is in part related to the use of the summary mnemonic lists or miitrkas.

Three principal 'canons' of Buddhist scriptures survive today corresponding to the three main traditions of living Bud- dhism: the Pali or Theravada canon of the southern t.radition of Sri Lanka and South-East Asia, the Chinese Tripitaka of the eastern tradition of China, Korea, and Japan, and the Tibetan Kanjur (bKa' 'gyur) and Tenjur (bsTan 'gyur) of the northern tra- dition of Tibet and Mongolia. All three of these collections are extensive. Modern printed editions of the Pali canon run to some fifty moderately sized volumes; the Taisho edition of the Chi- nese Tripitaka comprises fifty-five volumes, each containing some I,ooo pages of Chinese characters; together the Tibetan Kanjur and Tenjur comprise 300 traditional poti volumes. When the contents of the three canons are compared it is apparent that, while significant portions of the Pali canon are paralleled in the Chinese collection, and there is considerable overlap between the Chinese Tripitaka and the Kanjur and Tenjur, Buddhism as l;l

The Word of Buddha: Scriptures and Schools 41

whole does not possess a 'canon' of scriptures in the manner of the Hebrew Bible of Judaism, the Old and New Testaments of Christianity, or the Qu'ran of Islam. It is also apparent that the Chinese and Tibetan canons do not represent en bloc transla- tions of ancient Indian canonical collections of Buddhist texts, but rather libraries of translations of individual Indian works. made over the centuries (see Chapter ro). In the case of the Chinese canon this process of translating Indian texts began in· the sec- ond century cE and continued for over 8oo years; the process of arranging and cataloguing these texts continues down to the present century. In the case of Tibetan Kanjur and Tenjur the translation process was carried out between the seventh and thirteenth centuries, while the precise contents and arrangement of these two collections has never been fixed. ·

What of the Pali canon? The use of the term 'Pali' as the name of the language of the Theravada canon of Buddhist scriptures derives from the expression piili-bhiisii, 'the language of the [Buddhist] texts'. This language is an ancient Indian language closely related to Sanskrit, the language of classical Indian cul- ture par excellence. At the time of the Buddha, Sanskrit appears to have been very much the language of brahmanical learning and religious ritual. The Buddha therefore seems to have delib- erately and consciously eschewed Sanskrit, preferring to teach in the ordinary vernacular-the various Middle Indo-Aryan dialects, known as Prakrit, which were spoken across the north of India in the fifth century BCE.10 In the first century or so after the death of the Buddha, as Buddhism began gradually to spread across the Indian subcontinent, different groups of monks and the evolving schools of Buddhism appear to have preserved their own versions of the Buddha's teaching orally in their local dialect. However, as time passed there was a tendency for the language of 'the scriptures' to become frozen and increasingly removed from any actually spoken dialect. At the same time Sanskrit was becoming less an exclusively brahmanicallanguage and more the accepted language of Indian culture-the language in which to communicate learning and literature right across India. Thus Buddhist scriptures were subject to varying degrees of

42 The Word of Buddha: Scriptures and Schools

'sanskritization' ('translation' is too strong here since the order of difference between Middle Indian and Sanskrit is similar to that between modern English and Chaucer's or Mallory's English). Although basically Middle Indo-Aryan, the language of the Pali canon is thus something of a hybrid, preserving lin- guistic features of several dialects and showing some evidence of sanskritization.

Theravada Buddhist tradition traces the Pali canon back to a recension of Buddhist scriptures brought from northern India to Sri Lanka in the third century BCE by Mahinda, a Buddhist monk who was the son of the emperor Asoka. Mahinda and his company brought no books, the texts being in their heads, but the tradition is that the Pali.texts were subsequently written down for the first time in the first century BCE. The historical value of this tradition is uncertain. Most scholars would be sceptical of the suggestion that the Pali canon existed exactly as we have it today already in the middle of third century BCE. We know, how- ever, that what the commentators had before them in the fifth century CE in Sri Lanka corresponded fairly exactly to what we have now, and the original north Indian provenance and relative antiquity of much of the Pali canon seems to be guaranteed on linguistic grounds.U Significant portions of the material it con- tains must go back to the third century BeE:

How many other versions or recensions of the canon of Bud- dhist scriptures existed in partially or more fully sanskritized Middle Indian dialects is unclear. The Pali canon is the only one to survive apparently complete in an Indian language. Of the other ancient Indian versions of the canon, we have only isolated fragments and portions in the original Indian languages. More substantial portions are, however, preserved in translation especially in the Chinese Tripitaka. This, along with what Bud- dhist literature as a whole reveals about its own history, allows us to know something of the content of these other ancient Indian canons and also to identify the generally more archaic material-material that must be relatively close in time to the ancient Rajagrha recitation. This material takes the form of the four primary Nikayas or 'collections' of the Buddha's discourses

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-also known as the four Agamas or books of textual 'tradition' -along with the Vinaya or Buddhist monastic rule. These texts constitute the essential common heritage of Buddhist thought, and from this perspective the subsequent history of Buddhism is a working out of their implications. This is not to imply that Buddhism can somehow be reduced to what is contained in these texts; one must understand that this 'working out' in prac- tice constitutes much of what Buddhism has actually been and, today, is. Nevertheless, in the quest for an: understanding of Bud- dhist thought these texts represent the most convenient starting point.

Today we have two full versions of this Nikaya/Agama mat- erial: a version in Pali forming part of the Pali canon and a ver- sion in Chinese translation contained in the Chinese Tripitaka. It is usual scholarly practice to refer to the Pali version by the term 'Nikaya' and the Chinese by the term 'Agama'. Like the Pali canon as a whole, it is impossible to date the Pali Nikayas in their present form with any precision. The Chinese Agamas were translated into Chinese from Sanskrit or Middle Indo- Aryan dialects around the end of the fourth century CE, but the texts upon which they rest must like the Nikayas date from the centuries before the beginning of the Christian era. Portions of further versions of this material also come down to us in Tibetan translation in the Tibetan Kanjur.

The four Nikayas/Agamas arrange the Buddha's discourses in the first place according to length. The collection of long dis- courses ( dirghiigama/digha-nikiiya) comprises some thirty siitras arranged in three volumes; the collection of middle-length dis- courses (madhyamiigama/majjhima-nikiiya) comprises some 150 siitras in the Pali version and 200 in the Chinese. Finally there are two collections of shorter siitras. The first of these is 'the grouped collection' (saf!lyuktiigama/saf!lyutta-nikiiya) which con- sists of short siitras grouped principally according to subject matter and dominated by the subjects of dependent arising, the aggregates, the sense-spheres, and the path. The oral nature of early Buddhist literature resulted in the proliferation of numbered lists, in part as mnemonic devices, and the 'numbered collection'

44 The Word of Buddha: Scriptures and Schools

(ekottarikiigama!atiguttara-nikiiya) consists of short siitras built around such a numbered list and grouped according to number rather than topic.

In this book I generally quote from and refer to the Pali re- cension of these texts. Using the Pali recension is in part a matter of convenience and not a question of thereby suggesting that the traditions it preserves are always the oldest and most authentic available to us, even if it is likely that this is generally the case. The Pali versions of these texts have been translated into English in their entirety (unlike the Chinese and Tibetan versions) and are readily available. That these texts have become widely known over the past century through their Pali form has sometimes led to an attitude which sees them as presenting the peculiar perspective of Theravada Buddhism. But, as Etienne Lamotte pointed out forty years ago, the doctrinal basis com- mon to the Chinese Agamas and Pali Nikayas is remarkably uni- form; such variations as exist affect only the mode of expression or the arrangement of topics.U Far from representing sectarian Buddhism, these texts above all constitute the common ancient heritage of Buddhism.

The failure to appreciate this results in a distorted view of ancient Buddhism, and its subsequent development and history both within and outside India. From their frequent references to and quotations from the Nikayas/ Agamas, it is apparent that all subsequent Indian Buddhist thinkers and writers of whatever school or persuasion, including the Mahayana-and most certainly those thinkers such as Nagarjuna, Asaiiga, and Vasubandhu, who became the great Indian fathers of east Asian and Tibetan Buddhism-were completely familiar with this material and treated it as the authoritative word of the Buddha. When disagreements arose among Buddhists they did not concern the authority of the Nikaya/Agama material, but certain points of its interpretation and the authority of other quite different material, namely the Mahayana siitras, which we shall return to presently.

Alongside the four primary Nikaya/Agama collections of siitras the ancient Indian canons like the Pali canon preserved a 'minor' ( k~udrakalkhuddaka) collection of miscellaneous texts that were

The Word of Buddha: Scriptures and Schools 45

also recognized as having the authority of the Buddha's word. This fifth collection included such works as the Dharmapada ('sayings on Dharma') and the Jiitaka or stories concerning the previous lives of the Buddha. The four Nikayas together with a greater or lesser number of miscellaneous minor texts constituted 'the basket of discourses' (Siitra/Sutta Pitaka) for the earliest Buddhist schools.B

The Pali canon, Chinese Tripitaka, and Tibetan Kanjur all preserve versions of the ancient 'basket of monastic discipline' (Vinaya Pitaka ): the Pali canon and Kanjur one each, the Chinese Tripitaka four, plus an incomplete-fifth. All six extant versions of the Vinaya fall into two basic parts. The first is a detailed analysis of the rules which constitute the priitimok:ja (Pali pii{imokkha) and which govern the life of the individual monk or nun. The second comprises twenty 'sections' (skandhaka/ khandhaka) which set out the proper procedures for conducting the various communal acts of the Sangha, such as ordination (see Chapter 4).14

Sutra and Abhidharma: the problem of textual authenticity The Nikayas/Agamas are collections of siitras or 'discourses' regarded as delivered by the Buddha. The older term for a dis- course of the Buddha preserved in Pali is sutta. It is not clear what this term originally meant. When Buddhists started sans- kritizing their texts they chose the word siitra. This is a term which literally means 'thread' (compare English 'suture') but in a literary context refers especially to authoritative brahmanical texts consisting of a string of terse, aphoristic verses which a pupil might memorize and a teacher might take as the basis for exposition. Buddhist siitras, however, are not in this form. As Richard Gombrich has pointed out, it is perhaps more likely that Middle Indo-Aryan sutta corresponds to Sanskrit siikta, which means 'something that is well said' and was early in the history of Indian literature used to refer to the inspired hymns of the Vedic seers that make up the collection of the ~g Veda. Early