One of the points I've been driving at is the importance of the Nirvana Sutra's "four assurances:"
And the importance of applying them, not only to our study of Buddhism, but also to our study of the politics, religion, history and mythology of our general society. To reinforce this point it should be considered that even the sutras such as the Nirvana Sutra, were probably not literally authored by the Buddha -- and that those who have practiced these teachings have known that all along!
Reading assignment:
Peggy writes in an article "Historical Claims as an Issue in Ethics" quoting the :
The authority of Buddhist suutras has traditionally rested on
their being Buddha vac or Buddha vacana, the word of the
Buddha, and this has usually been understood as the word of the historical
Buddha Shaakyamuni. The Lotus Suutra presents itself as the teaching
of Shaakyamuni Buddha dwelling in the city of King's Home (Raajag.rha)
on Vulture's Peak or Mount of The Numinous Eagle (Gridhaki.s.ta) surrounded
by many arhants and bodhisattvas and emitting a white light from the circle
of hair on his forehead. The white light is seen as a portent and "it is
because he wishes all living beings to be able to hear and know the Dharma
(teaching/truth), difficult of belief for all the worlds, that he displays
this portent" (8).
This indicates that the story is to be taken figuratively.
She continues:
That this is understood as claiming a literal root in the life of the historical Buddha can be illustrated by the struggle of a Tibetan student studying at Indiana University when he first read the Lotus Suutra. "As a devoted Buddhist, he accepted the verdict of his tradition that all Mahaayaana scriptures (including this very peculiar suutra) were the word of the Buddha Shaakyamuni. But at the same time it seemed quite clear to him that the Lotus Suutra conflicted with everything that he, as a Mahaayaana Buddhist monk, had been taught and said 'I can't believe that the Buddha would say such things'" (9).
Next she raises the authenticity question:
The setting is a mixture of historically linked and mythological description which raises real questions about the origins and authority of the suutra. Its emergence on the stage of history is described by Williams in the following way.
The earliest Chinese translation was made by Dharmarak.sa in 286 CE and revised in 290 CE. The version which conquered East Asia, however, and therefore by far the most significant version given the suutra's importance in East Asian Buddhism, was the Lotus translated by Kumaarajiiva and his team of translators in 406. . . . Kumaarajiiva's Lotus Suutra consists of twenty eight chapters. It is not a homogeneous work. Japanese scholars, who have carried out extensive study of the Lotus Suutra, are inclined to see the oldest part of the text as having been composed between the first century BCE and the first century CE (chapters one to nine, plus chapter seventeen). Most of the text had appeared by the end of the second century (10)
What she is quoting from Williams describes Buddhism's evolution from a disparate and sometimes combattive set of oral traditions into even more diverse written traditions. The Lotus Sutra also represents an effort to syncretize these traditions into a useful whole. She continues:
To support his statements, Williams quotes two Japanese and one western scholar
(11).
The literal link of the Lotus Suutra with the historical
Buddha Shaakyamuni is thus questioned in historical scholarship, including
that done by Buddhist scholars, along with that of other great Mahaayaana
suutras. (D.K.) For many historically-minded people this tension
can present a crisis of confidence and the raising of what is an ethical
question about making claims for the suutra's origin that are not
'true', which tends in this context to mean historically accurate. If people
have been and are being told that this suutra was preached on the
Vulture's Peak during his lifetime by the Buddha Shaakyamuni and they then
find out that there is good reason for questioning that this is historically
the case, there might well follow a crisis of confidence in the integrity
of the whole tradition of the teaching and the authority figures who have
handed on that tradition.
This sounds harsh as I have stated it, but I think it is a realistic presentation
of the challenge involved. It is a challenge that has been experienced
by many Christians as a result of historical critical work on the Christian
Bible during the last century or more and is therefore a familiar one to
westerners coming into Buddhist scholarship. There is an imaginative exploration of the challenge in the life of one man in the nineteenth century novel by Mrs. Humphrey Ward entitled Robert Elsmere
(12).
The point here is that anyone studying religion soon finds out that all religions represent "accepted literature" -- and that whether they are attributed to God, or to a Buddha, they have been written down and edited by human beings seeking to tell a story. Western Religious authorities have trouble dealing with this truth, and so do some Buddhists. But the truth is it should be easier to deal with this realization as Buddhists because of the message of the Nirvana Sutra I alluded to in the opening. She continues:
But the challenge should not be seen as one
that comes to the material and eastern Buddhists from the outside culturally
and solely as part of a package of post-enlightenment western thought.
The distinguished Japanese thinker Tominaga Nakamoto (1715–1746 CE) also
questioned Shaakyamuni Buddha's authorship of the Mahaayaana suutras
and says:
The scholars of later generations vainly say that all the teachings came directly from the golden mouth of the Buddha and were intimately transmitted by those who heard him frequently (13).
Tominaga Nakamoto seems to have been the first writer "systematically to
question the assumption that the Mahaayaana suutras, or indeed others, were transmitted directly from the Buddha himself. He did this by the critical, historical method of juxtaposing innumerable variations in the various
texts and illustrating how these arose in order for some point to be made
over against another school" (14).
He did this entirely independently of western scholarship. He states that:
We can tell that for long after the Buddha's decease there
was no fixed exposition among his followers and there were no writings
upon which one could depend. Everybody renewed the teachings according
to their opinions and passed it on orally (15).Many of the suutras were compiled by people five hundred years after the Buddha, so they contain many words from these five hundred years (16).
Finally she gets to her essential point:
This kind of challenge made on the basis of historical investigations and
claims about historical truth needs to be taken seriously within as well
as outside religions, if scholars and members of traditions are to communicate
with each other. But, being more phenomenological, so does the style of
language being used by a tradition in the claims that it makes, and with
it the possibility that different kinds of truth claims are being made.
One of the best investigations and analyses of the issue of the claims
of suutras to be the word of the Buddha, to my knowledge, is that
presented in two articles in the journal Religion. in 1981 and 1982
by Graeme MacQueen. His investigation uses the evidence of the tradition
itself to build a coherent picture. He notes that at the time of the Mahaayaana
suutras' emergence, traditionalists in the Buddhist community called
attention to the fact that these were not literally the word of the Buddha
as it was collected in the Pali Canon and that they were therefore spurious.
MacQueen investigates what the Pali Canon itself takes as the authority
behind a suutra and finds a significant number of suutras
there also that are spoken by other than the Buddha but which are included
for one of three main reasons: because the Buddha approved of what was
said by a disciple, because he invites and gives someone permission to
teach and because he affirms a person's wisdom and ability, so by implication
approves what they teach. These are all seen as Buddha vacana in
some way. All of these, though, assume the existence of the historical
Buddha to validate them. But MacQueen also describes a purely functional
understanding of Buddha vacana (the word of the Buddha) and that
is described in the Pali Canon itself.
The problem with this approach is that literalism belies the importance of the Buddha's admonitions to "abide in the dharma and not the person" and to seek ultimate truth. This fairly requires that people contemplate what is being said every bit as much as who said it. The Buddha never admonished his people to such literalism as so many of them seek. Even in the Pali Canon, as she notes next, the Buddha says:
The doctrines, Upali, of which you may know: 'These doctrines
lead one not to complete weariness (of the world), nor to dispassion, nor
to ending, nor to calm, nor to knowledge, nor to the awakening, nor to
the cool (nibbana)'—regard them definitely as not Dhamma, not the
discipline, nor the word of the Teacher. But the doctrines of which you
may know. 'These doctrines lead me to complete weariness, dispassion, ending,
calm, knowledge, the awakening, the cool'—regard them unreservedly as Dhamma, discipline, the word of the Teacher (17).
Moreover, Buddhism specifically, and all religion generally, relies not on literalism or even material reality, but on "inwardness." The spiritual is more pscyhological than materially phenomenal. It is the kind of reality that allows people to build, to pray, to hope, to dream; and to find ways to turn their dreams into realities. When one lives life that way, the Buddha is always present in ones heart. Not literally, but real nevertheless.
She explains:
Mahaayaana suutras such as the Lotus do not rest, however, on this kind of principle alone. They set a scene in which the Buddha is still present so their origins are not restricted to the time of his historical birth as Shaakyamuni. MacQueen's understanding that this is not a fraudulent claim rests on an appreciation of the Mahaayaana belief that the Buddha had never gone away and is still present, though only the faithful are aware of this. There is a completely new emphasis and understanding of the Buddha as more than an enlightened teacher in history. Of course Mahaayaana Buddhists may claim that it is not discontinuous with the understanding within the Pali Canon, though it is not the understanding developed in Theravaada Buddhism. The mythological setting of the giving of the teaching in the Lotus and other suutras sets them against this background and there is in the text a dharmabhaa.naka, an inspired speaker who is the channel and messenger. Williams gives an example from the Pratyutpanna suutra of this being attained through meditation practice.
While remaining in this very world-system that bodhisattva sees the Lord, the Tathaagata Amitaayus; and conceiving himself to be in that world system he also hears the Dharma. Having heard their exposition he accepts, masters and retains those Dharmas. He worships, venerates, honours and reveres the Lord . . . Amitaayus. After he has emerged from that samadhi (meditative absorption) that bodhisattva also expounds widely to others those Dharmas he has heard, retained and mastered them (18).
Finally we get to the subject of Upaya or skillfulness, which she skillfully explains:
In the case of the Lotus Suutra we can add to MacQueen's exploration the general understanding that derives from the suutra itself that teaching is a device and that things taught have only an interim truth, a truth that is useful if it takes people along the path towards enlightenment. This fits in with the quotation from the A"nguttara Nikaaya, given above. The whole tone of the scripture is quite different from any intent to claim historical validity. It is mythological, poetical and full of imaginative narrative (stories, parables) intended to produce insight and wisdom not factual knowledge.
In the Lotus, the Buddha is no longer regarded as a mere mortal but as a sublime being with supernatural powers who preaches in a mythological paradise surrounded by thousands upon thousands of followers (19).Michio Shinozaki has stated the situation for Buddhists in the following way:
From the perspective of religious experience, the Buddha will appear together with us on the Divine Vulture Peak when we are upright and gentle and wish to see the Buddha. The Divine Vulture Peak is the sacred place where the Lotus was expounded by Shaakyamuni Buddha. Such a place can be everywhere for religious people. When people seek to meet the Buddha, wherever they are; it is the place for 'uniting' between the Buddha and the people in their vision (20).Historical context is only one device used in Buddhism. The historical Buddha himself was an upaaya kausalya, a skillful means for helping beings. The real source of the teaching is beyond a historical figure.
In other words, the admonitions of the Nirvana Sutra apply to the Lotus and the Nirvana sutra themselves.
Posted by cholte at September 19, 2006 11:25 PM