Robin Beck

Nibbana Sutta versus Parinibbana Sutta

I think the Suttas are reliable. The Nikaya and Agama versions match up. And those are coming from different oral traditions. Those monks were true to the task. There are also other Suttas that talk about the Ultimate & Deathless. The idea that the Buddha only taught provisional teachings is wrong. I think.

r

Hi,
I am going to have to reread the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, as I do not recall those verses being there. I do know those verses are from the Udana, and in fact I cite them in my article about Nirvana, which deals with the negative and positive formulations of the goal of Buddhism as found in the Pali Canon.

That article is here:

http://nichirenscoffeehouse.net/Ryuei/nirvana.html

I myself believe that positive approaches can sometimes be beneficial, but their drawback is that they can never approximate the truth itself, but only indicate it. And people have a tendency to cling to the description or to an idea rather than the reality.

The negative approach at least points out what the goal is not and what will hinder us from directly realizing it, but people tend to find that approach intimidating and/or mystifying.

A good balance of both should probably be used.

As for Richard Causton's book, I have the original and the post-Shoshu versions of that book. Overall I liked it, but in both cases I underlined in red those parts which I thought were not in line with what I had learned outside of SGI. I had done this years and years ago. The parts I underlined all had to do with the three truths and the "life force" rhetoric that some Japanese Buddhists are so fond of, but which is more Shinto than Buddhist.

There is a way in which people new to Buddhism and unfamiliar with the ideas of rebirth and cause and effect can benefit by thinking in terms of life arising and falling from the sea of phenomena - which is how the three truths were presented back in Richard Causton's day. I remember really resonating with the idea that our lives and phenomena in general are like waves rising from and returning to the greater ocean of causes and conditions. But as I learned more about Buddhism, explanations like those of Causton became a hinderance when I began to study what Shakyamuni Buddha, Nagarjuna, and Chih-i were actually teaching. Basically I had to drop the idea that ku or emptiness was some kind of mytical energy field in order to understand that the sutras, Nagarjuna, and Chih-i were using it as a way of hammering home the full implications of dependent origination.

There is a Zen story that I read in high school which I think explains how I felt. In the story, a man comes to a Buddhist teacher to learn about the Dharma. The teacher serves him tea but keeps pouring the tea even when it has begun to overflow. The man cries out, "Stop, the tea is overflowing, you can't put anymore in there." The teacher stops and says, "The cup is like you. It cannot take in anything new until it is emptied out." So this helped me a bit when it came time to approach Buddhism afresh, and I find that even now I must periodically dump my old conceptions and preconceptions in order to really understand where the sutras, or the past teachers like Nagarjuna or Chih-i or Nichiren himself were really coming from. In fact, my recent commentary on Rissho Ankoku Ron was actually a reexamination of Nichiren muchmore than it was an explanation of things I had learned previously.

As for the discourses being true to what Shakyamuni Buddha actually said - I have my doubts. The Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra (aka Nirvana Sutra) is obviously a later work that is a Mahayana gloss on many previous discourses from the earlier "Hinayana" sutras. The Mahaparinibbana Sutta of the Digha Nikaya also comes across as a story of the Buddha's last year and teachings so as to wrap everything up for posterity. I am sure that at the very least a lot of literary license was used. However, the Pali Canon as a whole is as close as we are ever going to get to the historical Buddha's actual teachings and doings. And in general, it seems that the Buddha preferred to negate rather than to posit something. He was afterall trying to get people to stop clinging, and was not trying to put forward some new thing to cling to. But compared to some Western mystics like John of the Cross, I think the Buddha comes across as more gentle and commonsensical. He is certainly easier to understand than Meister Eckhart.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei

Robin & Ryuei:

You realize that on the deepest level, I concur with your viewpoint on the Three Truths. What is explained in my book was for the most part dervived from the modern interpretation presented in Richard Caustons book, "The Buddha in Daily Life." Although his SGI sanctioned interpretation is, by necessity superfical because of his audience, it does render, what I believe is an effective basic presentation.

I still have difficulty with explaining the ultimate reality by the use of negations. And I also wonder about the Nirvana Sutra and especially the passage cited in this particular blog. First, was this passage an expansion for clarity on the actual words of the dying Buddha, written by well-intending (or not) latter appearing disciples to shore-up and make clear the Buddha's teachings? Without sounding cynical about my beloved master, Shakyamuni or his archivists, it seems amazing to me that a dying man could teach such voluminous wisdoms while being ravaged by the painful, disabling, and inconvienient symptoms of food poisoning. How much of the Nirvana Sutra is verbatim deathbed discourse, and how much is recontructing his earlier teachings to "connect the dots?" I ask this with great reverence for the dharma, the legacy, and golden words of the Thus Come One.

Lastly, can the ultimate reality only be explained in terms of negation? Does our various writings that attempt to possibly explain that which is unexplainable actually degrade or further obsure the truth which can only be realized?

For me, the most basic and reasonable approach for the non-Buddhist in a compact explanation is to start with the way which Causton and I did. Yes, there is, as Robin astutely pointed out,countless ways to explain this reality. Because the Three Truths and the ulitmate reality are beyond intellection, it can only be understood perfectly through realizations of samadhi.

Charles

Right now my imagecave links are empty; and if that snafu persists, they may be reborn over at photobucket or villagephoto.

r

Hi Robin,
What you have written here is my understanding to. I think what sometimes happens is that people think that the unconditioned is the source of conditioned things - like the ocean is the source of waves. This is not an unreasonable way to think, and I believe the Consciousness Only teachings do tend to take this view - with the alaya or storehouse consciousness, and the other consciousnesses as the waves that arise and fall on the surface.

Coming back to the conventional and ultimate realities however, I think that what is being pointed out is that these are not two different kinds of realities that lay one on top of the other. Rather they are two different views of the same reality. From one perspective there are causes and conditions and things and beings that arise and cease. From a deeper perspective the process of causes and conditions has no fixed forms and so is ultimately empty. It is not that emptiness gives rise to causes and conditons, rather causes and conditions are inherently empty and because of that openess and non-fixedness they are able to be causes and conditions. This is why Nagarjuna in the Mulamdhyamika-karika argued that if it were not for emptiness there could be no dependent origination, because then things would be sttic and isolated and unable to be effected by causes and conditions. When I read and pondered that several years ago, that is when I really started to understand that dependent origination (the process of causes and conditions) and emptiness are two different ways of describing the way in which things are just as they are.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei