Origins of Mahayana

Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 1999

Chapter 14. The Evolution ofthe Order after Afoka 223 Chapter 15. Mahayana 7i:xts Composed during the Ku~arta Dynasty 247 Chapter 16. The Origins ofMahayana 256 Chapter 17. The Contents ofEarly Mahayana Scriptures 275 Chapter 18. Theory and Practice in Early Mahayana Buddhism 296 Notes 313 Bibliographical Essay 323 Bibliography 345 Index 385 PI. brief survey of the development and geographical spread of Indian Buddhism reveals much about the universal qualities and the distinctive characteristics of Indian Buddhism, as well as providing an overview of its development. Buddhism was founded in the fifth century B.C.E.

Here is the first chapter (the introduction) of Genealogies of Mahayana Buddhism. Despite the fact that the pdf says "Taylor and Francis not for distribution," I did receive permission to distribute this from Taylor and Francis.

In considering the practices of Mahāyāna meditation, a divergence between Mainstream and Mahāyāna Buddhism is evident. However, it is a bit misleading concerning the historical and contextual becoming of the Mahāyāna school itself. The Mahāyāna is characterized by a gradual coming to prevalence, existing in close relationship with the Mainstream monastic institution. Furthermore, only by the seventh century do we see such strict delineations, marked by a formidable Mahāyāna Vinaya and monastic organization. This paper primarily contextualizes the advent of Mahāyāna as discussed in textual and scholarly sources concerning the historical development of the Buddhist tradition. It serves this means primarily by investigating the caricature of the saintly personalities involved and the practices and aims they ascribe to. Then it investigates key Mahāyāna texts to see what extent retrospective analysis is at play, to question the theoretical and practical developments of the Mahāyāna in relationship to its mainstream predecessors.

Mahayana Buddhism is a major branch of Buddhism, and is practiced in China, Tibet, Japan, and Korea. "The tradition emerged around the 1 st century ad and is typically concerned with altruistically oriented spiritual practice as embodied in the ideal of the bodhisattva" The word,

1994

most directly grateful with regard to the present project should not be out of order. My greatest debt is no doubt to my most direct teachers, NAGAoGadjin in Japan and Luis 0 . G om ez in the United States. Without the guidance of these great scholars it is doubtful that I would have ever reached the point of being able to write such a work as this. I think they have taught me well, and I am further grateful that, on the whole, they have let me go my own way. To Gregory S c h o pe n I owe innumerable suggestions about avenues of inquiry, works to which reference might be made, and not least of all perhaps something (although certainly not everything) of my cynical and questioning attitude toward the Buddhist tradition and what is "known" about it. I also owe to him the happy suggestion that I take up the Ratnarasi as a subject of study. His suggestion has bome even perhaps more fruit than he imagined. It should not go unnoticed that I also deeply appreciate his friendship -that above all. I am also very grateful to the other members o f my dissertation committee, Madhav D esh pan de, Don L opez and Griff F oulk. Professor D eshpande has been my guide in Sanskrit studies for many years, and is always a keen critic of my understanding of Indie texts and Indian culture. My long friendship with Griff F o u lk has made us perhaps more comrades than teacher and student, and my debts to him in all aspects of my intellectual, not to mention personal, growth cannot be enumerated. My acquaintance with Professor L opez has been of shorter duration, but am grateful for his helpful and iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. able to share a spacious and elegant old house with my good friend and fellow specialist in Indian Buddhism H ira o k a Satoshi My gratitude and debt to him goes far beyond words; I doubt anyone could have a better, more honorable friend. As a lecturer at Bukkyd University he also introduced me to many scholars there, among whom I must mention Professors K a jiya m a Yuichi ONODAShunzd K agaw a Takao IW M , and N am ika w a Takayoshi MJI It was also a very lucky circumstance that we were able to arrange a small discussion group in Kyoto, christened by one of the members the "Early Mahayana Research Study Group." The participants in this group, other than myself, were H iraoka Satoshi, Hubert D urt, H on jo Yoshifumi S asaki Shizuka 'ffcA'AIH, and Y am a giw a Nobuyuki U l|S #;£.. All of these friends have contributed greatly to my understanding and developing ideas concerning Mahayana Buddhism, but I would like to point out especially the assistance I have received from my good friend S asaki Shizuka. Professor D urt has been always generous with his friendship and advice, and also in opening the Hobogirin Institute to me. Japan that I was able to meet and develop friend ships with Urs A p p , Wendi A d a m e k , ARAMAKiNoritoshi Catherine C o r n i l l e , Robert D u q u e n n e , E n o m o to Fumio Antonino F o r t e , F u ji e d a Akira Franco G a t t i , Paul H a r r i s o n I r is a w a Takashi David J a c k s o n , K a t s u r a Shoryu S B Hi, KuDARAKogi HfH, MATsuDAKazunobu MarekMEJOR, M o c h iz u k i Ryoko M.M N o n in Masaaki tS tI H ® , O c h ia i Toshinori O d a n i Nobuchiyo SHiRASAKiKenjd fiiltnfSSfbSi, W a t a n a b e Sh5go Y a m a z a k i Gen'ichi iill^TC-*, and Y u y a m a Akira all of whom have in different but important ways contributed to my intellectual and personal growth. I should append a special note of thanks to Professor F o r t e for his constant friendship and encourage ment, and also for his genorosity in making available the resources and space o f his v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. [ 38 scholars, that Mahayana represents a Buddhism of the laity, and is thus a radical depar ture from the older, established Buddhist church. I believe there is rather what we might call a "radical continuity" with the established institutional organizations, although as I have tried to clarify above, it is not possible (at this point anyway) to specify whether this continuity should actually be viewed as conservative, reactionary, or otherwise. What is more, I think that in a great many areas, this continuity between Mahayana and Sectarian Buddhism is not limited to the ideology of monastic administration and institutional organization but extends to the realm of more abstract philosophical, metaphysical and doctrinal concerns as well. That is, it might be fair to say that we find much in Mahayana Buddhism o f both ortho-praxy and ortho-doxy. I will nevertheless concentrate most of my attentions here on the orthopractic ideology of the Ratnarasi, leaving to another occasion a more comprehensive study of the orthodoxy of Mahayana literature. It might, at the same time, be helpful to briefly indicate why I have found myself unable to accept many of the ideas of perhaps the two most influential recent scholars of Mahayana history, Hirakawa Akira and Etienne Lamotte. The most characteristic ideas of Hirakawa and Lamotte are, respectively, that stupa worship implies a lay community at the heart of the Mahayana, and that Mahayana texts are anti-clerical. At least for Lamotte, moreover, these two ideas are not unrelated. According to Buddhist canon law, the normative stipulations of the Vinayas, the distinction between laity and monastics is defined by the difference in the precepts they take. A monk has taken the primary and secondary initiations (pravrajya and upasampada), and has vowed to uphold a set of monastic rules (the pratim oksa). A lay follower o f Buddhism has taken the three refuges (in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha) and perhaps five, or eight, vows; in addition, he or she may vow to give up not only forbidden sexual activity but all sexual activity whatsoever. One who takes the three refuges, or Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The process outlined in the abstract applies to various historical instances, conspicuous ly to the history o f Protestantism. The Reformation, whist not an initially lay movement, met, with its doctrine o f the priesthood of all believers, the aspirations o f the laity, whilst subse quent dissenting and schismatic movements sought more direct access to saving grace, and wider opportunities for lay spiritual experience. Such straggles between priests and laity are by no means confined to Christian history: they have occurred in various religious contexts. The authors continue, in an overly credulous manner, I believe, to discuss the issue o f the schism between the Nichiren Shoshu and the S5ka Gakkai, relying almost entirely it seems on polemical materials (in English!) published by the respective parties, primarily the latter. AN i.23,16-20: etadaggam bhikkhave mama savakanam bhikkhunam... dhutavadanamyad idam Mahdkassapo. Note that the PTS edition cites a Burmese variant for dhutavadana as dhutangadharana. In Chinese see the Ekottaragama T. 125 (IT) 557b4, 8-9 H I ? ® % -t t S . . . 1 9 r I I JB. "The premier monk among my auditors... for the difficult practice o f the twelve dhuta ascetic purification practices is the monk MahakaSyapa." Divyavadana 61.27-29 has ayarn sravakah Kasyapo namndlpecchanam samtustanam dhutagunavadinam agro nirdistah; the same is found in the Mulasarvastivada Vinaya Bhaisajyavastu T. 1448 (XXIV) 25bl-2. Such references could easily be multiplied. 2 Ekottardgamal. 125(48.3)(II)788c26-28: f f + r S B K i f c a B 3 The passage is SN ii.202,6-203,26 (XVI.5), with the same in the Samyuktagama T. 99 (1141) (II) 301c7-29 = T. 100 (116) (D) 416b8-c6. 4 SN ii.208,13-210,22 (XVI.8). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. KaSyapa in the corpus of earlier materials is as a strict, ascetic, renunciant figure. These ascetic practices favored by KaSyapa are to some extent connected with reactionary and possibly extreme tendencies in Buddhist doctrines concerning praxis, a fact which is emphasized by the coincidence of several of the dhuta ascetic purification practices with those practices advocated by Devadattabut rejected by the Buddha as too severe to enjoin upon all monks. This characteristic alone should be enough to attract our interest, since it is surely significant that the authors of Mahayana texts should have chosen as their spokesman a figure associated with what are, at least for certain groups, potentially reactionary ideas. But as I have suggested, it is exactly this tendency which we should consider as central and characteristic: KaSyapa, the guardian of asceticism, may represent at least one stream of early Mahayana thought precisely because he stands for an extreme dedication to fundamentals of renunciant monasticism. Though in (literary) life KaSyapa is certainly a personage o f great interest, again in death, or rather "after-life," he plays a not inconsiderable role. For not only does KaSyapa accept the charge o f the Buddha to preserve and transmit the teachings, that is to become the Buddha's temporal heir,1 but according to a widely transmitted tradition he vows to carry the torch -or more literally, the robe -of the Buddha's teachings and transmit it to the next buddha to arise in this world-realm, Maitreya. This will lead us, unfortunately, into rather muddy waters, but plunge in we must to explore the relation between KaSyapa and Maitreya.2 1 As Schopen (1992: 31, note 46) has pointed out, KaSyapa is '"legally" the heir of the Buddha, and this is, for instance, the reason that he must re-perform his funearies. See for example the expression in the Mulasarvastivada Vinaya Bhaisajyavastu (Dutt 1939-59: iii.260.5-6): Referring to the time just...

Religion Compass, 2009

Religion Compass, 2009