Buddhist Scriptures

by Donald Lopez

  The Buddhist Universe

  The first section does not deal with the Buddha, but with the Buddhist universe. If we consider the Buddha simply as a historical figure who was born in India in the sixth (or fifth) century BCE (as we must also do), we miss much of the importance of the Buddha for Buddhism. The advent of the Buddha in our world is regarded by Buddhists as the most important, and propitious, moment in the history of our universe, and it is difficult to understand why, unless one has some sense of the universe into which the Buddha appeared. That universe, as described in Chapter 1, is made up of six realms – of gods, demigods, humans, animals, ghosts, and hell beings. These are all realms of rebirth, where beings have been reborn without beginning. The beings who inhabit the universe suffer pain and experience pleasure based on their negative and positive deeds. Although there are pleasures in these realms (especially in those of the gods and, to a lesser extent, humans) the universe is a place of suffering. At the same time, it is considered a great fortune to be reborn as a human at a time in the history of the universe when the teachings of the Buddha are available, and humans are thus exhorted to make the most of this opportunity (Chapter 2). The only way to entirely avoid the sufferings of the realms of rebirth is to escape from them. Until that occurs, it is important to understand that the universe operates according to the law of karma (Chapter 3), in which virtuous deeds produce experiences of pleasure and non-virtuous deeds bring experiences of pain, sometimes in extraordinary combinations, as a denizen of the realm of ghosts testifies (Chapter 4). Protection is available, however, in the teachings of the Buddha, with many texts explaining the particular benefits that accrue from proclaiming the message of that particular text to others. Even the gods are inferior to the Buddha and regard him as their lord; in Chapter 5, the divine kings of the four cardinal directions offer their protection to the devotees of the Sūtra of Golden Light.

  According to Buddhist cosmology, the universe suffers without the presence of a buddha during much of its history; the time when a buddha is present is called a ‘fortunate age’. In Chapter 6, an Indian monk explains to a Greek king precisely how momentous it is for a buddha to appear in the world, so momentous, in fact, that the world can bear the presence of only one buddha at a time; there had been buddhas in the past, but they had passed into nirvāṇa. There would be buddhas in the future, but they were at present still on the path to enlightenment. There was only one buddha for the present. This view would change with the rise of the Mahāyāna some four centuries after the death of the Buddha. Here, new texts claim that there are multiple buddhas present simultaneously in multiple universes, that those with the proper knowledge can visit those other universes, and those other buddhas can visit ours. This is illustrated powerfully in a chapter from the Lotus Sūtra (Chapter 7) in which two buddhas sit side by side. The preferred practice, however, was to seek rebirth in the domain of another buddha, and the most famous of these domains was the western paradise of the buddha named Amitāyus, ‘Infinite Life’, or Amitābha, ‘Infinite Light’, described in Chapter 8. The Japanese monk Genshin explained what those about to die should do to assure their birth in the pure land of Amitābha, and to avoid being reborn in one of the horrific hells (Chapter 9).

  The Buddhist universe also includes, however, our world of land and water, and Buddhists have travelled across lands and waters to visit the places where the Buddha lived and taught (Chapter 10). They have also identified places in their own homelands as the abodes of bodhisattvas, and have made pilgrimages to those abodes (Chapter 11).

  Despite the presence of places of pilgrimage where the remnants of the Buddha may be worshipped, or the availability of teachings that allow one to travel in the next life to marvellous pure lands, many Buddhists, having missed the opportunity to sit at the feet of the last buddha, await the coming of the next one. He is named Maitreya, and he currently resides in a heaven called ‘Joyous’ (Tusita). In Chapter 12, a monk ascends to heaven and meets Maitreya, who describes to him how wondrous our world will be when he appears in it as the next buddha.

  The Buddha

  The second section deals with the life and lives of the ‘historical Buddha’, called Gautama Buddha or Śākyamuni Buddha. Chapter 13 praises the Buddha as the first of the three jewels (triratna) – the Buddha, the dharma, and the saṅgha – to whom Buddhists go for refuge from suffering. The life of the Buddha is told and retold across the tradition. The events of the Buddha’s life are recounted in a somewhat fragmentary form in the earliest literature; in a discourse from the Pali canon (in Chapter 14), the Buddha describes his going forth from his life as a prince, his search for truth, his enlightenment and his first sermon in a more restrained and sober tone than would often be encountered elsewhere. Full biographies of the Buddha, beginning with his birth (or, more commonly, his vow many lifetimes ago to achieve buddhahood) and ending with his passage into nirvāṇa only began to appear several centuries after his death. An example from eighteenth-century Sri Lanka is found in Chapter 15. The life of the Buddha was often recounted in a language that strikes the modern reader as baroque; Chapter 16 provides an excerpt from a Mahāyāna sūtra in which the opulence (and remarkable capacity) of his mother’s womb is described.

  Accounts of the Buddha’s past lives, when he was still a bodhisattva, are one of the most popular forms of Buddhist literature. The Buddha is said to have been able to remember all of his past lives, and he is said to have employed his prodigious memory to describe events from those many lives. These appear in two genres. One is the jātaka or birth stories; there are over five hundred tales of the Buddha’s past lives on his long path to enlightenment. Sometimes these are simple tales with a moral lesson, with the protagonist of the story identified as the Buddha in a previous life. Sometimes he is an animal, sometimes he is a human, sometimes he is a god. The other genre is the avadāna, perhaps best translated as ‘legend’. Here, the Buddha is asked about the karmic causes of a particular event. The Buddha will then recount the past circumstances that led to the present situation. Sometimes the protagonist is the Buddha himself, sometimes it is a member of his audience. Three different avadānas are provided here, each recounting a past life of the Buddha and the remarkable sacrifice he made for others, motivated by compassion at their plight. In Chapter 17, he is a king who commits suicide in order to be reborn as a fish whose medicinal flesh relieves an epidemic. In Chapter 18, he is a king who gives away his own head. Chapter 19 is a rare jātaka story: an account of a past life of the Buddha when he was a woman. She also makes a remarkable (and gruesome) sacrifice to save the life of a starving woman and her child.

  With the rise of the Mahāyāna came a transformation of the bodhisattva ideal. No longer was there a single bodhisattva who went on to become the buddha for a given time and place. The bodhisattva path was declared in many Mahāyāna sūtras to be open to all; some even declared that all beings were destined to traverse the bodhisattva path to buddhahood. This exaltation of the bodhisattva took two forms: first, the bodhisattva described in the sūtras became someone to be emulated; second, particular bodhisattvas became objects of devotion. One of these was the bodhisattva of wisdom, Mañjuśrī. Chapter 20 explains why the Buddha himself pays homage to Mañjuśrī.

  Buddhism was never the sole religion in any of the countries of Asia, and Buddhists often had to defend their teacher, and his teachings, in debates with adherents of other traditions. In India, Buddhist scholars engaged in polemics with scholars of the Hindu and Jain traditions, claiming the superiority of the Buddha and explaining why only his teachings, and not those of non-Buddhist masters, were infallible. A famous defence is found in Chapter 21.

  After the Buddha passed into nirvāṇa, he remained in the world in the form of his relics, his images and his teachings. Chapter 22 describes the great reverence afforded a relic of the Buddha by a Chinese emperor. Chapter 23 provides a ritual for consecrating a painting or statue of the Buddha, transforming it into a suitable object of worship.
Chapter 24 provides eloquent praise to the Buddha, not for what he did, but for what he said.

  Monastic Life

  The third of the three jewels to which Buddhists go for refuge is the saṅgha, or community. This term is variously defined. Sometimes it refers to the community of those who have achieved nirvāṇa. Sometimes it refers simply to the community of the Buddhist faithful. But most often it refers to the community of monks and nuns. Both of these communities were said to have been founded by the Buddha himself. The five ascetics to whom the Buddha delivered his first sermon became the first monks. Others soon followed, ordained simply by the Buddha’s declaration, ‘Come, monk.’ The order of nuns developed later, when the Buddha stated that women are capable of attaining nirvāṇa and allowed a group of women, including his own stepmother as well as the wives of men who had become monks, to form an order of nuns.

  The rules for the monastic orders developed slowly. Rather than setting forth a complete set of rules for those who entered the order, the Buddha formulated rules in response to specific problems and issues that arose. The process of ordination developed in this way; some of the early versions are described in Chapter 25. Eventually, a fuller and more elaborate ordination ceremony became established, and came to be used (with some variation) throughout the Buddhist world. That ceremony appears in Chapter 26. Stories of the Buddha’s first encounters with those who would become his most famous monks are an important part of monastic literature. Perhaps the most notorious of those disciples was the mass murderer Aṅgulimāla, whose story is told in Chapter 27.

  Some monks preferred the solitude of the forest to the communal life of the monastery. As the monastic tradition developed, a range of activities classically associated with the Buddhist monk came to be regarded as ascetic practices followed only by the most devoted of renunciates. Thirteen such practices are enumerated: wearing robes made from discarded cloth rather than from cloth donated by laypeople; wearing only three robes; eating only food acquired through begging rather than meals presented to the saṅgha; begging for food from house to house rather than begging only at those houses known to provide good food; eating only what can be eaten in one sitting; eating only what can be placed in one bowl; refusing more food once one has indicated that one has eaten enough; dwelling in the forest; dwelling at the foot of a tree; dwelling in the open air, using only a tent made from one’s robes as shelter; dwelling in a charnel ground; sleeping in any bed that is offered, without concern for its quality; and never lying down. The ideal of those who sought solitude is represented in the famous Rhinoceros Horn Sutta, translated in Chapter 28.

  Because of the prominence of lay disciples in certain Mahāyāna sūtras, it has been wrongly assumed at times that the Mahāyāna was a predominantly lay movement and that monkhood was unimportant. However, an important early Mahāyāna sūtra, a selection from which appears in Chapter 29, suggests that monasticism was a central element of the Mahāyāna in India, as it was in East Asia and Tibet.

  The ordination of monks and the founding of monastic communities were considered signs of the establishment of Buddhism in a new land, as the dharma spread beyond the confines of the Indian subcontinent. But the rules of monastic discipline did not always translate well between languages and cultures. A number of Buddhist societies found it necessary to devise their own monastic rules to supplement those that had come from India. A famous set of rules from China is found in Chapter 30. Chinese monks also needed to establish their legitimacy in the eyes of the court and of their compatriots, for Buddhism was a foreign faith with practices, such as the vow of celibacy, that ran counter to traditional Chinese cultural norms. There developed in China a new genre of Buddhist literature – the biographies of eminent monks and nuns – in which the virtue, learning, and sometimes supernormal powers of those who had entered the order were recorded (see Chapter 31).

  All Buddhist traditions are concerned with lineage: the passage of the teaching, and of authority, from master to disciple, in a line that can be traced from the present disciple back to the Buddha himself. The ordination ceremony is perhaps the most important case of the passing on of the lineage of the Buddha. As new schools of Buddhist thought and practice developed, it was essential that they too be able to trace their authority back to the Buddha, a process that was often difficult to do historically; when traditions passed through centuries and over mountain ranges and seas, gaps could occur. One solution to this dilemma from the Tiantai school of China appears in Chapter 32.

  According to a rule attributed to the Buddha himself, in order to pass on the monastic lineage, it was necessary for a set number of fully ordained monks to be present before the ordination of a new monk could take place. If there was not the requisite number, there could be no ordination. There are thus numerous stories of those who sought ordination travelling great distances to find those who could ordain them. Those with the power to confer ordination sometimes travelled widely as well. One such ordination master made the perilous journey from China to Japan. His story is found in Chapter 33. Other monks went from Japan to China, where they received new teachings that they took back to Japan. In order to gain the favour of the court, however, they needed to demonstrate that the school they sought to establish offered benefits that other schools did not. Chapter 34 contains an excerpt from a famous text which argues that the Zen school can protect the Japanese islands from hostile invaders.

  Buddhism also offered benefits to the family members of monks. It is sometimes assumed that Buddhist monks and nuns had no contact with their families, but this was not the case in India, or in East Asia. The Buddha explained to one of the most famous monks that one can best serve one’s family, including those who have already passed away, by making offerings to the saṅgha (see Chapter 35).

  The section on monastic life concludes in Chapter 36 with an ancient poem in which a monk looks with disdain on the indolent monks of his day, and speaks with nostalgia about the dedication and discipline of the monks of the past.

  Meditation and Other Rituals

  The next section deals with what might be referred to generally as Buddhist practice. It is sometimes assumed that the primary Buddhist practice is meditation, but this is misleading for a number of reasons. Until the late twentieth century, the practice of meditation had been largely confined to the monastic community, and even within the monastery it was often regarded as just one of any number of monastic specialities, even in the early period of the tradition. A great many Buddhist monks never meditated. They did, however, engage in a wide range of ritual practices, some conducted in private, some in public; one of the monk’s functions was to perform rituals sponsored by the laity or to officiate at rituals in which lay people also participated. It is perhaps more appropriate therefore to consider the practice of meditation as one of many forms of Buddhist ritual.

  Our notion of the practice of meditation perhaps derives most powerfully from the image of the Buddha seated cross-legged under the tree, his right hand touching the earth. But the Buddha was not meditating at that moment, according to the story: his meditation had been interrupted, and he was calling the goddess of the earth to witness his right to occupy that spot, in response to a challenge from the god Māra who was seeking to deter him from his goal. Yet the Buddha is said to have often meditated, and to have taught his monks a wide variety of meditation practices. One of the most famous was called ‘the foundations of mindfulness’, a series of guided reflections on one’s body, feelings and thoughts, and on various phenomena, concluding with the reflection that each has a nature of impermanence, suffering and is without self. A portion of these instructions appears in Chapter 37. In certain of the Mahāyāna sūtras, the ultimate object of meditation is said to be emptiness – the utter absence of any kind of intrinsic nature anywhere. A famous description of this emptiness is found in Chapter 38, which also exhorts the bodhisattva to the practice of compassion for all beings in the universe, within the understanding that the universe, a
nd the beings who inhabit it, are all empty of intrinsic existence.

  We often think of meditation as a state of deep trance, but there are many forms of meditation in Buddhism, and a substantial literature considers their relative merits and their relations to each other. From an early point in the tradition, a distinction was drawn between two general forms of meditation. The first might best be described as concentration, the single-pointed focusing of the mind on a chosen object, whether it be the breath or a mental image of the golden body of the Buddha. Here, the purpose was to control the thoughts that flow, often uncontrollably, through the mind, and to concentrate all mental faculties on a single object. This practice was said to lead to deeper and deeper levels of concentration, each more sublime than the other. This is the practice that the Buddha is said to have mastered prior to his achievement of enlightenment; he concluded that although the practice of concentration led to profound states, it did not lead to liberation from rebirth.

  The other form of meditation might be described as insight. In English, we do not generally associate the term ‘insight’ with a meditative state, but rather with a level of understanding, gained through a process of study and analysis. These associations are also present in Buddhism, and meditation often involves a kind of controlled reflection or contemplation on any number of topics, including compassion, death, the sufferings of the hells, the glories of the pure lands and the absence of a self. Such reflections often included detailed visualizations, others were more sober philosophical analyses. Indeed, three types of wisdom are described. There is the wisdom arisen from hearing (which in this case might be better rendered as ‘study’), the wisdom arisen from thinking, and the wisdom arisen from meditation. It is only in the last stage that the understanding gained from the prior two forms is combined with a deep level of concentration, and it is only this combination of concentration and insight that can bring about enlightenment (at least, according to many texts). Thus, the relation of concentration and insight is a crucial one. It is explored at some length in Chapter 39.