Theravada and Mahayana

[RongzomFan]

I posted a book by Sam van Schaik. Did you click on the link?

[RongzomFan]

"The conclusion I’d like to draw is that at least some Buddhists, by the end of the 10th century and perhaps earlier, thought of the funeral rituals practised in earlier times by Tibetan ritual specialists as a religion called Bon. I suspect that this was not quite the same thing that Tibetans meant when they said “Bon” after the 10th century."

 

http://earlytibet.com/2009/08/24/buddhism-and-bon-iv/

[Simple_Jack]

I posted a book by Sam van Schaik. Did you click on the link?

Yes. Part of the reason, why i brought up ChNN's books is because, I've seen it mentioned that Bon already had their own Dzogchen teachings.

 

Read the other link: This makes me want to get ChNN's books now, to compare with.

Edited February 9, 2013 by Simple_Jack

[RongzomFan]

If you think I'm being anti-Bon, I'll also say that the Padmasambhava and Vimalamitra never heard of Dzogchen.

 

Padmasambhava did not go around Tibet and Bhutan subjugating local spirits.

 

There was a historical Padmasambhava, but all he did was subjugation at Samye, and got chased the hell out of Tibet.

[RongzomFan]

Yes. Part of the reason, why i brought up ChNN's books is because, I've seen it mentioned that Bon already had their own Dzogchen teachings.

 

This sort of thing depends on whether you take terma history as actual history.

[konchog uma]

You mention Bon. But Bon comes way after Buddhism.

 

http://books.google.com/books?id=La1CWinaDR4C&pg=PA99&dq=Tibet+Sam+van+schaik+In,+fact+the+Bonpo+religion&hl=en&sa=X&ei=JpQWUeW-No2v0AHL94H4Bg&ved=0CDMQuwUwAA#v=onepage&q=Tibet%20Sam%20van%20schaik%20In%2C%20fact%20the%20Bonpo%20religion&f=false

 

according to Lopon Tenzin Namdak bon has a 17,000 year history of oral tradition and transmission. Hard to find dates for Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche but i think he predated Shakyamuni Buddha.

[RongzomFan]

according to Lopon Tenzin Namdak bon has a 17,000 year history of oral tradition and transmission. Hard to find dates for Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche but i think he predated Shakyamuni Buddha.

 

 

Did you even click on the link? The whole Tonpa Shenrab story comes from a late terma.

[konchog uma]

Noone really knows. Basically just some funerary rituals.

 

Can you provide a date of Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche's birth or death? I can't find one.

[konchog uma]

Did you even click on the link? The whole Tonpa Shenrab story comes from a late terma.

 

yes. perhaps thats why the dates are so spotty. point taken.

 

thanks.

[RongzomFan]

according to Lopon Tenzin Namdak bon has a 17,000 year history of oral tradition and transmission. Hard to find dates for Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche but i think he predated Shakyamuni Buddha.

 

You are free to take Bon terma history as actual, just like Buddhists do with the terma biographies of Padmasambhava, Vimalamitra or Virupa.

[RongzomFan]

and Garab Dorje

[Simple_Jack]

This sort of thing depends on whether you take terma history as actual history.

Noted. I'll keep this in mind when reading that type of material.

 

What about the Dunhuang cave documents? I've noticed that a lot of the stuff coming out there tends to provide a more accurate or at least a different take on the history of Tibet. You know of anything that's been published on this, within the last few years?

[konchog uma]

no its hard to take terma history as actual, like i said, your point is taken.

 

i didnt have a lot of time earlier and so didnt read the whole section you linked to

 

my appologies

[RongzomFan]

Noted. I'll keep this in mind when reading that type of material.

 

What about the Dunhuang cave documents? I've noticed that a lot of the stuff coming out there tends to provide a more accurate or at least a different take on the history of Tibet. You know of anything that's been published on this, within the last few years?

 

Sam van Schaik's blog is mostly about the Dunhuang manuscripts.

 

http://earlytibet.com/

Edited February 9, 2013 by alwayson

[voidisyinyang]

You are free to take Bon terma history as actual, just like Buddhists do with the terma biographies of Padmasambhava, Vimalamitra or Virupa.

 

http://stellarhousepublishing.com/historical-buddha.html

 

No historical Buddha.

[RongzomFan]

I am open to the argument that there was no historical Buddha, but that is a shit website. Stop wasting my time.

[林愛偉]

That website and its excerpt on the Buddha is totally garbage.

 

We have parts of the Buddha's physical human body still on our planet. After it was cremated there were many sharira, and these pieces have been around the world. Some are here in China, some in India, Korea, Japan, etc. I have seen some here in China.

 

Check to see if any were carbon dated. hahaha Or better yet, instead of speculating, get a grant from the gov., and start research on carbon dating the Buddha's remains.

 

That and or actually go into deep concentration through meditation, gain some samadhi, and inquire if the Buddha was "real" or not. haha

 

Every one is so bent on if this teaching is real, or when it was configured, if the Buddha was actually here...haha its quite funny. We can all have our answers if we just investigated our mind. No intellectualism, no conscious thinking, no nothing. Just straight up cultivation, become enlightened, then realize Buddhahood, and then find out. Why speculate, do the work and get the answer. Really quite simple.

[sati]

http://stellarhousepublishing.com/historical-buddha.html

 

No historical Buddha.

 

Even if there was no historical Buddha, we have the Dharma, which is Buddha Body. We can have fancy thoughts about the former, but none about the latter.

[Simple_Jack]

http://stellarhousepublishing.com/historical-buddha.html

 

No historical Buddha.

 

Wow, that's a shitty resource for information on the historical Buddha. I would think you could do much better in posting credible information.

[Simple_Jack]

Here's a link with more credible information http://indology.info/papers/cousins/node4/:

 

 

 

4 The conclusion of these volumes on the date of the Buddha

A number of contributors attempt to assess the most likely date for the Buddha by the use of indirect evidence as to Indian cultural history. Bechert has placed thirteen contributions under this section heading and sums up the result as follows:

... the conclusion seems unavoidable that all major sources of indirect evidence point to later dates of the Buddha than those suggested by the corrected long chronology. (Symp. IV, I, p.11)

This seems to slightly overstate the case as not all the contributors propose any dating and others have worded their position very cautiously. It might be better to say that the overall tendency is to conclude that there is at minimum no objection to a later date. Undoubtedly the archaeological evidence as presented here by Herbert Härtel and in part by Hermann Kulke is the major factor tending to support a later date. It is not however clear whether it is as yet overwhelming. The other contributions which seem to support a late date are those by: George von Simson, Oskar von Hinüber, Siegfried Lienhard (around 400 B.C. with a margin of about twenty years). Wilhelm Halbfass and, rather cautiously, Lambert Schmithausen.

Turning to the ten papers which Bechert classes as dealing directly with the evaluation of the Indian tradition, seven seem to present a viable case. At the extremes: Cen'ichi Yamazaki defends the long chronology, while none of the other contributions in this section envisage a date before 420 B.C. to 350 B.C. but a ``somewhat later date is not inconceivable.'' (Symp. IV,I.p.236); no other contributor (except Eggermont) seems to propose a date after 380 B.C. Hajime Nakamura, K.R. Norman, and Richard Gombrich all propose dates within the range suggested by André Bareau: around 400 B.C. with a margin of twenty years on either side. Expressing this in other terms, the Buddha's period of teaching activity was in the second half of the fifth century B.C. perhaps extending into the first quarter of the fourth century.

It is worth noting that this is quite close to being a ``median chronology'' i.e. halfway between the short and the long chronology. Perhaps after all the difference between the short and the long chronology may in origin have simply amounted to whether 150 years was rounded down to a hundred or up to two hundred i.e. a difference in literary conventions.

In a paper read to the Royal Asiatic Society in 1872 and subsequently published in his On the Ancient Coins and Measures of Ceylon, T. W. Rhys Davids put forward an argument on rather different lines, as mentioned above. He interprets some of the information given in the oldest of the Ceylon chronicles in Pali, the Dipavamsain a way different both to the tradition of the chronicles and to the understanding of later scholarship. Partly because of the development of the consensus mentioned above and partly also because his interpretation of the Dipavamsawas based upon manuscript materials and seemed to be superseded by the editions and translations of Wilhlem Geiger, the views of Rhys Davids were subsequently disregarded.

His position depends upon the interpretation of the list of five Vinaya authorities prior to Mahinda in the third century B.C. as giving data on their ages at death rather than on their number of years as a monk. The latter interpretation gives the traditional 218 years down to the accession of Asoka i.e. the long chronology, but contains a number of problems. Indeed it has been generally recognized that a succession of five is too short for the long chronology. The alternative gives a shorter period of about 150 years.

Richard Combrich has now developed a similar theory, based upon the same proposition but with a more detailed and somewhat modified argumentation. In his version the accession of Asoka took place after 136 years. (I have elsewhere suggested some further minor changes. [note]) Gombrich's arguments have undoubtedly shown that the data in the Dipavamsaon the lineage of the teachers is impressively consistent when interpreted in this way. He is certainly right to argue that the lineage is a succession of teachers expert in the Vinaya and not a succession of individuals with some institutional authority. No doubt too he is correct in pointing out the existence of other lists of such teachers with different names, as found in various non-Pali sources, is in no way in contradiction. There would have been many such pedigrees for different pupil-teacher lines.

If the general arguments of the Rhys Davids-Gombrich thesis are correct, and they may well be, then the overall picture must be something like the following: when the creators of the Sinhala chronicle tradition attempted to work out a chronology, they had basically two sources of information for the period prior to Asoka. One was a lineage of teachers with ages at ordination and death. They must also have had some kind of brahmanical kinglist, of the sort preserved for us in various Puranas, perhaps derived from diplomatic links with North India. (We know from Megasthenes that such lists were current in Mauryan governing circles.) The long chronology as we have it is the result of combining the two sources with adjustments to make them fit.

Plausibly, then, the oldest Sinhala tradition is that of the lineage of teachers. How old is that? It may of course go back to the arrival of Buddhism in Ceylon in the third century B.C. and have then been compiled on the basis of information handed down intact from the time of the Buddha. Unfortunately, there is no way of proving that at present. Since the last book of the Vinaya-pitakathe Parivaraor ``Appendix'' already gives the list of the teachers together with a list of subsequent Vinaya authorities in Ceylon which terminates around the first century B.C., it must be relatively early and may well have been current by that date i.e. by the time at which the Pali Canon was set into writing.

Most probably then it represents the oldest attempt at a dating known to us. It seem quite possible that Ceylon which was a major trading area around this period may have been one of the main centres of South Asian Buddhism during some periods after the end of the Mauryan dynasty. Indeed prior to the Kusanas Anuradhapura and the Sunga and Satavahana capital of Vidisa (with which the Buddhism of Ceylon appears to have had some links) were quite possibly the two chief focal points of Buddhist activity for a while. If so, it is not at all surprising that the Sinhala texts should preserve earlier Buddhist traditions linked to the dynasties of North and Central India. Heinz Bechert, however, takes a rather different view.

Last modified: Mon Dec 19 10:41:03 2011

[Simple_Jack]

i find the idea of direct teachings from the Sambhoga Kaya much more convincing than the idea that the Pali Canon is the whole story. Any system has to have renewal through realised teachers like Marpa, Milarepa, Gamopopa and the Karmapas.

Sure, although personally, I think that the Pali cannon is the closest representative of what can be considered Shakyamuni Buddha's 'original teaching.' It's not only the format (which looks as though it really was passed on orally at one point,) but also that there are suttas which may have influenced later Mahayana sutras (such as the Diamond Sutra; check out the Alagaddupama Sutta.)

 

Buddhism tends to take on the cultural flavor of the countries it's disseminated into. Looking at China, we can see how it adapted and evolved into a distinct Chinese form of Buddhism (such as the Pure Land sect, Ch'an, Tien-Tai, etc.) If I recall correctly, there was a Ch'an abbot (eh, can't recall his name right now) who made a major change to how the monastic system operated. This is what led to the monastic communities becoming agricultural based, which ultimately allowed them to accommodate the growing number of people who joined the monasteries.

 

You can read about this in Nan Huaijin's "Basic Buddhism: Exploring Buddhism and Zen." It also goes over the general development of Buddhism throughout it's history in China (Nan Huaijin's "The Story of Chinese Zen," deals more specifically with the development of Ch'an in China.)

[Apech]

Sure, although personally, I think that the Pali cannon is the closest representative of what can be considered Shakyamuni Buddha's 'original teaching.' It's not only the format (which looks as though it really was passed on orally at one point,) but also that there are suttas which may have influenced later Mahayana sutras (such as the Diamond Sutra; check out the Alagaddupama Sutta.)

 

Buddhism tends to take on the cultural flavor of the countries it's disseminated into. Looking at China, we can see how it adapted and evolved into a distinct Chinese form of Buddhism (such as the Pure Land sect, Ch'an, Tien-Tai, etc.) If I recall correctly, there was a Ch'an abbot (eh, can't recall his name right now) who made a major change to how the monastic system operated. This is what led to the monastic communities becoming agricultural based, which ultimately allowed them to accommodate the growing number of people who joined the monasteries.

 

You can read about this in Nan Huaijin's "Basic Buddhism: Exploring Buddhism and Zen." It also goes over the general development of Buddhism throughout it's history in China (Nan Huaijin's "The Story of Chinese Zen," deals more specifically with the development of Ch'an in China.)

 

The Pali Canon is a written version of an oral tradition of what one or a few people remembered of the Buddha's teaching after his death. I'm not doubting its importance ... it is crucial of course ... but the idea that it is the be all and end all I find hard to accept. But maybe that's just me.

[Simple_Jack]

The Pali Canon is a written version of an oral tradition of what one or a few people remembered of the Buddha's teaching after his death. I'm not doubting its importance ... it is crucial of course ... but the idea that it is the be all and end all I find hard to accept. But maybe that's just me.

Well, 500 arhats isn't a few people, if we take the account of the 1st council as fact. Then again, I'm not saying the Pali canon, is the "end all and be all" of Shakyamuni's teaching. If we go by what Mahayana teaches (and what alwayson has been saying,) there can be and are more than one [samyaksam-] Buddha who teaches sentient beings simultaneously in any one universe.

Edited February 10, 2013 by Simple_Jack

[Simple_Jack]

(basically, arhats represent a non-afflictive ignorance.)

Correction: Arhats and pratyekabuddhas represent non-afflictive ignorance (or the sravaka and pratyekabuddha vehicles represent a non-afflictive ignorance.)

[stefos]

The Pali Canon is a written version of an oral tradition of what one or a few people remembered of the Buddha's teaching after his death. I'm not doubting its importance ... it is crucial of course ... but the idea that it is the be all and end all I find hard to accept. But maybe that's just me.

 

The issue is that most people haven't truly researched what they accept.

 

Period.

 

Every form of modern "Buddhism" is questionable by me and a number are flat out cults like Pure Land which are late inventions used to brainwash people.

 

Example of Buddhist thought in history:

-Chanting to Amitabha Buddha to save you? That has got ZERO to do with the Pali texts!

Versus

The Vimuttimagga which speaks of mindfulness, kasinas, development of siddhis, various states of consciouness, etc.

This is culled from the pre-Mahayana sects.

 

Now, Which one sounds more similar to what the Historical Shakyamuni Buddha probably taught & heard based on solid scholarship?

 

Riiiggghhht?

Stefos