Archaeology of Indian Buddhism - introductory course

Textual analysis and comparative discussion on early Buddhist sects and scriptures.
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Dhammanando
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Archaeology of Indian Buddhism - introductory course

Post by Dhammanando »

A course of thirteen lectures given earlier this year by Jason D. Hawkes, Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies at Leiden University.

Lectures

https://video.leidenuniv.nl/channel/The ... /201230153

Dr Hawkes' LinkedIn profile

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-hawke ... bdomain=uk
Yena yena hi maññanti,
tato taṃ hoti aññathā.


In whatever way they conceive it,
It turns out otherwise.
(Sn. 588)
neander
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Re: Archaeology of Indian Buddhism - introductory course

Post by neander »

thanks,

I found it interesting especially the lectures on the decline of Buddhism in India.

Dr Hawkes states that we do not have any plausible cause and details all the major hypothesis and their shortcomings and concludes that further research is needed.

One then should ask himself if Buddha cared so much about all living beings why did he leave such a feeble trace ?

There is nothing in writing before the Ashoka pillars and Gandharan texts much much later and all this corpus of Suttas has tremendous inconsistencies and differences...

Everybody must found his own answer..
thomaslaw
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Re: Archaeology of Indian Buddhism - introductory course

Post by thomaslaw »

neander wrote: Fri Jul 23, 2021 8:20 pm
all this corpus of Suttas has tremendous inconsistencies and differences...
No, this is not correct.

Most of the core teachings of Buddha-dhamma are found tremendous consistencies and similarities. E.g. see:

Choong Mun-keat. The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism: A Comparative Study Based on the Sūtrāṅga portion of the Pāli Saṃyutta-Nikāya and the Chinese Saṃyuktāgama (Series: Beitrage zur Indologie Band 32; Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2000).

:reading: :buddha1:
BrokenBones
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Re: Archaeology of Indian Buddhism - introductory course

Post by BrokenBones »

thomaslaw wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 2:10 am
neander wrote: Fri Jul 23, 2021 8:20 pm
all this corpus of Suttas has tremendous inconsistencies and differences...
No, this is not correct.

Most of the core teachings of Buddha-dhamma are found tremendous consistencies and similarities. E.g. see:

Choong Mun-keat. The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism: A Comparative Study Based on the Sūtrāṅga portion of the Pāli Saṃyutta-Nikāya and the Chinese Saṃyuktāgama (Series: Beitrage zur Indologie Band 32; Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2000).

:reading: :buddha1:
:goodpost:

Anyone who has read the sutta pitaka would come away with awe at the consistency in the teachings (one or two exceptions).
neander
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Re: Archaeology of Indian Buddhism - introductory course

Post by neander »

At the first council, there were already disagreements with the formation of 18 different schools ..

(Buddhism J.W.De Jong) “we must accept the fact there are divergences and contradictions in the Buddhist scriptures”

(Bronkhorst Early Buddhist meditation)
Put very briefly, the teaching of the Buddha as presented in the early canon contains a number of contradictions. There are views and practices that are sometimes accepted and sometimes rejected

you can go directly to https://84000.co/ download randomly some suttas and judge by yourself

that is why I personally believe with Nichiren that you can find the Buddha-nature only within yourself..
BrokenBones
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Re: Archaeology of Indian Buddhism - introductory course

Post by BrokenBones »

neander wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 7:56 am At the first council, there were already disagreements with the formation of 18 different schools ..

(Buddhism J.W.De Jong) “we must accept the fact there are divergences and contradictions in the Buddhist scriptures”

(Bronkhorst Early Buddhist meditation)
Put very briefly, the teaching of the Buddha as presented in the early canon contains a number of contradictions. There are views and practices that are sometimes accepted and sometimes rejected

you can go directly to https://84000.co/ download randomly some suttas and judge by yourself

that is why I personally believe with Nichiren that you can find the Buddha-nature only within yourself..
The first council... 18 schools? Are you sure about this?

This 'Buddha nature' you mention... is it something like the Holy Spirit the Christians talk about?
neander
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Re: Archaeology of Indian Buddhism - introductory course

Post by neander »

BrokenBones wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 10:06 am
neander wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 7:56 am At the first council, there were already disagreements with the formation of 18 different schools ..

(Buddhism J.W.De Jong) “we must accept the fact there are divergences and contradictions in the Buddhist scriptures”

(Bronkhorst Early Buddhist meditation)
Put very briefly, the teaching of the Buddha as presented in the early canon contains a number of contradictions. There are views and practices that are sometimes accepted and sometimes rejected

you can go directly to https://84000.co/ download randomly some suttas and judge by yourself

that is why I personally believe with Nichiren that you can find the Buddha-nature only within yourself..

The first council... 18 schools? Are you sure about this?

This 'Buddha nature' you mention... is it something like the Holy Spirit the Christians talk about?

we cannot be 100% sure about the date, as we cannot even date with precision the various councils there is abundant literature on this subject even on line, what is certain is that soon after the Parinibbāna Buddha's followers started having major disagreements, Davids. T. W. Rhys states that " already in the time of Asoka only seven of the eighteen sects had retained any practical importance at all, and that of these seven only three, or perhaps four, were still vigorous and flourishing. (http://buddhism.lib.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-ENG/tw.htm), scholars are still revising the schism dates


https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10 ... 3095744490
https://www.sacred-texts.com/journals/ia/18sb.htm

the concept is what stated on this article:
http://himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/colle ... _01_01.pdf

Buddhism underwent innumerable changes after the Paranirvana of the Buddha

in relation to the Buddha nature there is also enormous lieterature on line, here you can also find Vienna Tathāgatagarbha Symposium https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_yusi ... rkw/videos
BrokenBones
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Re: Archaeology of Indian Buddhism - introductory course

Post by BrokenBones »

There was no dissension at the first council... 500 Arahats settled on the Dhamma... all of one accord. You might be thinking of the second council where the splits began.

Buddha nature is totally out of line in this section... it's an eternalist concept dreamt up by pseudo-Buddhists who were missing having a god... it arose about 800 years after the Buddha... hardly early.
neander
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Re: Archaeology of Indian Buddhism - introductory course

Post by neander »

dates and subject of the Buddhist councils are shrouded in a heavy fog, included the very first councils..

https://www.encyclopedia.com/environmen ... t-councils

The general consensus of scholarship devoted to the first council almost uniformly concludes that the canonical accounts are at best greatly exaggerated and at worst pure fiction

“According to the traditions there were from time to time meetings called councils in English,the Pali term sangiti means singing or reciting together; the accounts we have of these councils are unreliable”, (J.W.De Jong)

All Buddhist traditions compete to be the first and most authentic but there is no historical proof whatsoever (as we do not have any tape or videos of what Buddha taught) which in Buddhism is not an insurmountable hurdle as in the Kalama sutta the reference is to test things by yourself..

Sutra of Dense Array, goes: “O monks, just as a goldsmith tests gold by rubbing, burning, and cutting before buying it, so too, you should examine my words before accepting them, and not just out of respect for me.”

as for the Buddhanature, I agree it does not fit the Therevada narrative
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Coëmgenu
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Re: Archaeology of Indian Buddhism - introductory course

Post by Coëmgenu »

neander wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 11:33 amwe cannot be 100% sure about the date
There is a huge disagreement between mainstream scholarship and "EBT scholarship" on this matter. Folks like, for instance, Ven Sujato, believe that Buddhism was utterly unschismed at the time of Aśokarāj and that the "18 schools" all arise considerably later than by mainstream reckoning. What I know of mainstream scholarship says that it was heavily sectarian at the time of Aśokarāj, if Aśokarāj was even actually a Buddhist. The Jains also claim most of Buddhism's geopolitical figures, like Bimbisārarāj etc.
What is the Uncreated?
Sublime & free, what is that obscured Eternity?
It is the Undying, the Bright, the Isle.
It is an Ocean, a Secret: Reality.
Both life and oblivion, it is Nirvāṇa.
neander
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Re: Archaeology of Indian Buddhism - introductory course

Post by neander »

Coëmgenu wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 3:50 pm
neander wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 11:33 amwe cannot be 100% sure about the date
There is a huge disagreement between mainstream scholarship and "EBT scholarship" on this matter. Folks like, for instance, Ven Sujato, believe that Buddhism was utterly unschismed at the time of Aśokarāj and that the "18 schools" all arise considerably later than by mainstream reckoning. What I know of mainstream scholarship says that it was heavily sectarian at the time of Aśokarāj, if Aśokarāj was even actually a Buddhist. The Jains also claim most of Buddhism's geopolitical figures, like Bimbisārarāj etc.
yes , in his paper Sects & Sectarianism Bhikkhu Sujato acknowledge the following :

The Aśokan inscriptions do not mention any schools or any explicit occurrence of schism. When the edicts say
the Sangha has been ‘made unified’, this suggests that there has been some conflict, but it falls short of establishing that
a schism had occurred
and goes on with his thesis in relation to what "made unified " actually means

however, it is unlikely that if Buddhism was so unified for such a long time (Parinirvana till Ashoka) it created some schism afterward, as the main Buddhist tenets would have been known by heart...

as Bronkhost said Buddha followers must have remembered only the last speeches so all the corpus we have now was very likely created by the various sectarian orders as soon as they established fixed monasteries blending with the preexisting religious and political structures..
thomaslaw
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Re: Archaeology of Indian Buddhism - introductory course

Post by thomaslaw »

The first schism occurred not long after the second council; it arose mainly out of the differences over certain Vinaya rules, not about the core teachings (dharma/dhamma) of Early Buddhism.

The first schism of the Sangha from the second council developed into two main branches, Mahasanghika and Sthavira, and then further developed various schools, traditionally numbering eighteen.
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