(The Island/ANN) - It goes without saying that some of the discussion in the features, midweek and weekend supplements and readers’ comments of The Island, not to mention the editorials, make illuminating reading. One such recent exchange triggered by the self-avowed Buddhist Dr Upul Wijayawardhana’s cogitations on Tibetan Buddhism and the mild repartee by Dr N.A de S Amaratunga was further enriched by a conciliatory-sounding interjection by the rationalist (and fire-walking childhood hero) Prof Carlo Fonseka focusing on a point of convergence among all sects of Buddhism in the doctrine of Anatta.

Looking briefly at the three points of view of Tibetan Buddhism and Buddhism in general that was the subject of the exchange, Dr UW has acknowledged that Tibetan Buddhism constitutes an ‘adulteration’ of Buddhism, and its current popularity in the West arises partly from the congenial personality of the Dalai Lama. American efforts to add Chinese claims to Tibet to the list of ‘bones to pick’ in their current designs to pick a quarrel with China — as a means of suppressing its rapid ascent to global economic primacy — no doubt, is another factor behind current Western adulation of the Tibetan faith.

Dr A’s riposte provided a concise, yet comprehensive summary of the developments relating to Tibetan faith and the broader Mahayana in the context of an ‘ideological warfare’ Buddhism was subjected to, especially after the Buddha’s parinibbana; Professor Fonseka’s typically humble pointing to Anatta as the bedrock common to all forms of Buddhism can be taken as an attempt at reconciling the differences between different schools of Buddhism on the basis of this ‘supposedly’ common element.

The three pieces, in combination, throw light on an important, but neglected area of academic analysis: the trends in the evolution of Buddhism following the parinibbana of the Buddha, including the transformation of its central tenets like the doctrine of Anatta. An almost identical process of corruption of Christianity, that is becoming critically important in the contemporary global political context, is also worthy of attention.

Starting with Professor Fonseka’s observation, it was indeed the doctrine of Anatta that embodied the core of the Buddha’s challenge to the Brahmanical establishment: The Buddha challenged the atman concept identified in the Advaita doctrine of the Upanishads — the ‘eternal’ individual self (atman) as the reality in human existence — with his articulation of the counter- notion of Anatta, or absence of self, as one of the foundation doctrines of Buddhism, together with the accompanying doctrines of anicca (impermanence) and dukkha (suffering); Anatta indeed is the doctrine that made original Buddhism distinctive and different from other prevailing Indian spiritual traditions that hailed from Hinduism.

It is important to note in this context that the world has not seen an ideological movement comparable to the powerful movement the Buddha launched against the Brahmanical religion in the sixth century BC, before or since; The Buddha’s preachings differed from the existing belief systems such as Hinduism (and Judaism ) fundamentally, due to it not containing any elements designed to entrench the power of a priestly class, aimed at exploiting the masses for their sustenance, purportedly under the orders of an omnipotent God. Unlike the Brahmin and the Jewish priestly classes who professed the sanctity of scriptures that provided the facility of celestial authority, nor did the Buddha ascribe any inherent merit to Dhamma per se, which he preached was a mere aid to help understand reality.

The Buddha clearly pointed out that each individual is responsible for his or her salvation, and emphasised the importance of purity of thought and deed, laying out a stricter path of renunciation for monks, based on monastic life and strict observance of the code of discipline (Vinaya); He attacked the largely self-serving structural elements of Brahmanism such as caste distinctions, animal sacrifices and other rituals, and its ideological foundations such as faith in a God who is supposed to have chosen a priestly class to salvage others, belief in the existence of an eternal soul, and indulgence in worldly life. He preached a philosophy of agnosticism — based on the failure of thousands of years of Hindu introspection to come to a firm conclusion — Anatta (soulless-ness), and world-renunciation. The challenge was bound to elicit a reaction from the powerful Brahmin priestly classes, and elicit it did.

The liberty Buddhism provided by not imposing measures to ensure uniformity of doctrine over the entire monastic establishment and the open-door policy to all people seeking enlightenment provided ample opportunities for the Brahmanical establishment to undermine Buddhism from within, through methods ranging from actively contesting the philosophical premises of Buddhism, to attempts aimed at assimilating Buddhism into the fold of Hinduism through strategies involving the sharing of terminology and concepts, the ‘adoption’ of Buddha as someone who was born into the Buddha in a Brahmanical system. Many Brahmin priests entered the Sangha under false pretensions, with the ulterior objective of undermining it from within. Vinaya had begun to deteriorate to such an extent, by the time of the 3rd Buddhist Council — convened by King Asoka, less than 150 years after parinibbana, for purposes that included flushing out bogus monks — there were at least 18 divergent schools with their own doctrines. Hindu Puranas portrayed the Buddha as born to mislead the asuras (who deny the Vedic knowledge) to the false path. In Vaishnava Hinduism, the Buddha is considered to be the ninth of the 10 major avatars of the Hindu god Vishnu.

It can be safely stated that the original Buddhism has virtually disintegrated under this concerted Brahmanistic campaign over the nearly 2600 years following parinibbana — with the notable exception of the Theravada Buddhism preserved in Sri Lanka and a limited number of other countries — in to an admixture of sects, cults, belief systems, religions and shamanistic practices that still identify themselves as ‘Buddhists’, despite the wide variance between what they believe in and the original Buddhavacana: the adage ‘language is the realm of the conceptualised nature, and language necessarily falsifies’ needs to be remembered while using the descriptor ‘Buddhism’ in relation to such a hotchpotch that has resulted from manoeuvres orchestrated by the Brahmanical vested interests as Dr A has outlined.

Looking briefly in to the timeline of the decline, as civilising and sophisticated as it was, Buddhism never managed to totally overcome the hold Brahmanism had on the psyche of the masses of India, probably because its appreciation demanded a level of intelligence that was not commonly found; Its influence, at least until Emperor Asoka embraced Buddhism in 236 BC, was limited to geographical pockets, with occasional regional spread. The relatively brief period of growth of Buddhism ended with the ascent of Pusyamitra Sunga, the founder of the Sunga dynasty (185-73 BC) that succeeded the Mauryan Empire. As is well known, Sunga began destroying Buddhist monasteries and massacring monks, declaring a reward of 100 gold Dinara coins for the head of each monk.

After varying levels of state patronage as well as persecution through the Gupta Empire (240-554 CE), King Sashanka (c. 600-630 CE), and the Pala dynasty in Bihar and Bengal (750–1174), Buddhism retreated to the periphery of the Indian continent to regions such as Kashmir, Gandhar and Bactria (modern day Afghanistan). The ascent of the Sena dynasty in Bengal (1070-1200 CE) marked a revival of orthodox Hinduism. The caste system that had been curbed by the Palas was re-established.

The Muslim invasion of Bengal by Muhammad Bakhtyar Khalji that ended the Sena Empire (c.1205), completed what the Brahmanist establishment had begun and continued for ten centuries, most notably through the burning down of Nalanda and Vikramashila universities and the Odantapuri Mahavihara in Bihar (mistaken by the mongrel to be a military fortress).

An aspect of the history of Buddhism in India, post-parinibbana is that all variations of fortunes of Buddhism under kings such as Kaniska, Harsavardhana and other powerful kings of northern India as well as the Pala and Sena Rulers of eastern India, often overlook the fact that it was the Mahyana rather than the original form of Buddhism preached by the Buddha that is central to the narrative. As an example, the kings of the Pala dynasty were great adherents of the Mahayana school Vajrayana which had absorbed a liberal element of Brahmanism in mantra, tantra and other secret rituals and forms of mysticism, and their patronage was of Vajrayana .Neither has the impact of the sophisticated Hindu philosophical counterattack, launched by the Mīmamsa scholar Kumarila Bhatta and Sankaracarya (who consolidated the doctrine of Advaita Vedanta) and other saints in the 7th and 8th centuries been adequately analysed.

Historical development of Mahayana

Mahayana was the largest and most important new movement to come in to existence, around the 2nd century AD, as a divergent school of thought within the broad umbrella of Buddhism. Doctrinally however, Mahayana can only be described as a loosely bound collection of many teachings and religious practices, rather than a philosophical stream with a composite base or any association with the original teachings of the Buddha. Rather, it is a loosely bound belief system containing many contradictions, based on a collection of sutras known as the Prajnaparamita Sutras (Perfection of Insight) that lack canonical authenticity and do not offer any elaborate philosophical arguments. In explaining the questionable historicity of the sutras, Mahayanists resort to the most un-Buddhist-like claim that they were written down at the time of the Buddha, but stored for 500 years in the realm of the nagas (at the bottom of the sea) because most people were unable to understand them; The Theravada tradition generally regards Mahayana sutras to be the inventions of Mahayanist monks around the late second century AD, nearly 700 years after the Buddha’s parinibbana.

Commonalities do exist between Mahayana and original Buddhism, in the form of belief in the general details of the Buddha’s life, the Four Noble Truths, and the Noble Eightfold path. The Mahayana ideal of becoming a bodhisattva — enlightened beings who are destined to become Buddha, but postpone that final state in order to help humanity — as against Arahatship, and the worship of future Buddhas Maitreya, Amitabha and Avalokiteshvara marks the defining difference between Theravada Buddhism and Mahayana. The term ‘bodhisattva’ occurs in a number of the suttas in the Majjhima, Aṅguttara, and Samyutta Nikayas in the Pali canon, as Buddha’s self-reference to himself prior to his attainment of Buddhahood. The Buddha never stressed the bodhisattva ideal as the goal, or prescribed a method to achieve bodhisattva status; The Buddha stressed that achieving Arhat status of mind is the only means of ending suffering. The goal of becoming a Buddha in Theravada Buddhism is reserved for the exceptional person, who follows the monastic ideal. This distinction is described by Rev. Walpola Rahula (in ‘L’ideal du bodhisattva dans le Theravada et le Mahayana’; Journal Asiatique, 1971): ‘Though the Theravadins believe that anyone can become a bodhisattva, they do not stipulate or insist that everyone must become a bodhisattva — this is not considered to be reasonable’.

The Mahayana belief of transferring the onus of personal salvation to a bodhisattva runs counter to emphasis the Buddha placed on self-reliance and individual effort of each person to end their own suffering. It is also contrary to the theory that the upper limits of progress set by one’s own efforts rather than reliance on deities or other beings, as contained in the Dhammapada: Purity and impurity depend on oneself; no one can purify another’; and as preached in the Maha Parinibbhana Sutta: ‘Therefore, O Ananda, take the Self as a lamp; Take the Self as a refuge. Hold fast as a refuge to the truth. Look not for refuge to anyone besides yourself. Work out your own salvation with diligence. ’

The absence of a central doctrine made Mahayana vulnerable to subversive encroachment of Brahmanical Hinduism by way of incorporation of Brahmanical concepts through new ‘vehicles’ such as Vajrayana, Mantrayana, and Tantrism, developed by Hindu ‘Mahasiddhas’ (great gurus) under the free intellectual atmosphere encouraged by the Gupta Empire toward the end of the 5th century. As Tantrism was spreading fast affecting almost every religious belief in India, only the Theravadins were able to resist its incursions. The incorporation of Tantric beliefs and orgiastic and ritual practices in particular, made serious damage to the ‘Buddhist’ identity of Mahayana. The injection of ideas and practices of Tantrism — such as occult rites, supernatural elements and magic caused a coalescence between Mahayana and Hinduism, with logic giving way to a molten mixture of magic and eroticism that was no longer Buddhist, but was crass superstitious idolatry covered with a shell of metaphysical sophistry.

Mahayana grew rapidly between the 5th and 7th centuries, later spreading to the east of India, China and Japan following the Silk Road, and further to Korea, and north into Nepal and Tibet. The Gupta and Pala Empires patronised Mahayana lavishly, including through the establishment of large scholastic centres such as Nalanda (established by the Gupta emperor Kumaragupta I around 5th century CE) and Vikramashila (established by Dharmapala c.783) that contributed to the thriving of a Mahayana ‘philosophy’ for the first time, giving rise to Madhyamaka, Yogacara, and Tathagatagarbha schools of thought. At the zenith of the Pala Empire in the early 9th century, Emperors Dharmapala and Devapala patronised Tantrism, and were instrumental in its spread in to Tibet.

Doctrine of Anatta in Mahayana

The doctrine of a ‘really existing permanent element’ within all sentient beings is a source of much debate and disagreement among Mahayana Buddhist philosophers. Some early Mahayana texts such as the Tathagatagarbha sutras of the 3rd century CE suggest the presence of an 'essential nature' (Buddha-dhatu), equivalent to 'Self', in all living beings allowing sentient beings to become Buddhas. The belief reflects the influence of Brahmanic Hinduism.

The South Indian philosopher (from Andhra Pradesh) Nagarjuna (c.150 AD –250 AD), the most important Mahayana philosopher, the head of Nalanda who founded Madhyamaka school of Mahayana Buddhism, together with his disciple Aryadeva, made the most noteworthy contribution toward the exposition of anatta within the Mahayana school: Nagarjuna asserted that the notion of a self is associated with the false notion of one's own identity and is the source of pride and selfishness is in a state of Avidya (ignorance). His theory of emptiness or voidness (sunyata), the core teaching of the Madhyamaka philosophy expounded in the Mulamadhyamakakarika (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way), is a sophisticated analysis of any concept carried out sfter the time of the Buddha: He applied the tetralemma —the figure used in Indian logic to demonstrate the assessments of all logical propositions: affirmation, negation, both or neither — to dharma and formulated the concept of sunyata (emptiness), extending the concept of anatta from sentient beings to all phenomena (dhammas). The sunyata concept reduces all things, even the Buddha, the dhamma and all beings as devoid of any svabhava (inherent existence), but just illusions (maya) and dreams (svapna). Obtaining a deep understanding of sunyata is said to be the prajnaparamita, the perfection of wisdom.

Another Mahayana school, Yogacara movement founded by philosopher brothers Asanga and Vasubandhu developed their own interpretation of anatta, criticising the Madhyamaka for succumbing to nihilism (the belief that nothing exists). According to their theory of Vijnanavada (the doctrine of consciousness), the ultimate truth (paramartha-satya) is that all things (dhammas) are only mind (citta), consciousness (vijnana) or perceptions (vijnapti) and no ‘external’ objects and ‘internal’ subjects really exists, but are the result of dependently originated flow of mental experiences. The Vasubandhu interpretations of no-self thesis were challenged by Candrakirti, a commentator on the works of Nagarjuna in the 7th century.

Western efforts to exploit ‘sanghabeda’

Forces aiming to spread the growth of the Buddhist ‘Revolution’ found their newest allies in European colonising forces that reached the Indian continent in the Middle Ages. Having been recently exposed to the Reformation, they saw parallels between Mahayana and Protestanism. Most invading forces being of Jewish or Crypto-Jewish origins, they were also attracted by the messianic aspects of different Mahayana schools that anticipate the arrival of Maitreya and Avalokiteshvara bodhisattvas.

The colonisers instituted and financed university Chairs and missionary activity dedicated to the academic study of Buddhism, charges with gathering knowledge on Buddhists and their practices to the attention of Euro-American scholars of religion and to the general public. The first several generations of non-Buddhist colonial studies of Buddhism, and Buddhist texts, reflected a concerted effort to erase the doctrinal differences between Theravada Buddhism and later sects. As far as ‘Buddhologists’ like the Polish-French-Jewish Jean Przyluski (1885–1944) — a colonial civil servant in Indochina who quickly became a linguist —Edward Conze, Etienne LaMotte, Hermann Oldenberg, and A.K. Warder were concerned, Mahayana existed as a separate school of Buddhism in competition with the Theravada. While acknowledging that Mahayana sutras are not the literal word of the Buddha, colonial students of Buddhism never impugned the religious authority of Mahayana.

Subtle denigration of Theravada has underlied the momentous volume of literature on Buddhism, focusing mainly on Mahayana. The now discredited Indologist Max Mueller wrote: ‘To my mind...Buddhism has always seemed to be not a new religion, but a natural development of the Indian mind in its various manifestations, religious, philosophical, social and political. Rhys Davids, the British colonial civil servant who became a Pali scholar upon losing his job at Anuradhapura due to misappropriating funds, wrote: ‘Gautama was born and brought up and lived and died a Hindu…There was not much in the metaphysics and principles of Gautama which cannot be found in one or other of the orthodox systems, and a great deal of his morality could be matched from earlier or later Hindu books.’ (in Buddhism: Being a Sketch of the Life and Teachings of Gautama, the Buddha).

A book written by Paul Williams of Bristol University, Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations (1989) is virtually an apology for all the philosophical weaknesses of Mahayana, imbued with some denigrating salvos on Theravada. Christian Lindtner, the founder of Jesus as Buddha argued (in ‘From Brahmanism to Buddhism’: Asian Philosophy 9 (1):5 – 37, 1999) that the Buddha did not reject all Upanishadic notions of atman, suggesting that Buddhism should be seen as ‘reformed Brahmanism’; Another Jewish, Czechoslovakian/British enthusiast on Buddhism — Karel Werner has suggested that modern scholars have misappropriated notions of atman when formulating their theories of anatta. The monk Thanissaro Bhikkhu holds that anatta should be regarded less as a metaphysical doctrine and more as a practical strategy for dissociating with elements of conditioned existence. This subtle promotion of Tantrism and other forms of Mahayana and denigration of Theravada is being continued by a generation of Bhantes who took on robes at the time of independence, and relying on the Brahmanistic strategies.

Conclusion

Theravada Buddhism, the oldest extant school of Buddhism remains the solitary belief system closest to the one taught by the Buddha, as recorded by his companions. Other claimants to Buddhism have in fact become devotees of various other ‘isms’ rejected unequivocally by the Buddha as not helpful in one’s mission towards enlightenment.

The form of Buddhism practiced in China and Japan in particular, only incorporates some fundamental ideas of Buddhism, with the overall emotional and psychic life of the people deeply rooted in the native Confucian, Taoist or Shintoist beliefs. The so-called Buddhism practised in Tibet is in fact closer to Shamanism than Buddhism, with the monk playing a dual-role as shaman and Buddhist monk.

The historical role Sri Lanka has played, and is continuing to play, as the repository of Theravada Buddhism is Sri Lanka’s glorious contribution to a world being deceived by unenlightened ‘mlechcha’ forces. Sri Lankan Buddhists need to be conscious of threats of various forms coming in different guises, and never let theiur guard down.

The history of Buddhism in India serves us lessons to learn from.

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