Subjectivity and Objectivity in Early Buddhism

What I want to do is to examine some views about Nibbana (Nirvana), the Way to it and Buddhist ethics, which are new, imaginative and erroneous. They are set out in a paper' by David Bastow. He suggests an interpretation of the Way and the Goal in Early Buddhism such that: i. The Goal and the Way are not conceptually distinct. We know this because: (a) 'Everything said about this goal of Arahatship, with the exception of a very few pictorial similes, is by reference to the progressive achievements of the Way.' And (b) The alternative, which is unsatisfactory, is that the relation between the Way and the Goal is 'causal and therefore contingent'. (c) The Way, from the first stage of moral restraint up to the final liberation of Nibbana, is a pattern of progressive stages, each char acterised by self-restraint leading to a freedom. 2. But 'freedom', introduced hopefully as a unifying concept for the stages of the Way, is vague, so it is necessary to give it 'descriptive stiffening'. There are three possibilities: freedom from immorality, from craving (but both are rejected), or from illusion and all that is impermanent. Even the last possibility is rejected, however, since it does not cohere with the con cepts of freedom as found in the early stages of the Way. 3. The Way is morally justified, not in terms of the Goal, but because the later stages are a logical and natural development and culmination of the principles implicit in the early part, where they are normally accepted wNithout difficulty. Since we are not told what is meant by 'Early Buddhism', it is not clear what is to count as scriptural evidence for or against the above thesis, but I shall, like him, limit myself chiefly to the Pali Canon, though there will be references to the commentaries. Let us start with i. My main point here is that the Goal and the Way are distinct. There is some difficulty in saying 'conceptually distinct', because the Goal itself cannot be conceptualised. It is atakkavacara,2 'not in the realm of logical thought'. And we read3 'There is no measuring of man won to the goal, whereby they'd say His measure's so: that's not for him; when all conditions are removed, all ways of telling are removed'. But even

Early Buddhists developed in intense dialogue with their religious others. During the formative stages of the Buddhist community, many Buddhist monks interacted with other ascetics on a daily basis. They engaged in religious debates and shared sleeping, eating and other public facilities. Given these facts, it is not surprising that early Buddhist texts refer frequently to their religious others. In the Pāli Vinaya, the monastic code of the Theravāda school, the most common term to refer to non-Buddhist ascetics is ‘titthiya’ (Skt. tīrthika). To explore the early Buddhist attitudes towards their religious others, this chapter offers a critical examination of titthiya in the Pāli Vinaya and early Jain texts. Building upon the work of C.V. Jones, this chapter shows a semantic shift in the application of the term titthiya. It demonstrates that early Buddhists had a positive understanding of the term titthiya, before they started using it to refer negatively to religious others. This chapter argues that this semantic shift went hand in hand with a change in the way Buddhists related to their various religious others. It further shows that the Buddhists’ initial positive understanding of the term titthiya was in accordance with wider metaphorical language of liberation.

In this article I survey selected aspects of the early Buddhist conception of mindfulness. I begin by distinguishing different types of mindfulness and draw out the implications of such distinctions. Next, I explore the relationship between mindfulness and memory in order to determine how far a conceptualization of mindfulness as a quality of the mind related to the present moment is indeed central to the understanding of its functions and significance in early Buddhist texts and in what way this relates to the ability to remember. Another dimension of the present exploration is the relation of mindfulness to being anchored in the body and how this can serve to maintain continuity of awareness in a daily life situation. The final topic I take up is the use of mindfulness to face pain and disease in the way this is already reflected in the early Buddhist discourses. These texts clearly document that the potential of mindfulness in this respect is not a modern innovation but has roots in the Buddhist tradition that reach back over more than two millennia.

The book is based primarily on the source material available in the Pali Canon, studied historically and philosophically in the light of the contemporary, earlier and later literary evidence related to the subject. The antiquity and authenticity of the material is vouchsafed by the literary, lingustic, ideological, sociological and historical evidence existing in the Pali Canon itself. The book traces the origin of the theory of knowledge and its development in early Buddhism - the Hinayana Buddhism of Pali Canon.

Enlightenment and Social Engagement in Early Buddhism -Focused on the Buddha's Teaching for Lay People

불교를 흔히 깨달음의 종교라고 한다. 그런데 여기서 문제는 과연 무엇에 대한 깨달음인가, 즉 깨달음의 내용은 무엇인가 라는 점이다. 깨달음의 결과를 통해 우리는 붓다와 같은 존재가 되는 것이며, 내용상으로는 붓다가 깨달은 바를 깨닫는 것이다. 붓다의 깨달음과 나의 깨달음이 달라서는 안 되며, 차이가 있어서도 안 된다. 그 깨달음은 일미(一味)이며, 한 길이다. 그럼 우리는 무엇을 깨달으면 붓다가 될 수 있는 것인가. 그것을 경전에서는 일반적으로 ‘사성제’와 ‘연기’로 제시한다. 이 가운데 본 논문은 ‘연기’에 초점을 맞추어 기술해 보고자 한다.BR 연기는 전통적으로 태생학적 관점에서 이해하는 삼세양중인과설이라든가 상의상관적 관점에서 이해한다. 하지만 본 논문에서는 연기를 번뇌의 소멸에 대한 체계화라는 관점에서 파악하고자 한다. 이를 위해서 우선 문헌적으로 성립이 가장 빠르다고 하는 『숫따니빠따』에 나타나는 연기의 내용을 고찰해 보았다. 『숫따니빠따』에서는 우리들이 일반적으로 알고 있는 연기의 내용과는 다소 다르지만, 기본적인 발상이 동일하며, 그 핵심적 내용은 고통의 원인 규명과 소멸이란 점에 놓여 있다. 그리고 『상윳따니까야』에서는 고통의 소멸이란 측면에서의 연기 내용과 연기를 이법(理法)으로 바라보는 관점이 병존하고 있음을 보았다. 이것은 이후 연기가 다양하게 해석될 수 있는 근거가 이미 경전 속에 내포되어 있음을 의미하는 것으로 이해된다. 그리고 『맛지마니까야』와 『디가니까야』에서 기술된 연관된 내용도 연기에 대한 다양한 이해가 폭넓게 이루어지고 있음을 보여준다. 한편 이러한 이해를 바탕으로 빨리율장과 우다나(Ud?na)와 같은 문헌에서 붓다는 바로 연기를 깨달아 ‘붓다’가 된 것으로 기록되기에 이르렀다는 점을 지적하였다. 사실 잘 알려져 있듯이, 붓다의 자내증이 연기라고 기록되고 있는 경전이나 문헌들은 『상윳따니까야』와 빨리율장의 「대품」 그리고 우다나 정도이다. 다른 경전들에서는 자내증으로 사성제나 선정의 성취를 통한 번뇌의 멸진에서 찾는다. 따라서 연기를 자내증으로 보는 이러한 흐름은 연기를 이법(理法)으로 규정하고자 하는 움직임의 논리적 결과라고 볼 수 있을 것이다.BR 결론적으로 필자는 연기의 기본적인 의미는 번뇌의 원인 규명과 소멸이라는 수행론적 관점에서 찾아야 한다고 보고, 붓다가 자신의 깨달음을 정리하는 과정에서 연기라는 형식으로 체계화된 것이라는 결론에 도달했다.

Classical presentations of the Buddhist path prescribe the cultivation of various good qualities that are necessary for spiritual progress, from mindfulness (sati) and loving-kindness (metta) to faith (saddhā) and wisdom (paññā). Examining the way in which such qualities are described and classified in early Buddhism—with special reference to their treatment in the Visuddhimagga (Path of Purification) by the fifth-century Buddhist thinker Buddhaghosa—the present article employs a comparative method in order to identify the Buddhist catalog of virtues. The first part sketches the characteristics of virtue as analyzed by neo-Aristotelian theories. Relying on these accounts, the second part considers three lists from early Buddhism as possible catalogs of virtue: (1) the components of ethical conduct (sīla), (2) the 37 factors that contribute to awakening (bodhipakkhiyā dhammā), and (3) the wholesome (kusala) or beautiful (sobhana) mental factors (cetasika). I then raise the question of why the Buddhist tradition developed several classifications of virtue, whereas the Western tradition of virtue ethics used a single category. Appealing to the connection between the virtues and living well (eudaimonia) in the eudaimonistic version of virtue ethics, I propose that one of the reasons why Buddhism developed multiple lists of virtues is its pluralistic acceptance of different modalities of living well and associated practices, in MacIntyre’s sense of the term. These modalities and practices are not equal, but are ordered hierarchically. Accordingly, I conclude that Buddhist ethics ought to be seen as a pluralist-gradualist system rather than a universalist theory.

The relationship between the earliest form of Buddhism and the various traditions that developed later has been a perennial problem in the history of Buddhist thought. As is well known to students of Buddhist philosophy, the different schools of the Abhidharma or scholastic tradition, in spite of rather significant doctrinal variations among themselves, all claimed to preserve the Buddha-word in its pristine purity. The Mahāyāna schools, adopting philosophical standpoints very different from those of scholasticism, upheld the view that theirs represent the true teachings of the Buddha. Many a modern scholar, after aligning himself with one or the other of these later philosophical developments, has endeavored to draw a close relationship between the school he has accepted and early Buddhism. In the present paper, I propose to show that early Buddhism, as embodied in the Pali Nikāyas and the Chinese Āgamas, which are recognized by all the different schools as representing the earliest sources for the study of Buddhism, is radically different from all these schools, at least as far as their philosophical content is concerned.

I argue that current theoretical understandings of mindfulness as an attention regulation strategy for psychological stress reduction and enhanced adaptation to society may produce de-ethicised therapeutic applications. I show how understandings of mindfulness in early Buddhism, psychotherapy and clinical psychology have changed over time. Current understandings of mindfulness as a skill or technique of bringing non-judgmental awareness (or bare attention) to present moment experience are historically recent and differ from early Buddhist understandings in at least one crucial respect: definitions of mindfulness as attentional control or metacognitive awareness lack an emphasis on deep ethical reflection. As such, we need to re-ethicise our conceptual understanding of mindfulness by remembering early Buddhist texts, where mindfulness involves the cultivation of an ethically sensitive style of remembering, which has largely been lost in contemporary definitions.

초기불교에서 업(業)의 윤리성과 도덕교육적 함의

This paper examines the puruṣa concept in the Caraka Saṃhitā (CS), an early text of Ayurveda, and its relation to Indic thinking about phenomenal worldhood. It argues that, contrary to the usual interpretation, early Ayurveda does not consider the person to be a microcosmic replication of the macrocosmos. Instead, early Ayurveda asserts that personhood is worldhood, and thus the person is non-different from the phenomenal totality (spatial and temporal) of his existence. This is confirmed by the CS’s several definitions of puruṣa, which are alternately posed in terms familiar to Vaiśeṣika, early (pre-“classical”) Sāṃkhya, early Buddhism, and Upaniṣadic monism. It is likewise confirmed by the Ayurvedic logic of sāmānya (translated as “identity”), which governs the meaning of the list of person-to-world correspondences in CS 4.5 and its often misinterpreted claim, puruṣo’yam lokasaṃmitaḥ. Finally it is confirmed in the program of Ayurvedic therapeutics, which aims at establishing various kinds of “appropriateness” for the sake of effecting samayoga—the “harmonious joining” of person and world.

On the Concepts of ‘Rise’ and ‘Fall’ in Early Buddhism

On the Meaning of nibbana in Early Buddhism

Mircea Eliade's book Yoga: Immortality and Freedom has deservedly become a classic, and has reached, as he intended, a far wider audience than the narrow circle of Indologists. The book's popularity may justify the following remarks. It was originally published in French in 1936, then in an enlarged French version in 1954, and in English translation in 1958. There has thus been ample opportunity for revision, and indeed in the second English edition (1969), which we are taking as our text, Eliade notes (p. xi) that he has made ‘numerous minor corrections’. However, the accuracy of his observations on early Buddhism still leaves much to be desired. Let us try to set the record straight.

The Doctrine of Karma and Saṃsāra in Upaniṣads and Early Buddhism