Namaste

[Vajradhara]

Namaste all,

i would completely agree, in the discussion of which is more emphasized, scripture or experience, Buddha Dharma tends to place the emphasis on experience.

that is not to say, however, that scripture doesn't have a valuable and important role to play, it most assuredly does.

it is to say, however, that all dharmas are empty, even Buddha Dharmas and, as such, to borrow a common metaphor, once we have reached the Other Shore, we set the raft we used to get here down.

metta,

~v

[Anicca]

This topic is a little old but i wanted to add something


The Buddha did not turn the wheel three times, this is propagana by the Mahayana and Vajrayana schools in an attempt to put down Theravada and laud themselves


There was only one turning, the buddha didnt have secret doctrines for later pupils

The reason we have the different "vehicles" today is because the sangha split

Some wanted to stick to the original rules and obey the Elders (head monks) and some wanted to change some rules and be more liberal and not listen to the elders as much

The group that stuck to the original rules and followed the Elders became the Theravada school

Hundreds of years after the split the Mahayana Sutras come into being that, as i said, laud themselves and put down the schools that stuck to the original rules and teachings, hence this story of three turnings which never happened

The group that broke away went on to further splinter into Zen, Pure Land, Shingon, Tibetan Buddhism (and the other small schools) which are the schools that went on to develop their own ideas such as "Buddha-Nature" and Bodhisattvas, praying to the Buddha etc which are not in the original teachings


So today we have Theravada which is the continuation of sticking to the original teachings and rules and the Mahayana and Vajrayana which is a continuation of the group that broke away

metta

[Ekanta]

This topic is a little old but i wanted to add something

The group that stuck to the original rules and followed the Elders became the Theravada school...

So today we have Theravada which is the continuation of sticking to the original teachings and rules and the Mahayana and Vajrayana which is a continuation of the group that broke away

metta

Hi again Anicca, I just saw your post and thought about this. Your description is... a bit to easy.
You know there were several schools (18?) some time after Buddhas death. Theravada was one of those building on certain older traditions and formed 250 BCE. There were other schools before and at the same time. Food for thought, see link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Buddhist_schools

[atanu]

Good Friends:

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The subject of the Buddha's relationship to the Vedas came up on this thread. I think it is possible to read the Buddhist Discourses and find support for various interpretations. The Buddha does reject rote ritualism centered on the Vedas and argues that mere memorization does not lead to realization. Is this a rejection of the Vedas as such? The difficulty with drawing that conclusion is that such criticisms are also found in the Upanishads and other Brahmanical Sages who do not reject the Vedas. So in itself such critiques are probably not definitive.

One argument presented regarding the Buddha's attitude towards the Vedas is his association with the Shramanera counterculture. Historians of this group, such as Padmanabh Jaini, a Digambara Jain, argue that all of the shramana teachers (e.g. Mahavira, Shakyamuni, the Ajivikas, etc.) held certain common views, one of which was a rejection of the orthodox brahmanical tradition. I think Jaini's thesis deserves consideration.

It is interesting to note, as an indication that would support the idea of the Buddha's positive view towards the orthodox tradition, that in the Mahaparinibana Sutta from the Pali Canon, there is a scene where the Buddha and his disciple Ananda, during the last months of the Buddha's life, take a kind of walking tour of various shrines. The Buddha comments about how "lovely" and peaceful these shrines are. He is clearly expressing a fondness for these places of worship. There is no sense here of hostility or even criticism of these shrines and their activities, no sense of rejection. On the contrary, there is a feeling of fondness and a sense of serenity. Whatever the Buddha's feelings about the received tradition they seem to have been complex.

I missed this earlier. It is nice how Dharmajim reflects the view that Buddha reformed corrupt and erroneous aspects of His time in Hinduism but that His so-called condemnation of Vedas might be a conjecture. Dharmajim states:

Is this a rejection of the Vedas as such? The difficulty with drawing that conclusion is that such criticisms are also found in the Upanishads and other Brahmanical Sages who do not reject the Vedas. So in itself such critiques are probably not definitive.

And

He is clearly expressing a fondness for these places of worship. There is no sense here of hostility or even criticism of these shrines and their activities, no sense of rejection. On the contrary, there is a feeling of fondness and a sense of serenity.

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What contrasting Mettas. Anicca and Dharmajim.


I remind that Shri Krishna, the master of Hinduism, teaches in Gita : Of what use is Veda to the enlightened? Do we say that Shri Krishna was critical of Vedas?

Om Namah Shivaya

[Anicca]

Namaste

Hi again Anicca, I just saw your post and thought about this. Your description is... a bit to easy.
You know there were several schools (18?) some time after Buddhas death. Theravada was one of those building on certain older traditions and formed 250 BCE. There were other schools before and at the same time. Food for thought, see link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Buddhist_schools

I was well aware, the point im trying to make is that the doctrines you find in mahayana are not backed up with the original, older pali canon and their claims of coming from the Buddha do not go with the known history

The mahayana sutras are in a sense just the insights and thoughts of mahayana monks and not always buddhas doctrine

Theravada (Pāli: थेरवाद theravāda (cf Sanskrit: स्थविरवाद sthaviravāda); literally, "the Teaching of the Elders" or "the Ancient Teaching", is the oldest surviving Buddhist school. It was founded in India. It is relatively conservative, and generally closest to early Buddhism

Of course there are elements that are of Theravada itself but these dont contradict the Suttas themselves in any major way and have basis in those suttas, mahayana and Vajrayana is a different story. Its from this school that you get all the doctrines that sound almost the same as Vedanta, even more so with Vajrayana

Origin of the school
The Theravāda school is ultimately derived from the Vibhajjavāda (or 'doctrine of analysis') grouping[4] which was a continuation of the older Sthavira (or 'teaching of the Elders') group at the time of the Third Buddhist Council around 250 BC, during the reign of Emperor Asoka in India. Vibhajjavadins saw themselves as the continuation of orthodox Sthaviras and after the Third Council continued to refer to their school as the Sthaviras/Theras ('The Elders'), their doctrines were probably similar to the older Sthaviras but were not completely identical. After the Third Council geographical distance led to the Vibhajjavādins gradually evolving into four groups: the Mahīśāsaka, Kāśyapīya, Dharmaguptaka and the Tāmraparnīya. The Theravada is descended from the Tāmraparnīya, which means 'the Sri Lankan lineage'. Some sources claim that only the Theravada actually evolved directly from the Vibhajjavādins.
According to Buddhist scholar A.K. Warder, the Theravada “spread rapidly south from Avanti into Maharastra and Andhra and down to the Cola country (Kanchi), as well as Ceylon. For sometime they maintained themselves in Avanti as well as in their new territories, but gradually they tended to regroup themselves in the south, the Great Vihara (Mahavihara) in Anuradhapura, the capital of Ceylon, become the main centre of their tradition, Kanchi a secondary center and the northern regions apparently relinquished to other schools."[5]
The name of Tamraparniya was given to the Sri Lankan lineage in India but there is no indication that this referred to any change in doctrine or scripture from the Vibhajjavadins, since the name points only to geographical location. The Theravadin accounts of its own origins mention that it received the teachings that were agreed upon during the Third Buddhist Council, and these teachings were known as the Vibhajjavada.[6] In the 7th century, Chinese pilgrims Xuanzang and Yi Jing refer to the Buddhist school in Sri Lanka as ‘Sthavira’.[7][8] In ancient India, those schools that used Sanskrit as their religious language referred to this school as the 'Sthaviras', but those that use Pali as their religious language referred to this school as the 'Theras'. Both 'Sthaviras' (Sanskrit) and 'Theras' (Pali) both literally mean 'The Elders'. The school has been using the name 'Theravada' for itself in a written form since at least the fourth century CE when the term appears in the Dipavamsa.[9]
There is little information about the later history of Theravada Buddhism in India, and it is not known when it disappeared in its country of origin.
The Theravada school had also reached Burma around the time it arrived in Sri Lanka and something of a synergy gradually developed. Around the end of the tenth century C.E, for example, war in Sri Lanka had extinguished the Theravadin ordination lineage, and a contingent of Burmese monks had to be imported to rekindle it. Burmese and Sri Lankan Theravada reinforced each other sufficiently, so that by the time Buddhism died out in India in the eleventh century, it had established a stable home in these countries. Gradually the Theravada form of Buddhism spread to Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. [10]
Royal houses in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia associated themselves closely with Buddhism. States in those areas strictly enforced orthodoxy, and ensured that Theravada remained traditionalist. This contrasts with the relationship of Buddhism to states throughout most of Buddhism's history in India.[11]

Mahayana history

Although the Mahayana movement traces its origin to Gautama Buddha, scholars believe that it originated in India in the 1st century CE,[4][5] or the 1st century BCE.[6][7] Scholars think that Mahayana only became a mainstream movement in India in the fifth century CE, since that is when Mahayanic inscriptions started to appear in epigraphic records in India.[8] Before the 11th century CE (while Mahayana was still present in India), the Mahayana Sutras were still in the process of being revised. Thus, several different versions may have survived of the same sutra. These different versions are invaluable to scholars attempting to reconstruct the history of Mahayana.
In the course of its history, Mahayana spread throughout East Asia. The main countries in which it is practiced today are China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam and worldwide amongst Tibetan Buddhist practitioners as a result of the Himalayan diaspora following the Chinese invasion of Tibet. The main schools of Mahayana Buddhism today are Pure Land, Zen, Nichiren Buddhism, Shingon, Tibetan Buddhism and Tendai. The latter three schools have both Mahayana and Vajrayana practice traditions.

Mahayana Sutras


The accounts of the texts specific to the Mahayana school (the Mahayana Sutras) are seen by scholars to not represent a true historic account of the life and teachings of Buddha[13]. The traditional account of why these accounts are not preserved in the older Tripitaka texts (the Pali Canon and the Agamas) of Early Buddhism, invariably involve stories of mythical dragons (Nāgas) and denigrating accounts on the intelligence of humankind (not clever enough) at the time of the Buddha[14]. The scholar A. K. Warder gives the following reasons for not accepting the Mahayana Sutras as giving a historical account of events in the life of Gautama Buddha[15]:

1. It is a curious aspersion on the powers of the Buddha that he failed to do what others were able to accomplish 600 years later.
2. Linguistically and stylistically the Mahayana texts belong to a later stratum of Indian literature than the Tripitaka known to the early schools.
3. Everything about early Buddhism, and even the Mahayana itself (with the exception of the Mantrayana), suggests that it was a teaching not meant to be kept secret but intended to be published to all the world, to spread enlightenment.
4. We are on safe ground only with those texts the authenticity of which is admitted by all schools of Buddhism (including the Mahayana, who admit the authenticity of the early canons as well as their own texts), not with texts accepted only by certain schools.
5. Mahayana developed gradually out of one, or a group, of the eighteen early schools, and originally it took its stand not primarily on any new texts but on its own interpretations of the universally recognised Tripitaka.

Of course we cant fully know what is true to buddha and not we can only go on the suttas and tradition, which Theravada has more claim to since the school and the scriptures are older and the suttas it adheres to are agreed upon by every single buddhist school

metta