Two Jataka Tales: a Comparison Across Schools of Buddhism
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Two Jataka Tales: A Comparison Across Schools of Buddhism Abigail Elisabeth Bush Advisor: Dr. Christopher Bell Senior Research 11/30/15 Bush 2 Introduction While the Jataka tales, stories of the Buddha’s past lives, found in the various schools of Buddhism have their differences, their overall importance is unchanging. Depending on the school, values in the narrative may shift, highlighting different morals or philosophical positions. Some may frown on such changes to the canonical narrative, but there is a certain beauty in such deviations—a poetic change that mirrors the teaching of the religious tradition in which it is retold. Aesthetic appreciation aside, the alterations of the Jatakas are valuable because they show how the importance of Siddhartha Buddha changes between schools and cultures. While he is the main figure in Theravada Buddhism, the historical Buddha’s popularity begins to diminish in Mahayana Buddhism with philosophical innovations and the rise of the Bodhisattva ideal. Vajrayana Buddhism will place some of its importance on gurus. The Jatakas are various stories of the Buddha’s past lives. Brimming with emotion and rife with conflict, these stories engage readers regardless of age or beliefs. They are as dramatic as any novel, as intriguing as any mystery, as fun as any adventure, and it is easy to see their appeal. Yet, at their core they represent the Buddha’s path to becoming an enlightened being. John Strong writes that during these past lives “the bodhisattva is not so much striving for enlightenment, understood as a realization of the truth of the dharma, as he is building a Buddha body.”1 These narratives then illustrate how the Buddha stayed in the cycle of samsara in order to become a Buddha and teach others. As a whole the Jatakas act as a roadmap for the practitioner to follow, but different schools and regions approach these Jatakas in various ways. Theravada Buddhism brings the practitioner closer to the Buddha. Mahayana Buddhism will use the Jatakas to assimilate into foreign cultures—supporting filial piety in China and the cult of Kannon in Japan. Vajrayana Buddhism embellishes on the Jatakas, stressing the relationship 1 Strong, John. Relics of the Buddha. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2004, p. 51. Bush 3 between Avalokiteśvara and his followers. These key differences are what this paper will examine and appreciate in the Jataka tales.2 Background on the Jatakas Birth stories are important. They tell us how someone was raised, what defines them, and, for the religious figure, what makes their story valuable enough to pass down from practitioner to practitioner. Sometimes these stories become inflated with the supernatural, the extraordinary, making them more legend than history, making the figure in question larger than life. Yet these exaggerations, whether taken literally or understood simply as part of the story’s rhetoric, form the backbone of the religious figure’s hagiography. This figure is a role model for the people from the very beginning. We can see what is valued about the figure through what remains the same after generations of the narrative’s retellings. What acts, what beliefs, and what stories are kept or discarded tell us what is important to different communities of practitioners. When we look at these religious figures, be they historical or legendary, it bodes well to start from birth, from the beginning. That is, of course, unless your figure has multiple births, multiple lives, and multiple beginnings. Such is the case with the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. The life that most know of Siddhartha is the one in which he achieved enlightenment. We know of his early years spent being pampered and protected as an Indian prince, when he became a renunciant after witnessing the Four Sights, and, finally, his realization that there is a middle way to obtain enlightenment. Out of all of the historical Buddha’s lives, this one is the most popular since it too marks the beginning of Siddhartha’s Dharma that is spoken about and taught to the world. However, that one life says nothing about the multiple lives Siddhartha lived before reaching enlightenment under the Bodhi tree. His past lives are just as important as the 2 While a single school of Buddhism can cover many regions and milieus, I am focusing on a few in this paper in order to produce a study that has substantial range without trying to cover all regions. Bush 4 one he lived as Siddhartha Gautama, perhaps even more so because they are the ones that influenced Siddhartha’s karma and shaped his life to become a Buddha. In scholarly studies of these birth stories, they have been examined as a collection of folklore and dissected as fairy tales. More importantly to the study of religion, these stories have been recognized as presenting an individual through a specifically Buddhist frame.3 The earliest form of the Jataka tales comes from the Theravada Pali canon dated as early as the fifth century BCE. They were originally passed down orally, allowing for discrepancies in the narrative or for new Jatakas to be added to the collection. This continued until around the third century CE when the stories were written down and standardized, forming the roughly 547 Jataka tales now available in the Pali canon.4 However, agreeing upon a solid date for the origins of the Jatakas is difficult. Likewise the authorship behind the Jatakas is muddled, unclear even with the information we know about these stories. And while the narrator of the Jatakas is the Buddha, there are still arguments about whether these accounts were actually spoken by the Buddha or someone else, perhaps after his death. There have been claims that many of the narratives were composed by Buddhaghosa in the fifth century CE but those too are uncertain. 5 Regardless of the authorship of the Jatakas, we can still examine how culture affects the narrative, especially in those tales adopted outside of the Pali canon. In order to know when the Jatakas were written and by whom, we need to examine why they were created. One obvious reason is clear to anyone who has been exposed to narratives similar to the Jatakas, such as Aesop’s fables or Christian parables, and that is for didactic purposes. While alternative reasons and uses of the Jataka tales will be discussed later in this 3 Rhys Davids, Caroline A. F. Stories of the Buddha: Being Selections from the Jataka. New York: Dover Publications, 1989, p. xvi. 4 Ibid, p. xvi. 5 Shaw, Sarah. The Jātakas: Birth Stories of the Bodhisatta. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2006, p.l-lii. Bush 5 paper, for now we will focus on this didactic use to understand how they can be used as teaching tools. Sarah Shaw reveals how the Jatakas emerged from a vow that Siddhartha—referred to as the Bodhisattva in his past lives—made while prostrating at the feet of the previous Buddha, Dipankara. Siddhartha vowed to “postpone his own enlightenment and freedom from the endless round of existences until he is ready to become a Buddha and teach others.”6 In this narrative, called the Sumedha Jataka, the Bodhisattva begins his journey, leading him to his final life born as Siddhartha Gautama. The Jatakas then, being stories of that endless round of existences, show how the Buddha developed the abilities that made Siddhartha ready for Buddhahood. One such way was in perfecting the ten perfections. These perfections, present in all three schools though understood in various ways, are generosity, virtue, renunciation, wisdom, effort, forbearance, truth, resolve, loving-kindness, and equanimity. Sometimes a Jataka will focus on one specific perfection and the story will illustrate how the Bodhisattva mastered or demonstrated that perfection. In these cases the Jatakas are quite like a guide for monks and practitioners to follow and that is useful for teaching. Along with the ten perfections, we can see other central teachings of Buddhism in Jataka tales, like the four noble truths, the importance of compassion, or filial piety. However, to know what exact teachings are represented by the story, they need to be individually analyzed. That is what I wish to accomplish with an intense look at the Sama and White Horse Jatakas. The structure of the Jatakas depends on both the translator and regional context of the story. The original Pali Jatakas’ structure is, as put by C. A. F. Rhys Davis, in “full Jataka garb” without any sections left out.7 This garb includes the actual Jataka story framed by an 6 Ibid, p.xix-xx. 7 Rhys Davids 1989, p. xvii-xviii. Bush 6 introduction from the Buddha explaining what has lead him to narrate this particular past life. This introduction is often called the “story of the present” (Paccuppanna-vatthu) and the Jataka is “the story of the past” (Atīta-vatthu).8 Usually it is an action, a problem, or a question from the Sangha community (“story of the present”) that prompts the Buddha into telling his Jataka (“story of the past”). This introduction that frames the Jataka is brought back after the story is told, thus allowing the Buddha to say, ‘…and Person X in the Jataka is me.’ This is called the “ahaṃ eva” or “Indeed that was I.”9 The full Jataka garb then is (1) something prompting the Buddha to begin telling a Jataka, (2) the telling of the Jataka story itself, and (3) returning back to the Buddha as he explains who he was in the past life. In this latter segment the Buddha sometimes elucidates what the lesson found in the Jataka has to do with the present situation.