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Buddhism–The Ebook an Online Introduction Buddhism–the eBook An Online Introduction Charles Prebish and Damien Keown 4th Edition Buddhism—the eBook An Online Introduction by Charles Prebish and Damien Keown 4th Edition Copyright © 2010 by Journal of Buddhist Ethics Online Books Published by Journal of Buddhist Ethics Online Books c/o Charles Prebish 2465 Circleville Road State College, PA 16803 USA www.jbeonlinebooks.org ISBN: 978-0-9801633-6-0 Contents Contents iii Acknowledgments ix Maps x Pronunciation Guide xiv Part I: Foundations Chapter 1: Background to Buddhism 2 The Indus Valley Civilization 3 The Indus religion 4 The Indus inheritance 4 Vedic culture 5 Vedic literature 5 The Vedic inheritance 7 The Age of the Wanderers 8 The two traditions 8 The philosophical problematic 9 The cosmos in Indian thought 10 The inhabitants of the cosmos 11 The Six Realms of Rebirth 12 Karma 17 Merit 20 Western perspectives 21 Chapter 2: The Buddha 25 The Buddha 26 The Buddha’s life in a nutshell 26 The Buddha’s birth 29 Renunciation 31 iii Austerities 33 Enlightenment 35 The first sermon 37 The Buddha’s last days 39 Chapter 3: The Dharma 42 The Four Noble Truths 43 The First Noble Truth: Suffering 44 The Second Noble Truth: Arising 47 Dependent origination (Skt.: pratītya-samutpāda; Pāli: paṭicca-samuppāda) 48 The Third Noble Truth: Cessation 50 The Fourth Noble Truth: the Path 52 Holy persons 54 The doctrine of no-self 55 The five aggregates 57 Chapter 4: The Buddhist sangha 60 The sangha defined 61 The Vinaya Piṭaka 63 Paracanonical Vinaya literature 63 Canonical Vinaya literature 65 Non-canonical Vinaya literature 67 The laity 67 Important disciples in the early sangha 68 Monastic life 70 Geographic dispersal of the sangha 72 Buddhist nuns 73 Part II: Development Chapter 5: Buddhism in India 79 Developments after the death of the Buddha 80 The early period 80 Early councils and schools 80 iv The Mauryan empire and Aśoka 84 The stūpa 86 Buddhist art 89 The North-west and Central Asia 90 Milinda’s Questions 91 Abhidharma 92 Vasubandhu 92 The rise of the Mahāyāna 93 Tantra 94 Monastic centers 96 Chapter 6: Mahāyāna 100 Introduction 101 Mahāyāna literature 101 Other Mahāyāna literature 102 Mahāyāna doctrines 105 Celestial Buddhas and bodhisattvas 109 Mahāyāna schools: Mādhyamika 112 Mahāyāna schools: Pure Land 116 Mahāyāna logicians 117 Chapter 7: Meditation 120 Hīnayāna: introduction 121 The Practice of Calm 121 The Practice of Insight 127 Mahāyāna: introduction 133 The standard structure of Mahāyāna meditation 133 Visionary and ecstatic techniques 136 The Pure Land tradition 137 The Tantra tradition 138 Techniques of spontaneity 139 The Mahāmudrā tradition 140 The Zen tradition 141 v Conclusion 141 Part III: Buddhism Beyond India Chapter 8: Buddhism in South-east Asia 144 Theravāda Buddhism 145 General characteristics of Buddhism in the region 145 Burma 153 Thailand 155 Vietnam 157 Chapter 9: Buddhism in East Asia 163 China: historical sketch 164 Chinese Buddhist schools 166 Chinese Buddhist religious life 171 Korea: historical sketch 171 Korean Buddhist schools 173 Japan: historical sketch 175 Japanese Buddhist schools 177 Chapter 10: Buddhism in Tibet 186 Historical sketch 187 Major schools of Tibetan Buddhism 189 Famous Buddhist figures and places 192 Tantra and Tantric texts 196 Tradition of the Dalai Lama 199 The Holocaust and thereafter 200 Part IV: Modernity Chapter 11: Buddhism in the Western World 204 Buddhism’s Western presence in historical perspective 205 The West and globalization 207 A case in point: America 209 vi Developmental issues in American Buddhism 212 Chapter 12: Socially Engaged Buddhism 217 What is socially engaged Buddhism? 218 The Buddhist Peace Fellowship 221 Engaged Buddhism: old or new? 226 Human rights 226 Ecology 229 Chapter 13: Ethics 235 Dharma as moral foundation 236 Buddhist precepts and virtues 236 Monastic ethics 238 Virtues 239 Dāna 240 Ahiṃsā 242 Compassion 243 Skillful means 244 War and terrorism 245 Terrorism 248 Buddhism and science 251 Chapter 14: Refections on the Nature and Study of Buddhism 258 European antecedents to the study of Buddhism 259 Early Buddhist Studies in America 260 Orientalism 262 Current Buddhist Studies in America 264 Scholar-practitioners in Buddhist Studies 265 Race, class and gender in Western Buddhism 267 The role of technology in Buddhist Studies 272 Appendix I 277 Appendix II 283 vii The Pāli Canon 283 The Chinese Canon 285 The Tibetan Canon 287 Glossary 289 viii Acknowledgments ‘The Background to Buddhism’, ‘The Doctrine of Meditation in the Hīnayāna’, and ‘The Doctrine of Meditation in the Mahāyāna’ by Stephan V. Beyer, from Charles S. Prebish (edi- tor), Buddhism: A Modern Perspective (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania University Press, 1975), pp. 3–9, 137–147, and 148–158, are reproduced by permission of the publisher. Material in Chapters 1, 12 and 13 from Buddhist Ethics: A Very Short Introduction by Damien Keown (Oxford University Press, 2005) reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press. Our thanks to Pragati Sahni for permission to use material from her 2003 D.Phil.thesis ‘Environmental Ethics in Early Buddhism’ in Chapter 12 and Sharon Smith for contributing the section on race, class and gender in Chapter 14. All photographic images are copyright John Powers, and are reproduced by permission, except for Figure 8.1, which is copyright Robert Hood. Maps Map of India Maps Map of the region where Buddhism began Map of South-east Asia xi Maps Map of Tibet Map of China xii Maps Map of East Asia Map of the spread of Buddhism xiii Pronunciation Guide In the course of its long history Buddhism has spread to every part of Asia. One result of this is that Buddhist concepts have come to be expressed in languages as diverse as Sanskrit, Pāli, Tibetan, Chinese, Mongolian, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Sinhala, Vietnamese and many more. Since this book is intended to reflect the cultural diversity of Buddhism, it contains terms drawn from all the major Buddhist languages. Following the scholarly convention, however, the primary language used is Sanskrit. Sanskrit served as the lingua franca of ancient India, just as Latin did in medieval Europe, and most of the translations made into other Asian languages were based on Sanskrit originals. The most important scriptures of Mahāyāna Buddhism were composed in a variant of Sanskrit known as Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, while the earliest Buddhist scriptures are preserved in Pāli, a literary language derived from Sanskrit. Sanskrit and Pāli One feature of Asian languages like Sanskrit is that their alphabets are larger than those of Western languages. In order to represent the additional characters diacritical marks have to be added to the Roman letters. These typically take the form of symbols such as dots and dashes placed above or below certain characters. These symbols affect pronunciation in various ways. As far as Sanskrit is concerned, the most important of these is that a macron above a vowel serves to lengthen it, roughly doubling the length of the sound. Thus the character ‘ā’ is pro- nounced as in ‘far’ rather than ‘fat’. With respect to consonants, an underdot (ṭ, ḍ, etc.) indi- cates that the tongue touches the roof of the mouth when pronouncing these letters, giving the characteristic sound of English when spoken with an Indian accent. For the most part the other marks do not affect pronunciation enough to be of any special concern. A summary of the most important points in connection with the pronunciation of Sanskrit and Pāli terms is shown below: ā pronounced as in far ī pronounced as in seek ū pronounced as in brute ṛ pronounced as in risk ñ pronounced as in Spanish mañana ś or ṣ pronounced as in shoe ṅ/ṃ pronounced with a nasal sound as in ring c pronounced ch, as in church Pronunciation Guide More detailed guidance on the pronunciation of Sanskrit can be found in Chapter 1 of Michael Coulson, Sanskrit: An Introduction to the Classical Language (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1976). Chinese The transcription and pronunciation of Chinese poses special problems due tothe fact that there are two systems in use for transcribing it, namely Wade-Giles and Pinyin. The latter was introduced in 1979 by the People’s Republic of China as its official system, but the earlier Wade-Giles method of transcription is still in widespread use. Pinyin has gained acceptance among specialists, and we use it here, but students are more likely to encounter Wade-Giles in introductory and popular literature. A helpful guide on converting from Wade-Giles to Pinyin can be found in A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1989, 441–4).Neither Pinyin or Wade-Giles, however, provides a way of representing the sounds of spoken Chinese with any accuracy since the same characters in Chinese may be pronounced in one of four different tones. Japanese The transcription of Japanese is relatively unproblematic, and this book uses the widely-adopt- ed Hepburn system. The characters used correspond closely to their Roman equivalents, with the exception of the long vowels ō and ū. As in the transliteration of Sanskrit, the macron over the letter indicates that the sound of the vowel is emphasized and lengthened, thus kōan is pro- nounced ‘koh-an’, with the emphasis on the first syllable. Tibetan In contrast to Japanese, Tibetan orthography and pronunciation pose many complex problems. This is despite the fact that a standard system of transliteration exists that does not rely on dia- critics, namely the system devised by Turrell Wylie and explained in his article, ‘A Standard System of Tibetan Transcription’ (Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 22, 1959: 261–7). The present work adopts this method of transliteration, but difficulties still remain.
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