The History of Buddhism

Soon after Buddha's death or parinirvana, five

hundred monks met at the first council at Rajagrha,
under the leadership of Kashyapa. Upali recited the
monastic code (Vinaya) as he remembered it.
Ananda, Buddha's cousin, friend, and favorite
disciple -- and a man of prodigious memory! --
recited Buddha's lessons (the Sutras). The monks
debated details and voted on final versions. These
were then committed to memory by other monks, to
be translated into the many languages of the Indian
plains. It should be noted that Buddhism remained an
oral tradition for over 200 years.

In the next few centuries, the original unity of

Buddhism began to fragment. The most significant
split occurred after the second council, held at Vaishali 100 years after the first.
After debates between a more liberal group and traditionalists, the liberal group
left and labeled themselves the Mahasangha -- "the great sangha." They would
eventually evolve into the Mahayana tradition of northern Asia.

The traditionalists, now referred to as Sthaviravada or "way of the elders" (or, in

Pali, Theravada), developeda complex set of philosophical ideas beyond those
elucidated by Buddha. These were collected into the Abhidharma or "higher
teachings." But they, too, encouraged disagreements, so that one splinter group
after another left the fold. Ultimately, 18 schools developed, each with their own
interpretations of various issues, and spread all over India and Southeast Asia.
Today, only the school stemming from the Sri Lankan Theravadan survives.

Ashoka

One of the most significant events in the history of Buddhism is the chance
encounter of the monk Nigrodha and the emperor Ashoka Maurya. Ashoka,
succeeding his father after a bloody power struggle in 268 bc, found himself
deeply disturbed by the carnage he caused while suppressing a revolt in the land
of the Kalingas. Meeting Nigrodha convinced Emperor Ashoka to devote himself
to peace. On his orders, thousands of rock pillars were erected, bearing the words
of the Buddha, in the brahmi script the first written evidence of Buddhism. The
third council of monks was held at Pataliputra, the capital of Ashoka's empire.

There is a story that tells about a poor young boy who, having nothing to give the
Buddha as a gift, collected a handful of dust and innocently presented it. The
Buddha smiled and accepted it with the same graciousness he accepted the gifts
of wealthy admirers. That boy, it is said, was reborn as the Emperor Ashoka.
Ashoka sent missionaries all over India and beyond. Some went as far as Egypt,
Palestine, and Greece. St.

Origen even mentions them as having reached Britain. The Greeks of one of the
Alexandrian kingdoms of northern India adopted Buddhism, after their King
Menandros (Pali: Milinda) was convinced by a monk named Nagasena the
conversation immortalized in the Milinda Pañha. A Kushan king of north India
named Kanishka was also converted, and a council was held in Kashmir in about
100 ad. Greek Buddhists there recorded the Sutras on copper sheets which,
unfortunately, were never recovered.

It is interesting to note that there is a saint in Orthodox Christianity named

Josaphat, an Indian king whose story is essentially that of the Buddha. Josaphat is
thought to be a distortion of the word bodhisattva.

Sri Lanka and Theravada

Emperor Ashoka sent one of his sons, Mahinda, and one of his daughters,
Sanghamitta, a monk and a nun, to Sri Lanka (Ceylon) around the year 240 bc.
The king of Sri Lanka, King Devanampiyatissa, welcomed them and was
converted. One of the gifts they brought with them was a branch of the bodhi tree,
which was successfully transplanted. The descendants of this branch can still be
found on the island.

The fourth council was held in Sri Lanka, in the Aloka Cave, in the first century
bc. During this time as well, and for the first time, the entire set of Sutras were
recorded in the Pali language on palm leaves. This became Theravada's Pali
Canon, from which so much of our knowledge of Buddhism stems. It is also called
the Tripitaka (Pali: Tipitaka), or three baskets: The three sections of the canon
are the Vinaya Pitaka (the monastic law), the Sutta Pitaka (words of the
Buddha), and the Abhidamma Pitaka (the philosophical commentaries).

In a very real sense, Sri Lanka's monks may be credited with saving the
Theravada tradition: Although it had spread once from India all over southeast
Asia, it had nearly died out due to competition from Hinduism and Islam, as well
as war and colonialism. Theravada monks spread their tradition from Sri Lanka
to Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Laos, and from these lands to
Europe and the west generally.

Mahayana
Mahayana began in the first century bc, as a development of the Mahasangha
rebellion. Their more liberal attitudes toward monastic tradition allowed the lay
community to have a greater voice in the nature of Buddhism. For better or
worse, the simpler needs of the common folk were easier for the Mahayanists to
meet. For example, the people were used to gods and heroes. So, the Trikaya
(three bodies) doctrine came into being: Not only was Buddha a man who became
enlightened, he was also represented by various god-like Buddhas in various
appealing heavens, as well as by the Dharma itself, or Shunyata (emptiness), or
Buddha-Mind, depending on which interpretation we look at -- sort of a Buddhist
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!

More important, however, was the increased importance of the Bodhisattva. A

Bodhisattva is someone who has attained enlightenment, but who chooses to
remain in this world of Samsara in order to bring others to enlightenment. He is a
lot like a saint, a spiritual hero, for the people to admire and appeal to.

Along with new ideas came new scriptures. Also called Sutras, they are often
attributed to Buddha himself, sometimes as special transmissions that Buddha
supposedly felt were too difficult for his original listeners and therefore were
hidden until the times were ripe. The most significant of these new Sutras are
these:

Prajñaparamita or Perfection of Wisdom, an enormous collection of often esoteric

texts, including the famous Heart Sutra and Diamond Sutra. The earliest known
piece of printing in the world is, in fact, a copy of the Diamond Sutra, printed in
China in 868 ad.

Suddharma-pundarika or White Lotus of the True Dharma, also often esoteric,

includes the Avalokiteshwara Sutra, a prayer to that Bodhisattva.
Vimalakirti-nirdesha or Vimalakirti's Exposition, is the teachings of and stories
about the enlightened householder Vimalakirti.

Shurangama-samadhi or Hero's Sutra, provides a guide to meditation, shunyata,

and the bodhisattva. It is most popular among Zen Buddhists

Sukhavati-vyuha or Pure Land Sutra, is the most important Sutra for the Pure
Land Schools of Buddhism.

The Buddha tells Ananda about Amitabha and his Pure Land or heaven, and how
one can be reborn there.

There are many, many others. Finally, Mahayana is founded on two new
philosophical interpretations of Buddhism: Madhyamaka and Yogachara.
Madhyamaka Madhyamaka means "the middle way." You may recall that Buddha
himself called his way the middle way in his very first sermon. He meant, at that
time, the middle way between the extremes of hedonistic pleasure and extreme
asceticism. But he may also have referred to the middle way between the
competing philosophies of eternalism and annihilationism the belief that the soul
exists forever and that the soul is annihilated at death. Or between materialism
and nihilism.... An Indian monk by the name of Nagarjuna took this idea and
expanded on it to create the philosophy that would be known as Madhyamaka, in
a book called the Mulamadhyamaka-karika, written about 150 ad.

Basically a treatise on logical argument, it concludes that nothing is absolute,

everything is relative, nothing exists on its own, everything is interdependent. All
systems, beginning with the idea that each thing is what it is and not something
else (Aristotle's law of the excluded middle), wind up contradicting themselves.

Rigorous logic, in other words, leads one away from all systems, and to the
concept of shunyata.

Shunyata means emptiness. This doesn't mean that nothing exists. It means that
nothing exists in and of itself, but only as a part of a universal web of being. This
would become a central concept in all branches of Mahayana. Of course, it is
actually a restatement of the central Buddhist concepts of anatman, anitya, and
dukkha!

Yogachara
The second philosophical innovation, Yogachara, is credited to two brothers,
Asanga and Vasubandhu, who lived in India in the 300's ad. They elaborated
earlier movements in the direction of the philosophy of idealism or chitta-matra.
Chitta-matra means literally mind only. Asanga and Vasubandhu believed that
everything that exists is mind or consciousness. What we think of as physical
things are just projections of our minds, delusions or hallucinations, if you like.
To get rid of these delusions, we must meditate, which for the Yogachara school
means the creation of pure consciousness, devoid of all content. In that way, we
leave our deluded individual minds and join with the universal mind, or Buddha-
mind.

Tantra
The last innovation was less philosophical and far more practical: Tantra. Tantra
refers to certain writings which are concerned, not with philosophical niceties,
but with the basic how-to of enlightenment, and not just with enlightenment in
several rebirths, but enlightenment here-and-now!
In order to accomplish this feat, dramatic methods are needed, ones which, to the
uninitiated, may seem rather bizarre. Tantra was the domain of the siddhu, the
adept someone who knows the secrets, a magician in the ways of enlightenment.
Tantra involves the use of various techniques, including the well-known
mandalas, mantras, and mudras. mandalas are paintings or other representations
of higher awareness, usually in the form of a circular pattern of images, which
may provide the focus of one-pointed meditation. Mantras are words or phrases
that serve the same purpose, such as the famous "Om mani padme hum." Mudras
are hand positions that symbolize certain qualities of enlightenment.
Less well known are the yidams. A yidam is the image of a god or goddess or other
spiritual being, either physically represented or, more commonly, imagined
clearly in the mind's eye. Again, these represent archetypal qualities of
enlightenment, and one-pointed meditation on these complex images lead the
adept to his or her goal.

These ideas would have enormous impact on Mahayana. They are not without
critics, however:
Madhyamaka is sometimes criticized as word-play, and Yogachara is criticized as
reintroducing atman, eternal soul or essence, to Buddhism. Tantra has been most
often criticized, especially for its emphasis on secret methods and strong devotion
to a guru. Nevertheless, these innovations led to a renewed flurry of activity in
the first half of the first millenium, and provided the foundation for the kinds of
Buddhism we find in China, Tibet, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and elsewhere in east
Asia.

China
Legend has it that the Chinese Emperor Ming Ti had a dream which led him to
send his agents down the Silk Road the ancient trade route between China and
the west to discover its meaning. The agents returned with a picture of the
Buddha and a copy of the Sutra in 42 Sections. This Sutra would, in 67 ad, be the
first of
many to be translated into Chinese.

The first Buddhist community in China is thought to be one in Loyang, established

by "foreigners" around 150 ad, in the Han dynasty. Only 100 years later, there
emerges a native Chinese Sangha. And during the Period of Disunity (or Era of the
Warring States, 220 to 589 ad), the number of Buddhist monks and nuns increase
to as many as two million! Apparently, the uncertain times and the misery of the
lower classes were fertile ground for the monastic traditions of Buddhism.

Buddhism did not come to a land innocent of religion and philosophy, of course.
China, in fact, had three main competing streams of thought: Confucianism,
Taoism, and folk religion. Confucianisim is essentially a moral-political
philosophy, involving a complex guide to human relationships. Taoism is a life-
philosophy involving a return to simpler and more "natural" ways of being. And
the folk religion or, should we say, religions consisted of rich mythologies,
superstitions, astrology, reading of entrails, magic, folk medicine, and so on.
(Please understand that I am simplifying here: Certainly Confucianism and
Taoism are assophisticated as Buddhism!)

Although these various streams sometimes competed with each other and with
Buddhism, they also fed each other, enriched each other, and intertwined with
each other. Over time, the Mahayana of India became the Mahayana of China and,
later, of Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.
Pure Land
The first example historically is Pure Land Buddhism (Ching-T'u, J: Jodo). The
peasants and working people of China were used to gods and goddesses, praying
for rain and health, worrying about heaven and hell, and so on. It wasn't a great
leap to find in Buddhism's cosmology and theology the bases for a religious
tradition that catered to these needs and habits, while still providing a
sophisticated philosophical foundation.

The idea of this period of time as a fallen or inferior time -- traditional in China --
led to the idea that we are no longer able to reach enlightenment on our own
power, but must rely on the intercession of higher beings.

The transcendent Buddha Amitabha, and his western paradise ("pure land"),
introduced in theSukhavati-vyuha Sutra, was a perfect fit.

Ch'an
Another school that was to be particularly strongly influenced by Chinese thought
was the Meditation School Dhyana, Ch'an, Son, or Zen. Tradition has the Indian
monk Bodhidharma coming from the west to China around 520 ad. It was
Bodhidharma, it is said, who carried the Silent Transmission to become the First
Patriarch of the Ch'an School in China:
From the very beginning, Buddha had had reservations about his ability to
communicate his message to the people. Words simply could not carry such a
sublime message. So, on one occasion, while the monks around him waited for a
sermon, he said absolutely nothing. He simply held up a flower. the monks, of
course, were confused, except for Kashyapa, who understood and smiled. The
Buddha smiled back, and thus the Silent Transmission began.

Zen Buddhism focuses on developing the immediate awareness of Buddha-mind

through meditation on emptiness. It is notorious for its dismissal of the written
and spoken word and occasionally for his rough-house antics. It should be
understood, however, that there is great reverence for the Buddha, the Dharma,
and the Sangha, even when they are ostensibly ignoring, poking fun, or even
turning them upside-down.

Zen has contributed its own literature to the Buddhist melting-pot, including The
Platform Sutra, written by Hui Neng, the Sixth Patriarch, around 700 ad., The
Blue Cliff Record, written about 1000 ad., and The Gateless Gate, written about
1200 ad. And we shouldn't forget the famous Ten Ox-Herding Pictures that many
see as containing the very essence of Zen's message.