IV

The Founding of Buddhism

1. THE LIFE OF THE BUDDHA

             Siddhartha of the Gautama clan, later called the Buddha, or “the enlightened one,” began life in the foothills of the Himalayas, where his people, the Sakyas, were primarily rice farmers. The Sakyas formed the small city-state of Kapilavastu with an oligarchic republican constitution, under the hegemony of the powerful Magadha and Kosala Kingdoms to the south. Siddhartha traveled south to study, and so, after his Enlightenment, he first spread his doctrines in Northeastern India, south of the Ganges, west of Bhagalpur, and east of the Son River—South Bihar, nowadays. The people of this provincial area had been only partially assimilated to the Aryan culture and its Brahminic religion. Brahminism focused in the region of Northwestern India between the Ganges and Jumma Rivers, the older center of Indian civilization. Indeed, despite Buddhism’s anti-Brahmin cast, its chief rival in the early days was not Brahminism, but Jainism.

             Though Gautama was probably a Kshatriya, that is, an upper class person who served in the army and was eligible to participate in the government (the rigidities of the Caste system were not yet established in the region), Kapilavastu was oligarchic, and his father was not, as legend has it, a king. He left home in his youth against the will of his parents to become a wandering ascetic, an odd and irresponsible thing to do before discharging one’s duties as a householder. In the groves where the ascetics lived Gautama practiced yogic meditations and austerities, and learned the philosophy and logic of his time. He would have encountered the doctrines of the Upanishads, and become familiar with the debates of the Brahmins. The Brahminic culture of central Bihar had not penetrated to the land of his birth, and he would have looked upon it with the critical and penetrating insight of an outsider.

             After much testing and experimentation (tradition says seven years worth), Gautama discovered the way to attain freedom (moksha) from the deeply unsatisfactory life of the ordinary man, and from further rebirth. Acceptance of the Buddhist doctrine that there is not, and never was, a self, might involve a false sense that one has been destroyed, but freedom from further rebirth was not sought from a desire for personal annihilation, but simply because it was a natural outcome of release from bondage to karma and the suffering that follows upon it. One had a choice, as far as Gautama could see, between furthering indefinitely a life full of suffering at every turn, or entering into a life freed from this suffering, but which comes to an end. One need not, perhaps, take all this quite literally. It seems possible that the Buddha, like some of the Upanishadic writers, did not believe that one lived many lives, but only, like many authors of later Abhidharma works, used this commonplace view as a way of speaking about the succession of mental states in this life. In connection with this, it might be that the rebirth that comes to an end is the illusory rebirth of the illusory self, so that freedom leads to a recognition that no one will be reborn, not a new state of affairs. If one’s rebirth in a new life is actual, but occurs only in the presence of an illusion of self, as we shall see the doctrine of the twelve–fold chain of causation implies, then release will imply the cessation of further rebirth. In any case, the fact of one’s eventual death will produce no great distress in someone freed from attachment to the illusory self.

             The way to this release involved Yogic techniques intended to produce non-attachment, techniques which he learned from others, though Gautama repudiated Jain asceticism, and had no truck with ritual and sacrifices to the gods. The metaphysical views behind the borrowed techniques, though, were quite original, involving a denial of the existence of any permanent, true self and the claim that the recognition of the truth of this denial, rather than the discovery of one’s true self, was the key to release. This meant, of course, that the yogic techniques themselves, adapted to a new purpose, took on a different character.

             The date of the Buddha’s enlightenment is uncertain. His death can be placed either about 485 bce, relying on Sri Lankan sources, or, depending on Northern sources, about 383 bce. The tradition states that the Buddha died at 80 years of age, so that would place his birth in 565 or 463 bce., and given that he attained enlightenment at 30–40 years of age, this would have been around either 500 or 400 bce. During his forty year of preaching, he converted many ascetics and established the sangha, the order of monks, an egalitarian, democratically organized counter-weight to the Brahmin caste, to carry on his work. The Sangha seems to have been modeled on the political institutions of his mountain homeland. It recognized no castes, and formally made all decisions through majority vote or consensus, though in practice seniority was recognized, and the monks of longest standing tended to run things. The lay people of the religion were expected to support the monks, and in return, the monks were expected to teach them. The Buddha instructed his very first converts to go out and preach to the people out of compassion, specifying that no two should go to the same place. He himself preached morality to the laymen, and is always represented as adapting his discourse to his audience. In particular, he often uses satirical humor when talking of the Brahmins, the high god Brahma, ritual practices, the way in which governments foster evil doing by trying to prevent it, and so on. Indeed, it may be that some misunderstandings arose even within the tradition from taking too seriously the Buddha’s ironical use of traditional notions in his discourses, possibly including even such notions as super-powers gained through meditation, and reincarnation or rebirth. The higher teaching concerning Nirvana and the means of achieving it were more or less reserved in the beginning for the monks, so that early Buddhism fits the Indian pattern of a religion with esoteric and exoteric branches. Nonetheless, it is to be observed that the Buddha apparently thought a layman could attain Nirvana thorough the practice of the virtues together with self-possession (the practice of awareness) and understanding of the Dharma, and remarks in several places that this is possible. The householder Citra was so learned that he instructed the monks. Probably Gautama thought that few laymen wished to aim so high, or would understand the more advanced doctrines, and that only an unusually capable person could attain the aim without living in the Order.

             The Buddha’s success was due in good part to his conversion of King Bimbisara of Magadha, who presented a park to the Sangha. The Sangha relied on royal patronage thereafter in most places, and Buddhist missions typically visited the capital city first, in hope of converting the rulers. (One should compare the success of Christianity after the conversion of Constantine.) This alliance with the King, and, as we shall see below, the merchant class, led to accommodations. In particular, the Sangha would not admit anyone serving under the king (i.e. deserting soldiers), slaves that had not been freed, those fleeing from criminal prosecution, or anyone under the age of twenty.

             The rules the Buddha made for the Sangha were not absolute, but established in response to various situations as they arise, and it seems the Buddha thought them justified by their effects in those situations. He specified that most of them might be modified in new situations. He was quite willing to take extenuating circumstances into account and excuse misbehavior. He seems to have thought that the Dharma should be sufficient to guide behavior. Indeed, even though he was asked by Sariputra in time of famine to formulate a systematic set of rules to govern the order, so that the laity would respect the order and continue to provide food for it, the Buddha refused to do so, and insisted instead on introducing rules as necessary when offenses appeared. He apparently wanted as few rules as possible, adapted to specific circumstances, but was particularly concerned not to make the Sangha something like a caste, with a rigid set of absolute ritual prescriptions, even if that was the sort of thing the laity was used to in dealing with the Brahmins. A great many of the rules have the explicit aim of avoiding a bad reputation among the laity, and the Buddha’s attitude seems to have been that, as long as it was not opposed to the dharma, one ought to take whatever measure was needed to insure the good repute of the Sanhga.

             The two chief disciples of Gautama were Sariputra and Maudgalanya. Sariputra supposedly figured out the dharma on his own from a hint gained from a monk, that the Buddha taught the origination of phenomena from causes. Gautama visited home after gaining these disciples, and his son, Rahula, became a member of the Sangha, as well as Nanda, his half-brother. His cousin, Ananda, also joined, and is noted as the type of the scholar-monk in later tradition. The community of Nuns was established late in the Buddha’s career, at the request of his aunt, Mahaprajapati while he was in Vaisali. Gautama apparently thought the existence of the nuns would bring ill repute to Buddhism, for it flew directly in the face of traditional Indian practices, and he worried that it might bring a premature end to the religion, but he did not wish to refuse his aunt, who no doubt had appealed to his deeper convictions, and so he established the community of nuns, but subjected it to additional rules, and made it subordinate to the monks.

             At the end of his life the Buddha seems to have known that he would not live much longer, and he traveled north, intending to return to his homeland. He died on the border of the Sakyan lands, at Kusinara. Before his passing, in one last meeting with his monks, Gautama told them they could abolish the minor rules as they would (though, it not having been made clear which rules were minor, the monks never availed themselves of this privilege), and, after assuring himself that no one was unsure about any point of the Dharma, he proclaimed that he knew all present had a sufficient understanding, and assured them all that they were stream–winners, who could not fall back, but would certainly attain Nirvana. He then uttered his last words, “Now, monks, I declare to you, all conditioned things are of a nature to decay—strive on untiringly,” and, steadying himself in meditation, he died.

2. THE WAY TO ENLIGHTENMENT

             The sermon later identified as the first the Buddha gave opens with an account of Gautama’s attainment of enlightenment, emphasizing his adoption of the “middle way” between the extreme asceticism characteristic of the Jains, and the lay life of pleasures and worldly involvement. This was very much necessary, since the ascetics whom he was addressing doubted that he could have accomplished much precisely because of his abandonment of strict asceticism. From the point of view of the monk, the “middle way” is central, and it underlies the structure of life imposed on the Sangha. Following this, the Buddha enunciated the Four Noble Truths: (1) Life is inherently unsatisfactory, (2) this unsatisfactory character is due to craving (trsna), (3) thus, the unsatisfactory characteristics of life can be eliminated if craving is once eliminated, which is possible. The first truth is not meant to deny that there is any happiness or pleasure in life, but is true since even pleasure and happiness are doomed to cessation, and create attachments that lead to suffering once they cease, or are suspected of being impermanent. When it is argued for, it is always argued on the ground of the three marks (laksanas) of existing things, first, that they are impermanent, and so lead to suffering due to change, second, that they are not self, and so lead to suffering rooted in our grasping after a self that cannot be found, and third, that they are unsatisfactory, since they lead to these sorts of suffering. The craving of the second noble truth is divided into craving for sensory pleasure, for becoming, and for non-existence, the last two covering craving for something to be the case or not the case, usually something associated with the self. (4) the way to eliminate craving is to follow the eightfold path, namely (i) the adoption of right views, namely, understanding the four noble truths, leading to (ii) right intention or thought, that is, renunciation of the worldly life and the determination not to harm anyone (ahimsa), carried out by (iii) right speech, no falsehood, malice, harshness, frivolity or nonsense, (iv) right action, no taking of life, taking what is not given, or misconduct in pursuit of pleasure, and (v) right livelihood, that is, one that is morally acceptable, (vi) right effort, directed toward fostering good states of mind and eliminating bad states of mind, (vii) right mindfulness, including both the practice of awareness and remembrance of the Dharma, and (viii) right concentration. Later the way was more simply expressed as progress through three stages, morality, meditation for the attainment of tranquillity, and meditation for the attainment of wisdom (most important was meditation on the four Noble Truths, the five aggregates, and dependent origination), or again, through progressive acquisition of the five faculties, faith, effort, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. Correct views and intention (“wisdom” or faith) comes at the beginning of the eight-fold path, since correct views and intentions formed in accord with them are necessary before one will practice correctly. Wisdom is the last of the five perfections because it is understood that a full realization and understanding of things as they are, which constitutes this wisdom, is only obtained when it has infected one’s whole character and all one’s dispositions. This is accomplished, of course, only through the practice of morality and meditation (mindfulness and concentration), which deepen one’s initial understanding and bring one to the point where no act is uninformed by it. Gautama emphasized that the eightfold way can be followed only by one who has good friends, the other members of the Sangha, of course, who share his aims and can inspire him to effort.

             The Buddha especially emphasized that his teaching was of what he knew from his own experience to be true. He himself had carried through the practices he recommended, and he knew that they worked and how they worked. He himself had experienced the extinction of desires, and so verified both the initial diagnosis of the problem, and the effectiveness of the treatment he recommends. He criticizes the Brahmins for teaching what they have not themselves experienced. This is reflected in the Sutras in his technique of preliminary questioning of his pupil to lay the foundation for his discourse. He seems to have thought that a student must be convinced of the dharma through his own experience. Typically he presents the dharma as a reasonable modification of or a consequence of the pupil’s own expressed views. Gautama does not always convince his audience, indeed, the very first person he spoke to after his enlightenment, an Ajivika, supposedly listened politely and then said only that it may be so, or again it may not, before going on his way.

             Gautama strove to avoid being made into an authoritative cult leader by the Sangha. He insisted that it was not his person, but the Dharma that was important, and that, although he had discovered the truths of the Dharma, he was far from the only one to possess these truths, or to be able to explain them. Especially later in his life, he seems often to have withdrawn in weariness before finishing a sermon, leaving a senior monk to complete it, and he often recognized the skill of one disciple or another in the Dharma. Upon his death, he told his disciples that the Dharma was to be their guide, that he had withheld no teachings from them, and that they had to rely on themselves to attain release.

             To return to the Buddha’s teaching how to gain release, the desire at the root of the trouble people experience itself has a root, namely ignorance. The three roots of suffering are desire, aversion, and delusion. Delusion is in part brought on by desire and aversion, which produce false beliefs about the absolute value of things, and these beliefs in turn reinforce desire and aversion. Nirvana is the “blowing out”, not of the self (such an aim is heretical, for it presupposes the reality of the self), but of the three flames of desire, aversion, and delusion, with which everything in our lives are ablaze. The idea is that we read our passions into reality and so come to see what we desire as objectively valuable, as something that must be had, else things have gone objectively wrong, and these false views of reality lead in turn to the intensification of desire and all the miseries that arise from it. Desire and ignorance continuously reinforce one another.

             The central delusion here is that there is a self which is important, and recognized as such by the cosmos, which must be satisfied, and is eternal, self-controlled and free-willed. In particular, the view that one can control the self is important for the first Noble Truth, for life is unsatisfactory in part because there is no self, that is, there is nothing over which we have absolute control. This, together with impermanence, is enough to guarantee that any grasping attachment will miscarry. Gautama took it that what we refer to when we talk of the self is really the five aggregates (skandhas): (1) body (rupa, often translated “form,” this word sometimes bears a different meaning, signifying the visible)—body is composed of the four great elements (mahabhutas), namely earth, air, water and fire; (2) feelings (vedana), pleasurable, painful or neutral, arising from contact with things in the world; (3) perception (samjna), through which the characteristics of things in the world are known; (4) volitions, drives, impulses and other conative states (samskara), including karma, which just is voluntary action (considered as it affects our future selves); and (5) consciousness (vijnana), falling into six types, one for each of the five senses, and mind-consciousness. Consciousness is something other than knowledge or perception, namely the awareness that accompanies that perception. The last four of these aggregates are mental (nama). Gautama apparently viewed the elements of the five aggregates as realities, but pointed out that they were all transitory. Reference to a self is merely conventional, that is, there is really only the aggregates, and talk about a self provides a convenient way to speak about these aggregates. He describes a progressive meditation on each of these elements, establishing that each is other than the self, due to its impermanence, and consequent unsatisfactoriness. Nothing is to be found beyond these constituents. The whole point is to reduce the self to something purely natural, in no way exempt from natural laws. The belief in a super-natural self with qualities such as freedom from causation in its willing, indestructibility, and the ability to survive outside the natural world is viewed as something deeply ingrained, a natural result of desire and aversion. The recognition that there is no such self is expected to convince a person that grasping after permanent possession of what is desired simply makes no sense, because no desire or aversion can ever be permanently satisfied. All that makes sense is to take things as they come, and let go as they go, maintaining a certain detachment from things, but nonetheless enjoying life without grasping after it. This doctrine was the most fertile point for the philosophical elaboration of Buddhism.

             The Buddha used traditional forms of meditation to accomplish “one-pointedness” and perfect stillness of mind, so that the mental discipline needed to form one’s life to the truths he taught could be obtained. But he also introduced a peculiarly Buddhist form of meditation, which is referred to under right mindfulness, or meditation for the attainment of wisdom. One is to be aware of what is actually presented in experience at every moment, and in particular in what is presented as the self, namely the five elements of the self detailed above. A deliberate search for the true self is to be undertaken, so that one can become convinced out of experience that there is no such thing, and cease to introduce a sense of ego into what is not the self. This awareness meditation is to be practiced continually, so that a calm and controlled mindfulness is a high virtue for a Buddhist. Attention to what one is doing, care, conscientiousness, and diligence are all to be practiced, for their presence is a sign of, and fosters, mindfulness.

             Awareness that there is no self supposedly leads to unselfishness and compassion for others, the four “divine” states, kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. Buddhaghosa compares these feelings to those of a mother with four sons, “a child, an invalid, one in the flush of youth, and one busy with his own affairs.” It is to be noted that the Buddhist virtues here are all of them disinterested, that is, they are due to the recognition that the other is not different from oneself, and one’s self is not important, so that there is nothing to block the operation of one’s natural feeling of kinship for the other. They are not due to the delusory notion that the other somehow belongs to one, the way we usually think of a child or spouse, or is a true self that is valuable in absolute terms, just as one’s own self is. This means that Buddhist ethics is very different in its philosophical bearings from the ethics of someone like Kant, who systematizes what the Buddhist would take to be delusory notions.

             An early systematization of the Buddha’s way is reflected in the Buddha’s recitation of the chief topics in the Mahaparanirvana Sutta, his last discussion with the Sangha. The seven topics enumerated there, namely the four foundations of self-possession, the four right exertions, the four foundations of power, the five faculties, the five strengths, the seven factors leading to enlightenment, and the eightfold way (already discussed above), are listed in a number of places in the scriptures of all the schools. Abhidharma seems to have begun as an elaboration of these seven topics. The four noble truths are presupposed by the seven topics, no-self and impermanence figure in establishing the first truth, and the theory of causation is an elaboration of the second truth. The Sutras of the Tripitaka are, moreover, organized, to a considerable extent, in terms of this classification of topics.

             This scheme places mindfulness (smrti) at the center, taking it to arise from the practice of awareness meditation mentioned above. The four foundations (upasthana) are observation of the body, of sensations, of whatever thoughts arise, and of the five obstacles when they arise, namely, the will to pleasure, malevolence, deliberate stupidity, concern for others’ opinions, and uncertainty or lack of faith. Further classifications of phenomena are added in the elaboration of the fourth group, including the five aggregates, discussed above. Again, the monk is to observe the six spheres of the internal and external, sight and its object, hearing, smell, taste, touch (body) and their objects, and mind and its objects. He is to observe how the conditioned connection in each pair arises and passes away, where “connection” is the entanglement of the internal organs of perception in their objects, leading to unfavorable mental phenomena. Again, the monk is to observe phenomena with reference to the seven factors of enlightenment, discussed below, and the four noble truths.

             The four right exertions follow on mindfulness, and have as their aims the prevention or abandonment of bad states of mind, and the production or preservation of good states of mind.

             The four foundations of power are the ability to concentrate one’s will, one’s thought, one’s energy, and one’s investigation. These are the abilities that enable one to carry out the four exertions.

             Various lists of faculties (indriya) are to be found, but the one intended here comprises confidence in the Buddha, in the Dharma, in the Sangha, and in virtue, energy to make the exertions, mindfulness, concentration (samadhi), that is, the ability to withdraw oneself from distractions and make the four meditations, and wisdom (prajna), the understanding of origin and cessation, and the four truths, without which the other faculties cannot endure. The four meditations, borrowed by Gautama from his teachers, are, first, that which arises from separation from pleasures and the bad mental states, with the presence of joy and happiness, and reasoning and consideration of what has occurred; second, the calming of reasoning and pondering, so that one achieves serenity and concentration of mind; third, that which arises through dispassion, so that joy is no longer present, though happiness is; and fourth, that which arises from the elimination of happiness and depression, leaving purity, equanimity and mindfulness. None of these methods involves an elimination of sensory experience, or awareness of a Self. The Buddha seems to have used the exercise of entering into these successive levels of concentration to gather his forces, for instance, at the point of his death. Unlike mindfulness, this sort of meditation cannot be indulged in all the time, but requires temporary withdrawal from life.

             The five strengths are the same as the five faculties, but have become unshakable. They are nowhere discussed in the scriptures, but only enumerated.

             The seven factors of enlightenment (bodhi) are mindfulness, discrimination of phenomena, energy, joy, tranquillity, concentration, and equanimity. They are always given in this order, and it seems that, although one is to practice all of them at once, they are considered to be acquired successively, the later factors depending on the earlier. These are opposed to the five obstacles. Note that joy is one of them, and though this is non-sensual and does not involve attachment, it is still one of the things to be transcended in the four meditations. The utilitarian character of those meditations should be apparent from this. The point is not to remain even in the first meditation. The obstacles are said to be increased and fostered by allowing them “food,” so that the food of pleasure is attention to attractiveness, the food of malevolence is attention to repulsion, the food of deliberate stupidity is discontent, laziness, languor, surfeit after meals, lack of mental energy, the food of concern for others’s opinions is lack of calm, and the food of uncertainty is attention to that which one is uncertain about. One is advised to starve these obstacles, by avoiding the conditions that give rise to them, and substituting their opposites, so that one attends to the foulness of what one expects to give pleasure, to the good features of what gives rise malevolence, to courage and initiating action in order to starve deliberate stupidity, to calming the mind to combat concern for others’ opinions (which is characterized by a kind of panic), to good and bad phenomena to starve uncertainty. Similarly, one is to seek out the conditions that give rise to the factors of enlightenment. It is also advised that one should pervade each of the four directions with the four divine states of benevolence, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, by considering that all beings are like oneself. (This last meditation is sometimes called the “Brahma” meditation, for Sariputra advises a Brahmin to use it as the way to attain to the heaven of Brahma, the highest heaven.)

             One who undertook to follow the way of the Buddha would, through the undertaking alone, became a member of the family of “noble persons” (arya pudgalas) who seek the way. One could then become a follower in faith, if one’s faculties were not of the best, or a follower of the Dharma itself, that is, one who follows the moral precepts, gives to the monks, and so on, hoping for a favorable rebirth, or one who understands the more esoteric doctrines and seeks nirvana rather than rebirth in the heavens. Once one understands the four Noble Truths thoroughly, and has completely abandoned belief in a self, doubts about the Three Jewels (the Sangha, Dharma, and Buddha), and abandoned all belief in rituals, one is a streamwinner, and will suffer no further bad rebirths. Once progress is made toward stopping the outflows, one becomes a once-returner, assured of enlightenment within one more life-time, a non-returner, and finally an arhant, who has attained Nirvana in this life.

3. THE REJECTION OF BRAHMINISM

             Buddhism rejected Brahminic thought, and the Pali scriptures of early Buddhism often attack the claims of the Brahmins to pre-eminence, and their dominance of religious life. Thus in one text a dialogue between Gautama Buddha and the Brahmin Sonadandra is recounted, in which the Brahmin lays down five qualifications to be a true Brahmin. Gautama gets him to give up all the external qualifications, that is, purity of birth on both sides for seven generations, knowledge of the Vedas, a handsome appearance and fair complexion, the first or second of those who holds a spoon at sacrifices, and so on, and finally he admits that learning and virtue are alone necessary. Elsewhere it is claimed that modern day Brahmins have degenerated from the standards of the old days, and are not really ascetics, and it is roundly asserted that a person of any caste whatsoever might attain nirvana. Sometimes the rejection of the Brahmins becomes more bitter, as when it is said that the five practices distinguishing the ancient Brahmins are now given up, save among dogs. In general, the early Buddhists hold that Brahminic sacrifices will not lead to release (moksha), but only rebirth in the Brahma world ruled by Maha-Brahma, which is a heaven of sensory pleasure. The Brahmins were supposed to maintain the three fires required to carry out major sacrifices. The Buddha juxtaposed the three fires of desire, aversion, and ignorance to these, converting the Brahminic fire that makes up the essence of the world to the fires of illusion.

             Buddhists claim that Maha-Brahma, quite mistakenly, thinks that he made the world, because he was the first of things to arise in the present world-cycle. Even this much is a concession, for a note of skepticism about the very existence of Brahman is also rung. It is considered notorious that the Vedic sages have never seen Brahman. The Buddhist rejection of the reality of the self attacked a fundamental assumption of the Vedic schools, and the extension of this doctrine from the microcosm to the macrocosm led to the rejection of the view that the world has an essence. The Buddha allowed no underlying unity, no omnipotent creator or universal soul stuff, as the reality and self behind the world.

             In one place Gautama speaks of these three fires of desire, aversion and delusion (confusion or deliberate ignorance), and suggests that the householder maintain the three good fires, parents, his immediate family, and those who have renounced the world. This is a typical replacement of the Brahminic sacrificial requirements by moral requirements, repeated often in the Nikayas. In particular, the Buddha rejected the notion that there were special duties belonging to one in virtue of birth. Duties were either universal, or due to one’s undertakings, as with the duties of a member of the Sangha. One born a Kshatriya did not thereby gain a duty or a right to kill, and one born a Brahman did not thereby gain rights to make sacrifices and duties to recite scripture. So in The Questions of King Milinda a prostitute makes the Ganges flow backwards through an act of truth, asserting her virtue in imitation of Sita’s assertion of perfect conjugal fidelity to Rama which enabled her to walk through fire. The lady asserts truly that she has always given good service for the cash she was paid, as is the duty of her station, regardless of who made the payment, noble or slave, high caste or low. So much for the virtue of fulfilling the duties attaching to one’s station in life.

             In the manner of the Upanishads, the Buddha also insisted that sacrifices accomplished nothing, indeed, that they amounted to murderous cruelty to animals. When speaking to laymen, Gautama consistently reinterpreted the ritual requirements of the Brahmans as moral requirements. The moral quality of an action on his view, however, consisted not in the nature of the action itself, automatically imposing its karma, as the Jains held, but in the intention behind the action, which shaped one’s character and so is one’s karma. It was bold move to say that karma is intention, for the word “karma” in fact means “action.” Probably the Buddha was prepared to argue that the reality behind an action is the intention that drives it. This view was coupled with the insistence that a “purifying action,” that is, a good ritual action, is “really” a virtuous action in accord with Buddhist ethics, which purifies the mind of desire, aversion and illusion, in the same way that meditation does, but not so directly. Thus ritualistic purity was completely supplanted in Buddhist thought by moral purity.

             The attack on the Brahmins is combined with a general rejection of the whole caste system. In the fourth of the five dreams the Buddha was said to have had before his enlightenment, four birds of different colors came from the four quarters, fell at his feet, and became white. The birds are the four castes, who are, once they become monks, all to be regarded as the same. Within the Sangha, the Buddha said, the four castes lose their identity, like rivers flowing into the sea, and people become simply sons and daughters of the Sakya. The rejection of the caste system, and the notion of special duties applying to people in virtue of their birth, was argued for on the ground that social arrangements were different elsewhere, and argument that would have appealed especially to Gautama, looking at the central Indian culture from the viewpoint of his own border province.

             Buddhists were at odds with the Brahmins in matters of epistemology, as well. The Buddhist recognized the ultimate authority of no oral tradition, but only of the Dharma, the truth. The Buddha himself had personally realized the truth, and on his deathbed he told his followers that the Dharma and the rules of the Sangha would henceforth be their teacher. In practice, of course, the tendency was to take the Dharma as the word of the Buddha, handed down in the oral tradition of the Sangha, and one might argue that things were not so different from the Brahminic oral tradition of the Vedas. Indeed, the Pali canon remained an oral tradition, and was not written down until the nineteenth century, though the situation was different in China. But there were two important differences. One was that the Buddhist monks used the local language of the people, without chanting, and had been instructed always to do so by the Buddha. As a result the Buddhists became great translators. The second difference was that the dharma as taught by the Buddha was supposed to have the authority of experience behind it, not any supernatural revelation. The Buddha urged everyone to test the dharma he preached by their own experience. His point, of course, was that if one tried out the prescription he proposed, one would find that it worked, and he was confident of the outcome of honest testing, but nonetheless, the dharma was in principle a scientific tradition, not a revelatory one like that of the Vedas.

             A most important contrast between the Buddha’s religion and the Brahmin’s was this, that Buddhism did not think that one needed, even in principle, an intermediary to discover the truth and attain salvation. The Buddhist clergy, like Christian Protestant clergy, might teach, but it did not perform any sacred rite of salvation, or do anything other than instruct one how to proceed on one’s own. Nirvana was attained by one’s own efforts, and no one else could do it for you. There is a crucial difference between Buddhism and Protestantism, inasmuch as the Buddhist did not think that salvation could be achieved in the lay life, while the Protestant movement in 16^th-century Europe rejected monasticism along with the intermediary role of the priesthood. That is not to say that Buddhists were quite decided on this point. The Buddha himself considered it possible, though difficult, for a layman to achieve nirvana, and a few cases are recorded in the Canon, along with many cases of laymen making spiritual progress. In the Mahayana tradition the enlightened layman was to come to play a central role, and with this a healthy reconsideration of the nature of nirvana was to take place. But in the early tradition, and in the Theravada, it was generally considered almost impossible to achieve enlightenment outside the sangha, and it is clear that the Buddha himself expected anyone seriously interested in achieving nirvana to enter the sangha. Indeed, to a considerable extent, no preaching concerning meditation or the higher religious aims of Buddhism beyond that morality which would help one attain a rebirth in the heavens, or in a life in which one would enter the sangha, was available to laymen. It was simply assumed that laymen had one religious aim, attainment to heaven, and monks another, nirvana. In defense of this situation, which was criticized by the Mahayanists, it is in fact difficult to make progress toward nirvana unless one can devote a good deal of time to the thing, and that time alone, meditating, so a serious lay disciple will generally consider entering the Order at some time, usually upon retirement.

             The Buddhist layman was anyone who would listen to the preaching of the monks on occasion, perhaps join in some ceremonies at the monastery, and give alms. There was no reason why such a person might not also practice the local communal religion, observe Hindu festivals, and the like. He or she might well employ Brahmins for one purpose or another, but, if serious about Buddhism, not to attain salvation, only for worldly ends. A serious layman would undertake to follow the five moral precepts always, and observe mild austerities on feast days, almost the same austerities required of a novice monk.

             Like most religions of personal salvation, Buddhism could be practiced anywhere and by anyone. The sangha was committed, in fact, to spreading the religion abroad, and followed the trade routes, no doubt often traveling with Buddhist merchants. Thus the religion spread West along the Ganges at first, then South along the sea coast and to Ceylon, and East into Bengal.

             Buddhism, then, was not only a religion of personal salvation, as opposed to a civic religion, but a religion of individual endeavor, as opposed to a religion relying on ritual observances, and a religion of ethical rather than ritualistic purity. One result of this in popular thought, given the retention of the basic Indian cosmology, was that both the gods and the operation of Karma were converted to ethical quantities, so that one’s place in the world was held to be due entirely to the ethical quality of previous lives. The Gods became the protectors of the Buddhist religion, and the world came to be viewed much as it is in Christianity, as a place in which power is ultimately always for the good. No suffering, and no good fortune, is undeserved.

             The rejection of the traditional Hindu justification for the use of violence on behalf of society, provided in the Bhagavad Gita, for instance, led many Buddhists to pacifism. It could not be argued that it is of the essence of a Kshatriya to make war, for he has no essence, and no duties rooted in his essence, nor any special privilege to violence, unless these are moral duties and privileges extended to all. Indeed, the state itself was looked upon with some suspicion. One Jataka tale says that the future Buddha was reborn as a king’s heir-apparent, but observing, as an infant, the King dispensing justice, and imposing the death penalty, he remembered how he had spent long years in the hells for such activities in earlier lives, he resolved to pretend to be an idiot deaf-mute. The king was suspicious, but could not draw him out, and at last ordered him destroyed when he was grown, but he preached a sermon to the man who took him to the cemetery, and then proceeded to convert the entire kingdom, with the result that the city was abandoned, and everyone, except the drunks, moved out to the country to lead the religious life. The Buddhist theory of the state suggests that it is part of that world that must be escaped to truly seek enlightenment. Kings occur on one standard list of disasters along with thieves. Again, talk of state affairs, of kings and battles, is discouraged as the sort of talk that involves one in bad karma. The Buddha made an effort to get along with the state, but seems to have had no better opinion of it in the end than did St. Augustine, who described it as a great robbery. In one place a Brahmin comes to the Buddha asking how to perform a great sacrifice that he has heard it rumored he knows how to perform. Gautama answers, through a tale of one of his former lives, that a great sacrifice that would help eliminate lawlessness and disorder would be for the king to eschew the use of force and the raising of extra taxes, turning instead to supplying seed and feed to those engaged in farming, and capital to commercial ventures, and making sure that those in his service are provided for (so that they need not live off bribes and extortion). Thus the king would become rich (presumably through moderate taxation on a flourishing economy), and secure in the affection of his people. In another Sutta, a king who had ruled his country justly during the Golden Age advises his son and successor to provide wealth to the poor. (Property has already evolved, and is necessary and to be respected because sufficient goods can be obtained only through work.) He neglects to do this, though he does provide protection to the righteous, that is, to those who have property rightfully acquired, and the result is that theft begins, and the thief is brought before the king, who gives him money. But it is too late, and the gift only makes matters worse because thieves expect to be rewarded, thievery becomes commonplace, and the king begins to execute thieves instead. After this thieves carry weapons to prevent being captured, violence increases, thieves begin to lie to protect themselves, others begin maliciously to accuse people of being thieves out of malice, and things become worse and worse. Part of the lesson seems to be that once people are corrupted by poverty welfare systems and charity do harm rather than good. The trick is to prevent poverty in the first place. In yet another Sutta, the Buddha claims, apparently satirically, to explain the beginnings of this world. The troubles begin with idleness and greed, which leads heavenly beings to life on the earth, where one of them steals rice, promises not to do it again, but does, and is punished the second time. Then government arises as one of the number is chosen to keep order, and he is the first Kshatriya. Thus the origins of the castes are explained sociologically as due to human convention, not eternal and divine arrangements, and it is suggested by the way that the Kshatriyas should have precedence over the Brahmins.

             It will be noted that these stories favor the views of the merchant class. They suggest that the government would do better to enrich the people by supporting business than by instituting welfare, for instance, in particular by keeping tax rates down and relying on a flourishing economy to supply the government’s needs. Indeed, there is evidence that the Buddha’s message may have appealed especially to merchants and townspeople. It has been compared to the appeal of Protestantism in the West to the merchants of the sixteenth century. It has been noted that the activity of Gautama centered on the capital cities of the countries he visited, not the forest retreats, and it seems clear that he aimed to convert, not ascetics or religious professionals, nor country folk, but the intellectually more sophisticated urban lay people, and, if possible, political leaders. An analysis of biographical information provided in the standard commentary for the more than 300 authors of the poems in the Thera- and Theri-Gatha, if its information is to be trusted, tells us that more than two-thirds came from large towns, and that about 40% were Brahmin, 23% Kshatriya, 30% Vaishya, and 3% each Shudra and Outcaste. Nearly half of these poets came from wealthy or powerful houses. Of course, this sample includes only monks and nuns capable of composing poetry, so the upper classes are presumably over-represented in it. No doubt a class structure maintained itself in the Sangha despite its democratic form, since the lower class members would defer to the upper class, and the upper class members would have the education to make their influence felt. But the impression of this sample is reinforced by the Canon’s use of the term “householder” (gahapati) for the typical monk. A “householder” would be the independent head of a household, a freeholder rather than a day laborer, someone who could hold a seat on the village council. In the Canon they usually hold land, and have laborers to do the work, but in the cities they would be merchants or tradesmen.

             The Buddhist ethic, founded as it is on prudential considerations and skepticism about the effectiveness of ritual, seems calculated to appeal to businessmen, as does its emphasis on industry and attention to one’s work. It is suggested, for instance, that diligence will win both wealth in this world and, if one turns it that direction, nirvana. Immorality supposedly leads to poverty, a bad reputation, loss of social status, anxiety about future lives, and a bad rebirth. The first three considerations are precisely those that would appeal to a business person. The general insistence on self-reliance and one’s responsibility for one’s own affairs in Buddhism is perfectly consonant with the self-reliant confidence typical of the business class, which likes to view itself as depending on its own efforts to produce wealth, rather than on inheritance or social class. Thrift is praised as well in Buddhist ethics. In the best known sermon on lay ethics, the Buddha says that one should not spend money on drinking, gambling, luxury, keeping bad company, stage shows and attendance at fairs, but rather consume no more than a quarter of what one earns, turning half of it back into the business, and saving the rest. (Religious donations are counted as part of consumption, since they do lead to favorable rebirth.) In fact, the law of karma means that one who does badly will inevitably sink lower, into less powerful positions, and be less able to accumulate good karma in the future, whereas one who gains good karma will be born in higher positions, and become able to do much more good than before. Those who are economically well off have their good karma to thank for it, but, of course, unless they give to the Sangha and are kind and morally upright, they will accumulate bad karma and be reborn in a worse economic position than before. So just as the Calvinist took material success as a sign of “election,” so a Buddhist would take material success as a sign of virtue in the past, and progress on the way toward enlightenment.

4. THE BUDDHIST CANON

             The texts on which our knowledge of early Buddhism is based are chiefly the surviving texts in the Pali language, and Chinese translations of the Vinaya and Sutra Pitakas. The destruction of the libraries in the Buddhist homeland by the Moslem invaders of the thirteenth century means that we rely on what survived on the margins, the Pali texts of Ceylon and Indochina, texts preserved in Tibetan in monasteries in the Himalayas, and the extensive texts preserved in Chinese translations. The Pali scripture are preserved by the Theravada (= Sthaviravadin) sect, but they agree closely with the Chinese translations in doctrine, and do not seem to reflect peculiarly Theravada, or scholastic Abhidarma views. They certainly represe