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Crumbling cigars of bark bring scholars one step closer to ancient words of Buddha

:: Crumbling cigars of bark bring scholars one step closer to ancient words of Buddha

BY ALICE MOLDOVAN

PHOTO

After more than 2,000 years, these birch bark scrolls easily fall to pieces.

SUPPLIED: MARK ALLON

The oldest Buddhist texts in the world are crumbly, prone to flaking into pieces at any time. Even conservators can't touch them with their bare hands.

Before they were found, the oldest manuscripts that scholars could study — texts from Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand — were only a few hundred years old and often damaged by the tropical climate.

Mark Allon, one of 20 people in the world who can read the scrolls' ancient language, says in comparison, the crumbling birch bark artefacts take researchers "way, way back".

"It's taking us very close, closer to the Buddha," he says.

Dr Allon leads the team at the University of Sydney that is digitising some of the 2,000-year-old manuscripts, which have only recently been unfurled.

Through his work, the public will soon be able to see them online and understand their ancient teachings.

The Treasure of Religious Diversity

Dharmavidya:

There is a sutra called the Parinirvana. It is concerned with the last three months of the life of the Buddha. It begins with a conversation in which the Buddha is obliquely giving advice to a politician who is considering going to war.

The first thing that we should take from this passage, therefore, is that political and religious affairs are not two watertight separate compartments. The Buddha is here dealing with an eminently worldly matter, namely war and peace.

When we look at the world today we see that far from bringing peace, as the Buddha attempted to do, religious differences often amplify community conflicts. This is due to a misunderstanding of Dharma.

In the course of the conversation, the Buddha has the following exchange with Ananda:

   "What have you heard, Ananda: do the Vajjis show respect, honor, esteem, and veneration towards their shrines, both those within the city and those outside it, and do not deprive them of the due offerings as given and made to them formerly?"

   "I have heard, Lord, that they do venerate their shrines, and that they do not deprive them of their offerings."

   "So long, Ananda, as this is the case, the growth of the Vajjis is to be expected, not their decline.

Now we can assume that these shrines are not all Buddhist ones, especially as there is a reference to their traditional past. Perhaps none of them are, since we are still in the period of the Buddha's lifetime. It implies that the shrines are, indeed, a source of strength and cohesion to the community and give that community moral strength. This is good. The shrines of the Vajjis are probably different from those of neighbouring peoples. Each tribe has its identity expressed in its religious form.

These words of the Buddha tell us his attitude toward religious difference. He is not expecting everybody to be a Buddhist and he is acknowledging the value that diverse religious practices can bring. If we can value religious diversity as a treasure rather than a threat then it is possible to have peace in the world and growth is to be expected, not decline.

Clearly, the Buddha sees the value of social stability as well as of growth and change; of diversity as well as cohesion. The important thing is not to set these principles at war with one another but to proceed in a way that respects what is already good and adds what is better without prejudice. Harmony between religions is a key to world peace.

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The Smaller Pureland Sutra

The Smaller Pureland Sutra

Thus did I hear

Once the Buddha at Shravasti dwelt

In the Jeta Anathapindika garden

Together with a multitude of friars

One thousand two hundred and fifty

Who were arhats every one

As was recognised by all.

Amongst them...
Shariputra the elder, Great Maudgalyayana, Maha-kashyapa,
 Maha-katyayana, Maha-kausthila,
Revata, Shuddi-panthaka,
Nanda, Ananda, Rahula,
Gavampati, Pindola Bhara-dvaja,

Kalodayin, Maha-kapphina, Vakkula, Aniruddha,
and many other disciples
each similarly great.

And, in addition, many bodhisattva mahasattvas...
Manjushri, prince of the Dharma, Ajita, Ganda-hastin,

Nityo-dyukta,

Together with all such as these

Even unto Shakra the king of devas

With a vast assembly of celestials

Beyond reckoning.

The Larger Pureland Sutra Sukhavativyuha: Manifesting the Land of Bliss

The Larger Pureland Sutra Sukhavativyuha: Manifesting the Land of Bliss

 

[The Scene] *
1. Thus have I heard. At one time the Blessed One was staying at the Vulture Peak at Rajagriha 2.

2. At that time the Buddha was attended by twelve thousand monks, all of them arhats.3

3. Among them were
- the Buddha’s first five disciples, the first arhats, Ajnatakaundinya, Ashvajit, Bashpa, Mahanama, and Bhadrajit;
- the first lay disciples who had all subsequently ordained: Yashas and his four friends, Vimala, Subahu, Purna son of Maitriyani, and Gavampati;
- the three Kashyapa brothers, Uruvilva Kashyapa, Gaya Kashyapa and Nadi Kashyapa, together with Kashyapa the younger and Kashyapa the great;
- the two friends, Maudgalyayana and Shariputra;
- the disciples Kapphina, Chunda, Aniruddha, Nandika, Kimpila, Subhuti, Revata, Khadiravanika, Vakkla, Svagata, Amogharaja, Parayanika, Pantha, Pantha the younger; - the Buddha’s half brother Nanda, his son Rahula, and his cousin and closest disciple Ananda;

4. The Buddha was also attended by a great many bodhisattva mahasattvas4 with Maitreya 5 at their head.6

[Ananda’s Enquiry] *
5. [23.] Then the reverend Ananda rose from his seat, uncovered his right shoulder, approached the Buddha, and knelt with his right knee touching the ground7. He joined his palms in anjali and said:
“The Blessed One’s sense powers appear serene, the colour of his skin is pure, his countenance is cleansed, radiating with a golden glow. As the jujube fruit turns bright yellow in autumn, pure, cleansed, radiating a golden colour, or as a skilfully made ornament of Jambu River gold displayed on a white cloth shows its purity, so the Blessed One appears radiant today.

6. [24] “Oh Blessed One, I do not ever recall seeing the Tathagata so serene, purified, cleansed, and radiant as I do today. This thought occurs to me ‘Today the Tathagata dwells in the sphere of most rare Dharma! the sphere of Buddhas! Today, the One who is the Eye of the World is centred upon what must be done by a guide of the world! Today, the One who is pre-eminent in the world dwells in supreme bodhi! Today, the Honoured of the Gods possesses all the virtues of a Tathagata! The Buddhas of the three times contemplate one another8. Could it be that you are now bringing to mind all the other Buddhas? Are you gazing upon the tathagatas, arhats, Samyak Sambuddhas of the past, the future and the

present? Is that why your august presence shines with such a radiance today?”

7. [25] Then the Blessed One said to Ananda,
“You are right, Ananda, you are right. But did the devas reveal this to you or did you discern this yourself, with knowledge arising from your own reflection?”

The Sutra on the Contemplation of the Buddha Amitayus

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THE SUTRA ON THE CONTEMPLATION OF THE BUDDHA AMITAYUS

The Sutra on the Contemplation of the Buddha Amitayus

NOTE: The famous “Sutra on the Contemplation of Buddha Amitayus” (or simply, “Contemplation Sutra”) is revered as canonical by all Pure Land Buddhists, and is one of the Three Sutras of Pure Land Buddhism, the others being the Larger Sukhavati-vyuha Sutra and the Smaller Sukhavati-vyuha Sutra. In the Contemplation Sutra, the Nembutsu (Namo Amida Butsu) is specifically proclaimed as the avenue to liberation of suffering beings from samsara. This English translation by J. Takakusu published originally as vol. XLIX of The Sacred Books of the East series (Oxford, 1894, public domain) has been edited for ease of reading and comprehension by modern readers. Footnotes from the original edition are dated and have thus been eliminated. A reprint of the unaltered and fully annotated translation exists in Dover paperback.
PART I.

1. Thus have I heard: At one time the Buddha dwelt in Rajagriha, on Vulture Peak, with a large assembly of Bhikkhus and with thirty-two thousand Bodhisattvas, with Manjushri the Dharma-Prince at the head of the assembly.

2. At that time, in the great city of Rajagriha there was a prince, the heir-apparent, named Ajatasatru. He listened to the wicked counsel of Devadatta and other friends and forcibly arrested Bimbisara his father, the king, and shut him up by himself in a room with seven walls, proclaiming to all the courtiers that no one should approach (the king). The chief consort of the king, Vaidehi by name, was true and faithful to her lord, the king. She supported him in this way: having purified herself by bathing and washing, she anointed her body with honey and ghee mixed with corn-flour, and she concealed the juice of grapes in the various garlands she wore in order to give him food without being noticed by the warder. As she stole in and made an offering to him, he was able to eat the flour and to drink the juice of grapes. Then he called for water and rinsed his mouth. That done, the king stretched forth his folded hands towards Vulture Peak and duly and respectfully made obeisance to the World-Honored One, who at that time was living there. And he uttered the following prayer: ‘Mahamaudgalyayana is my friend and relative; let him, I pray, feel compassion towards me, and come and communicate to me the eight prohibitive precepts of the Buddha.’ On this, Mahamaudgalyayana at once appeared before the king, coming with a speed equal to the flight of a falcon or an eagle, and communicated to him the eight precepts.

The Sutra on the Contemplation of the Buddha Amitayus

NOTE: The famous “Sutra on the Contemplation of Buddha Amitayus” (or simply, “Contemplation Sutra”) is revered as canonical by all Pure Land Buddhists, and is one of the Three Sutras of Pure Land Buddhism, the others being the Larger Sukhavati-vyuha Sutra and the Smaller Sukhavati-vyuha Sutra. In the Contemplation Sutra, the Nembutsu (Namo Amida Butsu) is specifically proclaimed as the avenue to liberation of suffering beings from samsara. This English translation by J. Takakusu published originally as vol. XLIX of The Sacred Books of the East series (Oxford, 1894, public domain) has been edited for ease of reading and comprehension by modern readers. Footnotes from the original edition are dated and have thus been eliminated. A reprint of the unaltered and fully annotated translation exists in Dover paperback.
PART I.

1. Thus have I heard: At one time the Buddha dwelt in Rajagriha, on Vulture Peak, with a large assembly of Bhikkhus and with thirty-two thousand Bodhisattvas, with Manjushri the Dharma-Prince at the head of the assembly.

2. At that time, in the great city of Rajagriha there was a prince, the heir-apparent, named Ajatasatru. He listened to the wicked counsel of Devadatta and other friends and forcibly arrested Bimbisara his father, the king, and shut him up by himself in a room with seven walls, proclaiming to all the courtiers that no one should approach (the king). The chief consort of the king, Vaidehi by name, was true and faithful to her lord, the king. She supported him in this way: having purified herself by bathing and washing, she anointed her body with honey and ghee mixed with corn-flour, and she concealed the juice of grapes in the various garlands she wore in order to give him food without being noticed by the warder. As she stole in and made an offering to him, he was able to eat the flour and to drink the juice of grapes. Then he called for water and rinsed his mouth. That done, the king stretched forth his folded hands towards Vulture Peak and duly and respectfully made obeisance to the World-Honored One, who at that time was living there. And he uttered the following prayer: ‘Mahamaudgalyayana is my friend and relative; let him, I pray, feel compassion towards me, and come and communicate to me the eight prohibitive precepts of the Buddha.’ On this, Mahamaudgalyayana at once appeared before the king, coming with a speed equal to the flight of a falcon or an eagle, and communicated to him the eight precepts.

How to read a Sutra - Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya answers this question :: link

QUESTION: What is the best way of reading and interpreting a sutra?

SHORT ANSWER: One tries to understand the Dharma contained in it and let the images bring that Dharma to life deep within.

LONGER ANSWER: I think one of the points in the questioner's mind is the question of how literally to take such things as descriptions of the Pure Land. Different readers certainly do differ in such matters and there is not really a strong orthodoxy on the matter. If we take the descriptions of the Pure Land, I think we have to take it that these are descriptions of visions. They do not necessarily correspond in detail to the geography. If you plan to emigrate to New Zealand you no doubt have an image in your mind of what it is like but this image will not correspond exactly to what you find when you get there. Nonetheless, the image does, in a certain way, correspond to the aspiration that is in your heart. So Pure Land Buddhists expect to be somewhere after death and they expect it to be a place close to the Buddha that is inspiring and some have been so inspired that they visualise that land and some of those visions have found their way into the texts.

Not just in the Pure Land schools. Much of Mahayana Buddhist literature from the Avatamsaka Sutra onwards is visionary. These visionary samadhis are themselves important practice. If you cultivate that vision it will work magic in your soul.

I am in Korea at the moment. There are lots of depictions of Buddhas here with Korean facial features. Now we know that Shakyamuni was not Korean, but never mind, we all know what the picture or statue is about.

So what matters is, on the one hand, the Dharma within the imagery and, on the other hand, the way that the imagery itself gives life to Dharma. Dharma is not just intellectual, it is supposed to lodge deeply within you. It is not just something to think rationally about, but, rather, something that should enter into one’s dream body. When Dharma has penetrated and permeated the unconscious mind then one is somewhere near to being a practitioner and to get to that state poetry, imagery and story are more effective than reductive literalism.

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The Famous Dialectic of Chan ~ Dharmavidya

The most famous classic of Chan Buddhism (Chinese Zen) is the Platform Sutra 六祖壇經. The sutra presents the teachings of Huineng 慧能 (638-713) [However, the text went through many revisions and the ten chapter edition that is currently taken as authoritative actually dates from 1291]. The most read section is the first chapter which records the competition for succession to Hongren 弘忍, the fifth patriarch. There were two contenders, Huineng and Shenxiu 神秀. The competition was conducted by the writing of a verse. The verse should show the author's understanding of the fundamental meaning of Chan.

The verse of Shenxiu is as follows

The body is the bodhi tree,
The mind like a mirror bright.

Ceaselessly, diligently, wipe the mirror
Let no dust alight!

Huineng then wrote a rejoinder to this verse

Fundamentally bodhi has no tree,
The mirror has no stand.
Originally there is not a single thing
Upon which dust could land.

These two verses are of enormous importance in understanding the deep meaning of Buddhism. On the one hand, there is the work of cleaning the mind. On the other hand, there is the realisation that mind itself cannot be contaminated. All delusion is adventitious and ephemeral. To not work at the practice is to sink further into delusion, yet to work too hard at the practice is to take delusion too seriously. What is one to do?

All Buddhist practices seek to cut through this seeming contradiction in one way or another. We could say that if Shenxiu's verse is the thesis, Huineng's is the antithesis; and the task is to find the synthesis.

Whether we see a Bodhi Tree
Or a mirror bright
When we welcome everything
Dust will shine with light.

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The Sutra on the Contemplation of the Buddha Amitayus

NOTE: The famous "Sutra on the Contemplation of Buddha Amitayus" (or simply, "Contemplation Sutra") is revered as canonical by all Pure Land Buddhists, and is one of the Three Sutras of Pure Land Buddhism, the others being the Larger Sukhavati-vyuha Sutra and the Smaller Sukhavati-vyuha Sutra. In the Contemplation Sutra, the Nembutsu (Namo Amida Butsu) is specifically proclaimed as the avenue to liberation of suffering beings from samsara. This English translation by J. Takakusu published originally as vol. XLIX of The Sacred Books of the East series (Oxford, 1894, public domain) has been edited for ease of reading and comprehension by modern readers. Footnotes from the original edition are dated and have thus been eliminated. A reprint of the unaltered and fully annotated translation exists in Dover paperback.
PART I.

1. Thus have I heard: At one time the Buddha dwelt in Rajagriha, on Vulture Peak, with a large assembly of Bhikkhus and with thirty-two thousand Bodhisattvas, with Manjushri the Dharma-Prince at the head of the assembly.

2. At that time, in the great city of Rajagriha there was a prince, the heir-apparent, named Ajatasatru. He listened to the wicked counsel of Devadatta and other friends and forcibly arrested Bimbisara his father, the king, and shut him up by himself in a room with seven walls, proclaiming to all the courtiers that no one should approach (the king). The chief consort of the king, Vaidehi by name, was true and faithful to her lord, the king. She supported him in this way: having purified herself by bathing and washing, she anointed her body with honey and ghee mixed with corn-flour, and she concealed the juice of grapes in the various garlands she wore in order to give him food without being noticed by the warder. As she stole in and made an offering to him, he was able to eat the flour and to drink the juice of grapes. Then he called for water and rinsed his mouth. That done, the king stretched forth his folded hands towards Vulture Peak and duly and respectfully made obeisance to the World-Honored One, who at that time was living there. And he uttered the following prayer: 'Mahamaudgalyayana is my friend and relative; let him, I pray, feel compassion towards me, and come and communicate to me the eight prohibitive precepts of the Buddha.' On this, Mahamaudgalyayana at once appeared before the king, coming with a speed equal to the flight of a falcon or an eagle, and communicated to him the eight precepts.

Day after day he visited the king. The World-Honored One sent also his worthy disciple Purna to preach the Dharma to the king. Thus a period of three weeks passed by. The king showed in his expression that he was happy and contented when he had an opportunity of hearing the Dharma as well as of enjoying the honey and flour.