The connection between early yogācāras, or practitioners of yoga, and later Yogācāra-vijñānavāda philosophy has long preoccupied scholars. But these connections remain obscure. This article suggests that a text that has received little attention in modern scholarship, the Saddharmasmṛtyupasthānasūtra, may shed light on aspects of early yogācāra contemplative cultures that gave rise to some of the formative dynamics of Yogācāra-vijñānavāda thought. I show how traditional Buddhist meditative practice and engagement with Abhidharma theoretics come together in the Saddharmasmṛtyuasthānasūtra to produce a novel (...) theory of mind that mirrors many of the philosophical problematics that early and late Yogācāra-vijñānavādins confronted and attempted to work out in śāstric detail. (shrink)

The present paper is the third in a series dedicated to uncovering the canonical sources of Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddhacarita and, to the extent possible, the monk-poet’s sectarian affiliation. Whereas parts I and II focused on Chapter 16’s indebtedness to (Mūla)sarvāstivāda Vinaya and/or Sūtra literature, this third part inquires into the sources of Aśvaghoṣa’s account of the Buddha’s enlightenment in Chapter 14 (whose first 31 verses have been preserved in their Sanskrit original). Detailed analysis reveals this chapter’s intimate relationship with T. 189, (...) a (Mūla)sarvāstivāda (?) biographical sūtra extant in Chinese translation only, but also with textual materials that have come to belong to Mūlasarvāstivāda literature and, as already demonstrated by Kajiyama Yūichi, with the Nagar(opam)asūtra of the Saṃyuktāgama. Among these likely sources, some provide a lively description of the five destinies, others relate to the iconographic prescriptions laid down for drawing the so-called Wheel of saṃsāra/existence, while yet others spell out the doctrine of dependent origination. The detailed comparison of these materials is followed by an admittedly speculative attempt to assess the relationship between these sources. (shrink)

In both the A?guttara Nik?ya in Pali and the Ekottarika?gamain Chinese translation, the suttas are grouped into eleven nip?tas, from the Ekaka-nip?ta/Eka-nip?ta to the Ek?dasaka-nip?ta – though in the Ekottarika?gama the nip?tas are not labelled as such. This grouping into nip?tas is based on the number of doctrinal items dealt with in the component suttas. In the Ones and Twos, it is often the case that a single original sutta has been subdivided so that its component sections become a series (...) of similarly structured derivative suttas superficially appropriate for inclusion in the Ones or Twos. Moreover, material for this process of subdividing has sometimes been provided by multiplying doctrinal sets with formulaic statements. In most of the remaining nip?tas the phenomena noted in the Ones and Twos are also present, but on a much smaller scale. In view of their Chinese counterparts in the Sa?yukta?gama, some groups of suttas in the A?guttara Nik?ya with sa?yutta-like nature were probably moved from the Sa?yutta Nik?ya to the A?guttara Nik?ya within the Pali tradition. Evidence of a comparable movement into the Ekottarika?gama is also available. The artificial suttas created by subdivision and the original suttas shared by the Ekottarika?gama and the A?guttara Nik?ya largely retained their original places at the beginning of each nip?ta, while the genuine suttas, probably earlier located in the Sa?yukta?gama and Madhyama?gama, were added progressively at the end of the growing nip?ta. (shrink)

Scholars have pointed out that the arguments for not-self recurring in the Buddhist texts are meant to refute the “self” in the Upani?ads. The Buddha’s denial of the self, however, was not only pointed at Brahmanism, but also confronted various?rama?ic trends of thought against Brahmanism. This paper investigates the extant three versions of a Buddhist text which records a debate between the Buddha and Saccaka, an adherent of a certain?rama?ic sect, over the relationship of the self and the five aggregates. (...) There exist divergences among the three versions in regard to the account of this debate. The account in sutta 35 of the Majjhima Nik?ya is generally consistent with that in s?tra 110 of the Sa?yukta?gama in Chinese translation, whereas s?tra 10 of Chapter 37 of the Ekottarika?gama in Chinese translation tells a very different story. Judging from Saccaka’s title, Niga??haputta, and his background as given in the Pali commentary, he was an adherent of Jainism. This paper demonstrates that Saccaka’s view, which was refuted by the Buddha, as stated in the two similar versions has nothing to do with Jainism, but rather it is an “invention” created by distorting Brahmanical thought. This “invention” has led the Pali commentaries and contemporary scholars to interpret the ‘self’ denied by the Buddha as what comes under one’s mastery or control, and to understand the statement “Each of the five aggregates is not self” in the Buddhist texts as denying the idea that each of the five aggregates can be seen as what comes under control. This, however, misses the point. The mainstream thought in India at that time conceived the ‘self’ or the essence of the individual or of the universe as a ‘controller’, and it is this concept that the Buddha exerted all his energy to overturn. Therefore, the account in those two versions of the text apparently has some mistake. As to the Ekottarika?gama version of the text, Saccaka’s view as stated therein is very different from what is found in the above two versions. An examination of this version shows that the views rebutted by the Buddha are very similar to those of the?j?vikas. Since the Buddhist texts frequently confuse the?j?vikas with the Jains, it is very likely that Saccaka was actually an adherent of the?j?vika faith and that this discourse is meant to criticize the?j?vika doctrines. Since the Ekottarika?gama version seems to make better sense, this version may be fairly close to the original account, while the other two versions have considerably deviated from the original. By comparing these three versions of the text, I also attempt to explore some important issues regarding the sectarian development of Buddhism, and to shed some light on the unique values of the Chinese Ekottarika?gama, which is, in terms of sectarian affiliation, significantly distant from the Pali Majjhima Nik?ya and the Chinese Sa?yukta?gama that belong to two closely related schools. (shrink)

Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddhacarita contains two sharply argumented critiques of the non-Buddhists’ self: one against Arāḍa Kālāma’s (proto-)Sāṅkhya version of the ātman in Canto 12, and one of a more general import in Canto 16. Close scrutiny of the latter?s narrative environment reveals Aśvaghoṣa’s indebtedness, in both contents and wording, to either a Mahāsāṅghika(/Lokottaravādin) or—much more plausibly—a (Mūla)sarvāstivāda account of the events that saw the Buddha preach selflessness to King Bimbasāra and his Magadhan subjects. Besides hinting at this genetic relationship, the present (...) essay aims at exhibiting the structure and contents of Aśvaghoṣa’s arguments against the self, some of which can pride themselves of a long posterity in the controversy over the self. (shrink)

The dynamic process of karmic activity is one of the key philosophical concepts of the Buddhist doctrine, and is traditionally explained as the operation of a chain of 12 mutually interlinked members of dependent origination. Textual research, however, reveals that a series of alternative chains of members of dependent origination coexisted prior to the systematization of this earlier textual material into the standardized list of 12 members. Such an alternative list consists of 10 members. This article examines the importance of (...) this particular list of 10 members in the development of Yogācāra Buddhist philosophy. This philosophy, the basic interpretation of the mundane world of which is that the world around us only xists as the working of the human mind, i.e. the domain of perceptual consciousness, matured in the late fourth–early fifth century CE. This examination of the 10-fold formula of dependent origination also adds to our knowledge of the region of origin of Yogācāra philosophy, and thus on the geographical diversities within the development of Buddhist philosophy. (shrink)

This study provides an overview of what is known about the shorter Chinese Samyukta Agama and also an annotated translation of its first 22 suttas, which corresponds to the Pali Bhikkhu Samyutta. Recent research suggests that T.100 belongs to the corpus of Sarvastivada Literature. The annotations resolve some unique expressions, correct some mistakes found in the textus receptus, and point out significant differences between the versions of the suttas. The text base for Chinese is the CBETA/Taisho edition, for Pali the (...) Chatta Sangayana edition published by the Vipassana Research Institute, if not indicated otherwise. The paper is a first result of the Bieyi za ahan jing-Project 1 at the Chung-hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies, Taiwan, which aims at a digital edition and translation of the complete work. (shrink)