Buddhism in India (arts of Japan cycle)

Under this kind of tree Buddha reached his enlightement. 
It is pipal, holy tree in India.

 

On the wet from monsoon rains and covered in lush vegetation plain of North India, outside a little village near a city of Gaia, a man sat under the boughs of a big tree. He didn’t look impressive: lean, in a patched robe, with a begging bowl lying nearby, apparently a wandering mendicant. He has just eaten a simple meal and putting his bowl aside sat in the lotus position attentively listening to the silence. He sat thus and motionlessly listened to the silence for the next forty-nine days. On the fiftieth day he suddenly woke up, as if from a deep dream. This Awakening of a poor beggar sitting under a tree was one of the most important events in the history of the world. This seemingly minor event changed the course of history of many a nation.

NIGHTMARES

This beggar saw (it is claimed) The Unseen Reality. He saw that beyond the reality surrounding us and perfectly visible, there is another reality, much more important and much more real. It appears to be invisible and impossible to describe, but all one needs is to wake up to actually see it. But why it is invisible? Because it is veiled by illusions. It is veiled by arrogance and greed, lie and indoctrination, indulgence in pleasures of food and sex. After the memorable event under the great tree the beggar travelled around North India and taught. He didn’t teach any doctrine or philosophy; all he taught was how to achieve similar Awakening. He taught that one must liberate himself from arrogance and greed, from lie and indoctrination, from indulgence in pleasures of food and sex. He himself noticed this Unseen Reality when he sat without any motion and listening to silence, therefore he taught that this could also be helpful.

RAGS

Soon he had many disciples who created a community and voluntarily accepted a monastic rule. The rule was to help to free oneself from illusions. To free themselves from indulgence in pleasures of sex they accepted celibacy. To free themselves from indulgence in pleasures of food they accepted the rule of taking one meal a day. To free themselves from greed they accepted the rule of poverty, of owning no more than a habit made from old rags and a begging bowl. To free themselves from indoctrination they accepted the rule of accepting no fixed views or doctrines and fighting no views or doctrines. To free themselves from arrogance, from considering themselves as better than other people, they accepted the rule of mendicancy, so they would always remember that even an effort to see the Unseen Reality is only possible with help of other people. As a sign of leaving the path of illusions and entering the path leading to the Unseen Reality they shaved their heads.

JOY

Gangetic plain

The Awakened (Buddha in Sanskrit) beggar came from the Sakya people, therefore he was called The Wise Man of the Sakyas (Sakyamuni in Sanskrit). They said he was a prince who fled the palace of his father in the city of Kapilavastu and chose a life of a mendicant. He travelled many years in the plains of North India until the evening when he stayed in the village of Kushinagara, where he went to the eternal sleep and entered entirely into the Unseen Reality. His disciples decided then that his teaching has to be kept for the future generations. A crowd of beggars with shaved heads gathered in the city of Rajagriha, the capital of the Magadha, the biggest kingdom of the North India plains. It was the fifth century BC. Writing was not in common use then, so they decided that it has to be memorised as much as possible. The closest disciple, who was all the time with the teacher during his later years, was brother Joy (Ananda in Sanskrit), he could recite from memory most of the teachings. The problem was, though, that brother Joy was not yet Awakened, during the life of his teacher he didn’t see the Unseen Reality. There were, however, four hundred and ninety nine Awakened beggars with shaved heads present in Rajagriha at the time. The memory alone is not to be trusted. The four hundred and ninety nine Awakened monks were necessary to make sure that the sermon memorised by brother Joy leads to the Awakening, that it is like a thread (sutra) leading to the escape from the labyrinth of illusions. The sermons had to be edited to make them easy to memorise, the best way was to put them in verses. It was agreed that as the Brahmins recite the Vedas every day, so will the monks of the new “Awakening” community recite the sermons of their teacher to pass them on to the next generations and to “soak up” their teaching. The sermons, passed on from generation to generation, became something like a thread (sutra in Sanskrit) binding the community.

JEWELS

The community (sangha in Sanskrit) quickly gained followers. The beggars with shaved heads did not fight any doctrines, so they accepted the belief in reincarnation, widespread in North India at the time. They added only that even if one doesn’t Awaken to see the Unseen Reality in this life, he could achieve that goal in the next or later life. They didn’t fight the Hindu belief in gods, they added only that the gods support the community of the Awakened. Supposedly one of the first converted to Buddhism was Indra, the Indian thunder-god. The only exception was the Deceiver (named Mara in Sanskrit), the source of all the illusions. The community of monks was there to lead all the people towards Awakening. The first step towards that goal is always selfless giving, therefore – to make sure that everyone has a chance to give - the order of beggars was created. For the lay people it was always important to support the Three Jewels (Tri Ratna in Sanskrit): the Awakened (Buddha in Sanskrit), the Teaching (Dharma in Sanskrit) and the Community (Sangha in Sanskrit).

KALINGA

Ashoka's pillar in Delhi

Alexander the Great entered North India with his armies and eliminated its kingdoms one by one, but after a short time he went back to the west. The kingdom of Magadha emerged from the turmoil as the strongest and under the Maurya dynasty conquered the valleys of both great rivers as well as Deccan. The kingdom that resisted the Mauryas longest was called Kalinga. Emperor Asoka at last conquered it in a bloody war. At the same time more and more monks with shaved heads roamed the land of the empire, they preached that who kills will be reborn in hell, whereas who refrains from killing will have a chance to see the Unseen Reality. Shaken by the bloodshed of the war against Kalinga, Emperor Asoka considered their teachings and changed his actions. He stopped the wars and ceased to hunt for pleasure, instead he made pilgrimages to Buddhist sacred sites. In all his lands he ordered stone pillars to be put up and his message of peace was written on them. In many of them appears the sentence: “All people are my children, what I desire for my children – happiness in this and the next world – I desire for all the people.” Looking after the “next world” he supported the Buddhist order and founded monasteries. Later rulers of Indian kingdoms followed his example, the most famous of those rulers was Kanishka of the Kushan dynasty. The domain of this dynasty spread in the first centuries of our era in the valleys of Indus, Oxus and Tarim. King Kanishka was a great protector of the Three Jewels, in his time the order of monks with shaved heads started spreading in Central Asia. Communities of monks recited the sutras in monasteries cut in rock in deserts, in mountains of the present-day Afghanistan and along the Silk Road. At last the wandering preachers reached the country where the silk came from.

REMAINS

What remained from the earthly body of the Wise Man of the Sakyas after the cremation was (according to tradition) kept in many places in India as precious treasures. Where they were buried huge mausolea were built. These were called stupas; the biggest one, in Ceylon, is not much smaller that the Great Pyramids. As a sign of respect they were circumambulated by the pious, always clockwise. At first neither pictures nor sculptures of the Teacher were made, in fact they were clearly avoided. In the bas relieves showing groups of people His presence was only marked by footprints. Perhaps it was to symbolise that he was already gone to the Unseen World. Later, at first in the lands of the Kushan Empire, the sculpted figures of Buddha appeared, the pious showed their respect to them by bowing to the ground. The Kushan empire dominated the lands earlier occupied by the Hellenistic kingdom of Bactria; the Greeks showed respect to their gods by bowing to effigies, possibly this way the custom entered the Buddhist religion. Certainly the earliest sculptures of Buddha are clearly Hellenistic in style, figures of perfect proportions in robes folded in a Greek manner. Later this art, Hellenistic to start with, evolved farther and spread to the most distant corners of Eurasia. The central practice of the Buddhist order was always sitting in silence, however the Awakened masters never questioned the validity of the preliminary practices, like showing respect or selfless giving. Bowing to the ground is a sign of humility, selfless giving is a contradiction of greed; they are the first steps on the path to see the Unseen Reality. No journey will ever take place without making the first step.

THREADS

At the time of Emperor Asoka new memory aids appeared: sutras written on palm leaves. With the new medium appeared also new kind of texts: psychological commentaries (as the main object of interest of Buddhists are the psychological barriers that stop men to see the Unseen Reality) and rules of monastic life (as the main object of interest was to find ways to remove the psychological barriers). Probably in the first century BC a Canon of texts appeared. It was divided into three “baskets” (pitaka in Sanskrit): The Basket of Threads (Sutra Pitaka), the Basket of Commentaries (Abhidharma Pitaka) and the Basket of Monastic Rules (Vinaya Pitaka). There appeared also a school, called Way of Elders (Sthavira Vada) that guarded the purity of the doctrine and defended it against new influences. Its members felt it was needed, because centuries passed, times changed and some monks claimed that the teaching has to be adapted. One of the things that changed was the spoken language. The Wise Man of the Sakyas avoided the language of the sacred texts of his time, the language that the lower casts didn’t understand. His message was addressed to everyone, therefore he preached in vernacular. In the vernacular, called Pali, the earliest Canon was written down. Since then the Way of Elders (Theravada in Pali) guarded this Canon and would not allow changing it.

SANSKRIT

Sutra in Sanskrit on palm leaves

The centuries passed, however, and times changed. During the late antiquity a script was quite widespread in India and a large proportion of the people could read. The literary language of North India at that time, the language of the educated, was Sanskrit. We know today sutras written in the language of that period. Although written as if the Wise Man of the Sakyas preached them himself, even with the time and place given, they seem to differ in style from the sutras preserved in the Pali Canon. They are often much longer, some of them are so long that the actual preaching would have to take several days. There are many new ideas in them, or the terms that appear in the Pali Canon have a much wider meaning in the Sanskrit Sutras. One term with a wider meaning is the Awakening Warrior (bodhisattva in Sanskrit), in the Pali Canon it only describes someone who fights for his own Awakening and who approaches his goal during many incarnations, whereas in the Sanskrit sutras it is often someone who fights for the Awakening of others, because he himself has reached perfection and appears in new incarnations only to help the humankind. Common people even revered some of those warriors, who were given names. The most popular became The Lord Listening to World’s Cries (Avalokietsvara in Sanskrit). In the Sanskrit sutras there are also personifications of some ideas, for example in the Sutra Avatamsaka appears a personification of the Unseen Reality under the name Buddha Greatsun (Vairocana in Sanskrit). Modern scholars think that those sutras were written later than the Pali Canon and that it is impossible to ascribe their authorship to the Wise Man of the Sakyas. The question of authorship is important for us, who are not interested in the Unseen Reality. For those who are interested in it the authorship is not important, the only important thing is whether the text leads to the goal, in this case towards the Awakening. The question of authorship was important to the Way of Elders, who claimed also that the monastic rule is absolutely necessary to Awakening, whereas among the teachers of the new school were some laymen. Nobody claimed, of course, that one does not need to free himself from greed or indoctrination, but the new teachers pointed out that the desire for one’s own Awakening is a form of greed and the strict following of old rules is a form of indoctrination. There was a characteristic difference between the two schools: wherever the Way of Elders spread – in Ceylon, Burma and Siam – they kept their Canon in the Pali language, whereas the representatives of the new school translated the sutras into languages of the countries they spread to: Iranian languages of Central Asia, Chinese and Tibetan.

NOTHINGNESS

The new school was called the Great Vehicle (Mahayana in Sanskrit). It was by no means a primitive heresy and a simplification, the best minds of the Subcontinent belonged to this school. Nagarjuna, a sage living in the second century of our era and the author of a philosophical treaty called “Madhyamaka Sastra”, is often considered one of the greatest thinkers in the history of India. This treaty says that all that exists is underlined by nothingness (sunyata in Sanskrit). For a reader not interested in the Unseen Reality the book is unreadable and absurd. The problem is that all texts of the Great Vehicle are written to help the reader in noticing the Unseen Reality, not to describe this Reality; they are written for a reader who started already certain practices. The Great Vehicle talks about six practices “leading to the other side” (paramita in Sanskrit): giving (dana), morality (sila), forgiving (kshanti), courage (virya), silent concentration (dhyana) and understanding or wisdom (prajna). These are important things, all those highbrow book are only accessories, like the figures of Buddha. Absurd texts are quite common in the literature of the Great Vehicle, they attack the natural tendency of the mind to self-indoctrination. Dharani, the string of syllables entirely devoid of meaning, seem to be even more absurd. Dharani are often quite long texts, a recitation of a single one may last about an hour. They are supposed to drive away “demons”, in other words undesirable states of mind; they are – like music – to create a state of mind that helps in achieving the really important goal: the Awakening. For the adherents of the Way of Elders they were – as they are for us – superstitious spells, but the followers of the Great Vehicle had a different opinion about them. The first who without a polemic mentioned dharani in his writings was Asanga, who lived in the fifth century and wrote a treaty entitled “Yogacara Bhumi Sastra”. This treaty was quite popular among the followers of the Great Vehicle, it was translated into several languages. Even greater influence had Asanga’s brother named Vasubandhu, author of several books, of which the best known was “Abhidharmakosa”. Vasubhandhu had a huge respect already during his life. Born in Peshawar, he taught at the monastic universities in Kashmir and at the court of emperors of the Gupta dynasty, who ruled the whole of North India. All those book are today considered philosophical and superficially they sometimes contradict each other, but one has to remember that this is not a philosophy in the Western sense. They do not describe the world, their purpose is not to indoctrinate, but to direct the mind towards a certain goal. They were written in a certain time and place as a response to a specific situation, the contradictions are only superficial. In later centuries and in different places they were used alternately, depending on needs. In the times of Nagarjuna and Vasubhandhu, too, the order of monks with shaved heads did not accept fixed views nor did it fight any doctrines. They clang to nothing, views and doctrines they changed as one changes gloves.

Buddha in hellenistic style

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