Buddha: 563-483 B.C.E.

In first sermon on the Dharma, he proclaimed the four noble truths.

Dharma: [law, duty, teaching, and mental state]

Hinayana: the saving truth that was lived and taught by the Buddha

Mahayana: "a more metaphysical significance."

Four noble truths:

1. All existence is suffering (dukhka);

2. All suffering is caused by craving (trishna)

3. All suffering can be ended

4. The way to end suffering is by practicing the noble eightfold path

The path that brings salvation as a "middle way" -- between self-indulgence and self-mortification:

Right views will be the torch to light his way.

Right aspirations will be his guide.

Right speech will be his dwelling place on the road.

His gait will be straight, for it is right behavior.

His refreshments will be the right way of earning his livelihood.

Right efforts will be his steps;

Right thoughts his breath;

and right contemplation will give him the peace that follows in his footsteps...

See also the discussion, The Questions of King Malinda [Menander, a Greek king who ruled n.w. India in the second century B.C.E.)

After the Buddha's death:

Establishing the monastic tradition: source: Mahaparinabbana Sutta (Sermon of the great decease)

Sutra Pitaka (basket of discourses) -- at the core, sermons or dialogues of the Buddha

Vinaya Pitaka (basket of monastic rules)

Primary schisms:

Second Council at Visali: 1st half of 4th ct. B.C.E.

Split between: liberal Mahasanghika (great assembly) and more conservative Sthaviravada (in Pali, Theravada: school of the elders)

Later, two other groups broke away from the conservatives:

Vatsiyaputras (or Sammitiyas) who believed in a form of ersonal entity (pudgala)

Sarvastivadins who believed in the existence of a past and future time.

The Three Main Traditions (ch. 8)

Asoka: ruled 273-232 B.C.E. -- his role in the history of Buddhism compared with that of Constantine in Christianity...."What had been, only two centuries before, a small, nonconformist sect was elevated to the status of a potentially universal religion. True to the principles of Buddhism, Asoka practiced tolerance of other religions, including the brahmans who continued to support Hinduism. Nevertheless, the Buddhists no longer thought of their community simply as a monastic order complemented by a relatively unorganized laity, but rather as a sangha operating in tandem with a Buddhist state ruled by a Buddhist king."

(After Asoka's death, the empire began to decline. Among other factors, the "proclamation of Buddhist pacifism as a policy....")

Hinayana (small boat) -- development during the two centuries B.C.E. and two centuries in the C.E.

Concept of the Buddha: tendency to divinize the Buddha. "Within the monastic tradition it was asserted that, in addition to his human, physical body, the Buddha possessed a more ultimate Dharma body, or dharmakaya. (Sometimes this was interpreted as a body associated with his practice of the Way, and sometimes as a body associated with the truth he had taught.) The conservative schools kept such speculation in check. In the more liberal traditions, the dharmic body, or body of truth, became more significant, whereas the human, physical body was reduced to the level of mere appearance."

"Among the laity the tendency toward divinization was related to the growing importance of devotional activities." This veneration of the founder hows up initially in the form of great stupas. "By the beginning of the Christian era, images of the Buddha began to appear. Through their enthusiastic participation in the veneration of these stupas and images, the laity came to view the Buddha as a great being who had much in common with the classical HIndu gods such as Brahma and Visnu."

In addition, "development of new and extended accounts of his life."

(Devotional cult surrounding Maitreya, a future Buddha residing in the Tusita heaven [fourth in a hierarchy of six heavens constituting the upper regions of the world of desire], awaiting the appropriate time to come into the world and establish his community. In Sarvastivadin strongholds in northwestern India and central Asia, the devout sought to accumulate merit in order to be reborn when Maitreya descended into the human world....society would be perfected, and the eightfold path and nirvana would be accessible to all.

Development of the concept of the Dharma

Composition of technical doctrinal treatises, their collection:

Abhidarma Pitaka (basket of the higher Dharma) -- a third segment of teachings equal in authority to the much older Sutra and Pitakas Vinaya.

"...carried forward the early Buddhist effort to analyze all reality into discrete elements which, in this context, were called dharmas. They described the process through which the dharmas that made up the individual beings and the various levels of cosmic reality came together, and they specified the process through which human actions, despite the nonexistence of any kind of self, created their appropriate punishments and rewards. They affirmed the reality of nirvana as a very different 'unconditioned' dharma that was equated with release from the cycle of rebirth. Finally, they analyzed the eightfold path, including its practices of discipline, meditation, and insight. In this way they sought to describe the process thorugh which the causes of the coming together of the conditioned dharmas (that is to say, the causes of existence and suffering) could be uprooted in order to achieve nirvana, the unconditioned."

An equivalent development in teachings directed to the less advanced monks and the laity -- e.g., descriptions of various conditions in which a human being could be reborn, including the various hells; the realm of suffering ghosts; the realm of the asuras or fallen deities; the realm of animals, the realm of human beings; and the realm of the gods.

The kinds of deeds that could lead to rebirth were specified.

New practices appeared -- e.g., "rituals designed to transfer merit from one individual to another, particularly from a living person to a deceased relative who might be languishing in one of the various hells or in the realm of the suffering ghosts." Also, lay-sponsored performance of paritta ceremonies: monks recite particular sutras to produce magical power which would assure their patron's safety, health, and prosperity.

Monastic development

"The efforts of the monks and nuns to legitimate their position in the life of the community led to the collection of teachings on the arya pudgala, or noble beings." -- who had entered one of four stages of the supraworldly path. A few such noble beings, who had obtained the "spotless eye of Dharma" that provided authority in matters of teaching and doctrine, could be placed alongside the Buddha and the Dharma as the third jewel or refuge. These were "a spiritual aristocracy which guaranteed the purity and sacred status of the community as a whole."

Similar legitimating interests apparent in the development of claims "of the existence of an unbroken lineage of 'masters of the Dharma.'...The majority of the later Hinayana schools held that their basic lineage began with the Buddha himself and included Mahaksyapa, the monk who supposedly convened the first council, three early arhants [those who had achieved nirvana] who succeeded him, and Upagupta, the legendary preceptor of Asoka."

Continuing splintering -- e.g., up to 18 different schools, and widening gap between the conservatives and liberals. "The conservatives emphasized the spiritual superiority of the monks, exalting the perfections of the arhants and other noble beings. The liberals, who questions these perfections, were less strict in maintaining the distinction between the monastic and lay traditions." In this way, they literally opened the door of the monastery to innovations from the laity -- and thus to the development of the Mahayana [Great Vehicle] tradition.