History and Dharma (2)

When original Buddhism arose, it already contained a special feature, absent in anything previously regarded religious, spiritual, or dharmic. This feature was at the very core of Gautama the Buddha's method of instruction, namely, it was critical thought geared intentionally to empower the individual with the means for his or her own salvation. Admitedly, salvation was still conceived in ascending, exclusively transcendental terms, but the power to grant salvation was not in any way external to the seeker. When it was conceived to be external, the Buddha was quick to point out the symbolic nature of such conception, and point the audience's understanding back unto themselves as agents and meaning-makers, though at the time one would more likely think of karma-makers, since ethics was the basic religious discipline.

Very soon after Shakyamuni's demise, his students, notably arahants and other aryas, began to codify, organize and formalize his teachings, that were passed in oral transmission from generation to generation, surely not without modification. The whole dharma was organized in three collections, known as Vinaya (code of discipline), Sutra (sermons mostly by the Buddha), and Abhidharma (systematic classification of teachings found in sutra). While each school developed their own vinaya with slight variations in emphasis, the sutra collection was augmented by Mahayana sutras, that are sometimes known as a separate collection, "bodhisattva pitaka". As teachings grew in complexity and diversity, they were classified as nitartha (definite meaning) and neyartha (requiring interpretation), and later also in different levels of doctrinal superiority, as found in Indo-Tibetan and Sino-Japanese traditions.

Interestingly, the Abhidharma developed into an illustrious tradition of logic and dialectics, through later schools such as Sarvastivada, Vaibhasika, Madhyamika and Yogacara, notably from 4th to 7th Century AD. Now, is Abhidharma a rational discipline? Surely. But this style of rational discourse is used in a very specific way, not to question anything found in the sutras, but to see how it can be true and consistent with something else found in sutras, when the two claims seem to contradict each other. In some Tibetan schools, Abhidharma is closely related to Prajnaparamita or "wisdom" sutras, that use dialectical reasoning along with paradox to establish two truths, namely conventional truth (samvrti-satya) and the ultimate meaning (paramartha). Of course, dialectic is a rational procedure, but rationality includes also arguments based on probability, direct experience etc. and all these are present in Buddhist methods of ascertaining the truth.

I mentioned that Buddhist logicians did not use their methods to question the claims found within sutras, although they did sometimes reframe those claims radically, but that would be better achieved with another sutra, such as Heart Sutra wherein fundamental teachings (skandha, ayatana, dhatu, and even the four noble truths) are rejected as reliable descriptions of ultimate reality - in this case, all conventional methods are simultaneously rejected as means to ascertain the ultimate meaning.

While Western civilization can almost be defined by its serious testing of the limits of tension between "unaided" reason and faith in "revealed" or mystical truths, in Buddhism we find that wisdom is developed through complementing the initial faith in study with subsequent critical consideration and reasoning, and finally with meditation or other realization-oriented method to directly access non-conceptual insight. But in order to better appreciate the role of reason and rationality in Buddhist history, let's make use of four quadrants.

(to be continued)