More family road tripping, so not much to report, so I'll share some more Dharma.
There's a lot of Buddhism, so much so that it's pretty confusing ;)
Two broad classifications that can be useful are "exoteric" and "esoteric." Exoteric Buddhism is spoken of and taught in plain language, although sometimes it can get incredibly technical. Since it is written in plain language, it is for anyone to hear, read, understand, practice, and realize. Esoteric Buddhism uses language much more relative to the culture and existing belief systems it is being transmitted into. Most forms of Buddhism we have today fall into the Esoteric camp, because the final movement, or "turning" of exoteric Buddhism happened in the 4th century is a unification movement that provides a bedrock for all later Buddhism.
If you're a nerd, you're probably more interested in the exoteric :) The philosphical traditions, and the deep technical studies of meditation and Mind are contained in the exoteric, although esoteric traditions have plenty of great texts that compass an understanding of the exoteric into various methods and rituals.
As Shantideva writes "Wisdom is often set aside for the sake of the result.". Most people, once recognizing that these methods "just work" if you "just do them" don't go ruining the method by inspecting why and how they work. From my own experience, this does effectively "ruin" most methods until "just sitting" is one of the few that remains :)
However, the ability for one to hear, see, understand, and practice any method immediately also improves through the study of wisdom. One begins to understand that all one experiences as "inner" and "outer" is of a the same nature, the same taste, and only appear different by means of the deterministic way of this Mind.
Wisdom teachings are much easier to understand once you know that they went through three evolutions, or revolutions, or "turnings," that changed how this wisdom was communicated. Unlike western institutions, these evolutions don't replace the prior, they all continue and encompass the previous, often returning to the clearest early teachings as a base. All wisdom teachings are talking about the same thing, but how they talk about it changes as the environment in which they need to be transmitted change.
These three turnings are referred to in many ways. They are identified with key figures, schools, and "yanas" (vehicles). Many also have key teachings which are quite small and often used in practice and read many times, and from my own experience, they reveal something different upon each reading.
Wisdom teachings aren't that difficult to understand once you know the story of how they come to be, which I'll be telling, but a quick breakdown will help in the beginning.
- First Turning
- Shakyamuni Buddha, ~500BC.
- All early schools based in Abhidharma
- Sometimes called Hinayana (Small Vehicle) or Śrāvakayāna (Voice Hearer Vehicle)
- Key Wisdom Teachings:
- Dharmacakrapravartana (Turning the Dharma Wheel) Sūtra. This is often referred to as the "origin of suffering) but if you read it, it is equally about pleasure (sukka) and displeasure (dukka) and the inherent dualistic relationship they appear in. This is the first teaching he gives after his enlightenment.
- Anātmalakṣaṇa (Characteristic of No-Self) Sūtra. This is the teaching of Anātman (no-self). He gives this teaching to the same group as the first, who return a few days later having meditated on the first teaching.
- Dependent Origination. Many sutras cover it in many ways.
- Second Turning
- Nāgārjuna, ~0
- Mādhyamaka (Middle Way) School
- Mahayana
- Key Wisdom Teachings
- Root verses of the Middle Way
- Prajnaparamita Sutras
- Third Turning
- Asanga & Vasubandhu (brothers)
- Xuanzang (walks to India from China to bring Yogacara to China hundreds of years later)
- Yogacara (Yoga Practice/Practitioner) School
- Dharmalaksana (Dharma Characteristics), Xuanzang's school
- All key figures consider this be a continuation of Mahayana. Vajrayana builds upon this turning as a base and this turning is a unification of previous movements so this ends up encompassing all the older traditions.
- Key Wisdom Teachings
- Uttaratantra Sastra (Originally called "Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra" but was then often referred to as the "Uttara" and then classified as a Tantra by Vajrayana buddhists, but "Tantra" was not even a term in use when written). This is the earliest teaching on "Buddha-Nature" I know of, and I spent a lot of time looking :)
- Samdhinirmocana Sutra. This is the root sutra of both the Yogacara nd Dharmalaksana schools. It pre-dates even the Yogacara school. It's a Gandaran Sutra from the first or second century. Contained within is a main "practice sutra" called "Vikalpa Yoga" (Differenting/Descriminating Yoga) which describes the "yoga" of shamata (resting/calming) and vipasyana (intuiting, often translated as "insight"). This is the "yoga" that Yogacara is named after.
- Yogacarabhumi. A massive 100 fascicle text of the Yogacara school. It includes detailed practice instructions for some of the early Sravaka schools, instructions which often don't have an earlier preservation from those traditions.
- Asanga & Vasubandhu (brothers)
After his enlightenment under the Bodhi tree Shakyamuni was walking in Deer Park and came across some people he used to know. This group was still following the path of aestheticism, a pretty hardcore form of spiritual practice which includes and exhaults a lot of what we would describe as self-torture. This path is focused on displeasure (duḥkha). Buddha Shakyamuni had abandoned this path when he found a "middle way" between dualistic extremes like pleasure (sukha) and displeasure.
He delivered his first teaching about the truth of displeasure, the object of mind these practitioners would have been following. This truth showed that the origin of displeasure is pleasure, that without one you cannot have the other, and together they set the wheel of samsara in motion. This is taught in the Dharmacakrapravartana (Turning the Dharma Wheel) Sūtra
They considered this teaching for a few days and returned, seeking something to do with insights gained from this teaching. Buddha Shakyamuni then taught the teaching of no-self (anātman), showing that every component of this "doer" can easily be seen to be "not self." This is taught in the Anātmalakṣaṇa (Characteristic of No-Self) Sūtra.
This group became the first followers of Buddha Shakyamuni. Shakyamuni Buddha's called his followers bhikṣus, which means "beggar" and would have had the same implications as that word has today. For Shakyamuni and his followers, to be a beggar meant that in order to eat one had to be seen as worthy of the offerings of others. Every day the entire community (sangha) would walk around the town they were in begging for food, knocking on the doors of both rich and poor alike, and making themselves useful in whatever ways they could be considered worthy of offerings.
As he travelled his congregation grew. A wealthy merchant eventually bought an open space park from a prince so that they might have a longer term residence. It was here that Buddha Shakyamuni gave his most detailed and enduring teaching on wisdom. It was delivered to his congregation, most of whom were already well aquianted with the previous teachings on wisdom and had been engaged in spritual practice for some time. This teaching is called "Dependent Origination."
In the same way Buddha taught that one cannot have pleasure without displeasure, he continued to show that all of what we consider interal and external "reality" is similarly dependent, or "conditioned," using 12 constituents his followers were already well aquianted with. Somewhat similar to how an AI model is "conditioned," Shakyamuni showed how each of these constituents is conditioned by the previous." By the 12th constituent, you can see how it then proceeds to condition the first thus representing an ever-turning wheel.
After Shakyamuni's bodily death his congregation began to fracture into different schools. As Buddhism grew and was given resources by various rulers, other spiritual traditions saught to compete for those resources as well.
A big reason rulers like to give resources to spiritual congretations is because it helps build a better relationship between rulers and the ruled. Not wanting to get caught up too much in deciding which school, or which tradition, the rulers and elite of India would support they turned to logic. Indic logic had been a growing discipline since even the time before Shakyamuni, and various systems of formal logic were developed and iterated upon such that various schools could "compete" in what would at least have the appearance of a merit based system.
The various schools of early Buddhism composed what they called "Abhidharma." Lists and ontologies of teachings built in forms of logic that monks could study in order to win these competitions for resources. For ~500 years these Abhidharma appear to have beat most rival traditions. However, these Abhidharma were focused on competition overseen by the rulers, and not on transmitting or bettering the ruled.
From the moment Buddhism began to fracture, schools focused on a more expansionary Buddhism found themselves without resources and moving to places with more layity seeking Dharma and less competition for resources. By the year zero this broad movement had a name, Mahayana (Great Vehicle), named as such because it includes everybody making it the "Great" vehicle.
Nagarjuna was a "bad kid," but from a relatively well off family, so when his transgressions caught up with him he chose to enter the monastic life. At first, he would have been a follower of the early schools, but eventually he converted to the Mahayana.
Unlike most Mahayana Buddhists, Nagarjuna did not fear or turn away from formal logic. I'll say that, I've read a lot of the writings of Western Logicians, and even earlier Indic logicians like Gautama (of which some consider Nagarjuna to be a re-incarnation of), and I know of no single greater master of formal logic than Nagarjuna. His works stills stands, thousands of years later, as unshakably precise and undefeatable.
Nagarjuna eventually establishes a school, the Madhyamaka (Middle Way), and when drawing from earlier teachings of Shakyamuni he holds the teaching of Dependent Origination as foremost.
The "Middle Way" school does not establish an Abhidharma, nor does it establish any ontological system. Instead, they compose a set of verses which, in precise formal logic, disproving all established Abhidharma, all views of reality, and even logic itself.
With logic that disproves logic as a weapon, Mahayana Buddhists begin to beat Abhidharmists in battles of formal logic. Mahayana Buddhism ascends and, due to it's open-hearted nature, it migrates quickly to new places and peoples as its pracitioners understand transmission of the teachings of compassionate wisdom as formost, not just sitting.
We'll start with the younger brother Vasubandhu.
As a young Hinayana monk, Vasubandhu compiles his own Abhidharma, a fairly bold thing for a young monk.
He then goes about beating both Hinayana and Mahayana Buddhists with this Abhidharma. Since his Abdhidharma contains resolutions to conflicts between various Hinayana Abhidharmas and Mahayanists, his Abhidharma ends up being adopted by the remaining Hinayana schools. Even after Vasubandhu converts to the Mahayana, they continue to hold his Abhidharma as formost. Those that exist today still refer to it, the translation I use today is the result of their work over many generations.
Asanga is the yogi's yogi. He leaves the Hinayana school his brother remains in for some time and converts to the Mahayana. He then goes in to the forest for 12 years to practice "Maitreya Yoga." To understand what that means, you should know that the practice section of the root sutra of Asanga and Vasubandhu's school is called "Vikalpa Yoga" and it is delivered by Maitreya.
Maitri means "friendly" and Maitreya means "friendly one." Maitreya is the "Future Buddha." The Buddha that comes next, and once you penetrate Buddhist philosophy you'll understand that this "next" doesn't have an exact time and place :)
After practicing this yoga for 12 years, Asanga comes down from the mountain. He sees a dog covered in maggots. Out of compassion for all living beings, he wants to remove the maggots from this dogs eyes, but since his hands would be too coarse and harm the dog he leans down to remove them with his tongue. At that time, Asanga sees Maitreya. For years Asanga walks around with Maitreya, but all anyone else sees is a dog with health problems.
Asanga teaches to whomever he sees wherever he walks and eventually people discover the extent of his realization. Some start calling him a "Third Buddha" (Nagarjuna was sometimes referred to as the second). Later, Asanga would engage in a practice that would manifest Maitreya as his own body, speech and mind, and deliver teachings. Afterward, Asanga would continue to deliver commentary as Asanga, and since what is written in these traditions is often iterated on after the fact we should expect that some final editorial discretion may have been left to Vasubandhu. Many of these text don't actually use this attribution, there is simply verse sections followed by commentary sections, so it could just be Asanga's spoken verses and commentary by either Asanga or Vasubandhu. The preservations of these teachings in writing is done in an environment where iteration is sometimes encouraged until they are translated into Chinese.
What this "third turning" really is, is a unification movement. Vasubandhu has aleady unified the early schools with his Abdhidharma, and Yogacara Buddhism bridges the conceptual divides between the Hinayana nad Mahayana. This isn't done with a single text or teaching because the divisions among various forms of Buddhism are rather diverse, but one that seems to be the most important for future forms of Buddhism is "Buddha Nature."
The doctrine of "Buddha Nature" is that beings are already enlightened, naturally, but we more or less "forget." What we are doing is suffering, so we don't need do a single specific thing to realize buddhahood, we need to allow enlightenment to arise naturally. Thus, the various schools of Buddhism and their methods differ only in response the particular appearance of suffering they encounter.
There is no single event in which Buddhism "comes to China." Instead, Buddhism comes over the mountains from India with whoever brings it. This means various teachings and sutras are translated by different people at different times, often with variations in the language based on the translator.
The teachings of Yogacara Buddhism prove to be some of the most problematic to translate. This leads to many disputes, and a monk named Xuanzang becomes completely fed up with these disputes so he requests permission to travel to India so that he can aquire and learn these teachings first-hand and bring them back to China.
Xuanzang's request is denied by the Chinese state. He leaves anyway, marked as a fugitive his journey is made all the more difficult, but he does eventually make it to India and comes back with a few elephants full of sutras which he spends the rest of his life translating. By the time he comes back to China, the emperor is over-joyed, as Xuanzang has become quite famous in India and is bringing back very valuable information.
The story of Xuanzang's journey has the unique distinction of being both the most famous historical and literary story in all of Asia. China invented paper and all the early means of reproduction. The Emperor insists that the first thing Xuanzang writes be an auto-biographical travel journal. The chinese state reproduces this text more over the coming two centuries than any other text, making it the most distributed text in the world, as it contains key information for navigating the silk road trade route.
After a few hundred years Xuanzang's journey is still famous but Buddhism is banned again in China so it becomes maybe a little awkward to talk about him the same way, so he starts fighting demons instead of translating sutras. Much more literary stories of Xuanzang's journey are told and eventually one is composed into written form and titled "Journey to the West." This becomes the first mass-market story of its kind, and is the most reproduced text in the world for the next few hundred years.
Retellings of "Journey to the West" continue to the present day. Just to name a few:
- Goku in Dragonball Z is based on the monkey king, from Journey to the West.
- "Journey to the West" by Stephen Chow (Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer). There's even a sequel.
- [American Born Chinese], TV show from an indie comic, features Michelle Yeoh as Guanyin (Chinese Avalokitesvara)
- God of High School, a korean anime featuring many literary figures but centered on the monkey king and his memories of Xuanzang (who is rendered a female).
And too many more to even list.
If you're looking for a single place to start, a single sutra to read and practice, Xuanzang has a good answer.
Nagarjuna considered the teaching of Dependent Origination as formost among all the early teachings. When Xuanzang gets back to China he translates more texts into chinese than any translator in history, but only one text from the original teachings of Shakyamuni.