A Concise History of Buddhism Quotes

“In their turn, these Buddhas became the focus for devotional cults. This practice was present from the earliest period of the Mahāyāna, and is witnessed and exemplified by those sūtras dedicated to the exposition of the Pure Land of Amitābha (see below). The nature of these ‘visionary’ Buddhas was later systematized in the Trikāya doctrine of the Yogācārin School. Most important among the archetypal Buddhas were Amitābha and Aksobhya, who formed a triad with Śākyamuni, and to whom were attributed three attendant Bodhisattvas, Avalokiteśvara, Vajrapāṇi, and Mañjuśrī respectively.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“THE SADDHARMA-PUṆḌARĪKA SŪTRA OR LOTUS SŪTRA The earliest date ascertainable for this sūtra is between 100BCE and 100CE. It is a composite text, showing an overall division into two sections, the first relating to upāya and ekayāna, and the latter to the life-span of the Buddha. Upāya, or skilful means, is the central teaching of the sūtra, and describes the way in which the Buddha adapts his teaching to the disposition (adhimukti) of his hearers, which means that the value of a teaching is relative to its result. This doctrine became the prime means used to account for the varied teachings of the sūtras, since those which were not thought to teach the ultimate truth, paramārtha-satya, were seen as upāya of the Buddha.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ SŪTRAS The Prajñāpāramitā sūtras, or Perfection of Wisdom sūtras, are a body of self-consciously related works dealing with the subject of the new prajñā, or wisdom, taught by the Mahāyāna. Instrumental in the origins of the Mahāyāna itself, some texts from this category are among the earliest Mahāyāna sūtras, probably originating in the 1st century BCE. Four phases have been identified in the growth of this body of texts:122 (a) 100BCE–100CE: the Ratnaguṇasaṁcayagāthā and the Aṣṭasāhasrikā (8,000 lines). (b) 100–300CE: a period of elaboration that produced versions in 18,000,25,000, and 100,000 lines (and possibly the Vajracchedikā). (c) 300–500CE: a period of condensation, producing, among others, the Heart Sūtra (although there is some evidence to suggest that this particular text was originally written in Chinese and then translated back into Sanskrit.123) (d) 500–1000CE: a period producing texts showing Tantric influences. The sūtras themselves offer no elaborate philosophical argument – just the assertion of the true way of things, which is that nothing has ultimate existence, not even the purportedly real dharmas of the Abhidharma analysis. A characteristic device of these sūtras is the creation of paradoxes by switching between the conventional and the ultimate perspectives. The Perfection of Wisdom sūtras, and their dharmaśūnyatā position, were not accepted by all the adherents of the Bodhisattva Path.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“Śāntideva quotes the Adhyāśaya-saṁcodana Sūtra on four qualities of a teaching by which it comes to be seen as the word of the Buddha: (a) It should be connected with the truth, (b) It should be concerned with the Dharma, (c) It should bring about renunciation of moral taints, (d) It should reflect the qualities of nirvāṇa, not saṁsāra.121 Rather than regarding the canon as being closed to further additions, in the way that the Tripiṭaka was supposed to have been at the First Council, the Mahāyāna clearly adopted an inclusive attitude, expressive of an openness to any teachings which were effective – itself a reflection of the new doctrine of upāya, ‘[skilful] means’ (see below). Some 600 Mahāyāna sūtras have survived to the present day, either in Sanskrit or in Tibetan and Chinese translations. In the following survey various groupings are suggested based on the nature of the teachings of the sūtras, but it should be borne in mind that, with only a few exceptions, these groupings were not self-conscious, and that many sūtras cut across any categories that are narrower than the general category of ‘Mahāyāna’.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“The new scriptures did not form a coherent body of doctrinal exposition; they propounded different and even apparently contradictory teachings. Moreover, many individual sūtras are clearly composite works, compiled over many centuries, such that the final text is formed from layers of material of different ages, and sometimes with different outlooks, so that even individual sūtras do not necessarily present a unitary, coherent teaching. The result of this was that several expository traditions arose to try to explain the teaching of the new texts, the more cohesive of these forming distinct schools.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“THE MOST CHARACTERISTIC FEATURE KNOWN of the emergence of the Mahāyāna, and of its later development, was the compilation of numerous sūtras teaching new Mahāyāna doctrines, and praising the new Mahāyāna religious ideal, the Bodhisattva. Unlike the sūtras of the Tripiṭaka, which are mostly historical in character, the Mahāyāna sūtras tend either to offer a lengthy and abstract discourse, or to portray a magical world of archetypal figures divorced from historical time and place, and make their greatest appeal to the spiritual Imagination, which they expand and transform through the means of visionary drama.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“In addition to the worship of new Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, it also seems that the early Mahāyāna involved the worship of the new sūtras themselves. Many early sūtras contain passages where the hearer is encouraged to worship the sūtra, using incense, flags, and bells, much as one would a stūpa – and where stūpa worship itself is denigrated, or at least held to be inferior to praise of the sūtra and of the dharmabhāṇaka, the preacher of the sūtra.115 On an organizational level it seems likely that, in origin, the Mahāyāna was an informal coalition of mutually sympathetic sūtra cults, in which groups of followers recited, studied, and worshipped their own sūtra.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“the goal of full Buddhahood came to be seen as superior to that of arhatship, so the layperson as a potential Bodhisattva also gained in importance. In this respect the impact of the Jātaka stories, always one of the most popular teaching media, in which the historical Buddha-to-be appears as ordinary people or even as various animals, must have been significant.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“However, these were clearly monks who had a vision of spiritual development that transcended monastic formalism, and perhaps this should be linked with the trend apparent in some early schools that questioned the status of the arhat.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“The Mahāyāna sūtras clearly re-evaluate the relative roles of the monastic and lay practitioner, making it clear that the new movement put less stress upon formal membership of the monastic community as a prerequisite for pursuit of the Bodhisattva Path. This is suggested by the frequency with which lay people, sometimes women, are shown with high attainments, and reaches its apogee in the figure of Vimalakīrti, the layman Bodhisattva who trounces all the śrāvakas and even the archetypal Bodhisattvas. The principle seems to be that spiritual attainment is not defined by, or restricted to those occupying, formal positions and roles within the monastic Saṅgha.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“The new Mahāyāna sūtras show new forms of spiritual practice oriented around devotion to these new archetypal Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.112 The historical background to this period of the emergence of the Mahāyāna was one of political disturbance and turmoil in northern India. The persecutions of Buddhism by Puṣyamitra Śunga (183–147BCE) were followed by repeated invasions from the north-west, the first that of the Śakas (c.90BCE). The pro-Buddhist king, Kaniṣka, with whose reign several significant developments are associated, was himself a Kuṣāṇa king, who took control of a north-western empire created by a second wave of invasion beginning in the early 1st century CE. It seems likely that the insecurity and uncertainty of the period may have contributed to the emergence of the new religious forms characterized as the Mahāyāna, and it is probably significant that in places the practice of buddhānusmṛti, the recollection of the Buddha, is recommended as an antidote to fear.113”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“DURING THE CENTURIES EITHER SIDE OF THE BEGINNING of the common era, teachings criticizing aspects of the Buddhism of the early schools, and introducing their own new religious preoccupations, began to make an appearance. From the modem perspective it is impossible to know the exact context for these developments, other than that they were embodied in new sūtras not belonging to the Tripiṭaka of the early schools. The new movement came, in the long term, to identify itself as the Mahāyāna, the ‘Great Way’, by way of a conscious contrast with, and criticism of, the non-Mahāyāna schools, which it dubbed the Hīnayāna, the ‘Lesser or Inferior Way’.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“The main targets of this critical analysis were the ingrained but deluded tendency of a person to experience themselves as a fixed and unchanging entity and the greed and hatred attendant upon this tendency. This tendency is regarded as the prime cause of suffering in the world, and the eradication of that suffering is the chief function of Buddhist spiritual practice. So, when Abhidharma specialists analyse the world that they perceive (including their own person) into these ultimately real existents called dharmas, they are confronted by the fact that there is no fixed permanent entity called ‘a person’. This prajñā or wisdom, the prime goal of the Abhidharma analysis, is termed the pudgalanairātmya, the ‘absence of selfhood in people’. This in its turn would enable them to see things as they really are, eradicating ignorance, and cutting desire and hatred.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“A practical example of the application of this method might be as follows: An ordinary, unenlightened person says T am pleased with this apple.’ The Abhidharmic analysis would restate this by saying ‘In association with this momentary series of material dharmas (rūpa) which constitute an apple, there is a concurrent series of feeling dharmas (vedanā) of a pleasant kind, of perception dharmas (saṁjñā) recognizing the object of happiness as an apple, of volitional dharmas (samskāra) both reflecting my past pleasure in apples and affirming a future predisposition to do so, and of consciousness dharmas (vijñāna), whereby there is awareness.’ Clearly, the effect of such an analysis, if applied and sustained over a long period, is to reduce the tendency to identify with a fixed sense of selfhood, and instead to emphasize that experience is made up of a constantly changing flux of conditions.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“That the majority of such dharmas are mental underlines the fact that the Abhidharma analysis is essentially related to meditation and what is perceived by the mind in higher meditative states. It would be misleading to assume that this analysis was in any way pseudo-scientific, and claimed to be analysing the make-up of the physical environment.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“The Theravāda enumerates 82 dhammas: 28 rūpa or material dhammas, 52 caitasika or mental dhammas (covering vedanā, saṁjñā, and saṁskāra), one citta or consciousness, all conditioned; and one unconditioned dhamma, nibbāna. The Sarvāstivāda lists 11, 46, and one conditioned dharmas, respectively, adding another category of 14 neither mental nor material; and distinguishing 3 unconditioned dharmas; space and two kinds of nirvāṇa, making 75 in all.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“Dharmas are not fixed, permanent objects, but momentary forces that are said to arise in a continual stream. They exist for a very short time, and during that time have a real existence. A mental dharma lasts for one-seventeenth of the time of a material dharma. For this reason we tend to identify the ‘self’ with the body, because it seems more permanent than our evanescent mental states.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“THE METHODS OF THE ABHIDHARMA When the Buddha offered an analysis of the perceived world in the sūtras, he was making a fundamental distinction between things as they appear (how things seem to be to the unenlightened) and what really is the case (how things really are – yathābhūta). This distinction issues forth in the Abhidharma as the distinction between the two truths: saṁvṛti-satya – conventional truth – the way things appear, and paramārtha-satya – the ultimate truth, which is the object of yathā-bhūta-jnāna-darśana, ‘knowing and seeing things as they really are’. The Abhidharma project was an attempt to systematize and to analyse all that exists, the conventional world, into its building blocks of ultimate existents, or dharmas, and thereby reveal the way things really are. The tools of analysis were meditation and clear, analytical thinking. Only those things that resisted analysis with such tools could be regarded as ultimately existent.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“THE BOOKS OF THE SARVĀSTIVĀDIN ABHIDHARMA PIṬAKA (a) Jñānaprasthāna, the ‘setting forth of wisdom’, by Kātyāyanīputra – concerned with the definition of terms. (b) Prakaraṇapāda, the basis of exposition’, by Vasumitra – discusses elements under the skandha analysis and a revision of that analysis under the headings of rūpa, citta, and caitasika dharmas; also introduces a list of ten positive mental events. (c) Vijñānakāya, the ‘collection on consciousness’, by Devaśarman – concerned with substantiating the Sarvāstivādin doctrines on the past and future existence of dharmas, and anātman. (d) Dharmaskandha, the ‘heap of elements’, by Śāriputra – discussion of the kleśas, āyatanas, and skandhas, and the practices required to gain arhatship. (e) Prajñaptiśāstra, the ‘treatise on designations’, by Maudgalyāyana – the arising of mental events, and cosmology. (f) Dhātukāya, the ‘collection of elements’, by Pūrṇa – discussion of ever-present and negative mental events. (g) Saṅgītiparyāya, the ‘way of putting things in the rehearsal’, by Mahākausthila (or Śāriputra) – a commentary on the Saṅgīti Sūtra.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“THE BOOKS OF THE SARVĀSTIVĀDIN ABHIDHARMA PIṬAKA (a) Jñānaprasthāna, the ‘setting forth of wisdom’, by Kātyāyanīputra – concerned with the definition of terms. (b) Prakaraṇapāda, the basis of exposition’, by Vasumitra – discusses elements under the skandha analysis and a revision of that analysis under the headings of rūpa, citta, and caitasika dharmas; also introduces a list of ten positive mental events. (c) Vijñānakāya, the ‘collection on consciousness’, by Devaśarman – concerned with substantiating the Sarvāstivādin doctrines on the past and future existence of dharmas, and anātman. (d) Dharmaskandha, the ‘heap of elements’, by Śāriputra – discussion of the kleśas, āyatanas, and skandhas, and the practices required to gain arhatship. (e) Prajñaptiśāstra, the ‘treatise on designations’, by Maudgalyāyana – the arising of mental events, and cosmology. (f) Dhātukāya, the ‘collection of elements’, by Pūrṇa – discussion of ever-present and negative mental events.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“That of the Theravāda is the only Abhidharma collection to survive in its entirety in its original Indian language. The Sarvāstivādin Abhidharma, originally composed in Sanskrit, survives only in Chinese and Tibetan translations. A brief analysis of the works of these two collections follows. THE BOOKS OF THE THERAVĀDIN ABHIDHAMMA PIṬAKA (a) Dhammasaṅganī, the ‘classification of things’ – listing and defining good, bad, and neutral mental states, and an analysis of material form. (b) Vibhaṅga, ‘analysis’ – offering a detailed analysis or classification of sixteen major topics of the Dharma, including the skandhas, nidānas, the elements, the faculties, mindfulness, bojjhaṅgas, jhānas, and insight. (c) Dhātukathā, ‘discussion of the elements’ – based on the skandha and āyatana analyses, and proceeding by means of questions and answers. (d) Puggalapaññati, ‘description of personalities’ – the analysis of human character types, by various factors that range in number from one to ten. (e) Kathāvatthu, ‘subjects of controversy’ – the refutation of the heterodox views of other Buddhist schools. (f) Yamaka, the ‘pairs’ – concerned with clear definition of terms. (g) Paṭṭhāna, ‘causal relations’ – a full discussion of pratītya-samutpāda.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“It is in the Abhidharma section of the Tripiṭaka that the greatest divergence between the schools became apparent, since different schools had their own unique Abhidharma collection.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“It seems that the Abhidharma proper grew out of, or was built around, mātṛkā – i.e. lists of technical concepts, originally serving as mnemonic devices for memorizing teachings.99 (It is in this sense that Abhidharma could be understood as ‘ancillary to the Dharma’.) For example, the ubiquitous list of 37 bodhipakṣika-dharmas, or ‘teachings that are requisite for Awakening’100 may have been an early example, given by the Buddha himself. We have another early example of this tendency in the Sāṅgīti Sutta101 where Sāriputta, who is traditionally associated with the origin of the Abhidharma, recites lists of teachings arranged according to number. Overall, the Abhidharma represents the attempt to extract from the Buddha’s discourses a coherent and comprehensive statement of teaching.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“THE ABHIDHARMA IS NOT A SCHOOL AS SUCH, but rather a body of literature. Not all the early schools had such a body of literature, but when they did they incorporated it into the canon. In essence it is an ordering and explanation of the key terms and categories of analysis that appear in the sūtras. The prefix abhi- means ‘above’ or ‘for the sake of, with regard to’, so the title is usually understood to mean ‘that which is above the Dharma’ or ‘the higher or special teaching’. However, it could also be construed as meaning ‘for the sake of the Dharma’ or ‘the ancillary to the Dharma’. The Abhidharma was regarded as special in the sense that it presents the Dharma in a pure, theoretical framework, rather than in a historical context, as do the sūtras – though whether this is an advantage could be disputed. It is regarded as a ‘higher’ Dharma because it is thought to be offering an explanation of these terms superior to that offered by the sūtras themselves.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“In the Pāli version over 5,000 suttas are gathered together, representing the teaching activity of the Buddha over forty-five years. Even so it appears that much was thought to have been lost after only the first thousand years of the transmission. Supposedly recited by Ānanda at the First Council and so personally witnessed and authenticated by him, each sutta begins with the words ‘Thus have I heard. At one time ...’. However, as already suggested, many of them post-date this time, and some can be seen to be composite in character, with an early core surrounded by additions.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“THE SŪTRA PIṬAKA The Sūtra Piṭaka is the collection of the Buddha’s sūtras (Pāli suttas), or discourses. The only complete version of the Sūtra Piṭaka survives in Pāli. It is known, largely through the survival of fragmentary manuscripts from Central Asia, that there were versions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, Gandhārī, and other vernacular languages belonging to various other early schools. Larger portions of these other Sūtra Piṭakas have survived in Chinese translation, though only a small proportion of these have yet been translated into any European languages, and a full comparison between them and the Pāli Sutta Piṭaka is still awaited.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“Whilst in later centuries the monks tended to reduce the recitation of the Prātimokṣa to the chanting of a liturgy, in origin it was an opportunity to search their hearts for any failings in their practice of the precepts, and to accept admonishment from others if that was due.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“The Vinaya Piṭaka is essentially a legal code concerned with rules of conduct for the monks and nuns, but not with the systematic exposition of Buddhist morality. The latter is encapsulated in various lists of precepts, found in numerous places within the Sūtra Piṭaka, that Buddhists chant regularly as an expression of their commitment to the Path, and try to observe in their lives.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“It is for this reason that even the highest ‘punishment’ is merely that of expulsion from the circle of the Saṅgha – which is why an offence for which expulsion is decreed is termed a pārājika, ‘defeat’.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism

“These are essentially concerned with explaining the origin of all aspects of the organization of the Saṅgha, and cover such things as admission to the Order, the ritual of confession, i.e. the recitation of the Prātimokṣa – the rules of personal training, the rainy season retreats, food and medicine, proper dwellings, permissible clothing, the proper resolution of disputes between monks, the nature of schism in the Saṅgha, along with a host of other things.”
― Andrew Skilton, Concise History of Buddhism