[Buddha-l] Monk/nun or lay person

[Stefan Detrez]

Part 2

The Mahayana was a result of a "Buddha-ology"
> that arose after the death of the Buddha. What is
> interesting is that it derived from an already in
> place bodhisatta concept that was developed after
> the death of the Buddha by the Mainstream
> schools. We see in such genuinely early Mahayana
> texts as the Ugra a continuity with that, but to
> make the bodhisattva doctrine work, the emergent
> Mahayanists had to, as they did over a period,
> redefine virtually every central concept of the
> Buddhism – Buddha, arhat, nirvana, bodhi.


Correct. Buddhalogy is a good term (also used officially as is done with
'christology'). Pali texts (especially the Sangha-centered ones) hardly have
Arhats who are laymen. The Theris and the Theras from the Gathas are all
monastics, tautologically.

How early are you going to go, and do you really
> mean Theravada? The Theravada, early or late,
> does not need to define itself in terms of the Mahayana.


In this sentence I mean later-Theravada texts and early-Mahayana texts.
Let's say from AD 0 to 200-250. Maybe the continuity was interrupted when
Theravada monastics realized that the Dhamma was beginning to become
populist, urging them to swiftly write the whole thing done and close it.

The Mahayana was not, and is not,
> some great bastion of lay practice. It is, and
> always has been, a primarily monastic movement.


I never said it wasn't. I only state that laymen/women attaining Nirvana is
a late development in the texts. One should be careful to generalize from
one instance ('there's a layman attaining Nibbana, SO it is characteristic
of the whole of the Theravada teachings') way back to the earliest texts,
because it would be an anachronism. And we are not dealing here with some
divine inspiration urging us to see the Theaching as consistent or perfect.

Stefan


--
Born, never asked.

- Laurie Anderson
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