The early Saṅgha

The Saṅgha (Skt Saṃgha), in the sense of the ‘Community’ of monks and nuns with the Buddha as its teacher, originated as one of the groups of Samaṇas. These suspended their wandering existence during the three months of the rainy season, and for the Buddhist Samaṇas this ‘rains’ (Vassa, Skt Varṣa) period became a time of intensified religious practice, with greater contact with the public at large. They also tended to return to the same places at Vassa, such as parks donated by wealthy lay patrons, and these locations then became the basis for a more settled communal way of life. In this way, the Buddhists invented monastic life, which was a middle way between the life of the solitary Jain renouncers, and that of the Brahmin householders.

The monastic discipline (Vinaya) developed by the Buddha was designed to shape the Saṅgha as an ideal community, with the optimum conditions for spiritual growth. Its sustaining power is shown by the fact that no human institution has had such a long-lasting continuous existence, along with such a wide diffusion, as the Buddhist Saṅgha. The Buddha advocated frequent meetings of each local Saṅgha, with the aim of reaching a unanimous consensus in matters of common concern (D.ii.76–7). If necessary, there was also provision for voting and majority rule (Vin.ii.84).

What are generally known as the four ‘Noble Truths’ (Pali ariya-sacca, Skt ārya-satya) are the focus of what Vin.i.10–12 portrays as the first sermon of the Buddha: the Dhamma-cakka-ppavattana Sutta. As found in the early Sutta (Skt Sūtra) collections known as the Nikāyas or Āgamas, the ariya-saccas are subjects of an advanced teaching intended for those who have, by the ‘step-by-step’ discourse (see p. 48), been spiritually prepared to have them pointed out. If the mind is not calm and receptive, talk of dukkha (Skt duḥkha) – the mental and physical pains of life, and the painful, stressful, unsatisfactory aspects of life that engender these – may be too disturbing, leading to states such as depression, denial and self-distracting tactics. The Buddha’s own discovery of the ariya-saccas was from the fourth jhāna (Skt dhyāna), a state of profound meditative calm (M.i.249). The Mahāyāna later came to see the teachings on the ariya-saccas as themselves preliminary to higher teachings – but there is none of this in the Nikāyas or Āgamas. In these, they are not teachings to go beyond, or unproblematic simple teachings, but about deep realities to be seen by direct insight (S.v.442–3 (BW.362–3)), and then responded to in appropriate ways.

The translation of ariya-sacca as ‘Noble Truth’ (e.g. Anderson, 1999), while well established in English-language literature on Buddhism, is the ‘least likely’ of the possible meanings (Norman, 1997: 16). To unpack and translate this compound, one needs to look at the meanings of each word, and then how they are related. The term sacca (Skt satya) is regularly used in the sense of ‘truth’, but also to mean a ‘reality’, a genuinely real existent. In pre-Buddhist works, Chāndogya Upaniṣad 6.15.3 sees the universal Self as satya, and Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 2.3 talks of two forms of Brahman: sat, which is mortal, and tyam, which is immortal, with 2.3.6 implying that the latter is ‘the real behind the real [sayasya satyam iti]’ (Olivelle, 1996: 28), that is, satya encompasses all reality, which is twofold in its nature. There is also a connection to sat, meaning existence.

The Path of the Bodhisattva

A ‘Bodhisattva’ (see p. 15) is a ‘being of/for awakening’, that is, one dedicated to attaining bodhi – ‘awakening’, ‘enlightenment’ or ‘buddhahood’. One who aims at the bodhi of a perfect Buddha, rather than of a Pratyeka-buddha or Arhat (see p. 99), was sometimes also called a Mahāsattva, a Great Being, or one directed towards the Great, that is, perfect Buddhahood (Harrison, 2000: 174–5; Williams, 2009: 55) – though the term ‘Bodhisattva’ on its own is usually understood in this sense. The Mahāyāna is focused on this kind of Bodhisattva, one on the path to perfect Buddhahood, whose task is to compassionately help beings while maturing his or her own wisdom (BT.83–5; BTTA.124–7).

Wisdom, compassion and skilful means

In his wisdom (prajñā), the Mahāyāna Bodhisattva knows that there are no ‘beings’, just fluxes of ‘dharmas’ that lack inherent existence (BTTA.157), but his ‘skilful means’ enables him to reconcile this wisdom with his compassion (karuṇā). This urges him to work for the salvation of all beings, for such empty fluxes do experience ‘themselves’ as ‘suffering beings’ (Vc. sec. 3).

Indian culture has not been as concerned with recording precise dates as have Chinese or Graeco-Roman cultures, so datings cannot always be arrived at with accuracy. All sources agree that Gotama was eighty when he died (e.g. D.ii.100), and the Pali sources of Theravāda Buddhism say that this was ‘218’ years before the inauguration of the reign of the Buddhist emperor Asoka (Skt Aśoka): the ‘long chronology’. Sanskrit sources preserved in East Asia have a ‘short chronology’, with his death ‘100’ years or so before Asoka’s inauguration. Based on a traditional date of the inauguration, Pali sources see Gotama’s dates as 623–543 bce. However, references in Asokan edicts to named Hellenistic kings have meant that modern scholars have put the inauguration at c. 268 bce (giving c. 566–486 bce for Gotama) or, more recently, anywhere between 267 and 280 bce. Richard Gombrich has argued that ‘218’ and ‘100’ are best seen as approximate numbers, and sees 136 as more likely, based on figures associated with a lineage of Buddhist teachers in the Dīpavaṃsa, a chronicle of Sri Lanka – with the ‘218’ in this text (6.1) as from its misunderstanding of figures in its earlier part. With various margins of error, Gombrich sees Gotama’s death as between 422 and 399 bce, with c. 404 as most likely, giving his dates as c. 484–404 bce.