Embodying the Dharma: Buddhist Relic Veneration in Asia

6. SIGNS OF THE BUDDHA IN NORTHERN THAI CHRONICLES

INTRODUCTION ON JULY 8, 1993, THE HIGHLY REVERED THAI MONK BUDDHADA\SA BHIKKHU died. Prior to his death he penned the following verses: Buddhada\sa shall live; there’s no dying. Even when the body dies, it will not listen. Wherever it is or goes is of no consequence; It is only something passing through time. Even when I die and the body ceases, My voice still echoes in comrades’ ears, Clear and bright, as loud as ever. Just as if I never died, the Dhamma-body lives on. Buddhada\sa’s poetic necromancy is reminiscent of Gotama Buddha’s admonition that after his death, the dhamma will be his successor. Pa\li sources reveal a dispute regarding not that but how the absent, “parinibbaned ” Buddha will be presenced. The debate focused on whether Gotama Buddha would be presenced by his teaching, namely the dhamma, or in objects such as bodily relics or other material signs.1 The sides in the debate cannot be precisely delineated, although it is much too simplistic to identify the dhamma contenders with a monastic elite, and the material sign advocates with lay devotional piety. 145 CHAPTER SIX SIGNS OF THE BUDDHA IN NORTHERN THAI CHRONICLES Donald K. Swearer The Pa\li suttas suggest that the disagreement was not framed solely in terms of the post-nibba\ned Buddha, the context popularized in current scholarship by the terminology of absence versus presence, but that it arose during the Buddha’s own lifetime. From this perspective, the Buddha ’s answer to the question about his identity or nature connects with the Buddha’s parinibba\na legacy. The Buddha’s claim that he is not a god or a divine being but the fully enlightened one (samma\sambuddha) represents but one side in a debate about his nature and mission. From the very beginning of his career, the Blessed One was revered not only as the enlightened teacher of the dhamma realized on the night of his enlightenment but in a variety of other ways—a divine being; a yogi with supernatural powers; an ascetic sage whose very touch could heal, protect, and bring other benefits. Illustrations of disagreement about the Buddha’s nature and mission abound in canonical and commentarial literature as, for example, in the following account of the Prince Bodhi Sutta in the Majjhima Nika\ya, an episode also recorded in the Cullavagga. On one occasion when the Blessed One was staying at Sum≥suma\ragira, Prince Bodhi invited the Buddha and his disciples to receive the noon meal at Kokanada, his newly constructed palace. Descending from the verandah to greet the Blessed One, Prince Bodhi asked the Buddha to step on the white cloth he had draped over the staircase saying, “Venerable sir, let the Blessed One step on the cloth, let the Sublime One step on the cloth, that it may lead to my welfare and happiness for a long time.”2 The commentary specifies that by this act Prince Bodhi, who was childless, hoped to have a son. After making the request a second and third time A|nanda asked the prince to remove the cloth, saying, “The Blessed One will not step on a strip of cloth; the Tatha\gata has regard for future generations.” The commentary stipulates that A|nanda was concerned lest people honor monks as a way of ensuring the fulfillment of their mundane wishes and “lose faith in the sanægha if their displays of honour do not bring the success they desire.”3 The commentary’s disclaimer regarding the power of a material sign—in this case a relic of association—appears to be a qualified one, however. The white cloth touched by the Buddha—or his bhikkhus—might, indeed, lead to the hoped for result, but if it does not, the laity might lose faith in the Buddha and his sangha. It should be pointed out that the onus appears to fall on the laity’s act of veneration rather than power of the material sign. In this chapter I propose to examine the signs of the Buddha and their power as constructed in a particular northern Thai text representative of a DONALD K. SWEARER 146 popular literary genre that flourished in northern Thailand between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. The chapter is divided into two sections, a background discussion of the literary genre known in northern Thai as tamna\n (chronicle...