Dharma

Chapter 4: Early Buddhism Three Baskets of Dharma

CHApTEr 4 Early Buddhism Three Baskets of Dharma This chapter will investigate Buddhist understandings of dharma in the three baskets (piṭakas) of the early Buddhist canon, taking them as an intentional organization of three different understandings of dharma developed over time.The “three basket” division is not established until about the first century BCE, but it is anticipated in early references to monks who have mastered one or more of three areas of expertise: “those who maintain the Dhamma,theVinaya,and the Lists of phenomena.” These three specializations lie, respectively, behind the “baskets” of the Sūtras (Suttas) or “Discourses,” the Vinaya or “Monastic Rule,” and the Abhidharma (Abhidhamma) or “Higher Teachings.” Presenting matters around the three baskets brings out the strikingly different ways that the Buddha’s dharma was developed.Whereas the Sūtras—especially the collection of “Long Discourses”—present the dharma’s public face,the other two baskets are addressing in-house audiences.Vinaya defines what monks and nuns should (and should not) do in common. And the Abhidharma refines what those really in the know should know. Yet these two approaches also have their wider public purviews.Vinaya regulates the public interface between Buddhist and non-Buddhist dharmas in practice. And Abhidharma stakes out Buddhism’s place in the erudite but politically important settings—sometimes including royal courts—of scholastic debate with other Indian philosophies. Starting with the Sūtras will enable us to keep them in view throughout so as to appreciate how the three baskets bring together overlapping teachings. Coming to theVinaya last will equip us to take stock of the complexities that distinguish Buddhist and Brahmanical senses of dharma before turning to the latter in chapter 5. Early Buddhism 35 Sūtra-Basket Dharma The Pāli canon provides the most accessible compilation of the Buddha ’s discourses. While its Sutta Basket includes discourses noteworthy for their basic instructional content, it also includes elegant dialogues famous as narratives. These portray the Buddha in interactive settings where his artful teachings have their maximum impact, thanks to his ethical and philosophical reasoning and stunning similes .We will open this basket onto discourses of this dialogical type and save more-instructional teachings, including the Buddha’s famous first sermon, for the next section on Abhidharma. The interactive settings can direct us to the likely historical background that the Suttas reflect in the Buddha’s dealings with nobles, Brahmins, householders, ascetics, and those at the low end of the social spectrum. In the “Discourse with Ambaṭṭha,” the Buddha claims that his clan, the Sakyans, are Kṣatriyas who “regard King Okkāka as their ancestor .” This would give him royal descent in a tribe reputed to have backed the eastward movement of Vedic culture. The Suttas, however, describe a post-Vedic kind of society. Market towns had emerged, and also contending monarchic and “republican” polities. Urbanization is in full swing, with aggressive metropolitan states. The Buddha can compare discovering the dhamma to finding an ancient path to an old and forgotten city. The “Discourse with Ambaṭṭha” runs the gamut on social issues while foregrounding various challenges that the Buddha puts to proponents of Vedic orthopraxy. It can thus introduce some of the complexities of posing the Buddhist dhamma specifically to Brahmins. The Buddha seems to have expected more from his dialogues with Brahmins than he did from those lowest in society. For instance, when he mentions that there are nine “parts” of the dhamma and says they are to be examined “with wisdom,” he is correcting a “pernicious view” about sex of an errant monk he calls “Ariṭṭha, formerly of the vulture killers” (Majjhima Nikāya 22). In mentioning Ariṭṭha’s low birth (jāti) in the same breath as his “pernicious view,” which he does also with “Sāti, son of a fisherman” (Majjhima Nikāya 38), the Buddha is practicing a form of jāti profiling—that is, he is stereotyping the intellectual deficiencies of disciples from low-caste “births” (jātis). 36 DHARMA But while such exchanges are rare, ones with Brahmins are among the most frequent in the Sutta Basket. As we see the Buddha engaging Brahmins on matters of social class, let us keep an open question before us: granting that the Buddha offers new angles on these complex topics, where is the dhamma in our text? The Buddha is touring with some five hundred...