Todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte, and#8220;The Buddha: Legend andamp; Historyand#8221; offers us a glimpse of the talk, Imaging Gautama, from the major new series of talks by Vishvapani to mark the launch of his new book: and#8216;Gautama Buddha: The Life and Teachings of the Awakened Oneand#8217; (Quercus, 2011).
Vishvapani recollects his religious studies and lessons on the Four Sights, which is not found in the suttas relating to Gautama. Does this mean it didnand#8217;t happen? Here Vishvapani traces the the development of a legendary story and other examples of details in the Buddha legend missing from the Pali Canon.
Talk given at the Cardiff Buddhist Centre, 2011.
[Music] Dharma Vites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you, and happy listening. [Music] So, in this process of separating out legend and history, what can we say for sure isn't right? When I was at school, this is probably the next step in my connection with the Buddha. Religious studies lessons and being told the life of the Buddha, and that focused on the four sides. The Buddha had he grown up in his enchanted palace, then leaving the palace to see, first of all, a sick person, then an old person, then a corpse. And finally, seeing a religious home in Manashrama. And this made an impact on me, because it seemed to be the story of someone discovering these vital truths about life in the scriptures they're called divine messengers. These vital truths about life that he'd hitherto ignore, to turn his attention away from. And that seemed that a really important lesson, and something quite universal, in that desire to seek something beyond sickness, old age and death. Seeing beyond the world of pleasure and privilege. So, when you come to look at the early scriptures, and I'm using early scriptures now to mean what we generally refer to as the canon of scriptures in Pali canon. They're also Chinese versions of these scriptures. And these are probably the earliest scriptures that we can have, we can look to. We find that this story doesn't appear. No four sides in the Pali canon headline. Does this mean it didn't happen? Well, what we do have in the Pali canon is a text called the Mahapadana sutta, where the Buddha tells this story about someone else. Now, actually, someone else is another Buddha called the pasi who lived in past ages. He does say that the things that happen to the pasi happen to all Buddhists. But it doesn't say that it happened to him, Dottama. Doesn't say that anywhere in the early scriptures. So, then you can trace in, first of all, the stories about the Buddhist past lives, called Jatakas. And then, next, in the more poetically composed lives, things like great text, the Buddha Charita. You see how this story develops. And so, bit by bit, the story that starts off relating to this past character called the pasi, and gets told about the Buddha that we relate to, go to Mahapadana. So, therefore, you can say, no, that's how a legend develops. It didn't happen to him. You know, that's what scholars tend to say about that particular incident. There are lots of other things that aren't there in the Pali canon, and come on to the extent to which you can trust the Pali canon in a minute. The story that Gautama was the son of a king. Not that. The tradition that he was called Sitharmata. Not that. That he had a wife called Yashedra. She's not mentioned. The mentions of his wife, she's called Rohula Mata, which means the mother of Rohula. Now, Rohula is mentioned, but there's no mention of a very romantic story that develops over the centuries of him stealing away in the middle of the night. And stealing one last glimpse at his family, and would he reach out and touch his son's head? No, no, no, it doesn't appear anywhere. And more broadly, in the poetic life, so recently he wrote a very good new translation of the Buddha charity, which I recommend to you by Patrick Olival. Beautiful poetry. And it sets the Buddha in the context of a Brahminical society. That's the society of the people pulling the Vedas and having the various casks and so on. And that really isn't what you discover if you read the earlier scriptures. He's not growing up in the Brahminical society. There are Brahmin's, but they seem to be coming in from the outside, from another culture. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [music fades out] [music fades out] [BLANK_AUDIO]
