Asian Art and Architecture: Art & Design 382/582

Siddhartha Gautama 624 - 589 (or 566-531, or 448-413)

Shakyamuni, the Buddha 589 - 544 (or 531-486, or 413-368)

Series of India geographical range ending Bihar & lotus

Plato’s Cave Maya’s Dream, East Torana Sanchi Early Andhra c 50 BCE - 50 CE

Plato’s Cave Enlightenment, East Torana Sanchi Early Andhra c 50 BCE - 50 CE

Plato’s Cave Return to Kapilavastu, East Tor Sanchi Early Andhra c 50 BCE - 50 CE

Plato’s Cave Doorguardian, East Torana Sanchi Early Andhra c 50 BCE - 50 CE

Plato’s Cave Wanderers

Plato’s Cave Maya’s dream Sanchi

Plato’s Cave Fire worshipers Sanchi

R&J 27 Wheel of Existence outline & ptg Tibetan

Plato’s Cave Assault of Mara

Plato’s Cave Kasyapa Conversion, East Tor Sanchi Early Andhra c 50 BCE - 50 CE

Plato’s Cave Enlightenment, East Torana Sanchi Early Andhra c 50 BCE - 50 CE

Plato’s Cave Kapilavastu, East Torana Sanchi Early Andhra c 50 BCE - 50 CE

Plato’s Cave Great Departure Sanchi

Plato’s Cave Fasting Buddha Gandhara

Plato’s Cave Sujata’s meal & assault of M Sanchi

Plato’s Cave First Sermon

Plato’s Cave Paranirvana

Robinson & Johnson follow a developmental vision of Buddhism. Or as they say, of the "bewildering variety within Buddhism." Theirs is one vision among very many. They are specialists in Buddhism, not India. They prefer awakening to enlightenment for translating bodhi. In general I will accede to them on Buddhism, though not always. My deepest familiarity is with India and I may disagree more often there. You will notice an almost total lack of works on India in their bibliography. In any case my view will hold for the course. You are someone too, and if you disagree don’t hesitate to do so, when you can support your view. Otherwise take mine and continue to search to see if yours is better.

When they point out that "Buddhism" is an 18th century word [in English] and say that the "Buddhists" called their practice "dharma" or "the Buddha’s message" don’t be surprised. You have many general bits of common assumption to overcome, if you are to look critically. Their view is intended to be critical. That is, it is based on original texts sources and careful study, not hearsay. Their approach, and ours is critical historical. That is we will trace the development of the many threads of the many Buddhisms. Many Buddhists have also used this approach. Though their goals and interests were religious and ours will be strictly historical and analytical. Our goal is to understand what they have understood and done, not to believe what they have believed.

We will maintain some analytical skepticism and so disagreements with some Buddhist beliefs. If Mahayanists believe their texts to be as old as the Theravadin or Sravakayana texts and the Vajrayanists believe their texts predate the historical Buddha, we will follow R&J in assuming that because the Mahayana texts totally assume the Sravakayana texts they are essentially later, and that because the Vajrayana texts essentially assume the Mahayana, that they are even later. Thus we will always have to distinguish between what we believe and what our subjects believe. We will need to know both. And to be respectful of both. One doesn’t need to agree to be respectful, only to recognize that disagreement with respect is preferable to disdain if we desire to avoid arrogance and if we want to live together in a world where no one has yet proven to all the others that only their way is true. That is, to live together in our world.

"The inherent tensions between doctrine and practice go a long way toward explaining much of the development of the tradition through the ages." R&J point this out and we will see how it works. Most of what we know and learn from R&J is ideal doctrinal textuality. And this will go for my art history too it is likely. But actual practice has never been so neat, and thus things have changed right along. Let’s see how.

The Enlightenment (Buddha’s Awakening)

The Social Context Buddhism rose in the 6th to 5th century BCE, in the Ganga valley plain in a culture with a developed world view. It was a time of great social ferment, with a republican tribal base of small separate hunting, gathering and grazing communities slowly being subsumed by a set of growing urban centers based on agriculture, the beginnings of commodity commerce and hereditary monarchical states. Tribal equality and democracy were being lost to the disequalizing factors of property, classes, and money. Most prominently, the long existent political organization of clan chiefdoms of locally related communities ruled by oligarchies of elders, were superseded in the cities and the hinterlands ruled by the cities by hereditary kings (rajas). legitimized by Brahmanical sacrifices.

The major contemporary ideology was the Veda-based Brahmanical precursor to Hinduism. The Vedas were a set of texts put together between [1100 and 900 BCE] in North India. (R&J say 1600, very few India specialists would agree. As pointed out above.) These ur texts were interpreted in a second layer of exegetical texts called Brahmanas, composed between the 9th and the 6th century. They offered a global vision of reality in which a sacrifice conducted by a priestly class called Brahmans, who controlled and explained the cosmos. This ideology was produced in an Indo-European language calling itself Sanskrit (or the refined language). It described a world of three levels: terrestrial, aerial, and celestial, where 33 great gods ruled and people below were divided into different (occupational) types and subject to these gods, though they could influence and even control them through the Brahmans’ sacrifices.

In the 6-5th centuries there was an ongoing heterodox current in development among those using the Indo-European languages. [The people of the subcontinent, tribal and urban, lived in a variety of other languages, most of those in the Indo-Gangetic plains of the north in Indo-European languages, and most of those south of the Narmada in Dravidian languages, with a much smaller number of a third system )Munda). It was the Indo-European speakers, calling themselves Arya, who came to dominate north Indian politics and so the history that has survived.]

Some among the upper classes questioned the Brahmanical orthodoxy and were developing a quite different approach left to us in the texts called the Upanishads. Written by both Brahmans and (more often) Ksatriyas (the other top caste), these texts (1) rejected the primacy of the Vedas and (2) explored metaphysical issues the orthodox texts ignored. Where do we come from? How do we transcend the pains of this world beyond the simple benefits of material wealth, wives, and victory in war that the orthodox texts promised.

The composers of these texts were called Shramana (strivers or wanderers). R&J reference to sama as the root of the term referring to being in tune (with nature) And this was a root claimed by later Buddhists, though wanderers seems the more likely origin in both use and etymology. Today we also call them renouncers, for one of their chief characteristics was their renunciation of families and worldly possessions, and their living a life by begging (and probably gathering), while occupied primarily by philosophical investigation of the problems their texts have left to us.

It was these Upanisadic sramana whom Siddhartha joined in his search for understanding at 29 years of age. What we will call Buddhism is in many ways, in its beginning, a strikingly unorthodox version of Upanisadic thought. The sramana sought revelation through rational speculation, austerities, and yogic meditation. The Buddhist and Jain versions of this ideological project are seen as heterodox in their degree of departure from and antagonism to the Brahmanical thought that preceded and succeeded it. The less antagonistic strains became one of the major bases for the subsequent development of the Brahmanical tradition commonly called Hinduism today.

The World View: experienced reality is seen as an infinitely repeated series of cycles of creation, devolution, destruction, and recreation. Human life is also seen as infinitely repeated rebirths, or transmigration (samsara), based to some extent on the acts (karma) of one’s previous lives. Most saw this as a continual rebirth of a personal identity, though there were others who denied this and saw life as a once through proposition, after which one simply passed away as a personality. This was quite different that the classic Christian (we may now say "Western") problem of seeking rebirth in heaven as a goal. This view saw rebirth in a heaven as one of the possibilities among the continual rebirths. The Indian problem was to escape the eternal wheel of rebirth. Moksa (release) from eternity, not eternal life, was the Indian goal.

Most saw one’s actions (karma) in one life as effecting one’s status in future lives. The orthodox Vedic view was that the only acts that counted in this regard were the sacrifices one could purchase from Brahman priests. The Upanisadic thinkers speculated beyond this, and wondered whether or not the ethical morality of one’s acts were effective for the better or worse, and saw renunciation and meditation as the way out. The Jains saw all action as being negative and binding of one to rebirth; only non-violence and inaction were reckoned as positive by them. One very small sect, called Ajivaka, saw all as predetermined and so depicted karma as of no importance. The Buddhist view saw moral intention and mental attitude as all important in determining karma.

The Buddha is a hero figure whose story was composed long after his life. And written down much later than that. As the Buddha created the Bhikkhu in his own image, so the Bhikkhus created the Buddha of our memory in theirs. All the first section of R&J is taken from Theravada, Pali texts and Ashvaghosha. The Sangha was organized along the oligarchic democratic lines of the "tribal" settlements, in which the Buddha was raised.

He was born in the Gautama family of the Shakya clan of the Ksatriya caste, in what are now the foot hills of Nepal. Suddhodhana, his father, was a chief or prince. According to R&J the date was in Buddhist tradition equal to 642 BCE. Later Western Buddhologists have decided that it should really be 566 or 448 BCE. Actually the issue is even more complex than that. 623, 563, an 466 also have currency in different places. The internal chronology is agreed to by all. He was 29 when he left his home of luxury to become a sramana, he was 35 when he actually reached enlightenment (bodhi) , and he was 80 at his end (paranirvana).

Throughout this life, before his enlightenment he is called Bodhisattva, a title given to one in his last perfected existence, on the verge of Buddhahood. And we get a full story: Maya his mother dreams of a white elephant descending into her womb,

R&J interpret the Awakening through analysis of the four stages of his dhyana (trance) spanning from midnight to daybreak the night of a full moon.

Attaining the fourth stage yielded abhijna (6 super knowledges): 1 psychic powers (levitation etc.); 2 psychic hearing; 3 knowledge of other’s minds; 4 memory of his former lives; 5 psychic vision; and 6 an extinction of asravas (sensual desires, becoming, ignorance, etc.). 1-5 are considered mundane, the last results from the Noble Eightfold Path. It is the 6th that is the attainment of arhathood or perfected being.

It is in this sixth that he perceives the Four Noble (Arya) Truths: "This is suffering, this is the source of suffering, this is the cessation of suffering, and is the path that leads to the cessation of suffering."

"In me emancipated arose knowledge of my emancipation. I realized that rebirth has been destroyed, the holy life has been lived, the job has been done, there is nothing after this." This is the great Wisdom (prajna).

The enlightenment combines two major elements, the acquiring of shamanic powers (psychic vision, etc.) and concrete vision of an ethical philosophy or theology.

Most major elements of this story, right down to the sorts of shamanistic powers acquired, are established ones in the Upanisadic (later Vedic) literature, as is the focal concern of the an interpretation of karma and samsara. What is heterodox and peculiarly Buddhist is the ethical interpretation of karma and the elements of the Four Noble Truths.

The importance of the full moon night, the uses of trance, the mythological beings who appear, even the nirvana goal of karmic and personal extinction are all familiar from the Upanishadic tradition.

What was different was the Buddha’s particular variation on these themes, and most specifically the ethical element added to the interpretation of karma. On one hand the Buddha rejected the claim of the materialists and the Ajivakas, who claimed there was no soul or afterlife, and so no transmigration (samsara) at all. On the other the Buddha denied that rebirth was determined by the Brahman’s sacrifices, or conformance to caste rules, or even some special sort of knowledge. Karma was accepted as the controlling factor of continuing cycle of lives, but karma was considered to be an expression of one’s entire life, including most centrally one’s moral intentions. Doing good deeds, following the Noble Eightfold Path, of right intentions and right speech, etc., was what formed one’s karma, not following the Brahman’s rules of graded inequality.

This moral causality is not a typical Upanisadic or earlier Vedic traditions. Jains, the other contemporary heterodox (non-Brahmanical) offshoot of Upanishadic thought, considered all actions—good or bad—to produce karma and all karma to be equally negative. The Buddhists treated personal intention as of primary importance. Good intentions lead to good karma and bad to bad. Unintentional deeds for them have no karmic importance, a major contrast with later Brahmanical Hindu thought, where it is the act that counts, not the intentions behind it.

This macro-cosmic view is seen in a paralleled operation in the assessments for breaking the Sangha’s Vinaya (discipline) rules. Failure to follow discipline was assessed differentially according to whether or not the failures were intentional or inadvertent.

This separation of ethics from acts is one of the essential differences between Buddhism and Brahmanical Hinduism.

R&J point out basic assumptions about the universe common to the period of Buddhism’s development. I see their number 2 as part of their number 5.

1 The cosmos was endless in time and space. Time is seen a sequence of vastly long kalpas (eons) endlessly repeating in cycles of degradation. Each series begins with an age of physically and morally perfected beings, followed by three succeedingly degraded ages of progressively defective beings. (We are currently about three quarters through the fourth and least perfected of these eons.) At the end of four kalpas the entire cosmos would be consumed, and then reborn fresh to pass through the cycle again. The Buddhist incorporated this vision significantly in a belief that the Buddha’s dharma would be seriously weakened after for half a millenium and give out altogether after a millenium. Eventually a new Buddha would appear to preach the dharma anew.

3 The quality of one’s birth in each life was determined by one’s acts in the previous life (one’s karma). The orthodox, Brahmanical view was that this karma was founded upon one’s careful following of the Brahman’s rules of living according to the caste into which one was born. Morality is of importance to the Brahmanical vision as well as the Buddhist vision, but with important distinctions. In the Brahmanical view the graded hierarchy of varna (castes) requires different sorts of acts from each group. And though theft or violence against another person may be accounted as wrong if the victim is of the higher varna, and especially bad if committed by a person of a lower varna against one of the higher varna (the highest being the Brahmans themselves), it may not be seen as wrong at all if committed against a member of a higher varna against someone of the lower.

4 Samsara (that which turns around forever) was the endless series of rebirths that each individual personality had to go through, as the karma of each existence played itself out in the status of one’s birth in the next. Good karma would result in births in progressively better situations. Theoretically one could even attain the status of a deity. And by the same token one could as effectively be reborn into lesser and lesser states, descending from human to animal, insect or even lower births.

5 Life too was seen as endless and continuous. Each person would eventually be reborn after each lifetime. That is, until some they could come up with a means of escaping. The Brahmanical texts called this moksha or release; the Buddhists called this nirvana.

Heavens (svarga) exist in this vision, but not as a final destination. One may spend time in a svarga between existences, but this is part of the cycle of samsara. Moksha and nirvana are excapes from not only the cycle of rebirth, but from the very existence of personality. In nirvana one’s being evaporates, never to be reassembled. Moksha and Samsara are not the Semitic worlds salvation as eternal heaven. They represent a desire not for eternal life, but for an absolute cessation of existence, escape from existence.

The Buddha’s life continues, with spirits, Devas, and supernatural playing a role.

The first sermon is among the most important of all Buddhist moments and conceptual sources. It is here that the Buddha lays out his basic message, and the fact that he has bothered to do it indicates that beyond his ability to impart wisdom he has taken the decision to share it. This produces the second half of the Buddha’s message, compassion for others. Compassion and Wisdom are the two great poles of Buddhism. In its initiating his movement to spread the dharma he is putting the wheel of the law into motion. In Sravakayana path only this sermon is given this title, though other paths will add their own moments. When they address him as friend he says that is no longer so, he is now an arhant (a perfectly awakened one) and a Tathagata (one of those who has gone this way)

He preaches (1) the middle path, condemning extremes of luxury and asceticism

(2) the 4 Noble Truths : duhkha, the origin of duhkha, the cessation of duhkha, and the means to the cessation

The Noble 8 Fold Path is right (1) views, (2) resolve, (3) speech, (4) action, (5) livelihood, (6) effort, (7) mindfulness , and (8) concentration.

The choice shows that the Buddha and the sangha eschewed consideration of the caste system for internal issues. It is constantly reiterated that Brahmans are considered the finest examples of how to act and be, but also that one is a Brahman by virtue of ones actions not one’s birth.

R&J make the point that the reverence for relics is a religious and not a philosophical dimension of Buddhism. Pilgrimage to the location of the 4 or 8 great events, is the same. They help followers develop a sense of "chastened dispassion," according to what Ananda heard the Buddha say.

R&J offer a detailed, if somewhat elliptical analysis of the Wheel of Life (or Wheel of Existence) of later Buddhism. Though their purpose is to elucidate a Buddhist vision of the cosmos, I shall use it as an example of reading a Buddhist image. Early versions of the image have survived from as early as Ajanta, in the 5th century, though it only reaches its current form in later Vajrayana Buddhism of Tibet.

A painted Wheel of Life on the screen, an outline in their hands, copper plate circulating

There is no Buddhist creation myth, since creation means nothing to the quest for release. What counts is the wheel of rebirth. The philosophical underpinning of the diagram is the concept of pratitya-samutpada or the chain of dependent origination (dependent co-arising in R&J). The idea that it is the dependence of all states on prior states that keeps our phenomenal reality seeming what it does, and which to escape, requires a break in the chain.

To be reminded that this is not all in our minds and that there is a material basis for our study, I will pass around an actual specimen. And I will leave this slide of a living version on the wall while you look at the outline from R&J. The point of the exercise is to get you to focus on analyzing a design by carefully reading the evidence of its forms. And by remembering that these forms point the way to deeper meanings, some of which we will approach, some of which go beyond our purpose here.

You will notice that the chain of the diagram differs in the absolute location, though not relative sequence, from the painting.