Virtuous and non-virtuous

Thesis: The Wite Lotus Society and the White Lotus Teachings – Reality and Label Promovendus Barend Joannes ter Haar

Title obtained in Leiden, 1989. Promotor Prof. E. Zurcher Prior assistance and guidance by prof. Kawakatsu Mamoru and Tomita Kenji of Kyushu University

Subject: White Lotus Teachings and Tradition in pré-republican China.

Chapter 2.2.1 of this thesis introduces the saying “chicai shimo”, “Eating vegetables and serving the devils” as follows:

“The phrase ‘eating … etc’ was always taken to imply rebellious intentions, … The phrase has been supposed to refer to Manichaean practices, because of the second part of the label, (shimo) ‘serving the devils’. It is not clear whether this usage of mo was inspired by its sound (homophone with mo in moni, the word for Mani, the Buddha of Light … etc.)”

Correction:

“Eating vegetables” means being a vegan. Being a vegan is being virtuous in the world of East-Asian Buddhism, and especially in that of the White Lotus Schools.
“Serving the devils” means being sly, having it behind one’s elbow.
In other words, this is a paraphrase of one of the historical Buddha’s sayings: wearing the robes, and pretending monkhood. I.e. it stands for a false pretense: someone pretends to be what he is not, or someone conceals his non-virtuous conduct.

To correct the misunderstanding around Mani and mo.
Mani was the godhead of Manicheism, not ‘the Buddha of Light”. “Buddha of Light” is one of the two epithets of  Amitābha Buddha, Omito-fo in Chinese.
The author furthermore mistook one Buddha for another: Amitābha (Buddha of Light) for Sakyamuni (historical Buddha).

Sinicizing the name of the historical Buddha Sakyamuni gives Shì jiā móu ní Fo.

To wrap it up: the entire thesis’ passage about the perceived connection between (White Lotus) Buddhism and Manicheism is utterly wrong. It is based upon an erroneous if not fantasized translation-interpretation of the chinese character mo.

Millenarian Teaching

Thesis: The Wite Lotus Society and the White Lotus Teachings – Reality and Label Promovendus Barend Joannes ter Haar
Title obtained in Leiden, 1989. Promotor Prof. E. Zurcher Prior assistance and guidance by prof. Kawakatsu Mamoru and Tomita Kenji of Kyushu University

Subject: White Lotus Teachings and Tradition in pré-republican China.

Unaware of the inclusion of large sections of beliefs or cultivations belonging to the White Lotus Teachings (bailianjiao) into Chinese Pure Land-teachings (jingtu), the promovendus stated in the first two chapters of his study that both Amidism and the cultivation on Maitreya, the Buddha of the future are manifestations of millennialism, to be understood in the Christian sense as an end to time and an end earth, as a saving of the believers into a parallel universe, and as a “second coming of Christ” as it is called – although it does not say where he comes since the world came to an end.
We may hold Matteo Ricci (ch. 6.1.2 in the thesis) responsible for introducing this concept of millenarian teaching.

Nor Amidism, nor “Maitreyism” are millenarian in that Western-Christian sense of the word. In neither teaching there is the preaching of an end of the world. The Buddhist Small Vehicle-manuscript, the Agañña sutta does speak of a “contracting” of the planet, followed by an “re-evolving”⁽¹⁾. Other texts mention a worldwide conflagration followed by a reinvigorating of the planet and either a coming of a “World Ruler” or of the next Buddha.

When there is mention of “millennialism” or “millenarian teaching” in the European sense it is understood as a belief by which the adherents are collectively saved just before a litteral and final end of the world takes place. The Amidists however follow an individual path by which this individual by his own determination-fixation on Buddha’s name and Buddhas Unconditional Compassion is accepted into the Pure Land where s/he continues to cultivate towards Buddhahood. In this latter view the world keeps turning be it without the individual who managed to step out.
Something similar goes for what we call Maitreyism: at the end of an era, when the Buddhist Teachings are lost and forgotten, the world is in disarray but does not come to an end. At that moment, it is believed, another Buddha appears, one in a long successions of Enlightened Ones who “turns the wheel” anew.

Both in the theory around the Christian-Western millenarian teaching and in other instances where East and West wish to meet, but cannot without in-depth research into words and concepts, we must come to the conclusion that here is a “discussion between the deaf”; both parties speak, but neither hears.

• (1) Contracting and expanding may be understood as the physical process in someone who goes hungry – his brains produce a “tunnel vision”, and starts eating again – the brains regain their former function. Especially this particular manuscript allows such an interpretation.
• The partly refurbished Pudu district in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital, is named after the Chinese White Lotus monk Pudu (1255-1330). This district is that of working class Chinese immigrants, i.e. their descendants. During the first years of the 21rst Cent. the  Buddhist Temple in Jalan Pudu was raised to the ground to allow for city renovation. The bhikshuni (or bhikkhuni: nuns) of the Pudu temple belonged officially to the Jingtu (Pure Land) Tradition but still maintained White Lotus ideals while serving the surrounding population that held and holds the same ideals.
• Albert de Pouvourville, part of the French ambassadorial staff in Vietnam and China, publishes an article in “La Revue de Paris” of April 3, 1912.
  Besides being obsessed with categories such as Yellow Race (Chinese), White Race (Westerners), and Red Race (Indians) he maintains that the White Lotus Society is a consequence of a first and ancient concept of Triad: Heaven, Earth, Mankind. He fails to see this as one of the postulates of Confucianism but seems to have heard that the “first traces of it appeared already in the second Cent. BC.” He however fails to provide us with relevant sources.

Sāgara, samudra

Sāgara (Skr. and Pali) and samudra (Skr.) or samudda (Pali) are the two words that early Buddhist writers used when describing huge water surfaces. As of the earliest translations into German, French and English sāgara and samudra have almost exclusively been rendered as ‘ocean’. More recent linguistic and geographical studies show however that during the rainy season rivers running over their floodplains also belonged to the category sāgara and samudra: a person standing on one bank could only imagine the further shore.
As a result of visions of this immensity of samudra[s] (samudda[s]) stories and parables came into existence. We know a story in which the sāgara/samudra is the recipient of anything and everything without showing preferences. It symbolises the epithome of equanimity. There is another story in which even the slightest drop of water eventually dissolves into this ocean — and is thus liberated. Nevertheless, this latter image is basically a Hinduïstic concept, as we shall see below.

“It is like the water flowing from the lake Heatless; by four great river currents it suffices the continent, inexhaustible, ever increasing, benefiting infinite beings, and finally pours into the great ocean: that water from the very beginning is headed for the ocean.”

This short passages is to be found in the Avatámaka sūtra [Garland sūtra], the book The Ten Stages. That is to say, it at least belongs to the second or later Tibetan inspired version translated under the supervision of Shiksha-nanda (652-710). Shikshananda headed the royal translation bureau in the northern Chinese capital of Luoyang. It is possible, and even highly likely that in his translation office there were Tibetans among his scribes who had finished their studies at Nalanda in Northern India but who were not yet prepared to go back to the precarious living conditions in Tibet.

An earlier Avatámaka sūtra translation, this time under the supervision of Buddha-bhadra (359-430), came to be written (and printed) in Xi’an, another former capital of Northern China.
Nalanda as “university” may have existed in Buddhabhadra’s 4th-5th Cent., but as Buddhism entered Tibet (and today’s Bhutan) not before the 6th Cent., it is highly unlikely that Tibetan Buddhist monks were present in Buddhabhadra’s translation office. Hence the shortness of the Buddhabhadra-version as compared to Shikshananda’s manuscript. It lacked at least the versified resumés of the later extended version. We may assume that Shikshananda’s translation received additions and embellishments written by Tibetans who remembered “Lake Heatless”, i.e. Lake Manasarovar with its four great rivers. Manasarovar is also called Anotatta (Pali), Anavatapta or Manasa (Skr.).

To take up the image of ‘heatless’ (Heat, root: ‘tap‘). The Advaita-tradition of Hinduïsm has a saying that runs as follows: “the heatless, smokeless light of the Divine Effulgence, of “Vedanta Incarnate“. Whether the “heatless” in this sentence should rather be compared with the “tapas“, the extreme physical effort of the saintly sadhu, which thus is rejected, is a discussion that we will leave in the capable hands of Hindu scholars.

Dissolving into the ocean. The said Advaita-tradition is all about stressing the concept of non-duality, i.e. the One.
In particular the Buddhist Lankāvatāra sūtra contradicts this concept of Oneness in the Hinduïstic sense of the word. Or rather, becoming One is strongly rejected. The “Lanka” rather stresses a “not-two = not-two; it is not One either”. Chapter III illustrates it in different ways. E.g.:
“There is an exalted state of inner attainment which does not fall into the dualism of oneness and otherness, of bothness and not-bothness; …” (III, 172)

“There is nothing but that which is seen of the Mind itself, the duality too is of the Mind; …” (III, 181, 65)

“… some philosophers … declare this to be Nirvāna: that there is a primary substance, there is a supreme soul, and they are seen differently by each, and that they produce all things from the transformations of the qualities. … All these view … are not in accord with logic, nor are they acceptable to the wise.” (III, 183-184 Tr. D.T. Suzuki)

“Tathāgata Tathāgata”

Many years ago a Taiwanese Bhikshunī (female monk) who taught at the Foguangshan Buddhist highschool in Kaohsiung but lived outside, in her own little temple together with her mother who had equally become a bhiksunī, handed me a version of the Lotus Sūtra. At that time I travelled around, no longer satisfied with the Srilankan-inspired theravāda teachings, but yet insecure about which road to take instead. The text of the Lotus Sūtra struck me like a hammer’s blow though after a short while this hammer turned out to be the thunderbolt that awakened me to the teachings of the Mahāyana.
I never became a true or staunch Lotus Sūtra adept. Nevertheless I wish to think of this bhiksunī, whose name I forgot, as a bodhisattva who wholly fulfilled her bodhisattva vows.

One of these days this memory arose after reading a short sentence in today’s Hindi that runs: “Hindu Hindu ek rahen“. Translated it means: “All Hindus ought to be united”.

“Hindu Hindu …” reminded me of a passage in the second chapter of the Lotus Sūtra that to this day constitutes a puzzle to all Sanscrit scholars who study the Buddhist lore.

Bhikshu Kongmu gives us the Chinese redering of the Sūtra’s passage. It reads: “wéi fó yú fó năi néng jiù jìn zhū fă shí xiàng“.
His translation reads: “Only a Buddha together with a Buddha can fully understand the true character of all things.” “Fó yú fó” being the Chinese rendering of “Tathāgata Tathāgata” in the original Sanscritic text that underpins todays translations.

Over the years a number of Lotus Sūtra have been discovered, but the version most used is the complete text once hidden in one of the Mogao-caves in Dunhuang, now Western China.

Long before Bhikshu Kongmu’s solution of the enigma Indologist Kern, who is remembered as the first to translate the Lotus Sūtra into English (and who did not hesitate to incorporate an “amen” into the second chapter) rendered the text as “None but a Tathāgatha can impart to a Tathāgata those laws which the Tathāgata knows.”

Today, given the “Hindu Hindu ek rahen” we might translate the sentence “Tathāgata Tathāgata … etc” with: “Only Buddhas can understand those things“, or “only Buddhas (i.e. only Tathāgata [plural]) can impart Buddha-knowledge.”