3  The Nature and Origins of Mahāyāna Buddhism1

I was once asked by an eminent Oxford philosopher ‘What sort of “animal” is Indian philosophy?’ If we try and clarify what sort of ‘animal’ Mahāyāna Buddhism is we find straight away that contemporary scholarship is beginning to indicate – I think convincingly – that there has in the past been considerable misunderstanding concerning the sort of religious phenomenon we are talking about. Talk has all too often been one of schism and sect; the model one of clearcut doctrinal and behavioural difference, rivalry and antagonism, often one feels, on the model of that between Protestant and Roman Catholic Christianity. This model perhaps has been reinforced by the undoubted antagonism found in some Mahāyāna sūtras towards those who fail to heed the message of the text. These people persistently continue to follow what the Mahāyāna sūtras themselves term – using an intentionally polemical and abusive expression – an ‘Inferior Way’, a Hīnayāna.2 Thus we have texts, the earliest of which might date in something resembling a form we have now from perhaps the second or first century bce, that see themselves as genuinely being the word of the Buddha (or a Buddha) and thus claim a disputed status as sūtras. These texts advocate a vision, although not necessarily all the same vision, which they term Mahāyāna, the ‘Great Way’, or the ‘Way to the Great’, or the ‘Greatest Way’.3 In some cases, perhaps increasing as time passed, this Great Way is contrasted with an Inferior Way (Hīnayāna), and sometimes this contrast is marked by the use of rather immoderate language. Followers of the Inferior Way are, as one Mahāyāna sūtra puts it, ‘like jackals’ (Williams 2009: 23).

Yet notwithstanding the harshness of some Mahāyāna sūtras (all of which were considered apocryphal by non-Mahāyānists), we now know that a picture of schism and sect, with attendant and widespread rivalry and antagonism, would be very misleading. We know from later Chinese sources, for example, that Chinese pilgrims to India found so-called non-Mahāyāna and Mahāyāna monks in the same monasteries. The only obvious and manifest differences between these two groups was that the Mahāyāna monks showed particular reverence, ‘worshipped’, figures of bodhisattvas, compassionate beings on the path to full Buddhahood, while the non-Mahāyāna monks chose not to.4

The student should be extremely careful not to extrapolate uncritically from the antagonism of some of the Mahāyāna sūtras to an actual, practical, antagonism ‘on the ground’. He or she should also be careful not to extrapolate from the sheer size of the Mahāyāna sūtra literature to the extent or indeed the nature of Mahāyāna identity in classical India. There is evidence that monks and nuns who did not adopt the Mahāyāna vision viewed it with some scorn, seeing it as an absurd fabrication based simply on the so-called Mahāyāna sūtras claiming a quite unjustified authenticity and consequential authority. Many Mahāyāna scholars such as Nāgārjuna (in e.g. the Ratnāvalī) or Śāntideva (in the Bodhicaryāvatāra) produced defences of the Mahāyāna, defending the authenticity of the Mahāyāna sūtras. But to the best of my knowledge there is no detailed, systematic refutation of Mahāyāna in any non-Mahāyāna Indian Buddhist source yet discovered.5 Modern scholars are frequently left digging and probing for what are claimed to be occasional and non-systematic references to Mahāyāna in non-Mahāyāna sources such as Vasubandhu’s enormous Abhidharmakośa. Given the many centuries of Buddhism in India, and the size of the Mahāyāna literature, this is absolutely astonishing if we extrapolate from the size of the Mahāyāna canon to the supposed extent of Mahāyāna in India. But we cannot make such an inference, and one is tempted to suggest that the only explanation for near-silence is that Mahāyāna in classical India was not a threat, and/or was not taken seriously. This could be because in spite of the size of the literature there were throughout much of the period of Buddhism in India very few monks who actually adopted the Mahāyāna vision, and those monks were just thought by their brethren to be a bit weird – but harmless. Alternatively it could be because in terms of what is to count as a threat among those who have come together to live a simple and cenobitic lifestyle the Mahāyāna was not a rival. I suspect it may be a combination of both of these factors.6

If we can follow Heinz Bechert (1982), for Buddhists ‘schism’ is nothing to do with doctrinal disagreements as such, but is the result of divergence in monastic rule.7 This makes sense. The whole purpose of Buddhist monasticism is for groups of people to live together a simple life with optimum facilities for inner development. What produces major disagreement in such contexts – and can lead to schism, ‘splitting the Sangha’ (saṃghabheda) – are what for non-monastics would appear to be fairly minor matters of behavioural disagreement. Thus if a monk holds that it is permissible to eat after midday, while all his brethren have to finish their meal before midday, this could cause great problems for the peaceful running of the monastery. Further difficulties could arise for the crucial issue of the harmonious relationship between the monastery and the local lay community. Imagine the response of the lay supporters to their farming day being disrupted by two groups of monks from the local monastery on the alms-round at different times. One could see that under such circumstances it might be better for all concerned that the divergent monk (and those who agree) ‘split’. Suppose on the other hand that a monk holds the final goal of all should be not nirvāṇa but perfect Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings. Or he believes that in meditation he is receiving personal tuition from a Buddha called Amitāyus unknown to other monks. This might be thought by many of his brethren to be pretty peculiar. But providing it does not lead to intolerable levels of disruptive behaviour – and why should it? – our monk’s Mahāyāna views need not lead to a ‘schism’.

Whether schism in ancient Indian Buddhism was always simply a matter of monastic rule, or whether it could be brought about by certain significant doctrinal differences, remains a matter of current controversy among scholars. Recent research (Walser 2005: 99–100; cf. Williams 2009: 4) has pointed to some suggestion in the sources that saṃghabheda could indeed be linked not just with disagreements over the monastic code but also with ‘teaching what is not the Dharma [i.e. Doctrine] to be the Dharma’. It may be that Bechert has overgeneralised in urging an exclusive association of schism in Buddhism with disputes over monastic rule. Either way it is clear that institutionally Buddhism is still primarily an orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy. What is most important is harmony of behaviour, not harmony of doctrines. The role played by doctrinal disagreements in Christian history does not apply in the case of Buddhism. Of course, where there is a genuine schism related to the monastic rule it could also be linked (perhaps subsequently) with doctrinal variation. But doctrinal difference as such does not appear to be a major determinant in Buddhism for schism. Thus since Mahāyāna is, as I shall argue, a matter of vision and motivation which does not (or need not) in itself entail behaviour confrontational to the monastic rule, it is unlikely that in itself it could have resulted from schism. It is not that sort of thing. It is not that sort of ‘animal’. Once this is appreciated it can be seen that the opposition between Mahāyāna and non-Mahāyāna could not really be a parallel to that of, say, Roman Catholicism polarised against Protestantism, where identity is very, very much a matter of doctrinal allegiance, of rival beliefs. Schism in Christian history is precisely the result of doctrinal disagreement. Identity in Buddhism is supplied by adherence to the monastic code, the Vinaya. Identity is a monastic matter. As time passed, after the death of the Buddha, there were indeed schisms, and there remain a number of Vinayas. The traditional Theravāda account of the Second Council at Vaiśālī in north India (c. 40–100 years after the death of the Buddha) describe how it was called to settle issues related to divergent behaviour among certain ‘wicked monks’.8 There is some question about how far we can follow the Theravāda account of this Council, but it is understandable that a Council may have been called over such central issues. The suggestion that the ‘wicked monks’ were defeated but remained stubborn and broke away is indeed an account of saṃghabheda, schism. This account could not be used as it often is, however, in any simple way to explain the origins of the Mahāyāna, since the complex doctrinally diverse entity that is Mahāyāna could not have resulted in any simple way from a monastic schism. The schism at the Second Council was not and could not have been the cause of the Mahāyāna.

Traditional Theravāda accounts associate the defeated monks with the origin of the Mahāsāṃghikas, a rival Vinaya and doctrinal tradition. In the past there has been a tendency to trace the origins of the Mahāyāna to doctrinal tendencies within the Mahāsāṃghika tradition. On both counts there are however problems. Suffice to say that it is looking very unlikely that the ‘wicked monks of Vaiśālī’ were the origins of the Mahāsāṃghikas or indeed anything to do with them, and few contemporary scholars would identify Mahāyāna in a straightforward way with any particular Vinaya tradition (or non-Mahāyāna sect). Inasmuch as we can detect from Mahāyāna sources the Vinaya or perhaps Abhidharma presuppositions of the compilers of those sources, we can see that Mahāyāna tendencies cut across the boundaries of the non-Mahāyāna sects and schools. For example, there is a clear association between the Dazhidulun (Ta-chih-tu Lun; *Mahāprajñāpāramitā Śāstra9), the enormous compendium of Mahāyāna attributed to Nāgārjuna and translated into Chinese by Kumārajīva in the early fifth century ce, and monks from the Sarvāstivāda/Vaibhāṣika tradition of Kashmir. But the Mahāyāna Lokānuvartanā Sūtra on the other hand shows a strong tendency towards the idea that the Buddha is in some sense always supramundane, and the teaching of emptiness, which are both associated with the Mahāsāṃghikas (see next chapter). Other Mahāyāna sūtras suggest a link with the Dharmaguptaka sect. It has been suggested by one scholar that sūtras may have circulated in various sects and been altered accordingly, so that we may not now be able to discover which group originated a particular Mahāyāna sūtra.10

The Theravāda Vinaya is one particular Vinaya, and indeed a monk can be defined as a Theravādin (a follower of Theravāda) precisely inasmuch as he has been ordained and lives according to the Theravāda Vinaya. In India in classical times, however, it seems likely that one of the most important Vinayas was that of the Mūlasarvāstivāda, the Vinaya which also to the present day guides the monastic vision of Tibetans. In China, and traditions influenced by China, among others the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya was popular. All these Vinayas are Vinayas which evolved over the centuries, but – and this is crucially important – they have absolutely nothing to do with issues of Mahāyāna versus non-Mahāyāna. There is no such thing as a Mahāyāna Vinaya.11 Thus it is extremely unlikely that Mahāyāna originated as such in any sort of schism. Moreover in a very real sense there cannot have been any Mahāyāna monks in India, since identity as a monk is a Vinaya matter, although of course there can certainly have been monks who held a Mahāyāna vision and motivation. Once we understand that Mahāyāna identity is not a matter of the Vinaya and therefore not a matter of publicly significant behaviour in a monastic context, then it becomes perfectly understandable that visitors to India would have seen Mahāyāna and non-Mahāyāna monks in the same monasteries. Why should we expect otherwise? If that still seems strange, then one has still not appreciated the inappropriateness of the schism-model, or that supplied by Christian parallels. Moreover the different Vinayas, although containing what were no doubt significant differences in the context of monastic concerns and precision, are all fairly close to each other. The radical doctrinal differences sometimes found between Mahāyāna and non-Mahāyāna are not matched in what was in public terms what actually counted for Buddhists in ancient India – monastic behaviour.

I have referred to Mahāyāna as a vision, a vision of what Buddhism is finally all about, rather than a sect, a school, or the result of schism. This picture of Mahāyāna corresponds I suggest with what scholarly research is beginning to indicate both about the nature of Mahāyāna and, more particularly, about what Mahāyāna is not. It also corresponds rather nicely with one of my favourite pictures of what Mahāyāna is really all about, a self-definition admittedly late (but enormously influential in Tibetan Buddhism) found in the Bodhipathapradīpa of the eleventh century Indian Buddhist scholar and missionary to Tibet, Atiśa. Based on earlier Buddhist precedents, Atiśa suggests a division of religious practitioners into three hierarchical classes according to their motivations. Hierarchical division of persons is a very Indian strategy (cf. caste and class), while division by motivation is quintessentially Buddhist where, as we have seen, from early days it has been the intention behind an act which is the main contributory factor in creating morally significant karma. Thus those of the lowest type perform (religious) actions motivated by saṃsāra – unenlightenment – worldly actions with the intention of some material gain either in this life or in another life. Those of the middle type are motivated by the wish for freedom from all suffering and rebirth, in other words the freedom that is nirvāṇa, enlightenment. Note that those who attain such a goal are in fact the group called arhats, and within this hierarchical framework as far as Atiśa is concerned they have followed an Inferior Path (a Hīnayāna). But those superior people whose motivation is the very highest take as their goal freedom from suffering for all, that is, perfect Buddhahood, motivated by the wish to attain the greatest possibility to benefit others. These are followers of the Great, the Supreme, Path – the Mahāyāna. In fact those of lowest motivation attain saṃsāra. Those of middle motivation attain nirvāṇa, while those with the highest motivation of all reach what Mahāyāna scholars came to refer to as a ‘nonabiding’ or ‘unrestricted’, or ‘not-fixed’ nirvāṇa (apratiṣṭhitanirvāṇa). This nirvāṇa is beyond such dualities. It is not saṃsāra but it is also not a resting in any nirvāṇa that would abandon sentient beings who are still suffering. Thus in the final analysis what makes a follower of Mahāyāna is not robes, rules or philosophy. It is motivation, intention. The Mahāyāna as a whole is a particular vision of what the final motivation and goal of serious practitioners should be. Atiśa’s self-definition of Mahāyāna is particularly useful for us because again it conforms with the picture of Mahāyānists and non-Mahāyānists in the same monastery, and it conforms with the archaeological and early textual evidence that there was no radical break between Mahāyāna and non-Mahāyāna, and as far as we can tell no genuine ‘Mahāyāna schism’. It reaffirms the centrality of intention in Buddhism, and explains why we find Mahāyāna cutting across the boundaries of non-Mahāyāna traditions. Mahāyāna is not as such an institutional identity. Rather, it is an inner motivation and vision, and this inner vision can be found in anyone regardless of their institutional position. Thus, of course, there could in theory be Theravāda Mahāyānists.12

I suspect it might indeed have been quite possible to visit India in earlier classical times and as a casual visitor not see Mahāyāna Buddhism as such at all. I am sure that great Mahāyāna thinkers like Nāgārjuna (c. second century CE) or Asaṅga (c. fifth century CE) would not have appeared much different from their non-Mahāyāna brethren. As Indians they would have looked, dressed and conducted themselves in a way akin to, say, a modern Theravādin in Sri Lanka. Their public behaviour might not have been sig-nificantly different from that of non-Mahāyānists. Perhaps even their public utterances would not have been very different. But if one came to know them well or visited them in their rooms or cells perhaps one could have detected a different vision and intention, a different idea of what, ultimately, it all meant, a different idea of what it was really all about and their lives as evinced in their private religious behaviour or conduct with sympathetic fellow Mahāyānists as well as their inner lives might too have been rather different from outsiders.

So far we have seen that Mahāyāna Buddhism is nothing to do with Vinaya differences, and is unlikely to have been the result of schism. It is hence not a sect of Buddhism. It is a phenomenon that cuts across the boundaries of different Vinaya traditions, and was also capable of cutting across the boundaries of doctrinal (such as Abhidharma) schools.13 Mahāyāna is very diverse. It is united perhaps solely by a vision of the ultimate goal for those capable of it of attaining full Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings (the ‘bodhisattva ideal’) and also (eventually) a belief that Buddhas are still around and can be contacted (hence the possibility of an ongoing revelation). To this extent the expression ‘Mahāyāna’ is used simply for practical purposes. It is used as a ‘family term’ covering a range of not necessarily identical or even compatible practices and teachings. Thus Mahāyāna could not itself be a school of Buddhism either. It lacks that sort of unity; it is not that sort of ‘animal’. It is possible to detect in some Mahāyāna sūtras criticism of those who do not accept Mahāyāna, and particularly criticism of those who do not accept the particular sūtra concerned (Schopen 1975). There is also criticism sometimes of or comments on other sūtras and their advocates (Harrison 1978; Pagel 1995: 36 ff.). According to Gregory Schopen it may be that in origins Mahāyāna was centred on a number of ‘sūtra cults’, involving the promulgation as well as perhaps (or eventually) the worship of specific sūtras which were perhaps in mutual rivalry. These sūtras were held to contain a particular new revelation from the Buddha (or a Buddha).

By far the most important and suggestive work on the nature and origins of the Mahāyāna in India has come from Gregory Schopen, with significant additional contributions by Paul Harrison. Schopen has drawn attention to the importance of archaeological data, such as inscriptional evidence, for the picture it can give us of what was actually happening in India, in opposition to the inferences we might be tempted to draw from written texts.14 The sheer size of the Mahāyāna literary corpus taken by itself might suggest that Mahāyāna was a widespread tendency in ancient India, although even this need not follow. After all, one person or one group of teachers could write a very great deal (note the repetitive nature of much of the Prajñāpāramitā literature). Schopen’s study (1979) of the evidence for Mahāyāna in Indian inscriptions has led to some interesting conclusions which appear to contradict the picture some might be tempted to draw from the literary remains.15 First, the evidence for Mahāyāna in Indian inscriptions (such as the inscriptions of those donating a statue to a monastery, for example) is actually relatively scarce. What evidence there is shows that with one exception the earliest use of the term ‘Mahāyāna’ in inscriptions dates from the fifth or sixth centuries CE, although it has been argued (controversially) that there is the use of certain terms identifiable as having a Mahāyāna reference from the fourth century CE. Either way we find that inscriptional evidence for Mahāyāna lags many centuries behind the earliest literary evidence (c. second/first century BCE), and it is arguable that the use of the term ‘Mahāyāna’ to give self-identity to a particular group of people took even longer. Thus, Schopen wants to conclude, ‘we are able to assume that what we now call the Mahāyāna did not begin to emerge as a separate and independent group until [at least] the fourth century’ (Schopen 1979: 15; 2005 reprint: 239). It seems that for perhaps five or six centuries – the centuries which saw the production of a great deal of the Mahāyāna sūtra literature, and many of the greatest thinkers of the Mahāyāna – Mahāyāna was not seen ‘on the ground’ as an identifiable ‘institution’ involving inscriptional allegiance. The one exception is contained in an inscription dating from the second century CE discovered in 1977, which also refers to the Mahāyāna Buddha Amitābha. But, as Schopen points out (1987b), the amazing point about this inscription and its reference to Amitābha is that it is the only one for many centuries, in spite of the fact that we know Mahāyāna literature and texts treating Amitābha (or Amitāyus) had been in existence for some time. Along with the absence of clear self-identity for the followers of Mahāyāna, we seem to find evidence of their scarcity – or at least, no evidence for their frequency – let alone the prevalence of a ‘cult of Amitābha’ in north India at that time, as some scholars have claimed. Schopen’s conclusions merit quoting at some length:

[E]ven after its initial appearance in the public domain in the second century [Mahāyāna] appears to have remained an extremely limited minority movement – if it remained at all – that attracted absolutely no documented public or popular support for at least two more centuries. It is again a demonstrable fact that anything even approaching popular support for the Mahāyāna cannot be documented until the fourth/fifth century C.E., and even then the support is overwhelmingly by monastic, not lay, donors.…although there was – as we know from Chinese translations – a large and early Mahāyāna literature, there was no early, organized, independent, publically supported movement to which it could have belonged.

(Schopen 1987b: 124–5; 2005 reprint: 268–9, italics original)

Note also that as far as he is concerned Schopen has failed to find any support for the widespread association of the laity with the origins or growth of Mahāyāna. This is important, for it contradicts a view widely held until fairly recently that the Mahāyāna represents primarily a move by the laity and those sympathetic to their aspirations, against certain rather remote and elitist monks.16 It is possible to point to material in the Pratyutpanna Sūtra, studied by Paul Harrison (1978, 1990) which gives incidental evidence to support the view that the origins of that particular relatively early Mahāyāna sūtra had nothing to do with the laity. It seems to me that the idea that the Mahāyāna in origin was indeed associated with the laity results at least in part from an over-literal and perhaps wishful reading of certain sūtras. These sūtras employ the rhetorical device of lay speakers (such as the rich merchant Vimalakīrti or the young princess Aśokadattā) in order to criticise non-Mahāyāna (in fact definitely Hīnayāna) views associated with rival monks.17 Mahāyāna was not however the result of a lay movement or lay aspirations, perhaps inspired by the rich mercantile classes, anymore than it was the result of an aristocratic Girl Guide-like movement of precocious juvenile princesses.18 It seems obvious that in the context of ancient India enduring religious innovation was made by religiously and institutionally significant groups of people who had the time to do so. This means, among educated laypeople, primarily brahmin teachers working within the caste and class based structures of orthodox householder life. It means as well renunciates, drop-outs, who also taught and survived on alms. It is unlikely that major changes in Buddhist ideology occurred at this time in the history of Buddhism inspired and preserved by householder brahmins, but entirely understandable that such changes occurred among Buddhist renunciates, i.e. monks.

Richard Gombrich (1990a) has argued that it seems unlikely that Mahāyāna as we know it could have originated without writing. This seems clear given the association of Mahāyāna in origins with the creation and preservation of the apocryphal Mahāyāna sūtra literature, and also Schopen’s (1975) mention of references in early Mahāyāna to worshipping the sūtras themselves in the form of books. This is on the model of the existing cult of stūpas, relic-shrines of the Buddha and his eminent disciples. The writing down of the Buddhist canon took place initially in the first century BCE. Thus Mahāyāna as such is unlikely to have occurred – would not have survived – much prior to the use of writing for scriptural texts. Against this, Vetter (1994) has suggested that there is some evidence that early Mahāyāna material was transmitted orally. Even so, Mahāyāna would not have survived without occurring within an enduring respected Buddhist organisation which was prepared to preserve it, and it is difficult to see in the case of Buddhism what that organisation could be if not members of the regular organisation which preserves Buddhist texts, the Sangha. One cannot imagine, on the other hand, the Sangha or indeed any significant Sangha member preserving radical innovative texts that originated in a lay movement against the Sangha itself.

The idea we get from Schopen’s work on archaeological sources is also supported by Paul Harrison’s concern with some of the earliest extant Mahāyāna literature, the translations into Chinese of Mahāyāna sūtras by Lokakṣema in the late second century CE (1987). Harrison has shown that the picture of early Mahāyāna involvement from these sources is overwhelmingly one of monks, although as well as nuns laity (including lay women) were also addressed in the sūtras. Note that women, however, are far from being treated on a basis of equality with men. We also do not find in these sūtras any antagonism towards monasticism, the Sangha, as such. Central to early Mahāyāna represented by these texts is an aspiration to perfect Buddhahood, that is, taking upon oneself the vow of the bodhisattva, while bodhisattvas as semi-divine beings, the so called ‘celestial bodhisattvas’ of later petitionary worship, are at this stage conspicuous by their absence. Early Mahāyāna is also characterised by a fairly antagonistic attitude towards those who follow the ‘inferior’ path to liberation from merely one’s own personal suffering, the state of the Arhat, rather than full Buddhahood for the benefit of all living beings.19 Susequently Harrison has argued that

some of the impetus for the early development of the Mahāyāna came from forest-dwelling monks. Far from being the products of an urban, lay, devotional movement, many Mahāyāna sūtras give evidence of a hardcore ascetic attempt to return to the original inspiration of Buddhism, the search for Buddhahood or awakened cognition.

(Harrison 1995: p. 65)

Thus Mahāyāna may in part represent a rather austere, almost ascetic, ‘revivalist movement’. This picture has been supported by Schopen (1999). He has shown quite convincingly in the case of an obscure Mahāyāna sūtra, the Maitreyamahāsiṃhanāda Sūtra (the ‘Lion’s Roar of Maitreya’) that this sūtra can be dated to the Kuṣāṇa period (c. first century CE) and originated in northwest India. This would make it one of the earliest datable Mahāyāna sūtras. The sūtra advocates a highly conservative monastic vision of Buddhism, centred on the inferiority of the laity, austere practice in the forest as the ideal, and condemns less austere monks for their involvement in such inferior practices as stūpa worship. Schopen concludes that

if there is any ‘relationship’ of the polemic found in the Maitreyama-hāsiṃhanāda-sūtra to the ‘rise of Mahāyāna Buddhism’ that relationship remains a mystery. This early ‘Mahāyāna’ polemic does not seem to be connected to the ‘rise’ of anything, but rather to the continuity and persistence of a narrow set of conservative Buddhist ideas on cult and monastic practice. That is all.

(Schopen 1999: 313; 2005 reprint: 95)20

It is possible that particularly significant in the origins of some of the Mahāyāna literature was a belief that the Buddha (or Buddhas) could still be contacted, and is really still teaching out of his immense compassion. There is some evidence that early Buddhism felt it to be a genuine problem why the compassionate Śākyamuni Buddha had died at the age of 80 when there was a widespread view that at the time of the Buddha the average lifespan was actually 100 years. Lifespan is supposed to be the result of merit, and we have a suggestion in the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta that a Buddha can live until the end of an aeon if he so wishes. We also have some grounds for thinking that in the early centuries the inability to see and benefit any more from the actual physical presence of the Buddha was felt by some very acutely. For this reason there was a real doctrinal problem as to why the Buddha actually died when he did die. One strategy was to blame the Buddha’s attendant Ānanda for not petitioning the Buddha correctly, as he should have done, to remain until the end of the aeon. Such an approach, however, could scarcely harmonise with the image of the Compassionate One, and central to Mahāyāna Buddhism as it eventually developed in India is a vision and understanding of the Buddha as not really dead but still around. When stated and accepted this understanding entailed that Buddhism itself had the potential to change in the light of a continuing revelation.

It is indeed possible that the suggestion that the Buddha is still around may have been (in part) a response to particular visions in meditation or dreams, perhaps associated with meditation practices involving visualising the Buddha and known as buddhānusmṛti (‘recollection of the Buddha’). We know that such practices were popular from a very early period, and that one of the results of these practices is that the meditator feels as if in the presence of the Buddha himself (Williams 2009: 39–40, 209–14; Harrison 1978, 1990). In the Pratyutpanna Sūtra, translated into Chinese by Lokakṣema and studied by Paul Harrison, we find details of a visualisation practice in which the meditator visualises Buddha Amitāyus in his ‘Pure Land’ (Buddha Domain, or Buddha Field; see later) located somewhere ‘in the West’, for 24 hours a day, for a whole week. After that, the sūtra says, the meditator may have a vision of Amitāyus, and receive new teachings not before heard. Moreover these new teachings the meditator is exhorted to transmit and expound to mankind.

It seems certain that a text like the Pratyutpanna Sūtra (and perhaps other early Mahāyāna texts associated with Pure Lands and buddhānusmṛti) describes practices which can lead to revelatory visions, and the Pratyutpanna Sūtra itself advocates the promulgation of the teachings thus received. But while visions can occur in meditation, the occurrence of visions – messages apparently from a Buddha – does not explain why someone would take those messages seriously. Indeed we are sometimes told that the Buddhist tradition in general has tended to be very cautious, even dismissive, concerning visions seen in meditation. Of course, if it is correct that for many centuries there were very few followers of Mahāyāna in classical India, then the problem becomes less acute. But certainly some people took these revelations seriously, and in the history of Buddhism those who took them seriously were sometimes great scholars. It is often said that the standard view of early Buddhism is that after the death of a Buddha he is beyond practical reference or recall, and certainly not someone with whom one could still have some sort of active relationship. For such a perspective the idea of seeing and receiving teachings from a living Buddha in meditation is problematic. One way round this would be to claim that the Buddha visualised is simply a Buddha who has for one reason or another not yet died. That would be to adopt a strategy of doctrinal reconciliation. As we shall see, this is indeed a strategy commonly adopted in Mahāyāna sources. But work again by Gregory Schopen suggests that the atmosphere in Buddhist circles in ancient India may have been at least emotionally more receptive to the idea that a dead Buddha is still around than was previously realised. Schopen has argued on archaeological and inscriptional grounds that the Buddha’s relics, preserved after his death in stūpas, were felt to be the Buddha himself. The Buddha was thought in some sense to be still present in his relics and even in spots associated with his life (e.g. Schopen 1987a, 1990, 1994). Through his relics the Buddha was also treated as if present in the monastery, and was treated legally by the monastery and apparently by the wider community as a person with inalienable property rights.21 Schopen has shown that in day to day life the Buddha was felt very much to be present among the monks, if invisible.

Perhaps it was little wonder, then, that certain monks, inspired by the common meditation practice of ‘recollection of the Buddha’, buddhānusmṛti, felt the genuiness of their visions of him and what had been revealed to them. Thus they arrived at the possibility of a continuing revelation and of course new sūtras.22 Little wonder also, then, that eventually we find in some circles forms of religiosity developed centred on the supremacy of Buddhahood above all alternative goals. This religiosity focused too on the great compassion of one who remains still present, transcending even death, helping sentient beings. It encouraged the need to attain a palpable immortality through becoming oneself a Buddha. In becoming a Buddha Śākyamuni, after all, is said to have triumphed over the Evil One, the ‘Devil’, Māra. The etymology of this name shows him to be the personification of death. Little wonder then that we also find in the meantime participation in ‘Pure Land cults’, a need to see the Buddha if not in this life in meditation, then after death through rebirth in his presence in the Pure Land where he still dwells.23

Thus it seems clear from early Mahāyāna texts that through meditation it was felt to be possible by some Buddhist practitioners to meet with a stillliving Buddha and receive new teachings, receive perhaps the Mahāyāna sūtras themselves. That some people actually took this possibility seriously may well have been prompted by a feeling on the one hand of sadness that the age of the living presence of the Buddha as a physical being had passed. But it was also prompted by an awareness of his continuing if rather invisible presence in the monastery, as relics imbued with the qualities of Buddhahood, the dharmakāya. These are themes that we shall meet again.

Key Points to Chapter Three