The Birth of a Tradition

If there’s one thing we can say for certain about the difference between Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism, it’s that they rely on different scriptures. Texts such as the Lotus Sutra, Heart Sutra, Diamond Sutra, and Perfection of Wisdom sutras are considered scripture in the Mahayana but not in the Theravada traditions.

I’ve long been perplexed by these sutras, which emerged around the 1st century CE and signaled the rise of the Mahayana. They feature settings and characters similar to those of the early sutras found in Pali and in their Gandhari, Tibetan, and Chinese counterparts. But their tone and message are strikingly different—as if the same cast of actors returned to film a sequel written and directed by a different filmmaker. Where did these new scriptures come from? Who wrote them? And why?

There seemed no better person to ask than Bhikkhu Anālayo, whose recent book, The Perfection of Wisdom in First Bloom: Relating Early Asṭasāhasrikā Prajñāparamitā to Āgama Literature, compares the earliest extant versions of the Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines in both Chinese and Gandhari. He relates their ideas and themes to early Buddhist texts of the Chinese and Pali canon, showing that what’s often seen as a sharp break between early Buddhism and the Mahayana was, in fact, a gradual evolution.

As with most of Anālayo’s works, The Perfection of Wisdom in First Bloom combines rigorous scholarship with measured understatement. I wanted to learn more about his findings and their implications. Anālayo spoke with me over Zoom during a brief pause from meditation retreat.

I’ve long been perplexed by the emergence of Mahayana scriptures—how they came into being and how their ideas differed from those that came before. Can you explain the connection between early Buddhism and the advent of the Mahayana? What you’re asking about speaks directly to what I’m trying to clarify. In a general sense, my hope is to give us a more informed historical perspective on the development of different traditions, which allows us to hold our particular sense of Buddhist identity in a more open manner, rather than in contrast to others, and see similarities and differences.

The Perfection of Wisdom that I discussed in the book is the earliest version of this type of literature, and also the earliest strata of Mahayana texts that are extant in complete form. We have some Gandhari fragments that are still earlier, but they’re mostly just smaller parts of a text. From a study of these early texts, we can see how certain ideas gradually developed.

If we just take a step back and think of ourselves at the time of the Buddha, and there’s a new teaching, and maybe you heard this teaching, and now you are telling it to me. For me to know what was happening at that time, because these teachings are always contextual, you will tell me, Oh, you know, the Buddha was staying at so-and-so place. Somebody came, asked this question, and so on. This is a commentary. You’re actually giving a commentary. The Buddha did not say, I’m staying at Jeta’s Grove, or whatever. So this is the very beginning of what we can call a commentarial tradition, in the sense that you are adding something to the “original text.” Would you agree?

Yes. And this becomes part of the received sutra. There’s the introduction that says, This thing happened, and usually at the end, then the report that says everybody was happy with the teaching.

Right, you’re referring to a narrative framework. There’s a narrative framework that has a kind of commentarial function. So, from the outset, the teachings were always combined with some sort of commentary. And in addition to that, not all the teachings, of course, are from the Buddha himself: We also have chief disciples giving teachings. Sometimes they get approval—they’re being approved by the Buddha, who says, This is very good. I would have said it the same way, but sometimes not. And sometimes we even have teachings by celestials. For example, the Āṭānāṭiya Sutta in the Dīgha Nikāya (discourse 32). The entire teaching is given by a celestial king to the Buddha, and the Buddha then repeats it to the monks. This is still “the Buddha’s word,” even though the Buddha was only repeating it. So, from the outset, there is a flexible idea of what accounts for “the Buddha’s word,” and there is an interweaving of the discourse with commentarial explanations.

In the course of time, more and more commentaries accumulated, because more things needed to be explained. And thus, new ideas come in, they’re brought into the commentaries, and out of this commentarial activity, we find gradually a new branch of literature emerging, which is the Abhidharma. Early Abhidharma texts are very clearly of a commentarial nature. But gradually, they become more and more independent works. And in the course of becoming more and more independent, they try to summarize key elements of the teachings. They try to put them into a neat system. Which is not really what we find in the early scriptures, where there’s a coherent set of ideas but not a completely watertight system. In the course of constructing such a system, the Abhidharma texts insist on a clear definition of terminology, and also on a clear demarcation of the things that are referred to by this terminology.

This is a distinct feature that marks off the Mahayana bodhisattva ideal: the premise that everyone should become a buddha.

This continues an analytical strand already found in early Buddhist texts but takes it further and further, until, eventually, in one branch of Abhidharma thought, we get the idea that things have an intrinsic nature, svabhāva, in Sanskrit. This is one thing, and it has a particular intrinsic nature; this is another thing, it has a particular intrinsic nature. In the course of this development, this new literature sheds some of the features of the early text. We no longer find playful use of language, because language has to be clearly demarcated. We don’t really find paradox anymore. We have some paradoxes in early Buddhism, but we don’t find this anymore, because things are clearly sorted out. And we also don’t really get this kind of lively narrative interchange, as it’s more like a structured kind of presentation.

Once this idea becomes popular, that things have an intrinsic nature, then we have a reaction to that, and that is the Perfection of Wisdom, which says, You are missing the point. There is no intrinsic nature. There is only emptiness. That is, simply said, the main message. And this message recaptures an idea of emptiness or not-self already found in early Buddhism. Because in early Buddhism, all phenomena are considered not-self.

Since it is a rebellion, a reaction, a criticism of this Abhidharma project, it also uses different ways to express its position. It recaptures the paradox. It recaptures the playful use of words, and it also introduces some of the chief disciples in its set. And it even adopts the sutra format quite intentionally. The sutra format has, of course, an authentication function: Thus have I heard one time. . . . Aha, this must have been from the Buddha. But it also communicates a return to the earlier teachings. And as part of all of that, we get a text like the Perfection of Wisdom articulating things in the way it does.

I’m here speaking specifically about the Perfection of Wisdom. We have a whole layer of early Mahayana texts, extant in translations from the 2nd century CE. I think the Perfection of Wisdom that I study in this book is a particularly central and important text among these. But I can only really speak about this particular text. I’m saying that this particular text has as its main concern the providing of a critical response to the idea that things have an intrinsic nature. That is the main critique that goes from the Perfection of Wisdom through Madhyamaka to Chan and Mahāmudrā and so on. It is a continuous strand of asserting that things do not have an intrinsic nature, that they are empty in this sense.

Is that how the early Buddhist emphasis on impermanence and not-self became a later Mahayana emphasis on emptiness? The Perfection of Wisdom does not really stand in dialogue with the early suttas so much as with this particular Abhidharma concept of an inherent nature. This is often misunderstood, and there are even scholars who think that already early Buddhism was confining the teaching on not-self only to persons, and that it was a Mahayana innovation to say that all phenomena are empty. But, as I showed in my book, the idea that all phenomena are empty is already found in early Buddhism. I think it’s important to see that the Perfection of Wisdom is not responding to an articulation of not-self or emptiness in early Buddhism but to an articulation of an intrinsic nature in a particular Abhidharma tradition. This articulation is found in the Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma. This idea of an intrinsic nature is sometimes also referred to as an inherent existence, but intrinsic nature is, I think, the best translation of svabhāva.

In that sense, would it be better to translate anattā as substancelessness instead of not-self? Is that how you get to this lack of intrinsic nature? You’re stepping out of the historical framework. The idea of an intrinsic nature arose after early Buddhism. How could early Buddhism be criticizing it? You see my point?

Yes, yes. Early Buddhism just says all things are not self, or all things are void of I, me, and mine. It has no concern with intrinsic nature; in fact, the very word—Sanskrit, svabhāva , or Pali, sabhāva—you will not find in the early suttas, in Pali or in their parallels. That concept evolves in the context of Abhidharma discussions. This is what I tried to say earlier. They were analyzing, and if you want to analyze and clearly distinguish, you eventually come to the point of saying, What is it actually that makes this particular thing the thing it is? What is its intrinsic nature that makes this one thing different from anything else?

It’s a logical evolution of an analytical strand in Abhidharma thought that leads to this conclusion. But the problem from the perspective of Perfection of Wisdom is that it involves a reification, that it kind of removes that intrinsic nature from being thoroughly empty.

The Abhidharma was, just as much as the Perfection of Wisdom, trying to formulate an accurate understanding of what they believed was the historical Buddha’s teaching. But their respective ideas are directly opposed to each other. This is just a historical development. We have that all the time.

It reminds me of the Talmud in Judaism, where you have commentary upon commentary on an idea; the commentaries are often opposed, but it’s all part of the same conversation that has been happening over the course of centuries. Yes, I think pretty much every Buddhist tradition is, in some way, articulating what they believe from their subjective perspective to be what the historical Buddha had in mind. But the results can be quite different from each other.

Besides emptiness, another example you write about is the bodhisattva ideal. Many people think this is a distinction in Mahayana, that there’s no bodhisattva ideal—or even bodhisattva concept—in early Buddhism. Can you explain? Also, is there a continuity between the two? The term bodhisattva, in its most typical usage in early Buddhism, refers just to Shakyamuni, from the time he went forth to the time he became awakened. The idea that he prepared himself for awakening already during past lives is a later development. So basically, from the time he went forth, practiced meditation, practiced asceticism, he was a bodhisattva—he was intent on bodhi. But already in early Buddhism, we get a gradual broadening in the meaning of the term, where it is already applied to past buddhas. And then it’s already applied to Sakyamuni Buddha at the time he was born. And then there are different developments that gradually led to the evolution of this bodhisattva idea. Particularly important are jatakas.

Jatakas are stories of the Buddha’s former births. There’s a very clear trajectory in which the Buddha, in early Buddhist discourse, tells some story from the past that may just have been a parable. But the conclusion is then drawn that the Buddha knows about what happened in the past because he was one of the protagonists. In this way, all kinds of stories and tales from the general Indian lore of storytelling were turned into stories of Buddha’s past lives.

A particularly significant discourse in the Dīgha Nikāya, the Lakkhaṇa Sutta (discourse 30), takes up the thirty-two marks. The Buddha is believed to be endowed with thirty-two particular physical marks of beauty. These marks usually feature in the early Buddhist texts as a kind of science of Brahmins. Brahmins are skilled in this, and when they meet the Buddha, they always want to check if they can discern these marks to confirm he’s a buddha. This discourse sets out saying that others also know these marks, but the specific Buddhist perspective is to understand the causality behind those marks—to know exactly what leads to these marks. Then there’s a long exposition of his past lives, saying, The Buddha did such and such a thing. This is why he now has such and such a mark.

This discourse has as its explicit purpose to show the conditionality that explains these marks. But it can, of course, be read in a different way: Ah! So this is the type of conduct that you have to observe over past lives in order to become a buddha. In combination with jataka tales, this idea is one of the key elements through which the bodhisattva idea gradually gains traction.

The bodhisattva ideal is, to the best of my knowledge, a shared property of all Buddhist traditions. We find it in Theravada as well—in Thailand, in Sri Lanka, in Burma—as an option. Not as something everybody has to do but just as an option. The idea is that somebody with sufficient dedication postpones the possibility of reaching stream-entry or higher levels of awakening in this life. Instead, over many lives, this person matures those qualities that will lead to becoming a buddha at a time when there is no buddha, no dharma, no sangha—to resuscitate or bring into being the three jewels.

This basically same bodhisattva ideal is also found in the Perfection of Wisdom that I discuss in the book. So this is a shared element, whereas the distinctive, fully fledged Mahayana articulation emerges with a later text, slightly later. This is the Lotus Sutra, Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, of which we have a Chinese translation that is about a century later than the Perfection of Wisdom. The Lotus Sutra takes the step of saying that everybody should become a buddha. As a result, there’s no longer room for those who wish to become stream-enterers and progress to arahantship, or for the somewhat more theoretical option of becoming a pratyekabuddha. Everyone should become a buddha.

This is a distinct feature that marks off the Mahayana bodhisattva ideal: the premise that everyone should become a buddha. And then, with the evolution of the idea of buddhanature, the idea emerges that everybody is already a buddha—it’s just that we don’t recognize it.

Was there anything surprising for you during the research and writing of this book that you weren’t expecting to find with these concepts we’re discussing? I was surprised at the high level of continuity of ideas that I found. Connecting early Mahayana to early Buddhism has shown me more continuities and gradual developments than I expected. In a way, actually, the shift is less from early Buddhism to the Perfection of Wisdom, as the shift becomes really pronounced for me with the Lotus Sutra. That is a decisive shift, where only buddhahood is accepted—to the point of denigrating arahantship, dismissing it as an illusion, as something that has no value. This is a much more pronounced shift, in my perspective. And this shift, of course, happens within an evolving so-called Mahayana tradition, because the Perfection of Wisdom, I think, should be considered a Mahayana text.

To wrap up, what do you want your readers to take away from this book? I would hope that it can contribute to what I think we really need, as Western Buddhists: a better understanding of the history of Buddhism. Based on that, we can have a more sophisticated engagement with Asian Buddhist traditions—not by taking one tradition as the only true one, or by throwing them all out in the name of some superior Western Buddhism, or lumping them all together under a kind of perennialism that claims everything is basically the same teaching.

Instead, we can see conditionality operating in the course of history. It’s all conditionality—and that is emptiness. To see the conditionality: how certain ideas arise here and there, leading to why certain traditions, practices, or behaviors take the forms they do. Seeing conditionality is sobering, but it’s also freeing.