Buddhaghosa was a scholar, erudite and a compulsive researcher who vitalized the dying Pali Tradition (Pali was killed by Sinhala Theravada Tradition- in other word "Sinhalen Bhana").
His biggest failure was that he has to wait until the Mettyya Buddha to appear in eons time to realize Nibbhana.
In other words Buddhist Meditation is to practice NOW and not later as envisaged, by Buddhagosa.
I have a copy of Visuddhimagga with me to remind me that the literary exercise is futile in the long run and the copy of Vimuttimagga (The path of FREEDOM) is much shorter and precise.
This is to counteract a distortion made by a senile guy who writes to the Island Paper for recreation of some sort.
Sometimes, I have to wake up from my slumber to awaken the misguided masses.
Reproduction from WiKiPedia and not my View!
Buddhaghosa
Tradition
|
Buddhaghosa with three
copies of Visuddhimagga, Kelaniya Raja Maha Vihara
|
| Occupation |
Buddhist monk |
| Era |
5th century |
| Movement |
Theravada Buddhism |
Buddhaghosa
was a 5th-century Indian Theravada Buddhist commentator, translator
and philosopher.
He worked in the Great
Monastery (Mahāvihāra)
at Anurādhapura, Ceylon
and saw himself as being part of the Vibhajjavāda school and in
the lineage of the Sinhalese Mahāvihāra.
His best-known work is
the Visuddhimagga
("Path
of Purification"), a comprehensive summary of older Sinhala
commentaries on Theravada teachings and practices. According to
Sarah Shaw, in Theravada this systematic work is "the
principal text on the subject of meditation."
The interpretations
provided by Buddhaghosa have generally constituted the orthodox
understanding of Theravada scriptures since at least the 12th
century CE.
He is generally
recognized by both Western scholars and Theravadins as the most
important philosopher and commentator of the Theravada, but is also criticized for his departures from the canonical texts.
Name
The name
Buddhaghosa
means "Voice of the Buddha" (Buddha+ghosa)
in Pali,
the language in which Buddhaghosa composed. In Sanskrit, the name
would be spelled Buddhaghoṣa (Devanagari बुद्धघोष),
but there is no retroflexing sound in Pali, and the name is not
found in Sanskrit works.
Biography
Limited reliable information is available
about the life of Buddhaghosa.
Three primary sources of information exist:
short prologues and epilogues attached to Buddhaghosa's works;
details of his life recorded in the Mahavamsa, a Ceylonese
chronicle; and a later biographical work called the
Buddhaghosuppatti.
A few other sources discuss the life of
Buddhaghosa, but do not appear to add any reliable material.
The biographical excerpts attached to works
attributed to Buddhaghosa reveal relatively few details of his life,
but were presumably added at the time of his actual composition.
Largely identical in form, these short excerpts describe Buddhaghosa
as having come to Ceylon from India and settled in Anuradhapura.
Besides this information, they provide only
short lists of teachers, supporters, and associates of Buddhaghosa,
whose names are not generally to be found elsewhere for comparison.
The Mahavamsa
records that Buddhaghosa was born into a Brahmin
family in the kingdom of Magadha.
He is said to have been born near Bodh Gaya,
and to have been a master of the Vedas, traveling through India
engaging in philosophical debates.
Only upon encountering a Buddhist monk named
Revata was Buddhaghosa bested in debate, first being defeated in a
dispute over the meaning of a Vedic doctrine and then being
confounded by the presentation of a teaching from the Abhidhamma.
Impressed, Buddhaghosa became a Bhikkhu
(Buddhist monk) and undertook the study of the Tipiṭaka and its
commentaries.
On finding a text for which the commentary
had been lost in India, Buddhaghosa determined to travel to Ceylon to
study a Sinhala commentary that was believed to have been preserved.
In Ceylon, Buddhaghosa began to study what
was apparently a very large volume of Sinhala commentarial texts that
had been assembled and preserved by the monks of the Anuradhapura
Maha Viharaya.
Buddhaghosa sought permission to synthesize
the assembled Sinhala-language commentaries into a comprehensive
single commentary composed in Pali.
Traditional accounts hold that the elder
monks sought to first test Buddhaghosa's knowledge by assigning him
the task of elaborating the doctrine regarding two verses of the
suttas; Buddhaghosa replied by composing the Visuddhimagga.
His abilities were further tested when
deities intervened and hid the text of his book, twice forcing him to
recreate it from scratch.
When the three texts were found to
completely summarize all of the Tipiṭaka and match in every
respect, the monks acceded to his request and provided Buddhaghosa
with the full body of their commentaries.
Buddhaghosa went on to write commentaries on
most of the other major books of the Pali Canon, with his works
becoming the definitive Theravadin interpretation of the scriptures.
Having synthesized or translated the whole
of the Sinhala commentary preserved at the Anuradhapura Maha
Viharaya, Buddhaghosa reportedly returned to India, making a
pilgrimage to Bodh Gaya to pay his respects to the Bodhi Tree.
The details of the Mahavamsa account cannot
readily be verified; while it is generally regarded by Western
scholars as having been embellished with legendary events (such as
the hiding of Buddhaghosa's text by the gods), in the absence of
contradictory evidence it is assumed to be generally accurate.
While the Mahavamsa claims that Buddhaghosa
was born in northern India near Bodh Gaya, the epilogues to his
commentaries make reference to only one location in India as being a
place of at least temporary residence: Kanci in southern India.
Some scholars thus conclude (among them
Oskar von Hinüber and Polwatte Buddhadatta Thera) that Buddhaghosa
was actually born in South India and was relocated in later
biographies to give him closer ties to the region of the Buddha.
The Buddhaghosuppatti, a later
biographical text, is generally regarded
by Western scholars as being legend rather than history.
It adds to the Mahavamsa tale certain
details, such as the identity of Buddhaghosa's parents and his
village, as well as several dramatic episodes, such as the conversion
of Buddhaghosa's father and Buddhaghosa's role in deciding a legal
case.
It also explains the eventual loss of the
Sinhala originals that Buddhaghosa worked from in creating his Pali
commentaries by claiming that Buddhaghosa collected and burnt the
original manuscripts once his work was completed.
Commentarial
style
Buddhaghosa was reputedly responsible for an
extensive project of synthesizing and translating a large body of
ancient Sinhala commentaries on the Pāli Canon. His Visuddhimagga
(Pāli: Path of Purification) is a comprehensive manual of Theravada
Buddhism that is still read and studied today.
Maria Heim notes that, while Buddhaghosa
worked by using older Sinhala commentarial tradition, he is also "the
crafter of a new version of it that rendered the original version
obsolete, for his work
supplanted the Sinhala versions that are now lost to us".
Writing
style
Ñāṇamoli Bhikkhu writes that
Buddhaghosa's work is "characterized by relentless accuracy,
consistency, and fluency of erudition, and much dominated by
formalism."
According to Richard Shankman, the
Visuddhimagga is "meticulous and specific," in contrast to
the Pali suttas, which "can be vague at times, without a lot of
explanatory detail and open to various interpretations."
Method
According to Maria Heim, Buddhaghosa is
explicitly clear and systematic regarding his hermeneutical
principles and exegetical strategies in his commentaries.
He writes and theorizes on texts, genre,
registers of discourse, reader response, Buddhist knowledge and
pedagogy.
Buddhaghosa considers each Pitaka of the
Buddhist canon a kind of method (naya) that requires different
skills to interpret. One of his most important ideas about exegesis
of the Buddha's words (buddhavacana) is that these words are
immeasurable, that is to say, there are innumerable ways and modes to
teach and explain the Dhamma and likewise there are innumerable ways
in which to receive these teachings.
According to Heim, Buddhaghosa considered
the Dhamma to be "well-spoken visible
here and now, timeless," visible meaning that the fruits of the
path can be seen in the behavior of the noble ones, and that
comprehending the Dhamma is a transformative way
of seeing, which has immediate impact.
According to Heim, this idea of the
transformative and immediate impact of the scriptures is "vital
to Buddhaghosa's interpretative practice," concerned as he is
with the immediate and transformative impact of the Buddha's words on
his audiences, as attested in the suttas.
Regarding his systematic thought, Maria Heim
and Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad see Buddhaghosa's use of Abhidhamma as
part of a phenomenological "contemplative structuring"
which is expressed in his writings on Buddhist praxis.
They argue that "Buddhaghosa’s use of
nāma-rūpa should be seen as the analytic by which he
understands how experience is undergone, and not his account of how
some reality is structured."
Yogacara
influences
Some scholars have argued that Buddhaghosa's
writing evinces a strong but unacknowledged Yogācāra Buddhist
influence, which subsequently came to characterize Theravada thought
in the wake of his profound influence on the Theravada tradition.
According to Kalupahana, Buddhaghosa was
influenced by Mahayana-thought, which were subtly mixed with
Theravada orthodoxy to
introduce new ideas.
According to Kalupahana, this eventually led
to the flowering of metaphysical tendencies, in contrast to the
original stress on anattā in early Buddhism.
According to Jonardon Ganeri, though
Buddhaghosa may have been influenced by Yogacara Vijñānavāda,
"the influence consists not in endorsement but in creative
engagement and refutation."
Theory
of consciousness
The philosopher Jonardon Ganeri has called
attention to Buddhaghosa's theory of the nature of consciousness and
attention.
Ganeri calls Buddhaghosa's approach a kind of
"attentionalism", which places primacy on the faculty of
attention in explaining activities of thought and mind and is against
representationalism.
Ganeri
also states that Buddhaghosa's treatment of cognition "anticipates
the concept of working memory, the idea of mind as a global
workplace, subliminal orienting, and the thesis that visual
processing occurs at three levels."
Ganeri also states:
Buddhaghosa is unlike nearly every
other Buddhist philosopher in that he discusses episodic memory and
knows it as a reliving of experience from one’s personal past; but
he blocks any reduction of the phenomenology of temporal experience
to the representation of oneself as in the past. The alternative
claim that episodic memory is a phenomenon of attention is one he
develops with greater sophistication than has been done elsewhere.
Ganeri sees Buddhaghosa's work as being free
from a mediational picture of the mind and also free of the Myth of
the Given, two views he sees as having been introduced by the Indian
philosopher Dignāga.
Meditation
Vipassanā and Vipassana movement
The Visuddhimagga's
doctrine reflects Theravada
Abhidhamma scholasticism, which includes several innovations and
interpretations not found in the earliest discourses (suttas)
of the Buddha.
Buddhaghosa's Visuddhimagga includes
non-canonical instructions on Theravada meditation, such as "ways
of guarding the mental image (nimitta)," which point to later
developments in Theravada meditation.
According to Thanissaro Bhikkhu, "the
Visuddhimagga uses a very different paradigm for concentration from
what you find in the Canon."
Bhante Henepola Gunaratana also notes that
what "the suttas
say is not the same as what the Visuddhimagga says they are actually different," leading to a divergence
between a [traditional] scholarly understanding and a practical
understanding based on meditative experience.
Gunaratana further
notes that Buddhaghosa invented several key meditation terms which
are not to be found in the suttas, such as "parikamma
samadhi (preparatory concentration), upacara samadhi (access
concentration), appanasamadhi (absorption concentration)."
Gunaratana also notes that the Buddhaghosa's emphasis on
kasina-meditation is not to be found in the suttas, where
dhyana is always combined with mindfulness.
Bhikkhu Sujato has argued that certain views
regarding Buddhist meditation expounded in the Visuddhimagga are a
"distortion of the
Suttas" since it denies the necessity of Jhana.
The Australian monk Shravasti Dhammika is
also critical of contemporary practice based on this work.
He concludes that Buddhaghosa did not
believe that following the practice set forth in the Visuddhimagga
will really lead him to Nirvana, basing himself on the postscript to
the Visuddhimagga:
Even Buddhaghosa did not really
believe that Theravada practice could lead to Nirvana. His
Visuddhimagga
is supposed to be a detailed, step by step guide to enlightenment.
And yet in the postscript he says he hopes that the merit he
has earned by writing the Vishuddhimagga
will allow him to be reborn in heaven, abide there until Metteyya
(Maitreya)
appears, hear his teaching and then attain enlightenment.
According to Sarah Shaw, "it is
unlikely that the meditative tradition could have survived in such a
healthy way, if at all, without his detailed lists and exhaustive
guidance."
Yet,
according to Buswell, by the 10th century Vipassana was no longer
practiced in the Theravada tradition, due to the belief that Buddhism
had degenerated, and that liberation was no longer attainable until
the coming of Maitreya.
It
was re-introduced in Myanmar (Burma) in the 18th century by Medawi
(1728–1816), leading to the rise of the Vipassana movement in the
20th century, re-inventing Vipassana-meditation and developing
simplified meditation techniques, based on the Satipatthana sutta,
the Visuddhimagga, and
other texts, emphasizing Satipatthana and bare insight.
Attributed
works
The Mahavamsa ascribes a great many books to
Buddhaghosa, some of which are believed not to have been his work,
but composed later and attributed to him. Below is a listing of the
fourteen commentaries (Aṭṭhakathā) on the Pāli Canon
traditionally ascribed to Buddhaghosa
While traditional
accounts list Buddhaghosa as the author of all of these works, some
scholars hold that only the Visuddhimagga
and the commentaries on the first four Nikayas as Buddhaghosa's
work.
Meanwhile, Maria Heim holds that Buddhaghosa is the author of the
commentaries on the first four Nikayas, the Samantapasadika, the
Paramatthajotika, the Visuddhimagga and the three commentaries on the
books of the Abhidhamma.
Maria
Heim also notes that some scholars hold that Buddaghosa was the head
of a team of scholars and translators, and that this is not an
unlikely scenario.
Influence
and legacy
In the 12th century, the Ceylonese
(Sinhalese) monk Sāriputta Thera became the leading scholar of the
Theravada following the reunification of the Ceylonese (Sinhala)
monastic community by King Parakramabahu-I.
Sariputta incorporated many of the works of
Buddhaghosa into his own interpretations.
In subsequent years, many monks from
Theravada traditions in Southeast Asia sought ordination or
re-ordination in Ceylon, because of the reputation of the Ceylonese
(Sinhala) Mahavihara lineage for doctrinal purity and scholarship.
The result was the spread of the teachings
of the Mahavihara tradition— and thus Buddhaghosa— throughout the
Theravada world.
Buddhaghosa's commentaries thereby became
the standard method by which the Theravada scriptures were
understood, establishing Buddhaghosa as the definitive interpreter of
Theravada doctrine.
In
later years, Buddhaghosa's fame and influence inspired various
accolades.
His life story was recorded, in an expanded
and likely exaggerated form, in a Pali chronicle known as the
Buddhaghosuppatti, or "The Development of the Career of
Buddhaghosa".
Despite the general belief that he was
Indian by birth, he later may have been claimed by the Mon people of Burma
as an attempt to assert primacy over Ceylon
in the development of Theravada tradition.
Other scholars believe that the Mon records
refer to another figure, but whose name and personal history are much
in the mold of the Indian Buddhaghosa.
Finally, Buddhaghosa's works likely played a
significant role in the revival
and preservation of the Pali
language as the scriptural language of the Theravada,
and
as a lingua franca in
the exchange of ideas, texts, and scholars between Ceylon
and the Theravada countries of mainland
Southeast Asia. The development of new analyses of Theravada
doctrine, both in Pali and Sinhala, seems to have dried up prior to
Buddhaghosa's emergence in Ceylon. In
India, new schools of Buddhist philosophy (such as the Mahayana) were
emerging, many of them making use of classical Sanskrit both as a
scriptural language and as a language of philosophical discourse.
The monks of the Mahavihara may have
attempted to counter the growth of such schools by re-emphasizing the
study and composition in Pali, along with the study of previously
disused secondary sources that may have vanished in India, as
evidenced by the Mahavamsa.
Early
indications of this resurgence in the use of Pali as a literary
language may be visible in the composition of the Dipavamsa and the
Vimuttimagga, both dating to shortly before Buddhaghosa's arrival in
Ceylon.
The addition of Buddhaghosa's works— which
combined the pedigree of the oldest Sinhala commentaries with the use
of Pali, a language shared by all of the Theravada learning centers
of the time— provided a
significant boost to the revitalization of the Pali language and the
Theravada intellectual tradition, possibly aiding the
Theravada school in surviving the challenge to its position posed by
emerging Buddhist schools of mainland India.
According
to Maria Heim, he is "one of the greatest minds in the history
of Buddhism" and British philosopher Jonardon
Ganeri considers Buddhaghosa "a true innovator, a pioneer,
and a creative thinker."
Yet,
according to Buddhadasa, Buddhaghosa was influenced by Hindu thought,
and the uncritical respect for the Visuddhimagga has even hindered
the practice of authentic Buddhism.
Notes
1.
See also Bronkhorst (1993), Two Traditions of Meditation in
ancient India; Wynne (2007), The Origin of Buddhist
Meditation; and Polak (2011), Reexaming Jhana
2.
Devotion to Metteya was common in South Asia from early in the
Buddhist era, and is believed to have been particularly popular
during Buddhaghosa's era.
References
-
-
(v.
Hinüber 1996, p. 103) is more specific, estimating dates
for Buddhaghosa of 370–450 CE based on the Mahavamsa and other
sources. Following the Mahavamsa, (Bhikkhu
Ñāṇamoli 1999, p. xxvi) places Buddhaghosa's arrival as
coming during the reign of King Mahanama, between 412 and 434 CE.
-
Gethin,
Rupert, Was Buddhaghosa a Theravādin? Buddhist Identity in the Pali
Commentariesand Chronicles, 2012.
-
Stede, W. (October 1951). "The
Visuddhimagga of Buddhaghosācariya by Henry Clarke Warren;
Dharmananda Kosambi". The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
of Great Britain and Ireland (3/4): 210–211. JSTOR 25222520.
-
Stede, D. A. L. (1953). "Visuddhimagga
of Buddhaghosācariya by Henry Clarke Warren; Dharmananda Kosambi".
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University
of London. 15
(2): 415. doi:10.1017/s0041977x00111346.
JSTOR 608574.
-
Heim, Ram-Prasad, In a Double Way: Nāma-rūpa
in Buddhaghosa’s Phenomenology, Philosophy East and West,
University of Hawai'i Press.
-
Buddhist
Phenomenology: A Philosophical Investigation of Yogācāra Buddhism
by Dan Lusthaus. RoutledgeCurzom: 2002 ISBN 0700711864
pg 106 n 30
-
Kalupahana,
David J. (1994), A history of Buddhist philosophy, Delhi: Motilal
Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited
-
For
instance, regarding the Khuddha Nikaya commentaries, (v.
Hinüber 1996, pp. 130–1) writes:
- Neither Pj
[Paramattha-jotika] I nor Pj II can be dated, not even in
relation to each other, except that both presuppose Buddhaghosa. In
spite of the 'Buddhaghosa colophon' added to both commentaries ...
no immediate relation to Buddhaghosa can be recognized.... Both Ja
[Jataka-atthavannana] and Dhp-a [Dhammapada-atthakatha] are
traditionally ascribed to Buddhaghosa, an assumption which has been
rightly questioned by modern research....
-
Buddhadasa,
[https://www.dhammatalks.net/Books6/Bhikkhu_Buddhadasa_Paticcasamuppada.htm
Paticcasamuppada:
Practical Dependent Origination]
Sources
-
Bhikkhu
Ñāṇamoli (1999), "Introduction", in Buddhaghosa
(ed.), Visuddhimagga: The Path of Purification, translated by
Bhikkhu
Ñāṇamoli,
Seattle: Buddhist Publication Society, ISBN
-
-
last Buswell, Robert, ed. (2004),
Encyclopedia of Buddhism, MacMillan
-
Crosby,
Kate (2004), "Theravada", in Buswell, Jr., Robert E.
(ed.), Macmillan Encyclopedia of Buddhism, USA: Macmillan Reference
USA, pp. 836–841, ISBN
-
Ganeri,
Jonardon (2017), Attention, Not Self, Oxford University Press
-
-
Heim,
Maria (2013), The Forerunner of All Things: Buddhaghosa on Mind,
Intention, and Agency, USA: OUP USA
-
Heim,
Maria (2018), Voice of the Buddha: Buddhaghosa on the Immeasurable
Words, Oxford University Press
-
Hinüber, Oskar von (1996), A Handbook
of Pali Literature, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharal Publishers Pvt.
Ltd., ISBN
-
Kalupahana,
David J. (1994), A history of Buddhist philosophy, Delhi:
Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited
-
McMahan, David L. (2008), The Making of
Buddhist Modernism, Oxford University Press, ISBN
-
Pranke,
Patrick A. (2004), "Myanmar", in Buswell, Jr., Robert E.
(ed.), Macmillan Encyclopedia of Buddhism, USA: Macmillan Reference
USA, pp. 574–577, ISBN
-
Rogers,
Henry Thomas, trans. (1870): Buddhaghosha's
Parables / translated from Burmese. With an Introduction,
containing Buddha's Dhammapada, or "Path of Virtue" /
transl. from Pâli by F. Max Müller, London: Trübner.
-
Shankman, Richard (2008), The Experience
of Samadhi: An In-depth Exploration of Buddhist Meditation,
Shambhala
-
Shaw,
Sarah (2006), Buddhist Meditation: An Anthology of Texts from the
Pali Canon, Routledge
-
Sponberg, Alan (2004), "Maitreya",
in Buswell, Jr., Robert E. (ed.), Macmillan Encyclopedia of
Buddhism, USA: Macmillan Reference USA, ISBN
-
Strong,
John (2004), "Buddhaghosa", in Buswell, Jr., Robert E.
(ed.), Macmillan Encyclopedia of Buddhism, USA: Macmillan Reference
USA, p. 75, ISBN
Further
reading
