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CHAPTER 2

The Background of Indian Culture

Buddhist study is the content of the teaching established by Shakyamuni Buddha. In Buddhist study, the three concepts of (1) Buddhist teachings, (2) Buddhist principles and methods, and (3) the process of learning Buddhism each have different meanings. Buddhist teachings are the teachings left by the Buddha, which are of a religious nature. Buddhist principles and methods include the philosophical and academic aspects of Buddhist study as well as all its methods of seeking realization. Learning Buddhism means to actually carry out the teachings left by the Buddha, studying in accord with his methods of guidance.

Chinese scholarship has a proverbial saying that "Buddhist study is as vast as the misty ocean," from which one can imagine the richness of its content. So if we are to introduce the important points of Buddhist study simply and very briefly from an academic point of view, we must first understand the cultural background of ancient India.

When we bring up this subject, we have to recognize that for thousands of years Indian culture and thought evolved circuitously in the context of religion and philosophy, and in light of the practical cultivation methods used by various religions and philosophies to attain realization. The teachings in present-day India are no exception. All of India's historical culture has gone through periods of religious struggle, ideological conflict, and inequality among social classes. And when foreign powers invaded the country beginning in the seventeenth century, at all times and in all places they used the contradictions in Indian religious thought as a method of control.

The doctrines of ancient Indian religions, including the religious and philosophical ideologies around the time of Shakyamuni Buddha, were so many and various that they could in fact be a blueprint for a comparative religion and comparative philosophy of the world. Usually discussions of Indian philosophy mention six teachers to explain what the six major schools of philosophy were like, but actually in the translated literature of Chinese Buddhist studies it often says that there were as many as ninety-six different schools of philosophical thought. Although the entire body of information is inadequate, fragmentary accounts still contain much valuable material. However, international discourse on Indian philosophy or Buddhism has been influenced by European academics since the seventeenth century and has never considered Chinese Buddhist resource materials important, thus causing both Chinese and foreign scholars to erase the value of Chinese Buddhist studies with a single stroke. This is very regrettable and indeed lamentable.

In sum, ancient Indian philosophy and religion already addressed all such topics as the existence or nonexistence of a supreme being, monism and pluralism, idealism and materialism, and so on. As far as Buddhism is concerned, by about the middle of the Sung dynasty it had entered completely into China due to the infiltration of foreign teachings, and had become Chinese Buddhism; after that the evolution of Indian cultural history has nothing at all to do with Buddhism. This point calls for special explanation so as to avoid misunderstanding.

The Situations and Political Conditions of Ancient India

The time of Shakyamuni roughly corresponds to China's Spring and Autumn era (722-484 B.C.), but the matter of exactly when he lived has been a bone of contention among Chinese and foreign scholars past and present. From the point of view of world cultural history, at this stage, in the course of no more than a single century of historical evolution in the East and West, welter of confusion that it was, a succession of philosophers emerged, a magnificent array. In China there were people such as Lao-tzu and Confucius, India had Shakyamuni's community of philosophers, and in Greece there were individuals such as Socrates and Plato. All were people whose influence on human civilization was to last for thousands of years.

At that time, China operated under a feudal system, but the Chou dynasty emperor was still at the center of society, honored alone as the supreme head reigning over all the land. India, on the other hand, was at that time divided into hundreds of nation-states contending for power, and had no central authority. Shakyamuni himself was a prince of peerless intelligence: he received his education in a royal palace, and as a youth was broadly learned and multitalented. Because he personally witnessed the ravages of war in India, and observed the pain of the strong devouring the weak in the realm of living beings, he wanted to discover a way of true peace for the masses of the world. So he resolutely left home and traveled all over in search of the teachings left by the philosophers of antiquity, searching for the truth of the universe and human life.

After he left home, he sought out the methods of practice and realization of the traditional teachings of Brahminism, as well as the devotional life of transmundane asceticism practiced by other religions and schools of thought. As a result, he finally realized that none of them was the ultimate learning, so he went through a phase of solitary ascetic practice, cultivating realization on his own. He left home at the age of nineteen, but began to spread his teaching only when he was thirty-two.

Modern scholars treat Shakyamuni the same way they do Confucius: some recognize him as the founder of a religion, others recognize him as a philosopher or educator. But in reality these ranks and positions of honor have no meaning at all for Shakyamuni Buddha. An individual true sage philosopher, he was able to ignore the vainglory of the world; he cast off the honor of royalty as one would throw away a worn shoe, without a second glance. At the same time, he frequently spoke of ancient Buddhas and other Buddhas, so he obviously didn't consider himself the founder of a teaching. It was when it came to the point where his teaching had changed into a religion that he was set up on a jewel throne as the founder of a religion, which was the doing of the followers of second-hand tradition in later generations.

I feel that the founders of all the religions mostly had this kind of heart in them. For example, Lao-tzu was hauled up onto the jewel throne of the founder of Taoism as Lord Lao the Highest, but where in this is the original intent of Lao-tzu's heart as indicated by the saying that "it is not known where he died," or the tale that he left the country riding on a blue ox? Rather than say that Shakyamuni started Buddhism and was the founder of the religion, it would be better to say that he edited and compiled the whole body of ancient traditional culture and thought of India, and brought out its unique and independent spirit of cultural teaching, making it even greater and worthier of savoring.