The Foundations of Buddhism

(Sean Pound) #1
The Word of Buddha: Scriptures and Schools 37
impart and acquire simply on the basis of theoretical manuals;
one needs a teacher who can demonstrate the training and also

comment on and encourage one in one's own attempts to put


the instructions into practice.^3 In fact a sense that knowledge is


not properly communicated by the written word colours the


traditional Indian attitude to learning in general: knowledge
must be passed from teacher to pupil directly. This does not mean
that at the time of the Buddha India had no literature. On the
contrary, in the form of the 8-g Veda India has a literature that
predates the Buddha by perhaps as much as a thousand years.
But this literature is 'oral'. It was composed orally, memorized,
and then passed from teacher to pupil directly by a process of
oral recitation for centuries, without ever being committed to writ-

ing. India'~ is, of course, not the only culture to have an ancient


oral literature; the Iliad and the Odyssey, for example, grew out
of a tradition of oral composition, yet the oral origins of tradi-
tional Indian learning continued to inform its structure long
after texts had begun to be committed to writing.^4

In presenting its teachings to the world, the Buddhist tradition


would thus point towards an unbroken lineage or succession of


teachers and pupils: just as the Buddha took care to instruct his
pupils, so they in turn took care to instruct theirs. The visible
and concrete manifestation of this succession is in the first place
the Sangha, the community of ordained monks (bhikkhu) and

nuns (bhikkhunz). Becoming a Buddhist monk or nun requires


a particular ceremony that is legitimate only if properly carried
out according to prescribed rules, which apparently go right

back to the time of the Buddha himself. In particular the pre-


scriptions for the ceremony require the presence of a minimum
of five fully ordained bhikkhus of at least ten years' standing.
Thus when someone ordains as a Buddhist monk there is in effect
a direct link back to the presence of the Buddha himself. Of course,


the principle of the passing of the teachings directly from per-


son to person may also operate outside the Sangha, for members
of the Sangha do not only teach other members of the Sangha,
they teach lay people as well. Yet the Sangha remains the tan-
gible thread of the tradition.
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