The Foundations of Buddhism

38 The Word of Buddha: Scriptures and Schools

So the Buddha's Dharma is mediated to us via the Satigha-

a community that ideally does not tnerely hand down some

vague recollection of what the Buddha taught but actually lives

the teaching. In the Pali commentaries written down in Sri

Lanka in the fifth century CE a distinction was made between

two kinds of monastic duty: that of books and that of practice

(see below, pp. 104-5).^5 The former is concerned with the study

of the theory as preserved in Buddhist writings. The latter is the

stniightforward attempt to put the Buddha's system of training

into practice, to live the spiritual life as prescribed by the Buddha

and his followers. Although this formal distinction is found in

the writings of a particular Buddhist school, the point being high-

lighted holds good for Buddhism as a whole. Throughout the his-

tory of Buddhism there has existed a certain tension ~etween the

monk who is a great scholar and theoretician and the monk who

is a realized practitioner. Something of the same tension is in-

dicated in the sixth and seventh centuries in China with the

arising of the Ch'an (Japanese Zen) school of Buddhism, whose

well-known suspicion of theoretical formulations of the teach-

ing is summed up by the traditional stanza:

A special tradition outside the scriptures;

Not founded on words and letters;

Pointing directly to the heart of man;

Seeing into one's own nature and attainingBuddhahood.^6

The same kind of tension is in part reflected in a threefold

characterization of Dharma itself as textual tradition (pariyatti),

practice (patipatti), and realization (pafivedha) once again found

in the Pali commentaries.^7 The first refers to the sum of Buddhist

theory as contained in Buddhist scriptures, the second to the put-

ting into practice of those teachings, while the third to the direct

understanding acquired consequent upon the practice. The rest

of this chapter will primarily be concerned with Dharma as

textual tradition.

Dharma as textual tradition goes back to the teachings heard

directly from the Buddha. These teachings were, it seems, mem-

orized by the immediate followers of the Buddha. For several