INTRODUCTION 5accounts throughout, as these come from the only complete Hinayana Canon
extant and are thus the only sources that can provide us with a holistic picture
of the relationships among the various teachings in the early centuries of the
tradition. To use an archaeological analogy, the fragments of other canons re-
semble broken pieces of ancient statuary, whereas the Pali is an entire statue.
Although the fragments can give us a sense of the range of motifs in ancient
sculpture, only the complete statue can offer us a full picture of the aesthetic
sense of its sculptors.
In following the Pali in this manner, we run the risk of blindly accepting
the biases of the Theravada school, which preserved the Pali; the Pali dis-
courses, however, contradict a number of the important doctrines that be-
came orthodox within the Abhidhamma and later texts of the school. This
contradiction suggests that the school preserved the discourses relatively un-
touched. Discrepancies between the discourses and Pali Abhidhamma, how-
ever, have forced us to agree with some of the early Mahayana critiqu'es of the
Abhidhamma enterprise. As a result, there is no one school ofBuddhism that
we have followed throughout our narrative. And, again, we must make the
point that the scholar's judgment as regards the historical reliability of a partic-
ular text is not the final word on the inherent worth of the teachings that the
text may contain.
Our presentation attempts to cover five main aspects of Buddhism in as
balanced a way as possible: ritual, devotionalism, doctrine, meditation prac-
tice, and institutional history. The five aspects fit rather neatly with the Triple
Gem-the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha-that serves as the basis of the reli-
gion in all its forms. Ritual and devotionalism relate to the place that the Bud-
dha and bodhisattvas-Buddhas-to-be-assumed in the tradition; doctrine
and meditation practice correspond to the Dharma; and institutional history
corresponds to the Sangha. The balance among these elements varies from
chapter to chapter, largely because the material available concerning the par-
ticular period or country may tend to be weighted in one direction more than
others. In many cases we have given more emphasis to the Dharma, both be-
cause of its intrinsic interest and because of its pervasive influence on all other
aspects of Buddhism. Rituals and institutions have meaning only when inter-
preted in light of the doctrine through which that meaning is articulated. In
choosing this emphasis, we are honoring an assumption common to all Bud-
dhist traditions: that the mind is the primary shaper of the world, rather than
vice versa. Readers who prefer to approach the tradition from its more mate-
rial aspects, such as its economic history, are directed to the bibliography.
In approaching the Buddhist. tradition from the standpoint of its articu-
lated Dharma, we find that the inherent. tension between doctrine and prac-
tice goes a long way toward explaining much of the development of the ·
tradition over the ages. This tension is present in all religions, but in Bud-
dhism it is particularly acute. Right view, which expresses the essence of the
doctrine, is meant to be used as a guide that leads ultimately to the abandon-
ment of attachment to all views. In this sense it is therapeutic, aimed at achiev-
ing the "health" of freedom from suffering. To borrow an image from the