2 INTRODUCTIONthrown into sharp reliefby the perspective offered by the assumptions, uncon-
scious and conscious, of the rest of humanity. This text is meant to help pro-
vide a part of that perspective.
When Richard Robinson wrote the first edition of this text in 1970, he
entitled it The Buddhist Religion in answer to a question that was very much
alive at the time: Is Buddhism a religion or a philosophy? The question grew
from a tendency in academic circles to identify Buddhism with a body of doc-
trine. Because that doctrine-unlike those ofWestern religions-insisted that
the concept of gods or a God was irrelevant to advanced spiritual life, it bore
little resemblance to what was recognized as a religion in the West. Robinson's
aim was to show that when Buddhism is viewed in its entirety-in terms of
devotional practices, institutional history, ritual, and meditative experience, as
well as doctrine-it most certainly is a religion. The measure of his success is
that the original question no longer commands the interest it once did.
Now, however, controversies in the field of Buddhist studies center on is-
sues related to the text's subtitle: A Historical Introduction. Some scholars, on
ideological or pedagogical grounds, have questioned whether the critical/his-
torical method of analysis is a valid approach to understanding Buddhism at
all. From the ideological standpoint, the question is whether this method
makes assumptions that would be rejected by Buddhists themselves. From the
pedagogical standpoint, the question is whether the historical method is equal
to the task of making the bewildering variety within the Buddhist tradition
intelligible. On both counts, however, a valid case can be made that the criti-
cal/historical method, even though it may not offer the final word on Bud-
dhism, is still a useful introit to the tradition.
To deal first with the ideological issues: All Buddhists, whatever their affil-
iation, agree that Dharma ultimately lies beyond the temporal and social con-
ditions of the world. As such, it does not lend itself to historical or any other
kind of analysis. Nevertheless, Buddhists themselves have used words to indi-
cate that there is an unconditioned level and to show the way to gain an expe-
rience of it, and these words surely lend themselves to historical treatment. In
fact, Buddhists themselves find it necessary to explain how, for instance,
Madhyamika was a reaction to Abhidharma, and Yogacara a reaction to
Madhyamika.
As for the conditioned level, Buddhist teachings on: dependent co-arising
(see Section 1.4.3) recognize two forms of causality operatin·g on any given
situation: influences from the past, and influences from the present. Thus an
attempt to trace what can be learned about the past influences acting on pres-
ent Buddhist practices should not pose any theoretical problems for a practic-
ing Buddhist, although we must remember that Buddhists themselves would
include among those past factors the workings of karma, which lie beyond a
scholar's ability to confirm or deny.
In actual practice, Buddhists of all schools have shown a wide variety of at-
titudes toward historical studies and their value in the practice of their own
religion. Some, such as Hsiian-tsang (see Section 8.5), have actually put their
lives on the line in the quest to find reliable records of the Buddha's true teach-