Introducing Buddhism and Law, Rebecca Redwood French and Mark A. Nathan
In the following reading about Buddhism and law by Rebecca Redwood French and Mark A. Nathan, the role of dharma is central, just as it was in Davis's account of Hinduism and law.
In the case of Buddhism, however, the study of dharma is largely associated with the teachings of one historical figure, Siddhartha Gautama, rather than the pantheon of sacred beings who feature prominently in Hinduism. Concepts of law and justice in Buddhism are embedded in the transformative insight the Buddha himself achieved concerning “causality and karma, impermanence and the absence of self, suffering and liberation.” Law is also reflected in the distinctive Buddhist conception of the righteous ruler, the cakravartin, or “wheel-turning” king, who protects the dharma and derives his legitimacy from righteousness rather than supernatural power and authority. A further distinctive aspect ofBuddhism and law is the Vinaya tradition, a set of rules established by the Buddha for the monastic community, with significant implications for the practices and obligations of lay followers.
The Life of the Buddha
Siddhrirtha Gautama was born the son of a ruler in an area that is now southern Nepal and, according to the tradition, was raised in a life of princely luxury. Although the dates of his life are uncertain, a majority of scholars place his birth in the sixth century BCE. As it was foretold that his son was destined to become either a great king or a great religious teacher, it is said that Siddhartha's father shielded him from any painful elements of life that might lead him along the latter path. However, the sacred biographies say that the prince eventually became curious about the world outside the walls of the palace and, leaving behind his wife and newborn child, studied under a number of teachers and experimented with different forms of ascetic practice that were common in India at the time, including some extreme austerities.
Finding none of these methods efficacious, he finally sat down beneath a pιpal tree and determined not to move from the spot until he had achieved his goal. In the course of one evening, the canonical texts say he progressed through successive stages of meditative insight before arriving at a perfect understanding of the way things truly are, rather than how they might appear to the unenlightened - that is, an understanding of causality and karma, impermanence and the absence of self, suffering and liberation. The Buddha's awakening that night and his subsequent teachings and discourses based on that experience are both referred to as dharma.The Buddha's teaching career began a few weeks after that event, we are told, and lasted some forty-five years. Over the course of that time, many people gathered around Srikyamuni, an honorific title meaning “the sage of the Sakyas,” and the teachings called “turning the wheel of law” have conÂtinued to attract followers for 2,500 years. His first disciples were his five fellow ascetic practitioners. Significantly for the development of Buddhism as a religion [...] among those who became followers of the Buddha during his lifetime and thereafter, some left home to join the sangha (or samgha), while others remained householders and provided support for those who had “gone forth” into the religious life. At times the word sangha is used more inclusively to encompass both groups, but most often it refers to a community or an assembly of monks or nuns who, upon full ordination, take a vow to uphold the precepts and rules contained in the Buddhist law codes, which are called Vinaya. The basic dynamic at the heart of the link between the sangha and lay society has long been recognized as a type of reciprocal relationship. Laypeople earn karmic “merit” for themselves or loved ones by donating food, land, or other necessities and gifts to the safιgha, while the monks and nuns serve as teachers of dharma and “fields of merit,” especially through their observance of the Vinaya.
[...]Dharma as Law
The word dharma has a broad range of meanings in the wider Indian social, religious, political, and legal discourses. It can signify the natural order of the universe and society as well as one's duty or ritual obligations within that order. The nineteenth-century founders of Buddhist studies in Europe, notably Eugene Burnouf and Brian Hodgson, recognized that the word dharma had multiple meanings and was difficult to translate, but they conÂsidered “law” an acceptable or even preferred translation. [...] [A]s Frank Reynolds points out, “â€?Law' when it was used as a translation for Dharma, was used with cosmic, philosophical, and/or ethical connotations that were never associated - in any really intrinsic or crucial way - with legal systems or codes.” [...]
One attribute shared by dharma and law may be universality. The law of cause and effect and other central doctrines described as the Buddha's dharma can be applied to all people and all sentient beings, for that matter - at all times. The conditioned nature of all things holds true no matter what a person's station in life or what beliefs that person may hold. Moreover, dharma also possesses a prescriptive aspect in addition to its descriptive component. [...] In other words, the Buddha did not simply describe reality as seen from his enlightened vantage point; he also laid down a number of principles for correct moral and ethical conduct based on his perfect insight and profound wisdom. [...]
One final way in which dharma enters this discussion of Buddhist law is through Buddhist textual references to a cakravartin, a “wheel-turning” king, the Buddhist image of an ideal ruler. [...] Like so many other central concepts in Buddhism, this notion of a “wheel-turning” king was common to Brahmanism and Jainism too, but in Buddhist teachings, Gethin tells us, “where cakravartin kings are described as conquering and ruling the whole earth not by violence or by the sword, but by righteousness (dharma), the wheel has also the connotation of �the wheel of truth' (dharma-cakra).”[19] In numerous places throughout the Buddhist scriptures, the Buddha is depicted as interacting with contemporary kings, instructing them in dharma and sometimes giving them advice.
Although the texts clearly contain scatÂtered views on kingship grounded in Buddhist ethics and virtue, Gethin cautions against reading a Buddhist form of constitutional law into them, as some have done, and concludes that at a minimum, discussions of kingship and the ideal of a cakravartin “have been used by Buddhists to reflect on how a king should behave.”Buddhist Monasticism
The relationship between those who leave home to become ordained monks and nuns and those who remain lay householders is central to an understandÂing of Buddhism as it spread throughout much of Asia. The establishment of a functioning and viable monastic community, which inevitably involved the establishment of monasteries and eventually the adoption of a monastic code to regulate the community, was an indispensable part of the transmission of Buddhism into new regions of Asia. This basic distinction is also important for any consideration of Buddhism and Law for two closely connected reasons. The first relates to persistent presumptions about the degree of distance separating these two groups of Buddhist practitioners, while the second conÂcerns the set of rules or precepts that function as a Buddhist law code for individual monks and nuns and for the sangha as a communal body or organization.
Although the monastic ideal within Buddhism, as portrayed in some canonical sources) was peripatetic, solitary, and austere, echoing perhaps the paradigmatic story of the Buddha leading up to his awakening, a more sedentary lifestyle clearly became the norm early in the history of the sangha involving tight-knit communities of settled religious practitioners. These monasteries in time grew to become quite large and complex institutions, as the example of the famous monastery and university at Nalanda located in the present-day Indian State of Bihar shows. [...]
One reason for the perceived disjuncture between sangha and society was the false assumption that Buddhist monasticism is marked by otherworldliness and the complete separation from society.
The biases that Western observers and generations of Buddhist scholars brought to bear on their conception of Buddhist monasticism, which was almost invariably compared to Christian forms of monasticism, certainly played a role. This has begun to change, however, in the last few decades. Changes in our understanding of Buddhist monasticism were spurred by two important trends in Buddhist studies in recent decades. First, there was a turn away from the normative descriptions found in Buddhist scriptural texts and more focus on the lived tradition as it is practiced in Buddhist monasteries and temples throughout Asia. Many of the preconceptions concerning Buddhist monasticism have come under scrutiny from the r970s as more anthropologists began to conduct field studies of Buddhist communities in Asia. There is now a greater awareness and sensitivÂity to the institutional realities of life in a Buddhist monastery, and less criticism of deviations or devolutions from the ideal religious life described in the sUtras.The second trend that has begun to reshape our understanding of Buddhist monasticism is the increased scholarly attention being given to Vinaya materÂials. The Vinaya is a set of canonical law texts containing rules, descriptions, case studies, definitions and punishments, and some ancillary material that was used to regulate the sangha. The more scholars scrutinize the contents of the Vinaya, the more shibboleths previously held by Buddhist Studies scholars concerning the nature of Buddhist monasticism have faltered. [...]
Vinaya as Law
The Vinaya comprises one-third of the Buddhist canon and is the first of the three “baskets” (pitika) to appear, followed by the discourses of the Buddha (Sutra Pitika) and scholastic treatises or commentarial literature - the “further dharma” (Abhidharma Pitika). The use of the word Vinaya in singular form is quite common, especially when referring to it as part of a singular Buddhist canon, but this usage is merely conventional because, just as there are multiple canons, nearly a dozen Vinayas existed at one time.
Six of these Vinayas have been preserved in a more or less complete form to the present day, and several more have survived only in fragments. Of the six that are extant, three are still in use today by monastic communities in Asia, and for simplicity they can be identified by the language of the Buddhist canon in which they are found: Pali, Chinese, and Tibetan.The core of the Vinaya lays out rules for monks and nuns to uphold individually and for the order to follow collectively. The tradition credits the Buddha himself with the creation of these rules on a case-by-case basis, but we may never know which (if any) of the rules can actually be traced to the time of the Buddha. The extant Vinayas almost certainly went through a sustained period of development before arriving in the written form that we have them today. [...] [I]n every Vinaya scholars have examined, the Buddha is depicted as the lawgiver. After hearing accounts from others and thoroughly investiÂgating the “causes and conditions” surrounding a suspected transgression or moral lapse on the part of monks and nuns, the Buddha decided on cases as the highest spiritual and legal authority concerning what is good and true. On that basis, he is said to have created a substantial body of law for the community of monks and nuns, making Buddhist law in this sense quite unique among the major world religions. A process of accommodation or adaptation to the legal, political, and social environments is plainly evident in the development of Vinayas, yet the existence of a complex law code gave the sangha sophisticated legal tools necessary to engage with lay society, political systems, and secular law wherever it became established.
All versions of the Vinaya have a similar structure. The material is divided into two main parts: the Sutravibhanga, which contains the core list of rules called the Pratimoksa that individual monks and nuns vow to uphold on full ordination; and the Skandhaka, which lays out the organizational procedures to be followed by the monastic community as a whole. The number of rules in the Pratimoksa range from 219 to 37r depending on the school and gender of the practitioner. Women were initially excluded from joining the safιgha, we are told, but after several years the Buddha reluctantly agreed to admit them. He did so, however, only after handing down a set of eight rules that appears to establish the subordination of nuns individually and collectively to their brethren, and additional requirements.
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