Theravada Tradition

A statue of the Buddha from Sarnath, Uttar Pradesh, India, c. 475 CE. The Buddha is depicted teaching in the lotus position, while making the Dharmacakra mudrā.Theravāda (Pāli, lit. "School of the Elders") is the most accepted name of Buddhism's oldest existing school. The school's adherents, termed Theravādins, have preserved their version of Gautama Buddha's teaching in the Pāli Canon.¹ The Pāli Canon is the most complete Buddhist canon surviving in a classical Indian language, Pāli, which serves as the school's sacred language.

For over a millennium, theravādins have endeavored to preserve the dhamma as recorded in their school's texts. In contrast to Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna, Theravāda tends to be conservative in matters of doctrine and monastic discipline.

Modern Theravāda derives from the Mahāvihāra sect, a Sri Lankan branch of the Vibhajjavādins, a sub-sect of the Indian Sthavira Nikaya, which began to establish itself on the island from the 3rd century BCE onwards. It was in Sri Lanka that the Pāli Canon was written down and the school's commentary literature developed.

From Sri Lanka, the Theravāda Mahāvihāra tradition subsequently spread to the rest of Southeast Asia. It is the dominant religion in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand and is practiced by minorities in India, Bangladesh, China, Nepal, and Vietnam. The diaspora of all of these groups, as well as converts around the world, also practice Theravāda.

Origins

The name Theravāda comes from Sthāvirīya, one of the early Buddhist schools from which Theravādins trace their school's descent. The Sthavira nikāya emerged from the first schism in the Buddhist sangha (literally "Community"). At issue was its adherents' desire to add new Vinaya rules tightening monastic discipline, against the wishes of the majority Mahāsāṃghika. According to its adherents' accounts, the Theravāda school derives from the Vibhajjavāda "doctrine of analysis" group, which was a division of the Sthāvirīya.

Theravadins' own accounts of their school's origins mention that it received the teachings that were agreed upon during the putative Third Buddhist council held around 250 BCE under the patronage of Indian Emperor Ashoka. These teachings were known as the Vibhajjavāda.

Emperor Ashoka is supposed to have assisted in purifying the sangha by expelling monks who declined to agree to the terms of Third Council. The elder monk Moggaliputta-Tissa chaired the Third council and compiled the Kathavatthu ("Points of Controversy"), a refutation of various opposing views which is an important work in the Theravāda Abhidhamma.

Later, the Vibhajjavādins, in turn, is said to have split into four groups: the Mahīśāsaka, Kāśyapīya, Dharmaguptaka in the north, and the Tāmraparṇīya in South India. The Tambapaṇṇiya (later Mahāvihāravāsins), was established in Sri Lanka (at Anuradhapura) but active also in Andhra and other parts of South India (Vanavasa in modern Karnataka) and later across South-East Asia. Inscriptional evidence of this school has been found in Amaravati and Nagarjunakonda.

According to Buddhist scholar A. K. Warder, the Theravāda “spread rapidly south from Avanti into Maharashtra and Andhra and down to the Chola country (Kanchi), as well as Sri Lanka. For some time they maintained themselves in Avanti as well as in their new territories, but gradually they tended to regroup themselves in the south, the Great Vihara (Mahavihara) in Anuradhapura, the ancient capital of Sri Lanka, becoming the main center of their tradition, Kanchi a secondary center and the northern regions apparently relinquished to other schools.”

Core teachings

The core of Theravāda Buddhist doctrine is contained in the Pāli Canon, the only complete collection of Early Buddhist texts surviving in a classical Indic language. These ideas are shared by other Early Buddhist schools as well as by Mahayana traditions. They include central concepts such as:

• The Middle Way
• The four noble truths
• The Noble Eightfold Path
• Three marks of existence (impermanence, suffering, not-self)
• Five aggregates (of a person)
• Dependent arising
• Karma and rebirth
• Jhana (meditative absorption)
• The bodhipakkhiyādhammā (37 factors conducive to awakening)
• Kleshas and asavas (mental defilements)
• Avidyā (Ignorance)
• Nirvana (the goal of Buddhism, the complete end of suffering)

Doctrinal differences with other Buddhist schools

The doctrinal stances of the Theravāda school vis-a-vis other early Buddhist schools is presented in the Pāli text known as the Kathāvatthu, "Points of Controversy", which said to have been compiled by the scholar Moggaliputta-Tissa (c. 327–247 BCE). It includes several philosophical and soteriological matters.

Traditionally, the Theravāda school generally holds some of the following key doctrinal positions:

• Theravādins traditionally believe that an awakened arahant (lit. worthy one) has an "incorruptible nature" and are thus morally perfect.

• On the Philosophy of time, the Theravāda tradition holds to philosophical presentism, the view that only present moment dhammas exist, against the eternalist view of the Sarvāstivādin tradition which held that dhammas exist in all three times – past, present, future.

• Like other schools, they reject the Pudgalavada doctrine of the pudgala ("person") as being more than a conceptual designation.

• The Theravāda rejected the view of the Lokottaravada schools which held that the all acts done by the Buddha (including all speech, defecation, and urination, etc.) were supramundane or transcendental. They also reject the docetic view which holds that the Buddha's body was a mere "transformation" or magical creation of a transcendental being.

• Theravāda rejects the view that there is an intermediate state (antarabhāva) between rebirths, they hold that rebirth happens instantaneously (in one mind moment).

• Theravāda traditionally holds that insight into the four noble truths happens in one moment, rather than gradually, as was held by Sarvastivada.

• Theravāda traditionally defends the idea that the Buddha himself taught the Abhidhamma Pitaka. Though this has been questioned by some moderns in light of modern scholarship.

• Theravāda rejects the Mahayana sutras as Buddhavacana (word of the Buddha), and do not study or see these texts as reliable sources. They further reject the view that the Tipitaka is incomplete and that Mahayana texts are somehow more advanced.

Monastic orders within Theravāda

Theravāda monks typically belong to a particular nikaya, variously referred to as monastic orders or fraternities. These different orders do not typically develop separate doctrines but may differ in the way they observe monastic rules. These monastic orders represent lineages of ordination, typically tracing their origin to a particular group of monks that established a new ordination tradition within a particular country or geographic area.

In Sri Lanka caste plays a major role in the division into nikayas. Some Theravāda Buddhist countries appoint or elect a sangharaja, or Supreme Patriarch of the Sangha, as the highest ranking or seniormost monk in a particular area, or from a particular nikaya.

Four stages of enlightenment

According to Theravāda doctrine, liberation is attained in four stages of enlightenment:

• Stream-Enterers: Those who have destroyed the first three fetters (false view of Self, doubt, and clinging to rites and rituals);
• Once-Returners: Those who have destroyed the first three fetters and have lessened the fetters of lust and hatred;
• Non-Returners: Those who have destroyed the five lower fetters, which bind beings to the world of the senses;
• Arahants: Those who have reached Enlightenment – realized Nibbana, and have reached the quality of deathlessness –are free from all defilements. Their ignorance, craving and attachments have ended.

Main disciples of Gautama Buddha

• Śāripūtra (Sanskrit), or Sāriputta (Pāli), was one of two chief disciples of Gautama Buddha, along with Maudgalyayana. In Heart Sutra, the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara preaches to him.

• Maudgalyāyana (Sk.) or Moggallāna(Pl.), also known as Mahāmaudgalyāyana or Mahāmoggallāna. He and Śāriputra were once disciples of Sañjaya Belaṭṭhaputta, the skeptic, but they became disciples of the Buddha. As a teacher, he became known for his psychic powers, and he is often depicted to use these in his teaching methods. Maudgalyāyana died at the age of eighty-four, killed through the efforts of a rivaling sect.

• Mahākāśyapa (Sk.) or Mahākassapa (Pl.). He had been praised by the Buddha as being equal to him in many respects² and he shared with the Master seven of the thirty-two "Marks of a Great Man." He had been the only monk with whom the Buddha had exchanged robes. Mahākāśyapa possessed to the highest degree the ten "qualities that inspire confidence."³ He was also a model of a disciplined and austere life devoted to meditation and was elected to preside over the First Council of the Sangha which had been summoned on his urgent advice. It may have been on account of all these features of his personality and his life that, much later in China and Japan, Maha Kassapa came to be regarded as the first patriarch of Ch'an or Zen Buddhism. (Hellmuth Hecker: Maha Kassapa, Father of the Sangha)

• Subhūti (Sk. & Pl.) is famed as the monk who was most worthy of gifts due to his practice of absorption on loving-kindness (mettā-jhāna) before receiving almsfood. He was the younger brother of Anāthapiṇḍika. After ordination he mastered the two categories of Vinaya rules, and, after obtaining a subject for meditation, lived in the forest. There he developed insight and attained Arahantship. It is said that when he went begging for alms he would develop mettā-jhāna at each door, hence every gift made to him was of the highest merit.

• Pūrṇa Maitrāyaniputra (Sk.) or Puṇṇa Mantānīputta (Pl.). He was also called Purna for short. He was the greatest teacher of the Law out of all the disciples. He was the top master of preaching.

• Kātyāyana or Mahākātyāyana (Sk.) or Mahākaccāna (Pl.). was foremost in expanding on and explaining brief statements of the Buddha.

• Anuruddha (Pl.) or Aniruddha (Sk.) was a top master of clairvoyance and the practice of the four foundations of mindfulness (satipatthana). Aniruddha was a cousin of Shakyamuni Buddha. He and Ananda became monks at the same time.

• Upāli (Sk. & Pl.) was a top master of Vinaya. He was born in the Shudra class and worked as a barber, ayurveda vaidya. Buddha had denied the class system, he ranked his disciples according to the order in which they joined. So Upali was ranked ahead of the ex-princes. In the First Buddhist council, the Vinaya was compiled based on his memory.

• Rāhula (Sk. & Pl.) was the only son of the Buddha (when he was still Prince Siddhartha) and his wife, Yaśodharā. He was a scrupulous, strict, and shrewd person. When the Buddha went to his hometown, he became the first Sāmanera (novice monk).

• Ānanda (Sk. & Pl.) was born on the same day as the Buddha and they were cousins. In the First Buddhist council, the suttas were compiled based on his memory. He lived to 120 years old.

“When the Buddha declared that Ananda would be pleasing to him and that he wanted him as his attendant, Ananda asked a favor of having eight conditions fulfilled:

First of all, the Master should never pass a gift of robes on to him; second, he should never give him any almsfood, which he himself had received; third, having received a dwelling place he should never give it to him; fourth, never to include him in any personal invitation (such as an occasion for teaching Dhamma when a meal would be offered).

Besides these four negative conditions, he also had four positive wishes, namely: if he was invited to a meal, he asked for the right to transfer this invitation to the Buddha; if people came from outlying areas, he asked for the privilege to lead them to the Buddha; if he had any doubts or inquiries about the Dhamma, he asked for the right to present these to the Buddha at any time; and if the Buddha gave a discourse during his absence, he asked for the privilege to have the Buddha repeat it to him privately.

He explained his reasons for these requests in this way: if he did not pose the first four conditions, then people could say that he had accepted the post of attendant only because of material gain. But if he did not express the other four conditions, then it could rightly be said that he fulfilled the duties of his post without being mindful of his own advancement on the Noble Path.

The Buddha granted him these very reasonable requests, which were quite in accordance with the teaching. From then on Ananda was the constant companion, attendant and helper of the Blessed One for twenty-five years.” (Hellmuth Hecker: Ananda, The Guardian of the Dhamma)

Sources

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theravada
• http://www.chinabuddhismencyclopedia.com/en/index.php?title=Category:Theravada_Buddhism
• https://www.accesstoinsight.org
• https://encyclopediaofbuddhism.org/wiki/List_of_notable_historical_figures_in_Buddhism

Footnotes

1. Tipitaka (the Buddhist canon):
• Vinaya Pitaka: the rules and procedures that govern the Buddhist monastic community
• Sutta Pitaka: over 10,000 suttas (discourses) of Buddha and his disciples.
• Abhidhamma Pitaka: a detailed scholastic analysis and summary of the Buddha's teachings in the Suttas, reworked into a schematized system of general principles that might be called 'Buddhist Psychology'.

2. He had in common with the Buddha the attainment of the eight meditative absorptions and the six supernormal knowledges (abhinna), which include Arahatship.

3. According to the Gopaka-Moggallana Sutta (M.108), the ten qualities of a monk that inspire confidence (pasadaniya-dhamma) are: he is (1) virtuous, (2) learned, (3) content with his requisites, (4) can easily obtain the four jhanas; he possesses (5) the supernormal powers, (6) the divine ear, (7) penetration of the mind of others, (8) remembrance of former lives, (9) the divine eye, (10) destruction of taints, i.e., Arahatship. (accesstoinsight.org)