Philosophical Embryology: Buddhist Texts and the Ritual Construction of a Fetus

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1 University Press Scholarship Online You are looking at 1-9 of 9 items for: keywords : Abhidhamma Philosophical Embryology: Buddhist Texts and the Ritual Construction of a Fetus Justin Thomas McDaniel in Imagining the Fetus: The Unborn in Myth, Religion, and Culture Published in print: 2008 Published Online: January 2009 ISBN: eisbn: Publisher: Oxford University Press DOI: / acprof:oso/ This short study examines premodern and modern rituals that involve the creation of ephemeral fetuses through the power of Buddhist philosophical texts and protective science. This chapter emphasizes that although Abhidhamma texts often say absolutely nothing about fetal development, motherhood, and birth, male monks use them to invoke the generative power of a mother. They are used to metaphorically and, many believe, actually create new life. The Abhidhamma texts that these rituals are based on are not mythological stories. They are detailed psychological and philosophical treatises. However, in Southeast Asia these psychophilosophical treatises have been transformed into fantastic stories that describe how new fetuses are created using words from the Abhidhamma. Early Buddhism: Three Baskets of Dharma Alf Hiltebeitel in Dharma: Its Early History in Law, Religion, and Narrative Published in print: 2011 Published Online: September 2011 ISBN: eisbn: Publisher: Oxford University Press DOI: / acprof:oso/ Chapter 4 takes up Buddhist understandings of dhamma or dharma as they were developed in (or better, into) the three baskets of the early Buddhist canon, especially the Pāli canon of the Theravāda tradition. It takes the three baskets' extant collections to have historical implications for understanding how Buddhist dharma was formulated over time. The first section treats Sūtra/Sutta Basket dharma, concentrating on what Page 1 of 6

2 the Buddha is represented as saying in these sermons, particularly in dialogues with Brahmins, highlighting in this respect the Ambaṭṭha Sutta. The second section on Abhidharma/Abhidhamma concentrates on Buddhist dharma theory, with its notion of dharmas plural. It looks at dharmas plural first in Sutta Basket usages and then in scholastic usages by the Theravāda, the influential Sarvāstivādin sect, and the early Mahāyāna. The third part examines Vinaya for its usage of dharmas as rules, its emphasis on consensus with respect to recitation of the Prātimokṣa/Pātimokkha code, possible correlations between Vinaya and the so called little republics, and the treatment of Vinaya rules in the Buddhist Genesis narrative of the emergence of householder life, celibacy, and kingship recounted in the Aggañña Sutta. The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Item type: book chicago/ This book explores the rise of insight meditation (vipassanā) as a widespread lay movement in Burma during British colonial rule. It does this through a study of one of its key architects, the Burmese monk Ledi Sayadaw ( ). His life and work shows that mass meditation emerged out of the relationship between two spheres of action, the study of Buddhist doctrine and the effort to protect the Buddhist religion. In terms of doctrinal study, Ledi empowered a wide range of people to participate in the longstanding elite practice of in-depth study, focusing particularly on the Buddhist philosophical texts, the Abhidhamma. He tied this study to the second sphere, protective efforts, by arguing that such study empowered a person to safeguard Buddhism. He then presented meditation as another way to insure Buddhism s safety not to mention as a means to spiritual attainments and he standardized and simplified meditation methods for lay people using the Abhidhamma. By allying insight practice in this way to study and protection, he set in train the collectivization of practice and the acceptability of lay control of its teaching, now hallmarks of modern Buddhism across the world. This analysis challenges the common assumption that colonialism forced the Burmese to entirely reconceive their traditions, for it shows that Ledi and other Burmese responded to the pressures of colonialism on pre-colonial terms. Thus, in explaining why mass meditation started in Burma, the book also extends into the pre-colonial past our understanding of sources for a form of Buddhist modernity. Page 2 of 6

3 Early Buddhism: Three Baskets of Dharma Alf Hiltebeitel in Dharma Published in print: 2010 Published Online: November 2016 ISBN: eisbn: Publisher: University of Hawai'i Press DOI: / hawaii/ This chapter investigates Buddhist understandings of dharma in the three baskets of the early Buddhist canon, taking them as an intentional organization of three different understandings of dharma that developed over time. The three basket division is not established until about the first century BCE, but it is anticipated in early references to monks who have mastered one or more of three areas of expertise: those who maintain the Dhamma, the Vinaya, and the Lists of phenomena. These three specializations lie, respectively, behind the baskets of the Sūtras (Suttas) or Discourses, the Vinaya or Monastic Rule, and the Abhidharma (Abhidhamma) or Higher Teachings. The Great War of the Commentaries: s Abhidhamma Controversy chicago/ The central question driving this chapter is why Ledi s highly technical and complex Abhidhamma commentary, the Paramatthadīpanī, caused tremendous controversy starting from its publication in Examination of the Paramatthadīpanī and the works opposed to it, as well as the reactions to Ledi s text in the social sphere, demonstrate that the controversy stemmed not from doctrinal disagreements, but from Ledi s confrontational style. His numerous dismissals of authoritative interpretations of the revered and fragile Abhidhamma exacerbated Burmese people s perception of the decline of Buddhism under British colonialism, particularly with the arrival of a print culture that spread the Paramatthadīpanī far beyond the scholarly elite. The chapter thus shows the importance of the Abhidhamma to Burmese Buddhism; it also shows a powerful way that Ledi made a national name for himself, even as he Page 3 of 6

4 learned about the power of print capitalism and the readiness of the laity to learn doctrine. In the Hands of All the People : Ledi Empowers the Laity chicago/ This chapter explores s efforts after 1900 to popularize study and practice among the laity. He exploited print culture, producing many vernacular writings, he went on wide-ranging preaching tours, and he founded numerous social organizations during his extensive travels all to teach doctrine and moral behavior. Ledi s program helped to empower lay people to collective action by arguing for Buddhism as the most scientific and superior of world religions. The chapter examines a speech by Ledi, in which he argues that lay people have the responsibility to protect and promote Buddhism. In this role, Ledi saw mastery of the Abhidhamma as the most powerful means that the laity could deploy, once again underlining the importance of philosophy and study to Burmese Buddhism. Rather than laicization or monasticization, Ledi s multipronged effort supported a leveling between monk and layperson and an intensification of lay life that reconstructed Burmese Buddhism. In This Very Life : Lay Study of the Abhidhamma chicago/ This chapter examines s Paramattha sa? khip, a Burmeselanguage poem published in 1904 that condenses the seven canonical books of the Abhidhamma into 690 easy-to-learn verses. Through this best-selling work, Ledi popularized lay study of the Abhidhamma, making it a resource for collective action. The poem brought lay people into the culturally prestigious world of Abhidhamma study and even Pali Page 4 of 6

5 scholarship. It provided them, too, with the conceptual vocabulary and modes of analysis to engage in Abhidhammic forms of meditation. The chapter also examines the social organizations Ledi founded at this time to promote the study of the Paramattha sa? khip. The chapter shows that as he worked to encourage doctrinal study more broadly, Ledi positioned the study of the Paramattha sa? khip in a group setting as a particularly powerful means to spiritual, and even social, development. The Birth of Insight chicago/ This chapter examines works on meditation by to show his vision of meditative practice, grounded in features described in earlier chapters. Ledi popularizes practice for all people, whatever their station in life. He uses basic Abhidhamma study as the basis for meditation, stressing fundamental doctrinal categories, particularly the four elements of earth, fire, water, and wind. This approach simplifies practice, because such learning is sufficient for dry insight meditation (sukhavipassanā) that requires no prior calming meditation (samatha). Meditation becomes a practice that one can do in the midst of lay life. Abhidhamma emerges in the analysis as the factor that explains the birth of mass insight practice in Burma as nowhere else. In Ledi s vision, the pursuit of awakening is part of modern lay life, and this fact reflects a Buddhist modernity that sees no conflict between religion and the modern world. The Work of Intention: Mental Life in the Abhidhamma Maria Heim in The Forerunner of All Things: Buddhaghosa on Mind, Intention, and Agency Published in print: 2013 Published Online: January ISBN: eisbn: Publisher: Oxford University Press DOI: / acprof:oso/ The chapter begins with a consideration of how to read and interpret Abhidhamma lists and commentaries, and the relationship of Abhidhamma methods to those of the Suttanta. It then explores Abhidhamma methods of categorizing mental experience and locates Page 5 of 6

6 cetanā in these classifications and the larger moral phenomenology of which it is a part. In addition to considering the many interrelated mental phenomena in conscious thought that contribute to intentional action, the chapter discusses ways Buddhaghosa treats other influences on agency: disposition, habit, culture, and intersubjective processes. Page 6 of 6