Historical consciousness and traditional Buddhist narratives

In this paper, I intend to explore some of the issues that come up when I tried to teach academically grounded, accurate, non-sectarian history of Buddhism at Buddhist dharma centers. First among these issues is that Western Buddhists can be quite fundamentalist in their approach to Buddhism and take many narratives literally. Chief among these, especially for Mahāyāna Buddhists, is the Heart Sūtra, which they believe was actually given by the historical Buddha during his lifetime because of the setting in which this narrative is placed. To explain why Mahāyāna teachings did not take hold for about four hundred years, they add the belief that the historical Buddha realized that people were not ready for those teachings, so he had them concealed among the nāgas, from where Nāgārjuna retrieved them. Historians obviously do not take this story seriously as history and seek for historical causes and conditions that led to the development of Mahāyāna ideas some four hundred years after the death of the Buddha. I will argue, first, that key Buddhist teachings, especially teachings on all-pervasive impermanence and on interdependent origination, can be used to verify historical accounts of the origins of Mahāyāna Buddhism. In other words, to accept the more sensible and reasonable account given by modern historians is not to abandon traditional Buddhist beliefs and teachings. It is rather to appeal to traditional Buddhist teachings that provide more adequate explanations of the origins of Mahāyāna Buddhism that the traditional mythic narrative. Second, I will discuss how the mythic account can be interpreted symbolically and will argue that symbols should not be considered as less important or real than facts. Only those who buy completely into the model of scientific materialism provided by the European enlightenment would not understand that in religions, symbols are as meaningful as facts.

full paper: http://www.internationaljournaldharmastudies.com/content/1/1/5 accessed 2/5/14