Baskets full of wisdom (Buddha’s soul….)

A disciple always looks up to his Guru for wisdom. He needs Guru’s guidance when he moves on the path of spiritual; quest. But the Guru can’t be there forever. So the disciples meticulously record whatever the Guru says, to look back when the Guru is no longer around.

 

Buddha’s early disciples carefully recorded whatever he said on various occasions. They did not write them down initially. But they memorized them ‘verbatim’. So, each of their record starts with the words - “thus we have heard on one occasion...” 

As compared to the abstract philosophical discussions in ancient scriptures like Upanishads, these recordings have an intimate feel – almost the voice of the Master reverberating in these records. Some sort of personal touch; A guiding hand. These records were recited ceremoniously after Buddha’s death, with all due reverence.

Oral transmission is not something new to ancient India. The vast Vedic literature was orally transmitted for thousands of years purely from memory. To aide preservation of original content, the Vedic Indians adhered to strict metrical rules and recitation techniques that ensured correctness. 

Buddhists employed a slightly different style. Their recordings, which were normally in the prose form, included multiple repetitions of the same sentences, sometimes rhyming, as if they are reciting poetry. That probably made them easier to memorize.

One drawback of this method, I found, was that these recordings sounded too verbose, repetitious, and even boring at times. All the same, they definitely have managed to preserve some of the most precious gems of Buddha’s wisdom.

After Buddha’s death, the monks used to meet periodically in congregations, comparing notes, amending whatever they had memorized. This went on for two centuries after Buddha’s death.

It is at that time the disciples decided to put these words of wisdom to writing. Thus came the early Buddhist scriptures (probably around 300 B.C.). They gave a nice name to these collections of records – Pitakas – or literally the baskets. Since there were three groups of collections they called them together as ‘Ti Pitakas’ – three baskets.

1. The first of these three collections or Pitakas is the Vinaya Pitaka. This was sort of rule of conduct for the monks in the Buddhist monastery. Such a rule book was required to manage a monastery that had thousands of inmates. Many of the rules were put down by Buddha himself.

2. The second collection is called ‘Sutta Pitaka’. This is the most important part of the Tipitakas. This has discourses by Buddha and some of his key disciples. Most of early Buddhism – called Theravada Buddhism - is in this Pitaka. The Pali word Theravada literally means – opinion of the elders.

These two collections were committed to memory during the lifetime of Buddha by his close disciples, and written down sometime in the 3^rd century B.C.

3. The third Pitaka is the so called ‘Abhidamma Pitaka’.  Unlike the Sutta Pitaka, this collection has very formally worded description of what Buddha is supposed to have said. 

According to Buddhists, whatever is described in Sutta Pitaka, is the conventional teaching (meant for lay folks), and the Abhidamma is the ultimate teaching..This collection has the Buddhist metaphysics. This was composed after Buddha’s death.

Most of my subsequent posts are going to be based on the Sutta Pitaka, the one I found to be close to Buddha and in the real sense ‘Buddha’s soul’. For an overview of Buddhist metaphysics you can refer to my book “Important missing dimensions in our current understanding of the Mind”, Chapter: “Buddhism and its Psychology without the Psyche”.