Тхеравада - новодел?

"Почему одна школа правильнее другой?"

Поэтому нужно читать самые ранние сутты которые мы имеем.

Я думаю, что такая постановка вопроса - это начало ссоры. Надо убирать из обоснования привязку к человеку и времени. Она, мало того, что странная, так еще и ведет к разборкам. Идущий в таковости, по мнению ланкийских тхеравадинов, вообще ничего не говорил или, по версии махасангиков,  говорил только "А"  

Сутры не признают но Праджняпармиту в тхервавде практикуют, а именно только достигнув непосредственного восприятия пустоты собственной самосущности можно стать Архатом.
Только термины наши русские переводчики из группы г.Топпера используют другие на мой взгляд крайне неудачные нос уть от этого не меняется.

Имеет современные трактовки древних текстов?

Сутры не признают но Праджняпармиту в тхервавде практикуют, а именно только достигнув непосредственного восприятия пустоты собственной самосущности можно стать Архатом.
Только термины наши русские переводчики из группы г.Топпера используют другие на мой взгляд крайне неудачные нос уть от этого не меняется.

Толя, ну куда Вас опять занесло? В Праджняпарамиту с буквой "А"? Дык это - не Тхеравада. Они (тхеравадины) даже и не признают ни фига этой сутры...

Топпер вот как-то сказал, что Праджняпарамита (как таковая) противоречит Канону. С какой стороны смотреть? Все зависит от точки отсчета, от системы координат...

Ежели очень хочется, то можно найти кучу противоречий где угодно. Если же смотреть с более общей точки зрения, в более общем контексте, то те утверждения, которые казались противоречивыми, становятся просто частными случаями общих утверждений.

Problems with the Definition of “Theravada Buddhism”

Theravada Buddhism’s reputation for being the earliest surviving form of Buddhism is developed in contrast to other forms of Buddhism, which are labeled “Mahayana” and “Vajrayana.” These are the umbrella terms commonly used for the Buddhisms of East Asia and Central Asia/the Himalayas, respectively.

Those who become more familiar with any of these forms of Buddhism quickly realize that these categories are not fixed, exclusive, or comprehensive entities. In fact, there are deep problems with such categorization, which can make us blind to the fluidity, complexity, diversity, and richness of any actual manifestation of Buddhism in real people and communities. To label and define the living traditions that have emerged from two and a half millennia of history in this way is a form of essentialism. Essentialism, while often a useful tool of classification, can at its worst be a sinister tool of control.

In fact, it is only in the modern period that the term thera-vāda, literally “doctrine of the senior monks,” came to be equated with the community religion of this region, becoming its official designation at the World Fellowship of Buddhists in 1950 (Perreira 2012: 561). The term sthavira/thera “senior monk” and its parallels in other languages were used by several branches of Buddhism, in their attempts to classify Buddhist divergence, to refer to an early division within the Buddhist fold between two groups: the sthaviras, and, usually, the Mahāsaṃghikas (Bareau 1955/2013: 23). The doctrinal positions preserved in the earliest layers of Theravada texts as well as Theravada’s own historiography places it as a development within the sthavira side of that division. Within one branch of  sthavira/thera Buddhism, the Mahāvihāra in Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka in the fifth-century ce, that is, 1000 years after the death of the historical Buddha, the term thera-vāda was used to refer to the teachings of senior monks, particularly those senior monks who gathered together immediately after the Buddha’s death at a meeting called “the first council.” The phrase was used in this way by the Mahāvihāra as it was codifying the preservation of its teachings (including the Pali Canon). The purpose of compiling these accounts of the first council at that point was to attribute to the Buddha’s immediate disciples and their successors a process of rehearsing and recording the Buddha’s teachings and rules in such detail that it could authorize the Pali Canon as it was rehearsed at the Mahāvihāra all those centuries later. The Mahāvihāra tradition also attributed to those early enlightened disciples the extensive commentaries that it had begun to systematize and “retranslate” into Pali at that time, the fifth-century ce. In the twelfth century, the Mahāvihāra monastic tradition came to dominate the Buddhism of Sri Lanka and would in turn strongly influence the textual and ordination lineages of Southeast Asia, across the forms of Buddhism that came at a later date still to be termed Theravada. Its claim to the authority of preserving the doctrine of the early senior monks was consolidated through a further period of reviewing this textual transmission and writing additional commentaries and handbooks.

The account of the first council, coupled with that of later councils, especially the third council connected with Asoka (mentioned earlier), validates the Pali Canon and commentaries, as the ultimate scriptural authority for Theravada Buddhism today. This in turn allows for the corresponding claim to earliness and authenticity on the part of Theravada. However, it is clear that the texts and the stories of their authenticity were the work of centuries. Moreover, there are also many other texts, written, visual, and aural, in many languages and media, that inform Theravada Buddhism as it is now practiced and as it was practiced over the centuries. Like other forms of Buddhism, what we now term Theravada is the process and product of two and a half millennia since the historical person referred to as the Buddha began preaching the teachings and institutions from which all forms of Buddhism developed. Within Theravada we frequently find doctrines, interpretations, and practices that have been more closely associated with Mahayana and Vajrayana. While these could be put down to the influence of Mahayana and Vajrayana on Theravada, the concept of Theravada as the religion of a community, ethnic group, and even nationality as a whole is a recent development. For most of the history of Buddhism, distinctions of doctrine and textual authority have been a matter of concern for a minority of scholars and practitioners, often coming to a head at points of crisis. The history of Buddhism in the region we now identify as Theravada shows different doctrinal and practice groups existing alongside and intertwined with one another. The current dominance of what is now defined as “Theravada” is the result of a number of factors, including which monasteries won in competitions to win royal sponsorship in the medieval period; and how Buddhist history came to be written at points of marked identity formation, that is, when big political changes led a group or community to redefine themselves. Key periods when this happened differ from region to region, but the eleventh to twelfth centuries marked one such watershed, as also did the nineteenth to twentieth centuries.

The definitions of Theravada that formed in the nineteenth to twentieth centuries owe much to changing conceptions of religion, rationality, science, and identity. Definitions of sameness and contrast became important in marking territory, ensuring allegiance and bolstering status at a marked period of shifting and contested power relations globally. This general picture has been complicated by and has interacted with Western Buddhist Studies scholarship that from the nineteenth through into the late twentieth centuries was also seeking to differentiate Buddhist traditions and schools and in the main did so on a purely doctrinal basis. The locus classicus that brought together the research that had been conducted in relation to the early schools of Buddhism by the time of its publication and went on to be the basis of further refinement in this area is the work of Andrй Bareau (1955/2013). In it Theravada is identified as a later subgroup of the early schools emerging from the sthavira side of a conjectured early split between Sthavira and Mahāsaṃghika factions. Bareau then defines Theravada purely by the 222 doctrinal theses claimed as “orthodox” in the Abhidhamma book, the Kathāvatthu, compiled at the third council, even while observing how different the lived Theravada of different regions was on the ground (1955/2013: 275–326). East Asian and Western understandings of Theravada in this way, and the concomitant association of it with pre-Mahayana Buddhism, led to it being labeled as one of the Hīnayāna “inferior vehicle” schools, a pejorative term found in Mahayana sūtras to refer to the Buddhism of the opponents in those sūtras. It was in reaction to this identification that representatives from what was then termed the “Southern” branch of Buddhism began from the end of the nineteenth century to grapple with how to refer to the branch(es) of Buddhism represented in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia (Perreira 2012: 510ff.), a process that led to the decision cited earlier to adopt Theravada as a collective label.

Rather than try to untangle the extent to which “Theravada” is thera-vāda, this book accepts the fluid definitions of Theravada to be found implicitly and explicitly among the people who identify themselves as Theravada Buddhists now and in recent history. It also accepts the fluid definitions of the Dhamma (truth), sāsana (transmitted teachings and associated institutions), and community (human and nonhuman) of those who contributed to the creation and continuity of the forms and manifestations of Buddhism on which “Theravada Buddhists” have been able to draw. What they believe(d), practice(d), and regard(ed) as authoritative is accepted here as Theravada belief, practice, and authority. This book therefore draws on a range of media and approaches, including fieldwork, for the evidence of what constitutes Theravada today. It draws on the evidence of texts and archeology for the views of those communities of the past that contributed to the current construction of Theravada.

Mostly the evidence we have for the past comes from textual collections preserved primarily by monks. While rich and diverse, such texts reflect the perspective of a minority, literate, usually monastic, usually male group, although shaped by the full range of humans and other beings and institutions with whom and which they interacted. This means that while the book aims to consider the views of animals and other beings as well as humans, children as well as adults, women as well as men, laypeople as well as monastics, and nuns as well as monks, the nature of the available evidence means that this quest is inherently doomed to failure. This particular challenge is greater for the past than for the present.

The fact that many Theravada Buddhists accept the idea that their form of Buddhism is earlier than other forms allows for debates over what is “true” or “orthodox” Theravada and what is “heterodox,” in spite of the absence of a central authority for this issue either in the past or present since the Buddha himself “discarded his lifespan.” Such debates are considered and questioned in this book in relation to the topics of the individual chapters. At the same time, there is no fixed distinction out there in the real world between Buddhist and non-Buddhist practices. For example, practices using protective string and recalling the spirits in Laos are found among those who identify themselves as Buddhists and those who do not. Feeding of ancestors is similarly found throughout Southeast Asia, among Buddhist and non-Buddhist families alike. Buddhists in Sri Lanka may find occasion to attend a Christian church whose patron saint has a reputation for assisting with matters of employment and Sri Lankan Catholic employees will allow their wrists to be bound with protective Buddhist string when prompted by an occasion at their workplace.

Distinctions between Buddhist and non-Buddhist practices can help us organize our knowledge and understand what we see. Yet what begins as a conceptual prop may then become a hindrance to a deeper understanding of the subject. In an inclusive study, which sees “what Buddhists do” as “Buddhist,” such distinctions are difficult to address. On the one hand, we can analyze the history, political contexts, and rivalry that led scholars and reform Buddhists to emphasize some views and practices while rejecting others. We become wary of attempts to discard the constantly adapted practices and fluid pantheon of Theravada as we grow wise to agenda of exclusion and essentialism. In the case of the Buddhist pantheon, attempts – with varying degrees of success and failure – have been and continue to be made to exclude deities that can also be found in spirit religions, animism, and Hinduism. This is an agenda that relies on recent labels. The resulting categorization of these aspects of religious expression in the region is ahistorical. On the other hand, pragmatically we have to set ourselves some boundaries in order to limit even an inclusive study. One possible avenue is to define as Buddhist those practices that in some way make use of the Buddhist pantheon, Buddhist terminology, or the Buddhist Sangha (monastic community), but this immediately proves too narrow. Many rituals performed by Theravada Buddhists, such as those for fertility, childbirth, childhood, and female coming of age, make little reference to Buddhist doctrine, terms, or monks, but they shape the lives of Buddhists and may shape Buddhist ritual. Moreover, the rituals and practices of Buddhists are constantly reconfigured. This is very  visibly true also of the pantheon. The Buddhist pantheon is a slow moving family of members, some similar, some disparate. While all nominally accept the Buddha as the head of the family, old members jostle with or  welcome new arrivals, and it is not always the same who come and go, who form the heart of the action or stand at the sidelines. This book has not mastered these issues, but has tried to identify them where they impact each topic under consideration.

This book, then, explores the histories, texts, teachings, soteriological practices, social organizations, and rituals of Theravada, especially as found in Sri Lanka and mainland Southeast Asia. It touches on its aural and visual representations, and seeks to place what we see in its political context. In each chapter, a different aspect of Theravada is examined, with an eye to the continuities one may detect covered within the diversity that falls under the broad umbrella term of Theravada. Each chapter explores an aspect of how Theravada is defined by and is used to define the individuals and societies that accept it as an identifying label. The purpose of this book is to orient its readers such that they may contextualize any aspect of Theravada teaching, history, culture, or practice that they encounter. As such this book offers a broad overview. However, the book also aims to provide readers with sufficient detail that they are not taken unawares by the potentially bewildering array that makes up Theravada. This book therefore offers much detail to illustrate the great diversity of Theravada, historically and in the present, while suggesting how such details may relate to the overall picture. Of course, this book cannot cover every aspect or every angle, nor every historical turn taken, but it aims to map out sufficient highways and contours to make the reader’s initial journey a smooth one. While seeking to err on the side of landmarks and highlights, the book also aims to draw the readers’ attention to sufficient further guides for their own onward explorations.