Bhikkhu buddhaghosa biography

5th-century Sri Lankhan Theravada Buddhist commentator, translator and philosopher

Buddhaghosa was a 5th-century Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhist arbiter, translator and philosopher.^[1] He worked in the Waiting in the wings Monastery (Mahāvihāra) at Anurādhapura, Sri Lanka and axiom himself as being part of the Vibhajjavāda nursery school and in the lineage of the Sinhalese Mahāvihāra.^[3]

His best-known work is the Visuddhimagga ("Path of Purification"), a comprehensive summary of older Sinhala commentaries not together Theravada teachings and practices.

According to Sarah Doctor, in Theravada this systematic work is "the top text on the subject of meditation." The interpretations provided by Buddhaghosa have generally constituted the authorized understanding of Theravada scriptures since at least loftiness 12th century CE.^[5]

He is generally recognized by both Western scholars and Theravadins as the most relevant philosopher and commentator of the Theravada,^[7] but attempt also criticised for his departures from the law texts^{[citation needed]}.

Name

The name Buddhaghosa means "Voice spend the Buddha" (Buddha+ghosa) in Pali,^[8] the language meet which Buddhaghosa composed. In Sanskrit, the name would be spelled Buddhaghoṣa (Devanagari बुद्धघोष), but there decay no retroflex ṣ sound in Pali, and birth name is not found in Sanskrit works.^[9]

Biography

Limited trusted information is available about the life of Buddhaghosa.

Three primary sources of information exist: short prologues and epilogues attached to Buddhaghosa's works; details produce his life recorded in the Mahavamsa, a Sri Lankan chronicle written in about the 13th century; and a later biographical work called the Buddhaghosuppatti. A few other sources discuss the life draw round Buddhaghosa, but do not appear to add plebeian reliable material.^[7]

The biographical excerpts attached to works attributed to Buddhaghosa reveal relatively few details of diadem life, but were presumably added at the about of his actual composition.^[7][12] Largely identical in get to your feet, these short excerpts describe Buddhaghosa as having lose it to Sri Lanka from India and settled encumber Anuradhapura.

Besides this information, they provide only sever lists of teachers, supporters, and associates of Buddhaghosa, whose names are not generally to be throw elsewhere for comparison.

In the Mahavamsa a composition take in the second part(often called Culavamsa) of that recorded poem is attributed to Dhammakitti, who lived decline or about the thirteenth century records that Buddhaghosa was born into a Brahmin family in nobleness kingdom of Magadha.

He is said to imitate been born near Bodh Gaya, and to accept been a master of the Vedas, traveling put on India engaging in philosophical debates. Only upon encountering a Buddhist monk named Revata was Buddhaghosa overpowered in debate, first being defeated in a occupation over the meaning of a Vedic doctrine existing then being confounded by the presentation of a-one teaching from the Abhidhamma.

Impressed, Buddhaghosa became undiluted bhikkhu (Buddhist monk) and undertook the study give a miss the Tipiṭaka and its commentaries. On finding first-class text for which the commentary had been vanished in India, Buddhaghosa determined to travel to Sri Lanka to study a Sinhala commentary that was believed to have been preserved.

In Sri Lanka, Buddhaghosa began to study what was apparently a notice large volume of Sinhala commentarial texts that difficult to understand been assembled and preserved by the monks disturb the Anuradhapura Maha Viharaya.

Buddhaghosa sought permission tolerate synthesize the assembled Sinhala-language commentaries into a filled single commentary composed in Pali. Traditional accounts descend that the elder monks sought to first grueling Buddhaghosa's knowledge by assigning him the task method elaborating the doctrine regarding two verses of righteousness suttas; Buddhaghosa replied by composing the Visuddhimagga.

Rulership abilities were further tested when deities intervened stand for hid the text of his book, twice forcing him to recreate it from scratch.

When rendering three texts were found to completely summarize fulfil of the Tipiṭaka and match in every cotton on, the monks acceded to his request and if Buddhaghosa with the full body of their commentaries.

Buddhaghosa went on to write commentaries on most expose the other major books of the Pali Maxim, with his works becoming the definitive Theravadin elucidation of the scriptures.

Having synthesized or translated goodness whole of the Sinhala commentary preserved at blue blood the gentry Anuradhapura Maha Viharaya, Buddhaghosa reportedly returned to Bharat, making a pilgrimage to Bodh Gaya to benefit his respects to the Bodhi Tree.

The details curiosity the Mahavamsa account cannot readily be verified; onetime it is generally regarded by Western scholars translation having been embellished with legendary events (such reorganization the hiding of Buddhaghosa's text by the gods), in the absence of contradictory evidence it practical assumed to be generally accurate.

While the Mahavamsa claims that Buddhaghosa was born in northern Bharat near Bodh Gaya, the epilogues to his commentaries make reference to only one location in Bharat as being a place of at least stand-in residence: Kanci in southern India.^[7] Some scholars so conclude (among them Oskar von Hinüber and Polwatte Buddhadatta Thera) that Buddhaghosa was actually born remit Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh^[19] and was relocated in adjacent biographies to give him closer ties to position region of the Buddha.^[7]

The Buddhaghosuppatti, a later make good use of text, is generally regarded by Western scholars chimp being legend rather than history.

It adds able the Mahavamsa tale certain details, such as class identity of Buddhaghosa's parents and his village, style well as several dramatic episodes, such as honourableness conversion of Buddhaghosa's father and Buddhaghosa's role conduct yourself deciding a legal case. It also explains high-mindedness eventual loss of the Sinhala originals that Buddhaghosa worked from in creating his Pali commentaries chunk claiming that Buddhaghosa collected and burnt the beginning manuscripts once his work was completed.

Buddhaghosa was apparently responsible for an extensive project of synthesizing ray translating a large body of ancient Sinhala commentaries on the Pāli Canon.

His Visuddhimagga (Pāli: Method of Purification) is a comprehensive manual of Buddhism Buddhism that is still read and studied today.^[23][24][25] Maria Heim notes that, while Buddhaghosa worked by virtue of using older Sinhala commentarial tradition, he is too "the crafter of a new version of give authorization to that rendered the original version obsolete, for government work supplanted the Sinhala versions that are at the present time lost to us".

Writing style

Ñāṇamoli Bhikkhu writes that Buddhaghosa's work is "characterized by relentless accuracy, consistency, suffer fluency of erudition, and much dominated by formalism."^[27] According to Richard Shankman, the Visuddhimagga is "meticulous and specific," in contrast to the Pali suttas, which "can be vague at times, without natty lot of explanatory detail and open to different interpretations."

Method

According to Maria Heim, Buddhaghosa is explicitly semitransparent and systematic regarding his hermeneutical principles and interpretation strategies in his commentaries.

He writes and theorizes on texts, genre, registers of discourse, reader effect, Buddhist knowledge and pedagogy. Buddhaghosa considers each Pitaka of the Buddhist canon a kind of manner (naya) that requires different skills to interpret. Edge your way of his most important ideas about exegesis arrive at the buddha's words (buddhavacana) is that these time are immeasurable, that is to say, there dingdong innumerable ways and modes to teach and enumerate the Dhamma and likewise there are innumerable shipway in which to receive these teachings.

According hint at Heim, Buddhaghosa considered the dhamma to be "well-spoken [...] visible here and now, timeless," visible concept that the fruits of the path can eke out an existence seen in the behavior of the noble bend over, and that comprehending the dhamma is a transformative way of seeing, which has immediate impact.

Buddhaghosa was a 5th-century Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhist author, translator and philosopher.

According to Heim, this answer of the transformative and immediate impact of honourableness scriptures is "vital to Buddhaghosa's interpretative practice," tangled as he is with the immediate and transformative impact of the Buddha's words on his audiences, as attested in the suttas

Regarding his systematic vulnerability, Maria Heim and Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad see Buddhaghosa's spray of Abhidhamma as part of a phenomenological "contemplative structuring" which is expressed in his writings assert Buddhist praxis.^[33] They argue that "Buddhaghosa’s use dressingdown nāma-rūpa should be seen as the analytic do without which he understands how experience is undergone, direct not his account of how some reality practical structured."^[33]

Yogacara influences

Some scholars have argued that Buddhaghosa's calligraphy evinces a strong but unacknowledged Yogācāra Buddhist faculty, which subsequently came to characterize Theravada thought bolster the wake of his profound influence on righteousness Theravada tradition.^[34] According to Kalupahana, Buddhaghosa was sham by Mahayana-thought, which were subtly mixed with Buddhism orthodoxy to introduce new ideas.

According to Kalupahana, this eventually led to the flowering of nonmaterialistic tendencies, in contrast to the original stress film anattā in early Buddhism.

Did the buddha talk pali Bhadantācariya Buddhaghosa was a fifth-century Indian Theravadin Buddhist commentator and scholar. His name means "Voice of the Buddha" in the Pāli language. Tiara best-known work is the Visuddhimagga, or Path make out Purification, a comprehensive summary and analysis of primacy Theravada understanding of the Buddha's path to liberation.

According to Jonardon Ganeri, though Buddhaghosa may imitate been influenced by YogacaraVijñānavāda, "the influence consists band in endorsement but in creative engagement and refutation."^[36]

Theory of consciousness

The philosopher Jonardon Ganeri has called concentration to Buddhaghosa's theory of the nature of awareness and attention.

Ganeri calls Buddhaghosa's approach a kindly of "attentionalism", which places primacy on the aptitude of attention in explaining activities of thought lecture mind and is against representationalism.^[37] Ganeri also states that Buddhaghosa's treatment of cognition "anticipates the construct of working memory, the idea of mind likewise a global workplace, subliminal orienting, and the reversal that visual processing occurs at three levels."^[37] Ganeri also states:

Buddhaghosa is unlike nearly every overpower Buddhist philosopher in that he discusses episodic recall and knows it as a reliving of familiarity from one’s personal past; but he blocks commoner reduction of the phenomenology of temporal experience succeed to the representation of oneself as in the ago.

The alternative claim that episodic memory is grand phenomenon of attention is one he develops ring true greater sophistication than has been done elsewhere.^[37]

Ganeri sees Buddhaghosa's work as being free from a mediational picture of the mind and also free understanding the Myth of the Given, two views subside sees as having been introduced by the Asian philosopher Dignāga.^[38]

Meditation

See also: Vipassanā and Vipassana movement

The Visuddhimagga's doctrine reflects Theravada Abhidhamma scholasticism, which includes some innovations and interpretations not found in the elementary discourses (suttas) of the Buddha.^[39][40] Buddhaghosa's Visuddhimagga includes non-canonical instructions on Theravada meditation, such as "ways of guarding the mental image (nimitta)," which sort out to later developments in Theravada meditation.

According do Thanissaro Bhikkhu, "the Visuddhimagga uses a very coldness paradigm for concentration from what you find double up the Canon."

Bhante Henepola Gunaratana also notes that what "the suttas say is not the same style what the Visuddhimagga says [...] they are absolutely different," leading to a divergence between a [traditional] scholarly understanding and a practical understanding based drudgery meditative experience.

Gunaratana further notes that Buddhaghosa fake several key meditation terms which are not variety be found in the suttas, such as "parikamma samadhi (preparatory concentration), upacara samadhi (access concentration), appanasamadhi (absorption concentration)." Gunaratana also notes that the Buddhaghosa's emphasis on kasina-meditation is not to be fail to appreciate in the suttas, where dhyana is always composed with mindfulness.^{[note 1]}

Bhikkhu Sujato has argued that be aware of views regarding Buddhist meditation expounded in the Visuddhimagga are a "distortion of the Suttas" since option denies the necessity of jhana.^[45]

The Australian monk Shravasti Dhammika is also critical of contemporary practice homespun on this work.^[46] He concludes that Buddhaghosa exact not believe that following the practice set douse in the Visuddhimagga will really lead him address Nirvana, basing himself on the postscript (colophon) tonguelash the text which states the author hopes holiday at be reborn in heaven and wait until Metteyya (Maitreya) appears to teach the Dharma.^{[46][note 2]} Despite that, according to the Burmese scholar Venerable Pandita, honesty colophon to the Visuddhimagga is not by Buddhaghosa.^[49]

According to Sarah Shaw, "it is unlikely that influence meditative tradition could have survived in such precise healthy way, if at all, without his accurate lists and exhaustive guidance." Yet, according to Buswell, by the 10th century vipassana was no somebody practiced in the Theravada tradition, due to description belief that Buddhism had degenerated, and that depreciation was no longer attainable until the coming beat somebody to it Maitreya.

It was re-introduced in Myanmar (Burma) train in the 18th century by Medawi (1728–1816), leading back up the rise of the Vipassana movement in ethics 20th century, re-inventing vipassana-meditation and developing simplified rumination techniques, based on the Satipatthana sutta, the Visuddhimagga, and other previous texts, emphasizing satipatthana and vacant insight.

Attributed works

The Mahavamsa ascribes a great many books to Buddhaghosa, some of which are believed snivel to have been his work, but composed afterward and attributed to him.^[53] Below is a list of the fourteen commentaries (Aṭṭhakathā) on the Pāli Canon traditionally ascribed to Buddhaghosa^[54]

While traditional accounts queue Buddhaghosa as the author of all of these works, some scholars hold that only the Visuddhimagga and the commentaries on the first four Nikayas as Buddhaghosa's work.^[55] Meanwhile, Maria Heim holds delay Buddhaghosa is the author of the commentaries relation the first four Nikayas, the Samantapasadika, the Paramatthajotika, the Visuddhimagga and the three commentaries on righteousness books of the Abhidhamma.

Maria Heim also notes defer some scholars hold that Buddhaghosa was the mind of a team of scholars and translators, pole that this is not an unlikely scenario.

Influence stand for legacy

In the 12th century, the Sri Lankan (Sinhalese) monk Sāriputta Thera became the leading scholar accuse the Theravada following the reunification of the Sri Lankan (Sinhala) monastic community by King Parakramabahu I.^[5] Sariputta incorporated many of the works of Buddhaghosa do his own interpretations.^[5] In subsequent years, many monks from Theravada traditions in Southeast Asia sought introduction or re-ordination in Sri Lanka because of prestige reputation of the Sri Lankan (Sinhala) Mahavihara pedigree for doctrinal purity and scholarship.^[5] The result was the spread of the teachings of the Mahavihara tradition — and thus Buddhaghosa — throughout the Theravada world.^[5] Buddhaghosa's commentaries thereby became the standard method uninviting which the Theravada scriptures were understood, establishing Buddhaghosa as the definitive interpreter of Theravada doctrine.

In subsequent years, Buddhaghosa's fame and influence inspired various accolades.

His life story was recorded, in an encyclopedic and likely exaggerated form, in a Pali keep a record of known as the Buddhaghosuppatti, or "The Development admit the Career of Buddhaghosa". Despite the general faith that he was Indian by birth, he succeeding may have been claimed by the Mon family unit of Burma as an attempt to assert precedence over Sri Lanka in the development of Buddhism tradition.^[58] Other scholars believe that the Mon rolls museum refer to another figure, but whose name arena personal history are much in the mold medium the Indian Buddhaghosa.

Finally, Buddhaghosa's works likely played skilful significant role in the revival and preservation declining the Pali language as the scriptural language medium the Theravada, and as a lingua franca send out the exchange of ideas, texts, and scholars betwixt Sri Lanka and the Theravada countries of mainland Southeast Asia.

The development of new analyses honor Theravada doctrine, both in Pali and Sinhala, seems to have dried up prior to Buddhaghosa's 1 in Sri Lanka.

What does theravada buddhism emphasize Buddhaghoṣa was a 5th-century Indian Theravada Buddhist reviewer and scholar. [1] [2] His best-known work even-handed the Visuddhimagga "Path of Purification", a comprehensive recapitulation and analysis of the Theravada understanding of excellence Buddha's path to liberation.

In India, new schools of Buddhist philosophy (such as the Mahayana) were emerging, many of them making use of prototype Sanskrit both as a scriptural language and reorganization a language of philosophical discourse. The monks pale the Mahavihara may have attempted to counter depiction growth of such schools by re-emphasizing the burn the midnight oil and composition in Pali, along with the read of previously disused secondary sources that may possess vanished in India, as evidenced by the Mahavamsa.

Early indications of this resurgence in the urge of Pali as a literary language may enter visible in the composition of the Dipavamsa advocate the Vimuttimagga, both dating to shortly before Buddhaghosa's arrival in Sri Lanka.

Buddhaghosa was born stop off a brahmin family in a village near Gaya in Magadha now called the state of Bihar.

The addition of Buddhaghosa's works — which combined probity pedigree of the oldest Sinhala commentaries with primacy use of Pali, a language shared by many of the Theravada learning centers of the time — provided a significant boost to the revitalization possess the Pali language and the Theravada intellectual folklore, possibly aiding the Theravada school in surviving description challenge to its position posed by emerging Buddhistic schools of mainland India.

According to Maria Heim, smartness is "one of the greatest minds in rank history of Buddhism" and British philosopher Jonardon Ganeri considers Buddhaghosa "a true innovator, a pioneer, remarkable a creative thinker."^[63] Yet, according to Buddhadasa, Buddhaghosa was influenced by Hindu thought, and the general respect for the Visuddhimagga has even hindered class practice of authentic Buddhism.^[64][65]

Notes

References

Sources

Further reading

External links