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cattasallaMany volumes with many words have been created by many people in the wisdom traditions of the world, and these words are studied by many others. Those approaching these texts have various reasons for doing so. They may be deeply religious people, venerating their volumes and carefully studying them as a guide on how to live life. There are others who admire or respect the wisdom that goes into the texts and who peruse them for inspiration without devoting themselves to any one path. Some are simply curious as to what they say, perhaps including them as part of a well-rounded education regarding the world at large. And there are those scholars who turn the texts into objects of inquiry to be analyzed.
As a disclaimer, I won't really be talking about oral storytelling traditions here. Those aren't texts I've thought about much, which is surely my own failing! To whatever extent I do mention oral traditions, it is in the Indian context, in which fidelity to preserving every syllable through rigorous memorization is paramount, in contrast to storytellers who take common characters, plots, and other story elements from their tradition and recreate the narratives for their time and place so they are both fresh and ancient.
Anyone who approaches these sacred texts enters into some kind of relationship with them. Of course, that can be said about any reader of any text whatsoever, whether Asimov or Kropotkin or Jemisin. This is a religious blog, so I'm going to focus on religious texts. I'm not a proper religious studies scholar by any stretch—in fact, I dropped out of school for that in 1996, after two years!—but I see three general ways we might engage in religious texts. We may see them as documents produced by specific cultural and historical processes. We may read them through the eyes of interpretations developed by earlier adherents over the centuries. We may read them in order to form some kind of personal connection to them, perhaps engaging them in a conversation for our own spiritual development. I'm the sort of person who does all three with the texts of my religion.
The first of those approaches is to try to understand where the texts came from. Certain people composed the texts, and later authorities determined what belonged in them and what should be excluded from them. Future generations produced their own authorities, who entered into a conversation with the prior ones, agreeing on some points and disagreeing on others; and so the material was passed down. Every person involved in this was embedded in social, political, and economic structures, which are reflected in the texts. Further, those who compose the texts were also embedded in a discursive environment, with certain ideas floating around in their time and place that demanded discussion or debate.
The early Buddhist texts (EBTs) were transmitted orally for a few centuries before being set down in writing. We can infer a fair amount about this process through the written texts that still survive. The most complete set from any early school is the Theravāda canon preserved in Pali (the language closest to what the Buddha taught in). We know the material had also been translated into other languages, such as Sanskrit or Gāndharī, but only fragments of those remain. Sections of the canons of other early schools were translated into classical Chinese and Tibetan, so we have those, too, although exactly which school they came from can be difficult to determine.
By comparing these texts, we can get some sense about how they are composed and what common material they came from before diverging. And be sure, most of what we have diverged very little. There is clearly a substantial quantity of teachings that each of the early schools considered authoritative, before they drifted apart and made their own edits. It is reasonable to infer at least some of the texts came from the Buddha himself, although it is also clear what we have bears the fingerprints of editing and even original composition.
A second way of understanding the texts is in terms of traditional interpretations. Each text is a root that led other, later, scholars to produce more texts, such as exegetical commentaries or speculative works expanding on philosophical points. In many religions, there are semi- canonical bodies of such work, such as the Midrash and Talmud of Judaism or the Tasfīr and Hadith of Islam.
Theravādins have a formal, semi-canonical body of exegetical literature, as well. We have the Aṭṭhakathā commentaries, the Ṭikā sub-commentaries which are commentaries on the commentaries, and further sub-sub-commentaries. We also have an ancillary body of literature for interpreting and expanding upon philosophical and practical points. Two of the major ones are the Abhidhammattasaṅgaha, the Compendium of Dhamma Philosophy, and the Vissudhimagga, The Path of Purity. These texts became so authoritative within the tradition that they largely defined the orthodoxy (with regional variations, of course), to the point that the suttas themselves were not often studied!
In the last century or so, scholars have returned to the suttas. And what they have found is that sometimes the commentaries are helpful for expanding on or explaining points, but sometimes they outright contradict what the suttas say. Nowadays the tendency to accept the commentaries prima facie is becoming infrequent, and they are viewed with a more critical eye.
Which brings us to what has been called the "Protestant" method. This is to trust one's own ability to understand and interpret the texts without relying on the authority of another. Of course, anyone reading translations of scriptures has to rely on the authority of the translators whose translations they use. But this method of reading sacred texts, starting with European Protestant Christians, has made its way into the Buddhist world. Richard Gombrich coined the term "Protestant Buddhism" to refer to the trend towards this starting in 19th century Sri Lanka. It was originally a neutral term, but it has become something of a pejorative when used by those who consider themselves traditionalists.
On this last approach, for Buddhists, caution is necessary. There are subtle points that require nuance, and which make it imperative to engage a systemic reading--one that takes into account the entire corpus and thus how various texts within it relate to itself--in order for the material to be properly understood. This is also true of a text such as the Bible, as well, but the Bible is a single volume, slim when compared to the thousands of pages of the Buddhist canon. While it's good for a Dhamma practitioner to read the texts themselves and come to a personal understanding, there's a reason we also have a formal pedagogical system within our religion. Because we don't just have a belief system. We have methods for training the mind, and it's easy to misunderstand the text and to inadvertently train the mind incorrectly. We bring our biases to whatever we read, and we risk confirming those biases if we are not careful. I like to say that there are many right ways of practicing Dhamma, but at the same time, there are definitely wrong ways of doing it, too.
One question that comes up for us is how to deal with a tension between taking the canon as historical documents that are exact recordings of narratives and sermons, or not. Traditionally, these are considered exact records of what actually happened. Such a position cannot be taken seriously in light of modern scholarship, though. Simply comparing different recensions of the EBTs makes that obvious.
But what we can trust is that there is a reason the texts were composed as they were. Even if the narratives or discourses did not happen exactly as presented, they are still meant to be instructive. Whether or not the Buddha literally said these things or the characters literally acted out the dramas, we have a mythology, and myths are usually more important than facts for spiritual development. So I tend to approach the texts as though they actually happened, knowing they probably did not, because that is a useful way to read them for my own religious education.
These are the major ways I see whereby one might approach sacred texts, and they can overlap. A student need not solely commit to only one of these, and can use multiple avenues to encounter the sacred words. Although, I'm not a religious studies scholar...I'm a scientist...so maybe I should have asked an actual religious studies scholar before writing this!
As a disclaimer, I won't really be talking about oral storytelling traditions here. Those aren't texts I've thought about much, which is surely my own failing! To whatever extent I do mention oral traditions, it is in the Indian context, in which fidelity to preserving every syllable through rigorous memorization is paramount, in contrast to storytellers who take common characters, plots, and other story elements from their tradition and recreate the narratives for their time and place so they are both fresh and ancient.
Anyone who approaches these sacred texts enters into some kind of relationship with them. Of course, that can be said about any reader of any text whatsoever, whether Asimov or Kropotkin or Jemisin. This is a religious blog, so I'm going to focus on religious texts. I'm not a proper religious studies scholar by any stretch—in fact, I dropped out of school for that in 1996, after two years!—but I see three general ways we might engage in religious texts. We may see them as documents produced by specific cultural and historical processes. We may read them through the eyes of interpretations developed by earlier adherents over the centuries. We may read them in order to form some kind of personal connection to them, perhaps engaging them in a conversation for our own spiritual development. I'm the sort of person who does all three with the texts of my religion.
The first of those approaches is to try to understand where the texts came from. Certain people composed the texts, and later authorities determined what belonged in them and what should be excluded from them. Future generations produced their own authorities, who entered into a conversation with the prior ones, agreeing on some points and disagreeing on others; and so the material was passed down. Every person involved in this was embedded in social, political, and economic structures, which are reflected in the texts. Further, those who compose the texts were also embedded in a discursive environment, with certain ideas floating around in their time and place that demanded discussion or debate.
The early Buddhist texts (EBTs) were transmitted orally for a few centuries before being set down in writing. We can infer a fair amount about this process through the written texts that still survive. The most complete set from any early school is the Theravāda canon preserved in Pali (the language closest to what the Buddha taught in). We know the material had also been translated into other languages, such as Sanskrit or Gāndharī, but only fragments of those remain. Sections of the canons of other early schools were translated into classical Chinese and Tibetan, so we have those, too, although exactly which school they came from can be difficult to determine.
By comparing these texts, we can get some sense about how they are composed and what common material they came from before diverging. And be sure, most of what we have diverged very little. There is clearly a substantial quantity of teachings that each of the early schools considered authoritative, before they drifted apart and made their own edits. It is reasonable to infer at least some of the texts came from the Buddha himself, although it is also clear what we have bears the fingerprints of editing and even original composition.
A second way of understanding the texts is in terms of traditional interpretations. Each text is a root that led other, later, scholars to produce more texts, such as exegetical commentaries or speculative works expanding on philosophical points. In many religions, there are semi- canonical bodies of such work, such as the Midrash and Talmud of Judaism or the Tasfīr and Hadith of Islam.
Theravādins have a formal, semi-canonical body of exegetical literature, as well. We have the Aṭṭhakathā commentaries, the Ṭikā sub-commentaries which are commentaries on the commentaries, and further sub-sub-commentaries. We also have an ancillary body of literature for interpreting and expanding upon philosophical and practical points. Two of the major ones are the Abhidhammattasaṅgaha, the Compendium of Dhamma Philosophy, and the Vissudhimagga, The Path of Purity. These texts became so authoritative within the tradition that they largely defined the orthodoxy (with regional variations, of course), to the point that the suttas themselves were not often studied!
In the last century or so, scholars have returned to the suttas. And what they have found is that sometimes the commentaries are helpful for expanding on or explaining points, but sometimes they outright contradict what the suttas say. Nowadays the tendency to accept the commentaries prima facie is becoming infrequent, and they are viewed with a more critical eye.
Which brings us to what has been called the "Protestant" method. This is to trust one's own ability to understand and interpret the texts without relying on the authority of another. Of course, anyone reading translations of scriptures has to rely on the authority of the translators whose translations they use. But this method of reading sacred texts, starting with European Protestant Christians, has made its way into the Buddhist world. Richard Gombrich coined the term "Protestant Buddhism" to refer to the trend towards this starting in 19th century Sri Lanka. It was originally a neutral term, but it has become something of a pejorative when used by those who consider themselves traditionalists.
On this last approach, for Buddhists, caution is necessary. There are subtle points that require nuance, and which make it imperative to engage a systemic reading--one that takes into account the entire corpus and thus how various texts within it relate to itself--in order for the material to be properly understood. This is also true of a text such as the Bible, as well, but the Bible is a single volume, slim when compared to the thousands of pages of the Buddhist canon. While it's good for a Dhamma practitioner to read the texts themselves and come to a personal understanding, there's a reason we also have a formal pedagogical system within our religion. Because we don't just have a belief system. We have methods for training the mind, and it's easy to misunderstand the text and to inadvertently train the mind incorrectly. We bring our biases to whatever we read, and we risk confirming those biases if we are not careful. I like to say that there are many right ways of practicing Dhamma, but at the same time, there are definitely wrong ways of doing it, too.
One question that comes up for us is how to deal with a tension between taking the canon as historical documents that are exact recordings of narratives and sermons, or not. Traditionally, these are considered exact records of what actually happened. Such a position cannot be taken seriously in light of modern scholarship, though. Simply comparing different recensions of the EBTs makes that obvious.
But what we can trust is that there is a reason the texts were composed as they were. Even if the narratives or discourses did not happen exactly as presented, they are still meant to be instructive. Whether or not the Buddha literally said these things or the characters literally acted out the dramas, we have a mythology, and myths are usually more important than facts for spiritual development. So I tend to approach the texts as though they actually happened, knowing they probably did not, because that is a useful way to read them for my own religious education.
These are the major ways I see whereby one might approach sacred texts, and they can overlap. A student need not solely commit to only one of these, and can use multiple avenues to encounter the sacred words. Although, I'm not a religious studies scholar...I'm a scientist...so maybe I should have asked an actual religious studies scholar before writing this!