Raising Eyebrows at the Court of King Asoka

Asoka invited Pindola-Bharadvaja to a vegetarian feast and asked him, "It has been heard that the honorable one personally saw the Buddha -- is this true?"

The honorable one showed his raised hands and eyebrows to the king and said, "Understood?"

"Not understood," answered King Asoka.

"The old monk personally saw the Buddha coming."

Fenyang, on behalf of Asoka, says, "Still working on the honorable one."

---

The Footnote states that: Asoka was an Indian Buddhist king (r. c286-232 BCE). Pindola-bharadvaja, the name of the first of the sixteen arhats, became the old man of the mountains, white hair and beard, bushy eyebrows.

Buddhism in the West has basically the same issue as educated Christianity had like 50+ years ago in its theological disputes, namely, in relying on claims of historical authenticity that are totally bunk.

Still, we get the following claims often enough:

1. Claim: We have records from the period of "The Buddha" that allow us to understand what he taught.

   Facts: We don't have any such records, the earliest records we have talking about this guy called "The Buddha" emerge at least 500+ years later. Therevada is an 18th century term, initially adopted by a religious movement in Sri Lanka in response to colonialism. "Mahayana" is essentially a term that has to be understood in its respective contexts

2. Claim: The Sutras, while initially orally transmitted, got written down and accurately reflect a coherent message.

   Facts: Setting aside the fact that the term "sutra" is just as useless in identifying the style/content/authorship/manuscript history as the term "biblically canonical" in reference to a text--the body of "sutra-status" texts are a hodgepodge creation across centuries of Chinese translating (or pretending to translate) Indian texts while interspersing their own forged content as well as writing stuff up on the spot and retroactively attributing it to an earlier source.

3. Claim: Zen cases are fictional creations by "literati"

   Facts: Zen Masters are among the most well documented and recorded group out there; the standard of evidence that Buddhists hold for the continuity and historicity of Zen texts must be applied to their own texts if there is to be any level of integrity to the discourse.

How does this connect to the case?

Well, the case itself is clearly contrary to the DHARMA KING STATUS pretty much every Buddhist places on Asoka: He's just another chump.

But none of this means that the case is to be relied upon as a historical authority, that Pindola-what's-his-name is a link in a chain-of-authority that mustn't be broken (unlike Dogen, Hakuin, predator priests).

That's all for now.

Submitted March 17, 2022 at 08:07AM by ThatKir https://ift.tt/5buU8gF