Upagupta, master of the Indian Forest Tradition

John Strong, Legend and Cult of Upagupta: insists on the forest tradition as the source of the cult of Upagupta, throughout Southeast Asia - Cambodia, Laos, Burma and Thailand.

Venerable Upagupta was the third-generation successor of the great Arahant disciple of the Buddha, Venerable Ananda.

Upagupta was disciple of Venerable Sanakavasi, the patriarch of Mount Urumunda, a disciple of Venerable Ananda. Sanakavasi was a native of Rajagrha, according to the northern legends (Asokarajasutra). He introduced Buddhism to Mathura in the west, by establishing a forest tradition on Mount Urumunda where he built a large temple.

Venerable Sanakavasin is associated with the Second Buddhist Council whose patron was Kalasoka.

When Venerable Sanakavasi passed away, Venerable Upagupta became his successor as patriarch.

“Not enough attention has been given to the fact that the masters of the Dharma in the legends were forest-dwelling ascetically inclined tradition of meditators,” Strong wrote.

“Sankavasin, when he is in Kashmir, rejoices at the contemplative life and sings of his meditation on rocky peaks and in deep ravines which keep him warm despite his wearing but a single garment of hemp. When he returns to Mathura and is taken for a mahalla monk, the next contrasts him to the Tripitaka masters form South India, who have memorized the whole of the Buddhist canon but knows nothing about meditation. The tripitaika master is a scholar monk, but the Upagupta knows he is a matricidal fornicator and will have nothing to do with him. Sankavasin, on the other hand, follows the vocation of mediation; he may look grubby, have long hair, and appear to be a mahalla, but he is actually enlightened, and he is Upagupta’s master.”

Upagupta himself was the head of the Natabhitika monastery on Mount Urumunda, which Sanakavasin founded. This monastery is repeatedly called “the foremost of all the Buddha’s forest-haunts (aranyayatana) where the lodgings (seat beds) are conductive to meditation (samatha).”

From her, Upagupta instructs monks from all over India who came to see him. The Ashokarajavadana says the Buddha predicted that Upagupta would be “the foremost of all those who are instructors of mediation.”

“Too often, the ascetic practices in general and the pamsukulika practices in particular have been studied from the perspective of the town-dwelling monks, who tolerated them but did not follow them, rather than from the perspective of the forest-dwelling monks, who advocated and maintained them…..The Pamsukulanisamsan ( is a text that is self-avowedly of the ascetic tradition). It is a Pali work of the anisamsa genre (telling the “advantage” of doing good deeds) and has found popularity in Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos. It tells the story of the very first pamsukula: A rich merchant of Uruvela had a daughter who died giving birth to her first child, who was still born. The merchant then decided to offer some robe material to the Buddha; he took an expensive piece of cloth, wrapped it around the dead fetus and the afterbirth of his daughter, and kept if for seven days. Then he deposited it on the road where he know the Buddha was due to pass. The Buddha, seeing it, thought,, “ This is the first pamsukula…the Buddhas of the past wore pamsukula; I, therefore, will wear one too.” He picked it up; the decaying fetus and afterbirth fell on the ground, which then shook and trembled to mark what for this tradition was a momentous occasion.”

“There follows an account of the washing, drying, and dyeing, of the pamsukula by the Buddha with the divine help of the god Indra; and then, as the text puts it, ‘the Buddha’s old robe disappeared, and he became a pamsukulika.’ Later, the Buddha exalts the wearing of rag heap robes in no uncertain terms: ‘the pamsukula robe,’ he declares, ‘is the best. It is while wearing it that the Buddhas have liberated all creatures…O monks, I wear the pamsukula robe; you should do likewise.”

“The real hero of this text, however, is not the Buddha but his disciple, the elder Mahakassapa, who the story goes on to present as a sort of patron saint of the pamsukulikas. The tale passes very quickly over his ordination and then features a noteworthy conversation between him and the Buddha. Mahakassapa asks the Buddha how many ‘vocations’ (dhura) there are open for Buddhist monks. The Buddha replies, “There are two: the vocation of books and the vocation of mediation.’ The elder then wants to know what is meant by these. ‘In the vocation of books, replies the Buddha, ‘a monk memorizes on nikaya, two nikayas, or all the texts of the canon. In the vocation of mediation, a monk practices awareness of the perishable nature of existence and he reaches arahantship. The Buddha goes on to describe the thirteen ascetic practices and in particular the wearing of pamsukula (of which he lists twenty-three different kinds) Kassapa decides to choose the vocation of meditation, but he does so fro noteworthy reason: “ I wandered forth,’ he declares, ‘to become a monk when I was an old mahallaka; I cannot follow the vocation of books! I will therefore follow the vocation of meditation.”

“The notion that the vocation of meditation (forest tradition) was particularly appropriate for monks who had entered the Sangha late in life (that is, mahallas) has important repercussions and may go far in helping to explain the town-and-book monks’ attitude towards long-haired ascetics and forest monks. As he Buddhist Sangha evolved, it became clear that the establishment liked to recruit new members when they were young. Not only did this allow for more control in maintaining the status quo, but it had the practical effect of giving more time to young monks for memorizing sutras when their minds were still supple and not yet preoccupied with pastoral cares and other duties. Monks ordained late in life not only found it more difficult to learn great numbers of texts by heart, but they brought with them habits form lay life that they sometimes found hard to shake and which caused them to be viewed with suspicion.”

“More importantly, becoming a forest monk late in life seemed to follow a well-established Brahmanical pattern of spiritual development, rather than a typically Buddhist one. According to the doctrine of the four ashramas, or stages of life, after being a student (brahmacarin) and hen a householder (grhastha), a twice-born Hindu could become a forest-dwelling hermit (vanaprastha) ‘when he had seen the birth of his sons’ sons and white hairs began to appear on his head.’ In India, then forest meditation was classically the prerogative  of men who turned to spiritual practices in their old age. Youth, the brahmacarin, stage, was the time for memorization of texts and for celibacy.” [John Strong, The Cult of Upagupta]

The scholar monks look back at the writings of Sakyamuni. The forest monks look forward to the Buddha of the future, Maitreya. Mahakassapa is instructive in this regard, he awaits the coming of Maître in a meditative trance in the mountains, and will present the Buddha’s robe to him. It is not clear whether he is dead or alive.

The forest saints are witness to the potency of the Dharma, of the possibility of present enlightenment, and to the awaiting of the Buddha of the future, Maitreya.

Forest monks were most active in promoting the vajrayana in India.

Forest Tradition in India: origin of Mahayana

The Mahayana literature continuously praise the forest tradition and make calls for monks to return to the forest and practice dhutangas. This theme of the Mahayana literature has been overlooked by scholars, until recently.

First, this strong strand of radical asceticism may be yet another element in early Mahayana literature that has not been clearly recognized, or given its due, precisely because it is so much at odds with Chinese understandings of the Mahayana….Second, if this radical asceticism and the exhortations to forest life found in the literature were actually implemented, then we might have found a second location for the early Mahayana in India….the early Mahayana groups may have been marginal in small, isolated groups living in the forest, at odds with an not necessarily welcomed by, the mainstream monastic orders, having limited access to both patronage and established Buddhist monasteries and sacred sites.

“So Mahayana may well have grown up among – or been significantly influenced by – those who had left the monasteries in order to practice their Buddhism more austerely and ore single-mindedly, both in deep meditation and also in the practice of the various ascetic acts (dhutagunas) such as dressing only in rags form the dust heap, eating only food gained form alms, and so on. Mahayana may have been the result of an austere (perhaps even puritanical) ‘revivalist movement’ that felt it was returning to the example of the Buddha himself, and the long and painful path he trod to full buddhahood…..” [Paul Williams, Mahayana Buddhism.]

Forest monks in India were critical of the comfortable, conventional lifestyles of the settled town-monks, which they considered an abuse and laxity of the original way of the Buddha. The Mahayana Sutras’ criticism of the “hinayana” are a record of these half remembered criticisms.

 The most violent expression of the criticism of the abuses of town monks is found, perhaps, in the Rastrapalapariprccha. The Rastrapalapariprccha – like the Kasyapaparivarta, the Ratnarasi-sutra, the Maitreyasimbandada-sutra, and similar texts – constantly criticizes monks who are ‘intent on acquisitions and honors,’ but it also criticizes monks for owning cattle, horses, and slaves and monks who are ‘intent on plowing and practices of trade’; have wives, sons, and daughters; and assert proprietary rights to monasteries and monastic goods.

The sort of criticism found in the Rastrapalapariprccha and such other texts is, however, almost always joined with calls to return to ‘the forest’ and to ascetic practices  dhutangas.

It is clear that by the time of the final composition of the mainstream Vinayas that the dhutangas or ascetic practices were – for the compliers – all but a dead letter…It is, however, equally clear that some strands of early Mahayana sutra literature were attempting to reinvent, revitalize, or resurrect these ascetic practices. Such attempts are clearly visible in texts like Rastrapalapariprccha, the Maitreyasimbanada-sutra, the Ratnarasi-sutra, and even in texts like the Samadhiraja-sutra.

Moreover, almost an entire chapter in the Astashasrika is taken up with what appears to have been a serious debate and dispute concerning the centrality of the dhutagunas in the early Mahayana.

The new texts record a vigorous debate anout the restoration of the dhutangas and a call to return to the Forest Traditon way of  life.

The Rastrapalapariprccha and the Kasyapaparivarta both make constant appeals to ‘delighting in living in the forest,’ to ‘living zealously the forest uninterested in all worldly diversions,’ to living alone ‘like a rhinoceros, never forsaking forest dwelling,’ ‘living in an empty place’ or ‘in mountains and ravines,’ etc.

Both the Rastrapalapariprccha and the Maitreyasimhanada Sutra say that all former Buddhas ‘abided in the domain of the forest’ and exhort their hearers to imitate them; in fact both imply that it was through abiding in the forest that the Buddhas achieved enlightenment.

The Samadhiraja-sutra – like the Rastrapalapariprccha – returns to the old ideal of living alone ‘like a rhinoceros’ and says there never was, nor will be, nor is now a Buddha who, when residing in a house, achieved enlightenment and adds, ‘one should dwell in the forest seeking seclusion.’

The Ugrapariprccha says, ‘a bodhisattva who has gone forth, having understood that ‘dwelling in the forest was ordered by the Buddha,’ should live in the forest.’

The Rastrapalapariprccha-sutra says; “He must accept the restrictions of the pratimoksha…he must be irreproachable…Being free from passion, free from hate, free from ignorance, he must always have pleasure in solitude…and the jungle…where there are not many men, abandoned by men, suitable for complete absorption.”

He must abstain from commercial activity, or medical studies, not mix with nuns, and not be addicted to chattering. In fact, the monk who really desires to obtain enlightenment should behave according to the pattern that most modern students of Buddhism assume is the norm in practice as well as theory for all Buddhist monks.

The sutra criticizes the village monks, who have no ascetic life and are obsessed with worldly gain and comfort. They do wicked things like owning property, engage in trade, speak to women in private, criticize forest monks. They are hypocrites, who destroy the teaching of the Buddha. They are unfaithful, indolent, confused; conceited and always angry. When they see a monk engaged in meditation they expel him from the monastery and beat him with a stick.

In the early days, the term bodhisattva generally means ‘good monk’ as opposed to the decadent worldly monks. The sutra has a lot of detail on the importance of the good bodhisattva dwelling in the forest or wilderness, living an austere life practicing the dhutagunas.

The sutra also makes frequent reference to the jatakas as models of the forest monk.

        
The Mahayana Sarvadharmapravrttinirdesa-sutra, even criticizes forest monks who neglect their meditation but travel from village to village preaching to the laity out of compassion: He is a “dharma-preacher [dhhharmabhanaka]. The forest hermit is described as having supremely pure morality, supernatural knowledge and powers, and is a formidable ascetic. He is a bodhisattva, an expert in meditation. The hermit and his disciples never go on alms round in the villages because “the Lord has urged and praised that we should live in seclusion.”  So some monks founded forest monasteries, small places with a few monks 
around a teacher; and other forest monks traveled, visited villages from time to time, to teach the people out of compassion, staying in forest monasteries from time to time.

“The Sarvadharmapravrttinirdesa-sutra allows us to hypothesize that as time passed the Mahayana, which probably originated among antisocial forest hermits with the idea of returning to what was seen as the ascetic spirit of the Buddha himself, eventually became itself institutionalized …. “

Then it began to have real impact in India, in the fifth century. “At this point we can only postulate that the Mahayana may have had a visible impact in India only when, in the fifth century, it had become what it had originally most strongly objected to: a fully landed, sedentary, lay-oriented monastic   institution – the first mention of Mahayana in an Indian inscription occurs, in fact, in the record of a large grant of land to a Mahayana monastery. In the meantime the Mahayana may well have been either a collection of marginalized ascetic groups living in the forest, or groups of cantankerous and malcontent conservatives embedded in mainstream, socially engaged monasteries, all of whom continued pouring out pamphlets espousing their views and values, pamphlets that we now know as Mahayana sutras.” [Schopen]

Meditation: Recently Paul Harrison has expanded on the importance of appreciating the deep, sustained, and prolonged meditation practices apparently undertaken by the forest hermit monks who were behind the production of many of the early Mahayana sutras. He suggests approaching Buddhist texts with consideration of their meditative context. Harrison draws attention, for example, to ways in which early Mahayana sutras centered on Pure Lands, such as the Sukhavativyuha or Aksobhyavyuha Sutras, provide prescriptions for concentrated visualization, visualizing the Buddha with whom the meditator wishes to make contact – to ‘visit- - in his Pure Land, effectively constructing the Pure Land in the mind of the meditator, and replacing or substituting an alternative ‘pure world’ for the contaminated word of everyday life. Such texts are not simply read. They are, as it were, like music scores performed. And it is within this sort of context of intensive meditative transformation of reality that   we can begin to understand a text like the Sarvapunyasamuccayasamadhi sutra  that speaks of Bodhisattvas discovering ‘treasures of the dharma’ deposited inside mountains, caves, and tress, and tell s us that ‘endless dharma-teaching in book-form come into their hands.’

“There are other early Mahayana sutras, however, that speak not of books appearing in the hands, or being found in caves, or receiving direct teachings from a Buddha seen in a vision, but rather of deities, supernatural beings (including, not inappropriately for a forest monk, tree sprits), visiting the forest monk meditator and given him significant revelations. These supernatural beings are found throughout Buddhism, and often visit at night, frequently just before dawn. Their visits and ‘admonishment’ are generally viewed possibility by the  tradition, and Harrison points out that even the mainstream Buddhist canons have in them teachings preached by deities under such circumstance s and accepted as the authentic ‘word of the Buddha.’

The production of the Mahayana sutras, seem to have been the productions of forest hermit monks. The monks. They may have dwelled in isolation from one another and had no regular direct connection with each other. They communicated with the Buddha or deities, with his Dharma-body, dharmakaya.  [summary from my notes on various essays by Paul Williams, Reginald Ray, Gregory Schoper.]

Forest Bodhisattvas: Forest Tradition Origin of the Mahayana

Mahayana Buddhism may have arisen out of the Forest Tradition of India. A growing body of  scholarship by Reginald Ray, Gergory Schopen, and Paul Harrison, state that the Mahayana tradition was an outgrowth of the monastic forest tradition, who were critical of the domestic comfort, laxity, wealth, accommodation of the settled village monks.

The Chan (Zen) tradition introduced into China by Bodhidharma may also be seen as a forest tradition, emphasizing meditation practice rather than sutra-scholarship.

The book by Daniel Boucher, Bodhisattvas of the Forest and the Formation of the Mahayana: A
Study and Translation of the Rastrapalapariprccha-sutra, outlines this research.

The Rastapala clearly preaches the ideal of rigorous ascetic practices, dhutanga, in the wilderness.

Primary sources for study of forest tradition in Mahayana Buddhism include Rastrapalapariprccha-sutra (short: Rastrapala). Other Mahayana texts of the forest tradition are  Ratnarasi, Kasyapa-parivarta, and Uprapariprccha, which share a pro-forest-dwelling ideology with the Rastrapala.

Paul Harrison, in “Searching for the Origins of the Mahayana: What are We Looking For?” says – “Far from being the products of an urban, lay, devotional movement, many Mahayana sutras give evidence of a hard-core ascetic attempt to return to the original inspiration of Buddhism, the search for Buddhahood or awakened cognition…They also display a strong and positive emphasis on the dhuta-gunas (extra ascetic practices) and aranya-vasa (dwelling in the forest or jungle), which is surely rather strange in the documents of a supposedly lay-dominated movement.”

The practice of dhutanga in the forest was an important part of the early Mahayana.

The Shier toutuo jing (Sutra on the Twelve Dhutagunas) is a Mahayana text translated into Chinese in the early sixth century.

“There can be no doubt that living in the wilderness in order to practice a rigorous form of reclusion was central to the orientation of the Rastrapala. Over and over again the authors of the Rastrapala exhort those on the bodhisattva path to ‘take pleasure in the wilderness’ and ‘dwell alone like a rhinoceros’, to ‘not abandon residence in the wilderness’, to take ‘pleasure in lodging in secluded hinterlands’, to ‘always dwell in forests and caves’, and to ‘frequent the wilderness and manifold hinterlands.’ Specific dhutaguna practices are listed in the story of Punyarusmi’s going forth after the death of the Buddha: “having gone forth he became a wearer of the three robes; he always practiced begging for alms and he only sat, never lying down.”

“Even when they are reviled on all sides, these sons of mine, remembering my words now during the final period of the Dharma, will dwell in forests in the hinterland at that time.”

“Those who are disciplined in morality and virtue will be despised in the last period of the Dharma. Abandoning villages, kingdoms, and cities they will dwell in the wilderness and forest.”

The Ratnarasi sutra vigorously promotes the dhutangas. Jonathan silk has translated and studies this sutra. The Sutra praises the sramana who “follows the yogic practice of cultivating the path,” “who delights in dwelling in the wilderness,” “who abides in the dhutagus,” and “who wanders alone like a rhinoceros.”

The true monks is “alone, unaccompanied, with nothing on which to rely, without possessions, without chattels”. He is entreated to take his alms systematically, in conformity with standard dhutaguna practice, showing no preference for generous patrons or disfavor toward those who give nothing. Although he practices alms begging, he should refrain from intimate contact with specific patrons or dropping hint s as to what he might prefer in his bowl. The monk should acquire his robes from the refuse heap, taking no delight in adorning his body with new robes.

Kasyapa-parivarta sutra, in the Maharatnakuta collection of Chinese and Tibetan cannons, is similar to the Ratnarasi says “There has never been a bodhisattva who dwells in the household and who has awakened to unexcelled, perfect enlightenment. They all, moreover, having gone forth from the household, fixed their thoughts on the wilderness with a predilection toward the wilderness. Having gone to the wilderness, they awakened to unexcelled, perfect enlightenment. And it is there that they acquired the prerequisites [sambhara] for enlightenment [bodhipakkyadhamma].”

The Ugrapariprccha marks the wilderness dwelling as a necessity, even if frightening; a requisite for all who set  out for Buddhahood.

When we start to look for the Forest Tradition explicitly in Mahayana literature, we begin to notice how wide-ranging the wilderness-dwelling motif  is within the Mahayana sutra literature, even when it is not the central preoccupation of any give text. In fact, wilderness dwelling shows up in places where we might least expect it, including texts that are overtly hostile to the monks who practice it. That even some Mahayana sutras qualify or oppose the wilderness for its members reminds us that we are witnessing one dimension of  the dialectic of tradition. 

Even the etymology of the words for Buddhist monastery reflect the root origin of forest dwelling. The word arama implies gardens filled with lush vegetation, flowers, birds - a sort of “garden of eden”. Buddhist monks refer to mandapas (groves) as components or constructions at monastic sites, and although this term is usually translated as a "hall" or "pillared hall." The most prominent architectural structures in gardens were bowers (mandapa nikunja), which could either take the form of a clump of trees which formed a sort of enclosure, or just as typically, were fashioned by arranging vines and other creeping plants around the structure of a roofed pavilion (mandapa).

The function of these "bowers" or mandapas was to provide shade, but that they were also "places of shelter and rest from the games and pursuits of the garden . . . places of seclusion--places where lovers could conduct their amorous liaisons in secrecy".

The early Indian garden, while full of flowers, flowering and fruit trees, and flocks of all sorts of birds, was a natural space, cultivated and carefully tended by gardeners called aramikas,  a category of lay workers who do the manual labor of the "monastery."

The Mulasarvdstivdda-vinaya of north India in the early centuries of the Common Era were fully aware of "the institution of the garden." Buddhist monks viewed their establishments as gardens, parks, groves. Buddhist monks had a detailed knowledge of the Indian garden.