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.]