Introduction

One of the characteristics of Buddhism is its plurality and diversity within. Also in the beginning of its development, discussion inside the community opened various perspectives, collected in vast doctrinal literature. This page in particular deals with the Theravada perspective, that allegedly is the most similar to the Buddhism of the origins.

Main doctrinal traditions: development of first Buddhist Traditions

Following the death of the Buddha around the 500 BCE, the Buddhist community flourished and developed  in different schools of thought. These developments lasted till the first century CE.

These evolutions inside the Buddhist community rose through debates and councils concerning the monastic regulations and the scholastic interpretation of the Buddha's teachings. The traditional chronicles report of a major separation between two groups: the Sthaviravada (Skt. the "elders") and the Mahasamghika (Skt. "adherents to the great community"). From these two groups subsequent sub-schools would be born.

Scholars nowadays do not hold sure how and when these schools represented actually separate communities. It is clear, however, that there were lively scholastic disputes, as the development of a large Abhidarma (the scholastic literature) demonstrate (see below).

Sacred texts and other texts: Abhidarma literature

The Abhidarma literature consist in treatises (Skt: Shastra) in which Buddhist scholars discussed various  doctrinal and philosophical topics. Various Abhidharma traditions arose in India, roughly during the period from the 2nd or 3rd Century BCE to the 5th Century CE and reflect the early developments of Buddhism. One main problem of the first Buddhist schools was to investigate the nature of phenomena (physical and psychological) that form the humane experience, in order to show how such phenomena are no more than temporary and impermanent aggregate of different factors.

These analysis were meant to negate the existence per se of everyday phenomena and thus help eliminating the attachment towards them. The most notable phenomenon of human experience that Buddhism conceives as illusory is the idea of individual Self. This is a common point throughout all Buddhism, called the doctrine of An-atman (no-self): the individual Self is a illusory aggregate of constantly changing processes. The attachment to the idea of having a permanent and individual Self is conceived as the root of all other attachments.

Apart from philosophical discussions, these texts reflect a discussion on two pivotal topics: the Ideal of Liberation and the Nature of the Buddha. In brief: the Sthaviravada  held the infallibility and superiority of the Ideal of Liberation of Arhat (see below), while the Mahasamghika doubted such qualification, and were also inclined to think of the Buddha as a more supramundane being, instead of a mere illuminate human teacher. The ideas of the Mahasamghika will be subsequently developed in the Mahayana traditions (see next page).

The nowadays Theravada tradition, now prevalent in Sri Lanka, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, and Cambodia is the only extant schools born from the Sthaviravada, which still considers the ideal of Arhat its ultimate goal (See links to other modules).

Main doctrinal tenets: the Ideal of Arhat

Arhat (Skt. “one who is worthy”) is the first ideal of liberation in Buddhism. The term denotes the perfected person (essentialy, monks) one who has gained insight into the true nature of existence and has achieved the same enlightenment of the Buddha. It is a ambitious ideal of liberation that highlight the nature of the beginning of the Buddhist community: in the first centuries the monastic organizations were inclined to be closed communities totally absorbed to the goal of enlightenment, characterized by general attitude of rejection, if not challenge, towards the outside world. For this reason, the Arhat ideal symbolizes a path towards liberation typical of these early developments. A path that was conceived as individual, arduous, and not open to everyone. With the growing of the community and the emergence of lay practitioners, the Arhat ideals slowly became rejected by the subsequent Mahayana traditions (see next page).

Source comment

Although the ideal of Arhat was not prominent in  later developments of Buddhism,  for example in China, the figure of Arhat represented nonetheless an artistic subject of sainthood. In China Arhat were considered disciples of the Buddha who had magical powers and could stay alive indefinitely to preserve the Buddha's teachings.

 This Arhat's figure, dressed in the Chinese monks' style, express sombre dignity. The austerity of his facial expression denote the willingness to renounce to the world and to strive exclusively towards liberation, typical of the Arhat's ideal of the first Buddhism.

Intercultural and interdisciplinary information

(Philosophy)
Many scholars of comparative philosophy found striking similarities between the doctrine of An-atman and the interpretation of the English Philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) on personal identity. According to Hume there is nothing that is constantly stable which we could identify as the self, only a flow of differing experiences. Our view that there is something substantive which binds all of these experiences together is for Hume merely imaginary. The self is a fiction that is attributed to the entire flow of experiences.

As he wrote in his  "Treatise on Human Nature" (1739) (Part IV Section 4: Of Personal Identity):

"Pain and pleasure, grief and joy, passions and sensations succeed each other, and never all exist at the same time. It cannot, therefore, be from any of these impressions, or from any other, that the idea of self is derived; and consequently there is no such idea... I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement".

Link to other modules:

See the pages on contries where Theravada Buddhism is prominent

Buddhims II. Diffusion in the World sections 2