Anne Bancroft - The Buddha Speaks: A Book of Guidance from the Buddhist Scriptures

ABOUT THE BOOK

Here is the core of the Buddhas teaching in his own words, as it was memorized word-for-word by his disciples and written down two hundred years after his death. These selections from the Buddhist scriptures deal with the search for truth, the way of contemplation, life and death, living in community, and many other topics, serving as an excellent small introduction to the Buddhas teaching. Whether addressed to monks and nuns, householders, outcastes, or thieves, the Buddhas teachings are characterized by one main concern: conveying the reality of our bondage to sufferingand the supremely good news that liberation is possible. It is a concern as relevant for people today as it was for the people of north India a millennium and a half ago.

ANNE BANCROFT is the author of numerous books, including Zen: Direct Pointing to Reality and Weavers of Wisdom: Women Mystics of the Twentieth Century. She lives in England.

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Shambhala Publications, Inc.

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2000 by Anne Bancroft

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tipitaka, English. Selections.

The Buddha speaks/compiled and edited by Anne Bancroft1st ed.

p. cm.

eISBN 978-0-8348-2182-8

ISBN 978-1-57062-493-3

ISBN 978-1-59030-827-1

I. Bancroft, Anne, 1923 II. Title.

bq1172.e5 b36 2000 99-048885

294.382dc21

This book presents the words of the Buddha as recorded by his followers. During the course of a long life spent traveling on foot between the villages and towns of north India, the Buddha (563483 BCE) gave many discourses and much advice not only to his order of monks and nuns but also to kings and villagers, outcastes and thieves, for he did not recognize any caste boundaries.

The style of these discourses, when they came to be written down some three centuries later, was repetitive and often divided into numbered categories, for that was how the teachings had been memorized at a time when writing was rare and materials expensive. His followers would want to remember a sermon word for word, and a large body of material was preserved in this way. After the Buddhas death, the movement divided into two main schools, the Theravada and the Mahayana. The Theravada took Pali, an ancient Indian language, for its accounts of the Buddhas teachings, while the Mahayana expressed itself in the equally ancient and classical Sanskrit. As Buddhism spread to other countries, such as Korea, China, and Tibet, the original Pali or Sanskrit texts were translated into the native languages. This proved to be very fortunate, particularly with regard to the Sanskrit texts, for this preserved them from destruction by later invaders. The Pali texts survived more easily because King Ashoka (third century BCE) of India, a keen Buddhist, had them written in document form as well as inscribing them on stones throughout the country.

In the late nineteenth century, translations were made of the Pali texts into European languages, and the translatorsnotably the Pali Text Societyfollowed the original words very closely. A little later the Sanskrit texts, too, began to be translated, and the chief English translator was Professor Edward Conze.

The Pali texts in particular have remained rather impenetrable because their late-Victorian translators not only kept to the original repetitive style but also used phrases and words of their own time that today have become obscure. Nevertheless, the essential Buddha, the brilliant teacher and philosopher who never claimed to be anything more than a human being, shines through, and there are constant intimations of a wonderful mindwise and serene, yet full of energy and humor; strongly compassionate, yet practical and penetratingly sane.

The central message of the Buddha was that every single one of us can find freedom from the deluded servitude that binds us to desires and cravings. By contemplation we can observe how life is. With awareness we can understand correctly the way to live and find clarity within confusion or despair. When we see the interconnectedness of all existence, we can free ourselves from self-love and the narrow confines of the self. Once the self has lost its power, a new consciousness is experienced that is timeless and unconditioned. This is nirvana never apart from the world but only to be apprehended when the world is no longer clutched at. The Buddhas own account of his awakening to these truths forms the first passage in the book.

The extracts in this book have been carefully edited to keep to the original text as closely as possible while at the same time using appropriate modern words and phrases instead of outdated ones. In this way the Buddha can speak to us as he spoke to the inhabitants of north India two and a half millennia ago. The reader will discover that the situations the Buddha came across in his many encounters with the people he met are intrinsically the same as the situations we find ourselves in today. His advice to his followers is as clear and necessary for our world as it was to theirs.

When I was a young man, at the beginning of my life, I looked at nature and saw that all things are subject to decay and death and thus to sorrow. The thought came to me that I myself was of such a nature. I was the same as all created things. I too would be subject to disease, decay, death, and sorrow. But what if I were to search for that which underlies all becoming, for the unsurpassed perfect security which is nirvana, the perfect freedom of the unconditioned state?

So, in the first flush of my independence, I went against my fathers wishes, shaved off my thick black hair, put on a saffron robe, and left my fathers house for a homeless life. I wandered a long time, searching for what is good, searching after an unsurpassed state of peace.

At last I came to a pleasant forest grove next to a river of pure water and sat down beneath a big tree, sure that this was the right place for realization.

All the conditions of the world came into my mind, one after another, and as they came they were penetrated and put down. In this way, finally, a knowledge and insight arose, and I knew that this was the changeless, the unconditioned. This was freedom.

The reality that came to me is profound and hard to see or understand because it is beyond the sphere of thinking. It is sublime and unequaled but subtle and only to be found by the dedicated.

Most people fail to see this reality, for they are attached to what they cling to, to pleasures and delights. Since all the world is so attached to material things, its very difficult for people to grasp how everything originates in conditions and causes. Its a hard job for them to see the meaning of the fact that everything, including ourselves, depends on everything else and has no permanent self-existence.

If I were to try to teach this truth, this reality, nobody would understand me, I thought. My labor and my trouble would be for nothing.