User:Sujato/Buddhist mythology

The Buddhist traditions have created and maintained a vast body of mythological literature. ?Although there is some historicity to the life of Siddārtha Gotama—personally I'd rather leave this for the paragraph further down where myth and history are discussed. An opening paragraph should be simple and straightforward, and leave qualifications for later.?, the central myth of Buddhism is the life of the Buddha. This is told in relatively realistic terms in the earliest texts, and was soon elaborated into a complex literary mythology. The chief motif of this story, and the most distinctive feature of Buddhist myth, is the Bodhisattva’s renunciation: leaving his home and family for a spiritual quest.

Alongside this central myth, the traditions contain large numbers of smaller stories, which are usually supposed to convey an ethical or Buddhist teaching. These include the popular Jātakas, folk tales or legends believed to be past lives of Gautama Buddha. Since these are regarded as episodes in the life of the Buddha, they are treated here as “myth”, rather than distinguishing between myth, legend, and folk-tale.

Buddhist mythology is maintained in texts, but these have always existed alongside oral traditions of storytelling, as well as creative retellings of myths as drama or artworks. This creative mythology continues to this day, and includes film, television, and musical adaptions of Buddhist myths.

Myth has always been an important part of the way Buddhists see themselves and form a Buddhist community. Attitudes to myths vary, with some people seeing the stories as entirely factual, while others see them as symbolic. In this article, as in scholarly study of mythology generally, the use of the term “myth” does not imply a judgement as to whether the stories are true or not. Rather, it refers to the study of sacred stories and their meaning within a community. A story such as the life of the Buddha includes both historical content about the Buddha’s life and teachings, and “mythic” content which shows how the story was received and what it meant to the people telling it. A historian’s job is to sift the “mythic” elements out and discern the facts. The task of mythology is to understand how all elements of the story contribute to its meaning.

Myth often deals with the supernatural. However, while Buddhist myth frequently deals with events normally regarded as supernatural, such as stories of gods, miracles, and so on, these are all seen as aspects of dharma, and thus as part of nature. In Buddhist context, then, it is best to describe these phenomena as “extraordinary”, in the sense of lying outside ordinary experience, rather than “supernatural”, being “above nature”.

Scholars have long recognized that Buddhism contains one of the world’s great mythologies. TW Rhys Davids said that the Jātakas are “the most reliable, the most complete, and the most ancient collection of folklore now extant in any literature in the world.” CAF Rhys Davids said that the Jātakas are “collectively the greatest epic, in literature, of the Ascent of Man”. Joseph Campbell discussed the life of the Buddha extensively in his The Hero with a Thousand Faces, relying on the later Buddha legends.

However, modern examination of Buddhist mythology is rare, and critics have argued that the emphasis on rationality in Buddhist modernism has obscured the role of mythology in Buddhist communities both past and present.

Buddhist Mythic Texts

The life of the Buddha in early texts

Gautama practices austerities before rejecting them as useless.

The earliest texts of Buddhism include the Nikāyas and Āgamas, as well as the Vinayas passed down by various traditions. For the most part, the Buddha is depicted in these stories as a wise and compassionate teacher, an exponent of meditation, and a critical philosopher. From the earliest times, however, we also find the occurence of various extraordinary phenomena, such as the appearance of deities, the performance of psychic powers, ??use page on abhinna, as the siddhi and riddhi pages are poor.?? or the thirty-two marks of a great man. These most often appear in the context of converting brahmins or other followers of pre-Buddhist religions, for example yaksha cults.

This body of texts does not include a coherent account of the Buddha’s life. However, it tells many individual events featuring the Buddha, and in a few cases gives more extensive accounts of important events in the Buddha’s life. All later versions of the Buddha’s life derive primarily from these sources. These include:

• The bodhisattva’s birth.
• Some details of his life growing up.
• References to the renunciation. The famous story of the “four signs” is told, but regarding the past bodhisattva Vipassī, not the historical bodhisattva.
• Detailed accounts of the bodhisattva’s practices before awakening. These include the encounter with earlier teachers, the period of austerities, and various of the bodhisattva’s own efforts to develop meditation.
• Various accounts of the night of the Awakening.
• The events following awakening are told in a famous narrative that is found either in Sutta or Vinaya.
• Events involving the Buddha’s family, including his return home and the ordination of his son,, the rebellion of Devadatta, ordination of the Buddha’s step-mother as the first bhikkhuni, found mostly in the Vinayas.
• The Buddha’s last journey, passing away, and subsequent events are told in the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta.

Most of the relevant texts from the Pali canon have been gathered and arranged in Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli's The Life of the Buddha. Bhikkhu Sujato has shown that the events of the Buddha’s life in the early texts fulfill almost all the stages of Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, despite the fact that they are not arranged as a coherent narrative. The Hero’s Journey becomes much more prominent and complete in later versions of the story.

The life of the Buddha in post-Ashokan texts

Prince Siddhartha Gautama cuts his hair and becomes a renunciant. Borobudur

While the early texts were mostly completed in the pre-Ashokan period, the post-Ashokan period saw the widespread adoption of Buddhism as a popular religion. At this time, Buddhism was spreading across the Indian subcontinent and beyond, and several distinct schools were emerging in different regions. It seems likely that each school would have used the life of the Buddha as a primary teaching vehicle. Several distinctive versions of this story survive. While these vary greatly in their literary forms, there is little doctrinal difference between them. Such texts include the following:

• Mahāvastu (“Great Story”) of the Mahāsaṁghika-Lokuttaravāda. This text is written in Hybrid Sanskrit, and is a loose compilation of diverse texts from multiple sources, sometimes repeating the same story, and with little attempt to create literary unity.
• Buddhacarita (“Life of the Buddha”) by Aśvaghoṣa. This is a sophisticated and polished epic poem by one of India’s foremost poets.
• Lalitavistara Sūtra (“The Play in Detail”) of the Sarvāstivādins. Styled as a Sanskrit sutra, the Lalitavistara was very popular in northern forms of Buddhism. It is the basis for many events carved in Borobudur.
• Jātaka Nidāna (“Souce of the Jātaka Stories”) of the Theravādins. This is situated as the introduction and setting for the Pali Jātaka stories found in the commentaries compiled in the Mahāvihāra in Sri Lanka. This forms the basis for the lives of the Buddha told throughout the Theravādin regions until today.
• Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya. While all the Vinayas contain some narrative, this text—extant in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese—includes a full life of the Buddha, replete with abundant legendary narrative.
• Abhiniṣkramana Sūtra.

Queen Māyā's white elephant dream, and the conception of the Buddha. Gandhara, 2nd–3rd century CE.

Despite the fact that these texts emerged in different schools over a long period, in different literary forms, they each share a range of motifs in the Buddha’s life that is not found in the early texts. Such motifs include:

• The Buddha’s mother, Māyā, dreaming of a white elephant.
• Lotuses springing up under the feet of the bodhisattva as he walked immediately after birth.
• Various encounters with Devadatta and others as a child.
• Seeing the four signs.
• The bodhisattva leaving his wife and child, often on the night of the birth.
• The bodhisattva’s horse, Kaṇṭhaka, who carried him away, but later died of grief.
• Meeting a hunter and exchanging robes.
• Floating the bowl upstream.
• The offering of milk rice by Sujātā.
• The attack by Māra’s armies.
• The earth goddess witnessing the bodhisattva’s past practice.

Battle with Mara

Many of these motifs are represented in early artwork, and one of the motivating factors in such developments was to present the teachings in a way that could form a dramatic personal story, which could be visually represented. For example, the Padhāna Sutta, an early text, depicts the assault of Māra in purely psychological terms, while the developed versions imagine a vast army of demons attacking the Buddha, an image which is frequently depicted in Buddhist artwork.

These later works also show a much greater emphasis on the miraculous. The Buddha as a human teacher was receding further into the past, and for the new generations of this time in Buddhist history he was becoming a legend of magnificence and glory, more and more godlike as the years passed by. These developments in the mythology have their counterparts in the more philosophical texts, where the Buddha is conceived as absolutely omniscient, and increasingly, omnipotent as well.

The extended life of the Buddha in Jātakas

One of the “three knowledges” (tevijjā) of the Buddha was recollecting past lives. However, early texts contain very few actual narratives of past lives. Such stories as are found in the early texts almost always show signs of belonging to the latest strata of those texts.

However in a short time the Buddhist community developed a vast repertoire of stories associated with the Buddha’s past lives, known as the Jātakas. There are 550 such stories in the Pali canon, and hundreds more in Chinese, Tibetan, and Sanskrit sources. Several Jātakas are depicted in visual form on the monuments at Sanchi, dating around the 1st century BCE. The corpus of Jātaka stories continued to grow over the centuries.

The Jātakas appear to be mostly derived from folk tales and legends. Like the lives of the Buddha, they are not sectarian, as many Jātakas are shared among traditions. Some of the stories are related to Brahmanical legends, such as those found in the Rāmayaṇa and Mahābharata, while others show similarities to Aesop’s fables and other world literature. While most of the Jātakas contain a “moral”, in most cases these pertain to simple and universal ideas, such as non-violence or honesty, and only a few of the stories feature distinctively Buddhist ideas.

A typical Jātaka tale features a conflict or challenge, which the hero overcomes through his courage, intelligence, or other virtues. The hero of the story is identified with the bodhisattva, while other characters in the story are often identified with familiar associates of the Buddha, such as his close disciples, family, or Devadatta as the antagonist.

Since the Jātakas are in essence the preliminary chapters of the Buddha’s spiritual development, they are sometimes included together with the Buddha’s life. In the Pali sources, for example, the life of the Buddha is featured as the opening framing narrative of the Jātaka collection.

There is a similar class of literature known as Apadāna. Originally the term seems to have simply meant a tale of the past, as the Mahāpadāna Sutta of the Dīgha Nikāya tells the story of a Buddha in a past age. However it came to refer to a class of stories about the past lives of the Buddha’s monk and nun disciples. These often depict how enlightened disciples of the Buddha achieved that status by making offerings to a Buddha in a past life.

Vinaya

Prince Siddhartha with his maternal aunt Queen Mahaprajapati Gotami

The doctrinal texts (suttas) of the early period contain little narrative and less myth. However in the texts on monastic discipline (Vinaya), each rule or procedure must be preceded by an origin story. These are frequently simple narratives that merely give a context for the rule. However in several cases the narrative is developed and includes significant mythic motifs. Most of these occur in relation to important events in the Buddha’s life, especially those involving his family. But they also occur independently.

Frauwallner argued that the portion of Vinaya known as the Khandhakas was formed around one of the earliest versions of the Buddha’s life story. Later Vinaya texts such as the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya and the Mahāvastu added even more mythic material.

Some of the myths told in the Vinayas include:

• The period after the Buddha’s awakening (this corresponds to the “return” portion of Campbell’s hero cycle.)
• The ordination of the Buddha’s stepmother Mahāpajāpatī. This episode is particularly rich in mythic imagery and meaning.
• The rebellion of Devadatta (betrayal by a close relative is familiar in the myths of, for example, Jesus, Balder, and Osiris.)
• The medical training of the doctor Jīvaka.
• The story of Prince Dīghāvu.
• Multiple original stories for Vinaya rules include mythic motifs, for example the stupa rule.

Prophecy

Buddhist literature includes a wide range of prophetic texts, which speak of future events. As with the Jātakas, there are a few such stories in the early texts. The most famous is the Cakkavatti Sīhanāda Sutta of the Dīgha Nikāya. This is the only early text to mention Metteyya, the future Buddha. It is an apocalyptic text, which predicts that humanity’s moral conduct will decline so far that civilization will utterly break down. After a long time society will reform, based on the principle of non-violence, and ultimately a golden age will arrive, with the future Buddha Metteyya as the teacher of that age.

A complex mythology developed around the messianic figure of Maitreya, which has inspired multiple Buddhist cults of both the past and the present. He has been frequently conflated with similar messianic figures, such as the returning Jesus Christ.

Later traditions continued to produce prophetic texts, although they were never as widespread or popular as the Jātakas.

Sectarian myths

Most, possibly all, of the schools of Buddhism told stories of the origin of their own particular school of Buddhism. These narratives function like creation myths, explaining how the school came to be, and why it has a special authority to convey the Buddha’s teaching. Unlike the pan-sectarian myths of the Buddha’s life or the Jātakas, these exist specifically to promote one’s own school in relation to contemporary rivals.

The Theravāda origin story is found in multiple places, such as the Dīpavaṁsa, where the Buddha himself is said to have predicted the spread of Theravāda to Sri Lanka. The Sarvāstivādins located their origins in the time of Ashoka, claiming to be the true Dharma that spread to Kashmir when Buddhism in the Middle Country had become corrupt.

Such sectarian myths also typically include an account of how the Dharma triumphed over primitive and violent religious cults, especially human or animal sacrifice in worship of yakkhas.

The Mahāyānists needed to address the fact that their texts were unknown for the first 500 years of Buddhism, and claimed that they had been hidden in a dragon realm until people wise enough to understand them were born. Similarly, the Theravādin Abhidhammists, lacking a historical context for Abhidhamma texts, claimed they had been taught by the Buddha to his mother in Tusita heaven.

These myths show how the Buddhist communities of India sought authority for their own school through a narrative of connection with the early Buddhism as taught by the Buddha in the Middle Country.

Such mythologies developed, not just as “official” sectarian doctrines, but as local tales. For example, in most Buddhist countries there is a story of how the historical Buddha visited their country and foretold that the Dharma would be established there.

Myths in Mahāyāna texts

In addition to the Mahāyāna origin story, Mahāyanist texts include a wide variety of narratives and mythologies. These vary from dramatic or humorous tales, to abstract philosophical parables.

Others

Buddhist traditions contain large numbers of stories and spiritual narratives in addition to the above. These are often simple moral fables, similar to Jātakas. In some cases, mythic complexes can be discerned that have no counterparts in the orthodox texts, but are found widely in popular culture.

An example of this is the cult of Upagupta. He was a monk who, according to legend, lived in the time of Ashoka. He does not appear in central Pali texts, but is a well known figure in the northern regions of Theravāda, including northern Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos. In these regions a variety of tales with related themes and motifs occur, and form the basis of ritual activity, usually carried out by the lay people. Such activities occur in a liminal space on the edge of the officially sanctioned Theravādin praxis.

Themes

Renunciation

The key event in the life of the Buddha is his leaving home. This event dramatizes the conflict between the “worldly” values of family, career, and prosperity and the “spiritual” values of renunciation and dispassion ( ? virāga, there's a wiki page for vairagya but only it's use in non-Buddhist Indian traditions. --- I think no need ?) . This tension is a defining characteristic of Buddhist myth.

In the central story of Siddhattha, the image of the bodhisattva leaving home is evoked every time the story is told. In the early texts, the Buddha simply says that he left home “though my mother and father wept with tears running down their faces”. The developed stories each tell the event slightly differently, evoking the bodhisattva’s pain in leaving his wife and child, or his wife’s pain in being left behind.

The renunciation is also dealt with repeatedly in the Jātakas, with further variations. In some cases, the bodhisattva leaves home with his wife, or with both wife and children, or even with the whole city. In one case, the wife leaves the bodhisattva to raise the children.

These endless variations can be interpreted in the light of the theories of Claude Levi-Strauss. He noted how myths tell stories that never have a final black and white solution. The repeated stories each resolve a core problem is a slightly different way, but the question can never be put to rest, and so a new telling is always needed.

Awakening

Following on from renunciation is awakening (bodhi). In Buddhism this refers to an insight into the truth that leads to the end of suffering. In the doctrinal texts this is presented in psychological and existential terms, which the myths translate into narrative and imagery.

(different accounts? MN26 vs MN36 ? MN26 without the remembering of past lives ? )

Thus the armies of Māra, the forces of darkness and desire, are no longer simply psychological impulses, but literal armies of demonic forces, depicted in lavish detail. And they are not overcome simply by insight, but by evoking the Earth Goddess (dhārinī). She, as an elder deity, has borne witness to the bodhisattva’s heroic deeds in the countless past lives as depicted in the Jātakas, and testifies to this fact, dispelling the forces of darkness.

Each detail of the awakening experience become imbued with mythic significance. The place where the Buddha sat, described in the early texts simply as a pleasant place suitable for meditation, becomes the “navel of the world”. It is the only place on earth strong enough to bear the weight of the awakening, and is used by all Buddhas, past, present, and future.

Psychology

Buddhist myths use the standard story types and heroic journeys, always with a strong psychological emphasis. While the behaviour of the bodhisattva in the Jātakas is not always beyond reproach, there is a strong emphasis on overcoming hate and greed, and using intelligence and kindness to solve problems. The bodhisattva is more commonly represented as clever and resourceful than as a fierce warrior or powerful king.

Most of the motifs in world mythology that have become famous for psychological interpretations exist in Buddhist versions, such as the Oedipus story.

Geography

Buddhist mythology is strongly rooted in the geography of India. This includes the vast presence of the Himalayas, the powerful rivers, fertile fields, and endless wild forests. The wilds, including the mountains, are regularly depicted as resorts of sages and seekers. The cities are where wealth and fame are found, and wisdom lives in the wilderness. ? the other ascetic/renunciate/samaṇa traditions of the Jains, Carvakas, Aajiivikas, yogis, sāṃkhyas ?

The early texts are strongly focussed on the “middle country”—the central part of the Ganges valley—where the Buddha spent his whole life. Reference to areas outside this are few. In the later texts, such as Jātakas, there is a much expanded geography, with a strong emphasis on trade across deserts and oceans. The Baveru Jātaka (“Babylon Jātaka”) tells of how to take advantage of the gullible Babylonians in trade.

Animals

Animals feature prominently in the texts, whether domesticated beasts like the cow or the cat, or wild beasts such as the lion or crocodile. The Jātakas, like folk tales everywhere, frequently feature talking animals. A distinctive feature of Buddhist tales, however, is that the ethical implications of such talking beasts are not dismissed. Instead, it is in dialogue with talking beasts that ethics of non-violence and restraint in killing animals are developed.

Several kinds of animals appear regularly enough that they assume the role of stock characters. The lion is strong and fearless, the jackal, his nemesis, is weak, craven, and duplicitous. The peacock is sometimes mocked for his vanity, but also admired for his incomparable beauty. A crocodile is vicious and untrustworthy, while a monkey is tricky and unpredictable.

Extraordinary Beings (?Yes, good idea)

The Buddhist tradition shares with the wider Indian culture a range of extraordinary creatures.

(Here we should discuss Buddhist cosmology, or perhaps link somewhere?)

what do you think about the Buddhist cosmology wiki page? Buddhist cosmology

similarities to Jain cosmology?

the dual meaning of naaga for instance as a massive deep-diving serpent and as an extraordinary human?

any relation to the naga yogi/sadhu sect? they also act as fierce protectors

PS - sorry I haven't had much time recently, may have some more time this weekend, any particular task to work on? images? research?

Politics

One of the earliest mythic motifs in the Buddha’s life is the notion that he is a “Great Man” (mahāpurisa), who must choose his destiny. If he remains in the home, he will become a righteous universal emperor (cakkavatti), while is he chooses the way of renunciation he will become a Buddha. Of course, the historical bodhisattva chooses renunciation, but stories are told of those in the past who chose kingship. These are depicted to show an ideal of Buddhist leadership, one who rules “without violence or weapons”.

This notion of the twofold choice echoes the story of Gilgamesh, the oldest of the full-scale hero myths known to us. He too went on a search for the deathless, although he failed, and ultimately his legacy was that of a great ruler.

The Aggañña Sutta depicts an alternative, and arguable earlier, ideal of a Buddhist king. There, in a manner not dissimilar to the practices prevailing among the Buddha’s own Sakyan people, the king is not destined but elected by the people. This democratic model, however, was largely ignored, and subsequent Buddhist myths almost always featured hereditary kings.

The Jātakas depict many examples of kings both good and bad, and the bodhisattva himself was a king in many stories. Frequently he was torn between the value of leading his people and the allure of the renunciant life.

Kingship in the Jātakas displays many of the classic features familiar in James Frazer’s analysis of sacred kingship. The king has not just worldly power, but had a connection to the gods. His behaviour affects the weather: a righteous king ensures good crops. The king is sometimes sacrificed, or stories of escaping and reforming sacrifice are told.

Gender

The Jātakas show an ambiguity in relation to gender. On the one hand, gender is seen as not a binary phenomenon. For example, there is fluidity in gender across lives. Frequently women are strong and capable. Gender roles are sometimes reversed, as when the bodhisattva’s wife leaves him to raise the children as she becomes a nun. In some texts, gender is presented as a performance, and both men and women can engage in that performance with awareness. Transformation and escape from the traps of gender roles is made possible through a spiritual life, especially as a renunciant. The origin myth of Mahākassapa develops the idea of an ideal spiritual union, with both husband and wife equally devoted to the spiritual path. Even after renunciation and awakening, the husband, Mahākassapa, continued to offer support for his former wife, protecting her from sexual harassment.

At the same time, there are many stories, including Jātakas, that depict women in strongly negative terms. These misogynistic sacred texts continue to influence attitudes towards women in contemporary Buddhist cultures, where it is widely believed that birth as a woman is due to bad karma.

In his White Bones Red Rot Black Snakes, Bhikkhu Sujato pointed out that the Jātakas were compiled by many people over a long time. Rather than representing a single, coherent Buddhist position regarding women, he argued that they represent multiple conflicting attitudes, an ambiguity which cannot be easily represented in the doctrinal or philosophical texts. One of the major cause of negative views of women is the confusion and tension around sexuality experienced by those who have chosen a renunciant life. While the early texts advise to deal with this through mindfulness and meditation, in the stories the tensions become externalized as negative characteristics of women. Such views should not be seen as fixed, however, since Buddhism is not essentialist. Negative characteristics of women—like negative characteristics of men, which are also depicted—are qualities to be overcome and transformed through spiritual development. Thus Buddhism has always insisted the women are equal to men in their capacity for awakening.

Adoption and inversion

The Buddhist texts frequently adopt Brahmanical myths, frequently inverting motifs to illustrate a point of difference between Buddhism and Brahmanism. When the deity Brahmā appears, he is sometimes depicted as a magnificent devotee of the Buddha, but sometimes gentle fun is poked at his vanity and ignorance. The ferocious war god of the Vedas, Indra, is transformed into the gentle and slightly buffoonish Sakka, who wins a war by refusing the drive through a forest where baby birds are nesting.

Buddhism and world mythology

Many mythic motifs are universal, or at least widely spread. Such motifs relate common human experiences such as love, grief, or transcendence. However such motifs are handled in different ways in different mythologies, and this reveals the particulars of a mythic system.

In Greek myth, for example, we frequently encounter the motif of a male god who establishes his dominion by raping, killing, or abducting a local goddess. On a historical level this tells us something of the relation between patriarchal and matriarchal forms of worship. In Buddhist myth, the same situation is handled not through violence but through compassion. Consider the famous story of Harītī, found in Buddhist narratives from the Middle Country to Kashmir, and as far afield as Indonesia and Japan. She is a child-eating yakkhinī, who received the children of the villages in sacrifice. But she herself was a mother, and by appealing to her maternal love, she is persuaded to give up her vicious ways. She becomes a devotee of the Buddha, and a shrine for her is created in the Buddhist monastery, where she continues to receive non-violent offerings.

Another classic mythic motif is the substitute sacrifice. This occurs as religious practices replace more violent forms of worship, and provide a way of tracing the emergence of compassion as a key religious value. In the story of Abraham, Yahweh demands that he sacrifice his son, something which is shocking to us, but normal in many cultures. However, Yahweh accepts a goat as substitute. Buddhist versions of this motif go further, as animal sacrifice was never acceptable, so deities are persuaded to accept rice offerings.

Myth and ritual

The royal outfit worn by novitiates-to-be before being samanera ordination, to re-enact Rahula's rejection of a princely life in exchange for a life of self-detachment.

It is common for mythic events to be performed or re-experienced and ritual, and in fact some myths arise as explanations of ritual. We find this frequently in Buddhism, as the ordination procedure mimics the renunciation of the Buddha. Although the Vinaya texts describing ordination depict it as a simple, almost bureaucratic, procedure, modern Buddhist cultures will dress the candidate up like a prince and parade him through the streets before ceremonially shaving him and giving the ordination.

Common mythic themes

Here are a few other common themes and motifs of myth which are found in Buddhist myths.

• Creation
• Origins of culture
• Family origins
• Atonement
• Death of parents
• Journey
• Hidden royalty
• Abandoned baby
• Regicide and deicide

Time

From the beginning, time has been treated in Buddhist texts in an expansive way. Countless aeons pass as the universe is born, dies, and is born again. In all these times, the same patterns emerge again and again. Mythic return is thus a crucial theme. The most important example of this is of course the Buddha himself. While a Buddha passes away and no longer is part of the play of time, another Buddha will always arise. The lives of these Buddhas are always told in the same basic pattern, though with different details.

Despite this expansive view on time, the historical framework of Buddhist myth is in fact quite narrow. With few exceptions, the Jātakas, and even the stories of the future, imagine a world that is much like the India of the 5th century BCE, or more precisely, in the case of the Jātakas, a little earlier. The Jātakas frequently depict Benares as an independent city of considerable political and cultural influence, however this historical situation only obtained for a few centuries at most. Thus the many hundreds of births of the bodhisattva are set within a historical window of only a few centuries.

Historical context

Sources

• Brahmanical myths. The early texts explicitly draw upon Vedic characters and events, but do not refer to the developed Brahmanical mythology of the Rāmayaṇa and Mahābharata. These myths are, however, referred to in the Jātakas. In some cases these Buddhist sources may be the earliest sources of these myths.
• Oral storytelling tradition. There are references to wandering singers, artists, and other storytellers. Buddhist stories freely draw on such sources and adapt them with a Buddhist message.
• World stories. Some stories show an affinity with Aesop’s fables and other stories known from world’s literature. These stories would have spread along the trade routes.

Creativity

Storytelling traditions do not simply repeat what they hear, they add, interpret, create, and invert stories. The earliest texts depict the Buddha as a fearless re-inventor of myth, subverting the Brahmanical creation myth, and treating myth generally in a playful and light-hearted manner.

In some cases the Buddhist storytellers added to a pre-existing myth in a simple and obvious way. For example the Mora Jātaka includes a verse of sun-worship, followed immediately by a verse in worship of the Buddhas, with no attempt to reconcile the two.

In many cases it is not possible to discern the changes introduced by the Buddhist storytellers, as we do not know the sources they were working with. We can also assume that some stories were simply invented by the Buddhist story-tellers, or were adapted from real-life experience.

Storytellers

The early texts have a storyteller, usually the Buddha. Later texts usually have either an unknown narrator as storyteller, or they unhistorically place their stories in the mouth of the Buddha. As such we are left to infer who was telling the story.

In many cases, the narratives would have been created and passed down among the monastic Saṅgha, who always played a prominent role in teaching. It is likely that the male Saṅgha was the predominant influence on the texts, although nuns have played a role as well. Teaching from stories such as Jātakas remains popular today.

• Regional variations and developments, in India and elsewhere.

Forms of myth

Literary styles and development

The primary source for Buddhist myth is literature. The corpus is extensive; for example, over 500 Jātakas exist in Pali alone. Storytellers avoided a heavy reliance on specialized Buddhist doctrinal terms. The Jātaka and other collections contain a wealth of terms and ideas, especially reference to everyday details.

The Jātakas remain closely linked to the oral tradition. The core of the story is a set of verses, which in the Pali tradition are the only part considered canonical. The story, and the framing narrative that tells the events of the Buddha’s day, are commentary. However, as shown by TW Rhys Davids, verse and prose must have been passed down together in many cases. This is typical of Pali oral literature, where a fixed canonicaly portion was accompanied by a much larger and more fluid commentary, which itself would gradually become canon. When taught, the verses would typicaly be recited verbatim, whicle the story would be elaborated and adapted by each storyteller.

By way of contrast, a developed literary work such as the Buddhacarita is written down and is meant to be read. Drawing on the elaborate literary heritage of the Mahāyāna sutras, which were also composed as written texts, Aśvaghoṣa employed a huge vocabulary and complex poetic methods to create a sophisticated text for the enjoyment of an educated class.

Art

There is no art, or any other physical remains, from the earliest period of Buddhism. The first Buddhist art appears in the Ashokan period. But Ashoka’s pillars, while artistically superb, do not tell myths.

Perhaps 100 years after Ashoka, we have our first known Buddhist stupa complexes, which contain substantial and elaborate art. As well as drawing on motifs from the early texts, these frequently depict episodes from Jātakas and from the evolved form of the Buddha’s life. The art that has survived is sculpture in stone, although this must be the remnants of a much richer heritage in more perishable materials.

In addition to purely decorative motifs, we frequently find art arranged in a sequence, or a roundel, depicting various events selected from a particular story. These would presumably have been used as a story-telling framework, a precursor to our modern graphic novels. A teacher, presumably a monk or nun, would tell the story illustrated by the pictures, or else people who knew the story would remind themselves of it. This method was developed fully in Borobudur, where the stories wind around the huge structure. In many modern Buddhist temples, especially those that are popular tourist sites, murals play the same role.

Performance of myth

There is little concrete evidence for performance of myth in a way more elaborate than the simple storytelling with pictures described above. There are indications, however, that Indian Buddhists developed edifying dramas, perhaps with musical accompaniment. Such performances became popular in Buddhist cultures.

Interpretations of Buddhist myth

In Buddhist traditions of the past

There is no developed tradition of myth interpretation within Buddhist traditions. Writers acknowledged that the various lives of the Buddha were similar, differing in only inconsequential details. The more spectacular aspects of Buddhist myth were likely treated for their entertainment value. Vasubandhu, writing around the 4th century CE, took it for granted that his audience understood that the so-called “guardians of hell” were in fact just projections of the mind. It is, however, not uncommon to find strictly literal interpretations of myth.

Contemporary emic

Bhikkhu Sujato has written an extensive analysis of Buddhist myth, focussing on women. He shows the extensive correlations between Buddhist myths and broader world myth, drawing on such sources as Joseph Campbell and Erich Neumann, a student of Carl Jung.

Contemporary etic

Campbell’s Hero’s Journey saw the journey as ultimately a psychological quest. In the Buddhist version, this psychological aspect is explicit, and the violent warrior overtones of the quest are entirely absent.

Roberto Calasso in his Ka discusses Buddhist myth in the context of Indian myth more generally. He argues that the Buddha came to “put an end to gesture”, as his journey was ultimately inwards and dispensed with outward forms of spirituality such as ritual.

As Calasso sees it, the ancient world of sacrifice, of prohibition and authority, is ruined by the coming of the Buddha. The Buddha wishes to “eliminate the residue,” the leftovers from which everything new is generated (the pursuit of nirvana is nothing less than a wish to extinguish the residue of a lived life–rebirth). His doctrine prefigures our own world: “What would one day be called ‘the modern’ was, at least as far as its sharpest and most hidden point is concerned, a legacy of the Buddha. Seeing things as so many aggregates and dismantling them. . . . An arid, ferocious scholasticism. . . . Total lack of respect for any prohibition, any authority.”

Denial of myth in Buddhist Modernism

The reform movements in Buddhism that emerged around the end of the 19th century are known as Buddhist modernism. They are characterized by a rational approach to Buddhist ethics, philosophy, and meditation, and tend to reject or downplay mythic elements.

As a result, forms of Buddhism as presented in contemporary Buddhism rarely pay much attention to myth. Scholarly analyses are rare, and in traditional Buddhist cultures myth has largely been reduced to telling Jātaka stories to children. The idea that Buddhist texts even contain myths is foreign and little understood. Little attempt is found to examine Buddhist myths within the context of modern studies of mythology.

Myth in Buddhist societies

Forms of mythmaking in Buddhist cultures

While the basic mythology of Buddhism is similar in different countries, each country has developed its own distinct forms of cultural expression of myth.

Thai - Vessantara Jataka, Chapter 8 (The Royal Children) - Walters 35246 - A T Front

In Thailand the most popular myth is the Vessantara Jātaka. This is told or performed at large ceremonies such as the “Bun Phawet” in Roi Et, where Upagupta is honoured as well as the Bodhisattva. The Vessantara, ostensibly the final birth of the bodhisattva, extols the virtue of giving. Since “giving” in the story includes giving away wife and children to a cruel master, it has been criticized as authorizing slavery and child abuse. The evil brahmin of the story, who bought the wife and children, is invoked in bawdy money-making ceremonies.

Enduring power of symbols

Buddhist cultures typically preserve relics or places that tie them with the Buddhism of the past, and especially with the historical Buddha. These things are given meaning by telling sacred stories about them.

In Sri Lanka, the most popular sites for pilgrimage are the Bodhi tree at Anuradhapura, and the tooth relic at Kandy. The Bodhi tree myth says that it was a sapling taken from the tree under which the Buddha sat, brought to Sri Lanka by King Ashoka’s daughter, the enlightened bhikkhunī Saṅghamittā. Worship of the tooth relic is ultimately derived from the closing passages of the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta, which tell of the distribution of the Buddha’s physical remains after his cremation.

Politics of myth

Sacred story has a profoundly political dimension. One of the basic functions of myth is to tell how society was formed, and to authorize the usage of power due to heroic deeds or divine blessings. The Aggañña Sutta, for example, tells how kingship came to be established, and many Jātakas give lessons on how a king should rule righteously.

Contemporary myth is used in a similar way. King Bhumipol of Thailand is famous for telling Jātaka stories, which often contain some comment or twist that illustrate current events. In his translation of the Mahājanaka Jātaka, for example, the ending was changed so that the bodhisattva no longer renounced the throne, but remained and educated his people in preserving the environment.

In Sri Lanka, the Mahāvaṁsa, which tells the history of Buddhism on the island, was used to provide a mythic authority for the civil war against the Tamil Tigers. The revered King Duṭṭhagaminī expelled the Tamils invaders and felt remorse for killing, a violation of the most fundamental Buddhist precept. He was reassured by monk, however, that only killing those who had taken refuge in Buddhism could be considered a moral fault.

Revision of myth

As the basic myths of Buddhism are told and retold, they adapt to time and place. In modern times the life of the Buddha has shed more and more of the miraculous overtones and has moved closer to what historians regard as the Buddha’s actual life.

The Paṭhamasambodhi, for example, was composed in the Lanna region of what is now northern Thailand and written in Pali. Multiple different versions exist, the oldest dating to around 1500 CE, and it was translated into different forms throughout South East Asia.

Non-Buddhist myths and their place in Buddhist culture

Myth in Buddhist countries is by no means always Buddhist. For example, the Hindu myth Rāmāyana is popular in South-East Asia. In Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok there is a large sculpture depicting the churning of the milk-ocean by the gods and demons, featuring Viṣnu in the form of a tortoise. Such myths are not regarded as religious in nature, but place Buddhist cultures within the wider sphere of the Indic cultural circle.

Mythology in Contemporary Buddhism

Hagiographies of Buddhist saints

Hagiography is one of the most popular forms of contemporary myth in Buddhist cultures. These come in the form of biographies, sometimes autobiographies, of revered monks or other spiritual practitioners. These stories typically draw on basic elements of the hero’s journey as exemplified in the Buddha’s life: special signs in youth, renunciation, struggle, awakening, teaching, and establishing a legacy. However their form is that of the modern biography, with more or less inclusion of paranormal events.

Such hagiographies are one of the staple forms of literature in the Thai forest tradition. The primary example is the biography of Ajahn Mun Bhuridatta, the founding father, by one of his students, Ajahn Maha Boowa. This biography remains popular today, and has been translated into English. It established many of the standard features of such biographies: accounts of struggles with sexual temptation, meeting with tigers and ghosts in the forest, and exciting tales of psychic or meditative prowess. It is controversial, however, since it depicts events such as meeting with long-dead arahants, a phenomenon that is impossible according to the Theravāda tradition.

In the Chinese tradition, we find the biography of Hsu Yun (Empty Cloud), which similarly relates stories of spiritual and psychic prowess in the very long life of this Chinese Buddhist master.

Likewise, the Tibetan tradition contains many biographies of famous teachers such as the Dalai Lama. A unique mythic feature of this tradition is the story of the identification of the master as a reincarnation of a former master.

Film

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depictions_of_Gautama_Buddha_in_film

The life of the Buddha has been told in several films. Bertolucci's Little Buddha included elements of the Buddha's story as part of a more contemporary tale. Recently the film Siddhattha was made in Sri Lanka, which focussed on the emotional tensions around the decision of the bodhisattva to go forth.

TV

The Saiyūki (西遊記) (lit. "Journey to the West"), also known by its English title Monkey, was a Japanese TV series that told the story of the pilgrimage of Xuan Zang to the India to retrieve the Buddhist sutras.

More recently, a popular series on the life of the Buddha has aired on Indian television.

Comic books

The life of the Buddha was adapted as a manga by Osamu Tezuka. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddha_(manga))

Narrative retellings

Literary retelling of the Buddha's life include Old Path White Clouds by the Vietnamese Zen teacher, Thich Nath Hahn.

Buddhist themes in contemporary myths

Since Buddhism and meditation became a part of popular culture in US in the 1970s, it has become common to see Buddhist themes expressed in contemporary mythmaking.

Star Wars, which was deliberately constructed as a modern myth on the Campbell model, features many Buddhist motifs. These include the Jedis, closely modelled on the Japanese samurai. Jedi meditate, and are asked to “be mindful of their feelings”.

The Matrix features themes of illusion, reality, and freedom that are fundamental to Buddhism.

Incorporation of modern motifs in Buddhist myth

The relation between contemporary myth and Buddhism goes both ways. The murals in Wat Rohn Kung, for example, feature Michael Jackson, Neo from The Matrix, Freddy Kruger, and a T-800 series Terminator, Harry Potter, Superman, and Hello Kitty.

Invented myth as modern propaganda

Certain Buddhist schools use invented mythologies in order to establish their school and its peculiar doctrines. The Thai Dhammakaya movement, for example, tells initiates that the abbot of Dhammakaya, Phra Dhammachayo, is in fact the contemporary incarnation of the primordial Ādibuddha, the cosmic essence of Buddhahood which has existed since the beginning of time.

Technological change and effect on myth

The evolution of myth is intertwined with the history of technology. The ages of human society, for example, are often correlated with Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age, according to the dominant technology of the time. Several Jātakas, notably the Bhūridatta Jātaka, depict the Bodhisattva as an engineer and technological genius. The Chaddanta Jātaka has a very early description of abseiling gear and techniques.

Modern myth continues to incorporate technological themes, both in the form and content of the storytelling. For example, the armies of Māra may be depicted wielding guns. Just as the adoption of writing changed the forms of literary myth, film, TV, audio, and digital media create new possibilities for mythmaking.

Use of Jatakas and life of the Buddha in Buddhist education

While mythology is rarely a subject for teaching adults in modern forms of Buddhism, it is still a staple of education for children and young people. Stories of the Buddha’s life and the Jātakas form a staple of Buddhist Sunday Schools, found throughout South-East Asia. They are retold in simple forms, including as picture books.