A History of Buddhist Transformation¶

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Volume III of Studies in Buddhist Thought. The first two volumes ask “What did the different schools say?” and “Were they right?” This volume asks something else: at each turn, who actually took the step, and what moved them to do so?

Origins and Character¶

This series began as an attempt to write a history of Buddhist thought: to see how a teaching devoted to extinguishing the three poisons itself changed under their influence. Once writing began, two unavoidable preliminary tasks emerged. Before discussing these transformations, the doctrines of the different schools had to be explained clearly; hence Volume I, A History of Buddhist Philosophy. Once they had been explained, it became clear that philosophy could reach only part of the problem: the schools' real parting of ways lay in soteriology; hence Volume II, A Critique of Buddhist Soteriology. This volume connects the threads of those two volumes and adds the external forces they did not systematically address: political change, the rise and decline of other religions, exchanges between civilizations, monastic economies, the composition of monastic communities, and wars, disasters, and portents.

Motives leave no archive; judgments of hidden motives cannot be empirically verified, and this volume will not pretend otherwise. This is the least restrained of the three volumes. It contains far more conjecture than the first two, and the scholarly reins are deliberately loosened. Loosening them does not mean dispensing with rules. Here the rules become three: mark every conjecture explicitly as conjecture; for every judgment of hidden motives, give the circumstantial evidence on which it rests and explain how it could be overturned; wherever a straightforward explanation stands alongside one that imputes hidden motives, present the straightforward explanation first.

Organization¶

The starting point is neither dynasties nor schools, but junctures. Each essay treats a major turn or the formation of a tributary: the first split after the Buddha's passing, scholasticization, the rise of Mahāyāna, the formation of an arena of debate, the return of true permanence, the turn toward Esoteric Buddhism, the death of Indian Buddhism, entry into China and translation, reconstruction in China, the surviving forms of Chinese Buddhism, reorganization in Tibet, Japan's revolution of simplification, and modernity's rewriting. The final essay draws these together in an account of the shape of transformation.

The first two volumes already provide the chronology, which will not be repeated here. At every juncture, the same four questions are asked: What changed? What forces drove it? Who benefited? Who bore the cost?

State of Completion¶

This volume is still being written. Progress varies from essay to essay: some are drafted, while others remain outlines. Pages indicate which essays or chapters have yet to be developed.

Relation to the Other Two Volumes¶

Volume I, A History of Buddhist Philosophy, provides the chronology and doctrines; Volume II, A Critique of Buddhist Soteriology, provides the judgments and trajectories. This volume connects the two and adds the dimension of external forces. Each of the three volumes can be read independently.