|
|
not been fully recognized by those beholden to Buddhaghosa’s model, but it also points to a very marked tension found in certain early texts between the two types of meditation practice—samatha (tranquility) and vipassanā (insight)—which Buddhaghosa (and some other early texts) presented as wholly complementary.
Chapter 3 continues with a discussion of another type of noble person who takes Buddhist soteriology in yet another intriguing direction. This is the saddhāvimutta or “one liberated by faith.” Theravāda Buddhist soteriology has usually (and rightly so, for the most part) been described as one of great self-effort. My treatment of this noble person brings to light the little-explored place of faith in this form of Buddhism by looking at the path of this type of noble person.
Much of the current understanding of the Theravāda soteriological project, which this study hopes to informatively redefine, comes from an image of it that has been constructed over time, both by leading Theravādin thinkers and practitioners who have long been greatly invested in maintaining what they have seen as their school’s unchanging, singular conservancy of a religious way of life and by those scholars who have accepted this position. Another closely related counterpart to this flawed historicism over the past two centuries has been the project (and again, it is one in which both scholars and members have participated) of identifying a purely rationalist, empiricist form of “original” Buddhism. Again, Fauré has made observations about Chan/Zen studies that I see as applying equally, if not in this case more so, to Theravāda studies. He has spoken of how scholars have tried to reinterpret and “clean up” Buddhism by downplaying or dismissing aspects of the tradition that they have deemed as overly ritualistic, superstitious, irrational, or miraculous ones, designed to appeal to the masses. Furthermore, Fauré continued, “In both East and West, the historical Buddha [and the traditions that followed him, I would add] was presented as a humanist of sorts, a rational critic.”18