Early Indian and Theravada Buddhism: Soteriological Controversy a ...

of those authorities who have advocated Buddhaghosa’s singular, two-tiered progressive path of complementary samatha and vipassanā cultivation (usually scholastically and scripturally oriented village monks)—a powerful and influential movement inspired by forest monks championing a technique of vipassanā alone, known as the “Burmese Bare Insight Method.” In their publications describing this now very popular and widespread method, which inspired, among other things, a lay meditation revival in Theravāda countries, the proponents of this system have also often “reinvented” the earlier history of Buddhist meditation by reading back their technique as the one that has predominated ever since the time of the Buddha.¹⁹ The debate between this “reformist” movement, which has appeared to revive the ideal of the noble person who is “liberated by insight” (paññāvimutta), and “traditionalist” monks who have seemed to support the model of the noble person who is “liberated in both ways” (ubhatobhāgavimutta) is the focus of chapter 6.

With regard to the history of Chan/Zen Buddhism, Fauré concluded that when students of this tradition are able to overcome the “teleological fallacy,” what is revealed is a tradition of plurality, a composite of diverse and often conflicting attitudes that arose at the contact of changing worldviews, practices, and institutional structures.²⁰ In sum, what this book endeavors to reveal is that it has been the same in the case of Theravāda Buddhism, despite what many modern scholars and followers have claimed or accepted.

At this introductory stage, it must be acknowledged that there has been important work done by scholars before me that has gone beyond Buddhaghosa’s model to reveal some of the diversities and tensions explored in this book. In particular, the work of Paul Griffiths (1981 and 1986), Reginald Ray, Tilmann Vetter, Winston King, Johannes Bronkhorst, and Nathan Katz must be noted. Their insights have served as inspirations for this work. I place my scholarship in the context of their previous observations and hope that it significantly builds upon the groundwork they have laid.