Buddhism: A Journey Through History

Read a review of Donald S. Lopez, Jr.’s new book, Buddhism: A Journey Through History, plus an excerpt courtesy of its publisher, Yale University Press.

By Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Constance Kassor

Constance Kassor’s review for Buddhadharma:

Most historical accounts of Buddhism follow a familiar trajectory: tracing the life of Prince Siddhartha to his life as Shakyamuni Buddha, and the subsequent spread of Buddhism from the Indian subcontinent across Asia and into the rest of the world. This narrative has formed the basis of dharma talks, college courses, and popular understandings of Buddhist history.

In Buddhism: A Journey Through History, Donald S. Lopez, Jr. offers a fresh perspective on this traditional narrative. Through 30 concise essays, Lopez reexamines Buddhism’s historical and cultural developments from diverse angles, challenging readers to think beyond the standard storyline. Each essay is between 5000 and 6000 words long, striking an ideal balance that the author describes as “short enough to be read in a single sitting, long enough to provide sustenance for thought.” The essays cover topics as varied as “Canon,” “Food,” “Narrative,” and “Persecution,” and are designed to stand alone, inviting readers to explore in any order that they choose.

The book begins with an extensive introduction, offering a comprehensive overview of Buddhism as a whole, focusing on the historical Buddha, the monastic community, and Buddhist traditions in countries and regions throughout the world. Most essays begin with modern examples from Europe or the United States, grounding the discussion in relatable contexts before tracing the topic’s roots in earlier Buddhist history.

As a seasoned scholar of Buddhism, Lopez brings a depth of knowledge to his writing while keeping the essays accessible and readable. This book appeals to diverse audiences: newcomers seeking an entry point into Buddhist history, as well as more seasoned practitioners and students. Buddhism: A Journey Through History is not just a re-telling; it’s a reimagining


[Please note that the text from which this excerpt derives makes use of footnotes and diacriticals; these are not represented in this excerpt.]

Read an excerpt from the book’s third chapter, “Art,” below.


EXCERPT:

In February 1954, the abbot of a temple in Japan removed a panel from the back of a five-foot, three-inch wooden statue of the Buddha. Named after the temple in Kyoto on whose altar it still stands (usually behind a screen), it is known as the Seiryoji Shaka, or the Seiryoji Sakyamuni. Opening a buddha image is a consequential act, not to be undertaken lightly. Most abbots would not allow such a thing, seeing it as sacrilege. However, the abbot of Seiryōji since 1942, Tsukamoto Zenryū (1898–1980), was a distinguished scholar of Chinese Buddhism who knew the statue’s history. With him stood a team of scholars as well as representatives from the Ministry of Education.

The panel, located between the Buddha’s shoulders and above his waist, was five and a half inches wide and eleven inches long, revealing a compartment that was three inches deep. The compartment was completely filled with what appeared to be all manner of disparate materials, over five hundred individual pieces. There were precious stones, a brass bell, a child’s silver bracelet, rosary beads, and a one-foot wooden pole wrapped in gold foil. They found scrolls of three sutras—a block print of the Diamond Sutra (Vajracchedika) and manuscripts of the Lotus Sutra (Saddharmapundarika) and the Sutra of the Golden Light (Suvarnaprabhasa)—as well as woodblock images of Sakyamuni preaching the Lotus Sutra, and of the bodhisattvas Manjusri, Samantabhadra, and Maitreya. There was a description of the pilgrimage of the Japanese monk Chōnen (938–1026) to China composed by one of his disciples, as well as Chōnen’s birth certificate, wrapped in his umbilical cord. And there was an oath from Chōnen himself—marked with his handprints from his own blood—to build a new monastery when he returned to Japan, an oath that went unfilled.

There were 132 Chinese coins, some pasted to the inner surface of the panel. Perhaps most surprisingly, the compartment contained miniature viscera, internal organs—heart, lungs, liver, stomach, and fifty inches of intestines—each hand sewn in silk, each containing a tiny treasure inside: a bit of incense, a small gem, a piece of paper with a mantra written on it. They found a catalogue of the contents of the compartment, complete with the donors’ names and prayers for auspicious rebirth; the organs had been offered by three Chinese nuns, the silver bracelet by a one-year-old child. However, not all of the items listed were present, and there were items in the cavity that were not on the list. For example, the list said there were four mirrors, when there was only one. The list also said that a tooth of the Buddha had been implanted in the statue’s forehead, causing blood to appear at the top of the statue’s head. Finally, there were some four hundred fragments of a variety of textiles, cut into small squares. And importantly, the catalogue gave a date. The statue had been sealed on the eighteenth day of the eighth month in the year 985, its contents remaining untouched for almost a millennium.

Buddhist art is a massive field, encompassing many cultures, historical periods, media, and styles. Like most of the topics of this book, it can—and in the case of Buddhist art, it has—filled many volumes in many languages. In this chapter, we will try to introduce something of its form, something of its purpose. Rather than attempt a survey, we will explore those themes through a single image, the Seiryoji Buddha. As is the case so often in this book, in order to understand the history, we must begin with the legend.

The Buddha’s mother, Mahamaya, died seven days after his birth. Apart from the early accounts, where no mention of this is made, the famous biographies of the Buddha, composed centuries after his passing, all report this, differing only on the cause of her death. According to some, she died from happiness, overjoyed at having given birth to a future buddha. According to others, she died then because she would have died of a broken heart when her son renounced the world and left the palace twenty-nine years later. According to yet others, she died because no other child can inhabit the womb where a future buddha once dwelled. She was reborn as a god in the Joyous Heaven (Tusita), the same heaven whence her son had descended into her womb. Because of her early demise, she was not able to benefit from her son’s teachings. And so, seven years after his enlightenment, the Buddha decided to teach her the dharma.

Buddhist monks and nuns are prohibited to travel during the monsoon season, observing what is known as the rains retreat, during which they must remain in one location. The Buddha decided to spend the three months of that rains retreat on the summit of Mount Meru, the flat-topped mountain at the center of the Buddhist universe and the site of another, and lower, Buddhist heaven, the Heaven of the Thirty-Three. His mother was invited to meet him there, where he gave daily teachings to her and the assembled gods. He taught them something that he had not taught before, that class of teachings called the abhidharma, the “higher dharma,” which encompasses what is often considered the more philosophical elements of Buddhist doctrine. Sometimes described as metaphysics, it deals with technical questions of the constituents of reality, focusing especially on epistemology and ontology. Yet, the Buddha could not restrict his highest teaching to the heavens; he needed to also dispense it on earth. And although he was the Buddha, he was also a monk who had to beg for his alms. Thus, each day during the three months of the rains retreat, he would fly down to earth before noon, collect his alms, and eat his meal. His disciple Sariputra, renowned as the wisest of the monks, would meet him, and the Buddha would repeat the teachings he had given to the gods before returning to Mount Meru.

At the end of the rains retreat, the Buddha made a dramatic return to earth. The two most famous of the gods—Sakra (Indra), lord of the Heaven of the Thirty-Three, and Brahma, lord of the Brahma realms in the sky above Mount Meru—created a magnificent stairway from heaven. It consisted of three sets of stairs: the one on the right was made of silver; the one in the center was made of seven jewels; and the one on the left was made of gold. Brahma descended the stairs of silver; Sakra descended the stairs of gold; and the Buddha came down the jeweled staircase. Called devavatara in Sanskrit, meaning “descent of the gods,” it is among the most commonly depicted scenes in Buddhist iconography. This divine staircase touched the earth at the city of Samkasya. It then sank into the ground, leaving only seven steps above the surface.

This legend—told and retold, presented and represented across the Buddhist world—serves three important purposes. First, it rights a wrong. The most important of women, the mother of the Buddha, is able to receive the benefit of her son’s buddhahood. We often associate the notion of “filial piety” with Chinese religion. Yet, the devotion of the child to the parent is evident throughout the Buddhist world, from the earliest votary inscriptions of Buddhist monks and nuns to the Tawadeintha (Thirty-Three) festival in modern Burma, where the Buddha’s descent is acted out. Here, the monk playing the Buddha declares that the teachings he gives to his mother are worth less than the milk he received from just one of her breasts.

Second, the story adds the Buddha’s imprimatur, indeed, his authorship, to the abhidharma, the third and last of the “three baskets” (tripitaka) that constitute the Buddhist canon. Early texts refer to the Buddha’s teaching as having only two parts, the dharma and the vinaya, the doctrine and the discipline, causing scholars to speculate that the abhidharma developed long after the Buddha’s death; the traditional attribution to Sariputra is the way that the tradition tacitly acknowledged this (despite the fact that, according to the tradition, he died before the Buddha). The story of the Buddha’s heavenly sojourn explains that the Buddha did, in fact, teach the abhidharma; he just did not teach it publicly, conveying it in private lunchtime lectures to Sariputra over the course of three months.

Third, and finally, the story creates a new place of pilgrimage, with the city of Samkasya becoming one of the “eight great sites” associated with the Buddha. Samkasya is, in fact, far to the west of the region where the Buddha likely lived and died. As his teachings spread westward after his death, this legend brought him there. The story of the Buddha’s sojourn atop Mount Meru would come to serve a fourth purpose, one in many ways more consequential than the other three. To understand its importance, however, we must leave the legend for a moment and turn to art history.


Excerpted from Buddhism: A Journey Through History by Donald S. Lopez, Jr. Copyright © 2024 Donald Lopez. Run with permission from Yale University Press. All rights reserved.

Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Donald S. Lopez, Jr. is the Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan. His books include The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (with Robert E. Buswell, Jr.), The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Biography, and The Lotus Sutra: A Biography. He lives in Ann Abor, Michigan.
Constance Kassor

Constance Kassor

Constance Kassor Ph.D. is an assistant professor of Religious Studies at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, where she teaches courses on Buddhist thought and Asian religious traditions, with a special interest in how Buddhism relates to questions of social justice and gender. She is the creator and voice of Religious Lessons from Asia to the World, a ten-part program on Audible. For more information visit constancekassor.net