Visions of the Buddha- Creative Dimensions of Early Buddhist Scripture

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Visions of the Buddha offers a ground- breaking approach to the early discourses of the Buddha, the most foundational scriptures of Buddhist religion. The early discourses are commonly considered to be attempts to preserve the Buddha's teachings, but Shulman demonstrates that they are full of creativity, and that their main aim is to beautify the image of the wonderous Buddha. While the texts surely care for the early teachings and for the Buddha's philosophy and his guidelines for meditation, and while at times they may possibly relate real historical events, they are no less interested in telling good stories, in re-working folkloric materials, and in the visionary contemplation of the Buddha in order to sense his unique presence. The texts can thus be, at times, a type of meditation.

Eviatar Shulman argues that the early discourses should be acknowledged as literary masterpieces that helped Buddhism achieve the wonderful success it has enjoyed. Much of their masterful storytelling relied on a technique of composition defined here as the play of formulas. The literature of early Buddhism comprised formulas that are repeated again and again within and between texts. Shulman argues that these formulas are the real texts of Buddhism, and are primary to the full discourses. Shaping texts through the play of formulas balances conservative and innovative tendencies within the tradition, making room for creativity within accepted forms and patterns. The texts we find today are thus versions-remnants of a much more vibrant and dynamic creative process.

The main idea raised in this book is quite simple that the early discourses attributed by tradition to the historical Buddha, the texts that purport to reveal his words, ideas, and instructions, are no less a creative act of the Buddhist textual tradition and imagination than an attempt to preserve his words or to relate the historical events of his life. This understanding of the texts is quite different from the one that is common both in popular perception and in scholarly under- standing, in the Buddhist world and in the modern West alike. Even if some of us have learned to be suspicious of our intellectual tendency to take scripture as an immediate and self-evident source of authority, scripture has a special power, and it speaks authority effortlessly; there still, we may admit, lurks in our minds an underlying security-that the texts offer an epistemological foundation, that somewhere in their midst can be found the truth, so that if we clear away the right kinds of debris, we will know what underlies the later accumulation of fantasy.

And indeed, this must be right; so much has been put into the texts, perhaps the very best of human endeavour, of the humane hope for a better reality and a more fulfilling life, so much effort has been invested in the beautification of textual vision, that the texts must tell us something very real about the life of tradition in its earlier stages and about its foundational moments. Texts, in the present case-foundational religious texts-are a very serious business. But are they not playful as well? Are they not moved by a vision or inspiration that explores its own potential no less than it describes clearly defined ideas or portrays its idiosyncratic understanding of historical events? And is this understanding not itself a creative act of the imagination, driven both by lived realities and by an im- pulse to change and retell them, and thereby to find new expression for religious, or plainly human, consciousness? Would one's intuitions and insights about the Buddha not be part of the way one told his or her story?

The texts are about the real; or better-they are about envisioning and founding the real, about a creative, constitutive act that is at the heart of scripture. Yet even this understanding, which posits scripture as a subjective act rather than as an objective reality, rests on a dichotomy between the real and the unreal that we can no longer uphold. If we are to understand religious scripture, we must shake away the remnants of an intellectual heritage that distinguishes between essence and form, between abstract and concrete, between underlying reality and sur- face facts, between the historical or philosophical and the fantastical, between true and false.

This work has matured over a number of years, and there are many people and institutions to whom I am grateful for making it happen. Interestingly, while Jerusalem is obviously the center of the world, it is somehow on the margins of academic travel routes, so that this book emerged very much through conference presentations and lectures. The project began if one can really define such a beginning-when I was invited by Natalie Gummer and the late Luis Gomez to participate in a conference on "The Language of the Sütras" at the Mangalam Institute in Berkeley in the summer of 2015. Inspired by their call, I first gave voice to the intuitions about text I had been cultivating. In the same spring I gave two talks in Germany, which helped me refine my ideas. The first was at the CERES Center at Bochum University, one of the best places I have found to discuss religion, and particularly so with my hosts Carmen Meinert and Volkhard Krech. The second was at the Indology Institute at Leipzig, which was followed by enriching discussions with Eli Franco. Later, I spoke about the key ideas expressed in Chapter 3 in a conference on Buddhaghosa organized by Maria Heim at Amherst in the fall of 2016, and then in a panel on "Buddhist ways of reading in the conference of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, organized, again, by Natalie Gummer and Maria Heim, and yet again at Bochum in a conference on "Self-reflective traditions." The responses I received on all these occasions were very important for me as well. Materials from Chapter 4 were presented in a February 2019 conference of the "Belief Narratives Network" in Guwahati, Assam. There I learned much about the real life of religion at its intersection with folklore, and was greatly enriched by the feedback of participants, and especially that of ÜloValk. A more mature presentation of my ideas was given in Jerusalem in December of the same year in the conference on "The Idea of Text in Buddhism," generously funded by the Khyentse Foundation, where I had the opportunity to share my ideas with some of the great luminaries of Buddhist studies and to feel that my ideas-and especially the more radical theory of the play of formulas-received good resonance. There, the responses from Paul Harrison and Mark Allon were of special value to me. Mark also read and commented on significant parts of the manuscript, as did Petra Kieffer-pülz, to whom I offer my sincere thanks. Charles Hallisey was present in many of these events, and has taught me more about Buddhism, and about text, than anyone else. He has been a wonderful inspiration and support all along, and has had a profound effect on my academic path.