IB World Religions 2.1.4. Sangha, Dhamma and the Cultivated Path: Bhavana, Sila, Panna, Karuna, Upaya Notes

2.1.4. Sangha, Dhamma and the Cultivated Path: Bhavana, Sila, Panna, Karuna, Upaya

Dhamma as teaching and truth

1. Dhamma (Sanskrit dharma) is the second of the Three Jewels, and it names both the teaching and what the teaching is about. Buddhists use the word in two connected senses at once.
2. In the first sense it means the teaching: what the Buddha is held to have taught, preserved in the Pali Canon for Theravada Buddhists and in a much larger body of sutras for Mahayana Buddhists.
3. In the second sense it means the truth the teaching points at, the way conditioned things actually behave, which Buddhists hold would be so whether or not any Buddha had ever noticed it.
4. A traditional formula holds the two senses together. The dhamma is called svakkhato, well expounded, and ehipassiko, inviting a person to come and see for themselves.
5. The word carries a third, technical use as well. In the Abhidhamma a dhamma is any basic constituent of experience, which is the sense at work in the formula that all things are without self.
6. Buddhists therefore describe taking refuge in something impersonal. The dhamma is presented as neither a divine command nor a covenant, but as a description a practitioner is expected to test.

Sangha, narrow and broad

1. Sangha means community, and it is the third of the Three Jewels in which a Buddhist takes refuge. The word is drawn tightly in one branch and widely in another.
2. In its strict Theravada sense the word means the monastic order: bhikkhus (monks) and bhikkhunis (nuns) who live under the Vinaya, the monastic code.
3. A narrower usage restricts the word further still, to the ariya-sangha, the noble community of those who have reached a stage of awakening, whether ordained or not.
4. Mahayana communities generally draw the word more widely, counting lay practitioners alongside monastics as sangha.
5. The wider word matches a wider practice. Mahayana traditions developed substantial roles for lay teachers, and in Japanese schools such as Jodo Shinshu the clergy marry and live as householders.
6. Vajrayana Buddhism adds a further layer through the lama system, in which a personal teacher holds an authority that Theravada tradition gives to the order as a whole.
7. The difference is not merely verbal. Who counts as sangha settles who teaches, who is materially supported, and where a lay Buddhist directs their loyalty and their giving.

Sila and bhavana

1. Sila and bhavana are the parts of the training a Buddhist works at daily. Sila is ethical conduct, and Buddhists treat it as the ground the rest of the training stands on rather than as a separate department of the religion.
2. For laypeople sila is expressed in the Five Precepts: undertakings to abstain from harming living beings, from taking what is not given, from sexual misconduct, from false speech and from intoxicants.
3. The precepts are worded as training rules a person takes upon themselves rather than as commands issued to them, which suits a tradition that names no commanding god.
4. Bhavana means cultivation or mental development, covering meditation and formal training generally, and the word is literally about causing something to grow.
5. Theravada practice divides it in two. Samatha (calm) steadies the mind, often on the breath, while vipassana (insight) turns that steadied attention onto the three marks of existence.
6. Other branches cultivate differently. Zen practice centres on seated zazen and on koan work, Pure Land Buddhists recite the name of Amitabha, and Vajrayana practitioners work with visualisation, mantra and mandala.
7. Sila and bhavana are held to prop each other up. A mind carrying guilt settles badly, and a settled mind finds restraint much less of a struggle.

Panna and karuna

1. Buddhists train panna and karuna on purpose, and the two are meant to grow together. Panna (Sanskrit prajna) is wisdom, and Buddhists mean by it direct insight into how things are rather than accumulated information about them.
2. Panna is what bhavana is for. A steadied mind is turned onto impermanence and the absence of a permanent self until seeing takes the place of agreement.
3. Karuna is compassion, the wish that beings be free from suffering, and Buddhists cultivate it in formal practice rather than waiting for it to arise on its own.
4. Metta bhavana, the cultivation of loving kindness, extends goodwill outwards in widening circles: to oneself, then a friend, then a stranger, then a difficult person, then all beings without exception.
5. Doctrine ties the two qualities together. If no permanent self separates one being from another, then another's suffering has no clear boundary marking it off from one's own.
6. Mahayana teaching makes the pairing explicit, describing wisdom and compassion as the two wings a bird needs, and Vajrayana art represents their union directly in paired figures.
7. Buddhists hold that either quality alone goes wrong. Wisdom without compassion turns cold, and compassion without wisdom acts on sentiment and ends up doing harm.

Upaya and skill in means

1. Upaya (fully upaya-kausalya: skilfulness, or skill in means) is the principle that a teaching should be shaped to fit the person receiving it. It lets one teaching arrive in whatever form a particular hearer can use.
2. The idea is present from the beginning. The Buddha is shown teaching farmers, kings, brahmins and murderers in quite different words, and the images in the canon shift with the audience.
3. Mahayana thought raises upaya into a formal doctrine, above all in the Lotus Sutra, where earlier teachings are presented as skilful stages leading towards a fuller one.
4. That move does substantial work for Mahayana Buddhists. It explains how scriptures appearing centuries after the historical Buddha can still be received as his word.
5. Upaya is also how Buddhism travelled. Vocabulary, imagery and practice were adapted as the tradition moved into China, Tibet and Japan, and again as it reached Western countries in the twentieth century.
6. Buddhist commentators discuss the obvious risk themselves. A teaching adjusted far enough to suit its audience can stop being the teaching.

The pieces as one arrangement

1. The pieces hold each other up, which is why Buddhists seldom teach them apart. Dhamma, sangha and the cultivated qualities are normally presented as one working arrangement rather than as a list of separate topics.
2. The lay and monastic roles interlock most visibly of all. Lay Buddhists supply food, robes, shelter and money, and the sangha supplies teaching, ritual and a field in which punna (merit) can be made.
3. That arrangement is what keeps the dhamma in existence. Without lay support there is no order to preserve and transmit the texts, and without the order there is nobody trained to teach them.
4. The qualities map onto the Noble Eightfold Path that already organises them, with sila covering conduct, bhavana covering mental training and panna covering understanding.
5. Karuna and upaya then govern what a practitioner does with any of it, which is why Mahayana Buddhists count teaching others as part of the practice rather than as an addition to it.
6. The proportions vary by branch and by country. What Buddhists describe everywhere is the same set of components: a teaching, a community carrying it, and qualities a person cultivates.