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LECTURE XI - HIERARCHICAL BUDDHISM, ESPECIALLY AS DEVELOPED IN TIRET AND MONGOLIA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 August 2010

Monier Monier-Williams
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

Early Buddhism was, as we have seen, opposed to all ecclesiastical organization. It had no hierarchy in the proper sense of that term—no church, no priests, no true form of prayer, no religious rites, no ceremonial observances. It was simply a Brotherhood consisting of men who had renounced all family ties, all worldly desires—even all desire for life—and were pledged to devote themselves to meditation, recitation of the Law, self-restraint, and the accumulation of merit, not for the sake of saving others, but for their own deliverance.

It was on this account that when the Buddha died he abstained from appointing a successor, and gave no directions to his followers as to any particular form of government. All that he said was, ‘Hold fast to the Law; look not to any one but yourselves as a refuge.’ In short, the Society (Saṅgha) he left behind was a simple brotherhood of monks which claimed some kind of corporate authority for the enforcement of discipline, but had no Head except the Law. Nor did Buddhism for a long time think of contravening the last injunctions of its Founder. Nor has it ever attempted to establish a universal hierarchy under one Head and under one central authority, and although the great Kāṡyapa as president of the first Council (p. 55) is sometimes held to have been the first successor of Buddha, and Ānanda the second (p. 56), these men never claimed any supremacy like that of Popes.

Type
Chapter
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Buddhism
In its Connexion with Brahmanism and Hinduism and in its Contrast with Christianity
, pp. 253 - 302
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010
First published in: 1889

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