This presentation will explore the status of the Buddha as the first fully ordained monk, as it emerges from Vinaya scriptures. In fact, while this issue is not directly addressed in the Vinaya of the Mahāvihāravāsins or in its commentary by Buddhaghosa, a rich array of sources transmitted among other nikāyas understood the founder of the monastic lineage to have performed a specific kind of ordination, referred to as “autonomous” (svāmaṃ, svayambhūtva) or “master-less” (anācāryaka) upasampadā. Such an ordination features prominently in lists of four, eight, or ten types of upasampadā that open several texts related to the Vinayamātṛkā genre, or that are quoted in treatises such as Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣya. These lists may be fruitfully compared in terms of their contents, ordering, and function within their wider scriptural contexts. Indeed, some of these lists appear to have played an important (and, so far, unexplored) role in ordering the narrative materials within Vinaya corpora. Moreover, I will investigate the relationship between definitions of self-ordination, conceptions of Śākyamuni’s bodhisattva career and Awakening, and the Buddha’s status as Svayambhū. I shall conclude by suggesting possible conceptual links between self-ordination as depicted in Vinaya literature and the self-conferral of the bodhisattva precepts as it is described in a wide range of Mahāyāna sources.
- Click here to download the invitation (PDF)
January 28th, 2015 - 16.00h
Universität Hamburg, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1,
ESA-OST, Raum 209
Free Entrance.