Year: 2003
Type: article
Abstract: his paper is the result of digressions accumulated over the years.JL Some years ago I was reading a collection of some of the early Upanisads that are said to predate the arising of Buddhism.The root Buddhist doctrine is "conditioned co-production" [pratT tyasamutpada].It is the "root" doctrine in the sense that all other doc trines can be said to follow from it.As the Buddha himself is reported as saying, "One who sees conditioned co-production sees the Dharma; one who sees the Dharma sees conditioned co-production."1Basically, pratT tya-samutpada states that all things come to be in dependence upon other things.Nothing has independent, autonomous existence.So too with the teachings of the Buddha: they too must arise in de pendence upon conditions, and part of those conditions must be the religious culture that predated the Buddha.Although there are no di rect references in the early Buddhist texts to the Upanisads, reading through these texts, as well as the Rg Veda, I noticed that there were some seemingly humorous allusions, especially cosmological ones, that showed the Buddhists were not only aware of at least certain aspects of these pre-Buddhist texts, but also that they possessed a satirical as-
Author: Robert Morrison
Institution: Cardiff University
Language: English
Topic: Indian and Buddhist Studies
Subfield: Religious studies
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4386765958