• Corpus ID: 235994928

DID THE BUDDHA BELIEVE IN KARMA AND REBIRTH 1

@inproceedings{Bronkhorst2009DIDTB,
  title={DID THE BUDDHA BELIEVE IN KARMA AND REBIRTH 1},
  author={Johannes Bronkhorst},
  year={2009}
}

• J. Bronkhorst
• Published 2009
• History

The title of this lecture may raise some questions. Before we can even try to answer the question whether the Buddha believed in karma and rebirth, we have to address a few other ones. One is whether karma and rebirth necessarily form a couple. We will see that not all scholars have looked upon these elements in this way, and that some have suggested that the Buddha may have believed in only one of these two. An equally important question concerns the issue whether philological research can ever hope to find out anything about the historical Buddha.1 Isn't it safer to say that the early Buddhist texts inform us about the views and beliefs of the, or a, Buddhist community during some period? And if philological analysis allows us to reach further back into the past (supposing it can actually do so), does this not merely lead us back to an earlier phase of the views and beliefs of the, or a, Buddhist community? Is it not, therefore, wiser to speak about early — or even: earliest — Buddhism, and leave the Buddha out of the picture? In earlier publications I was not quite certain about this issue, and had a tendency to speak about early or earliest Buddhism, rather than about the historical Buddha.2 But closer reflection suggests that this attempt to express oneself carefully may really have the opposite effect. The texts on which we base our conclusions — primarily the SËtras — claim to present [2] the teachings of the Buddha.3 They may be right or wrong in this, and probably they are partly right and partly wrong, but they do not even pretend to inform us, except perhaps in passing, about the beliefs and practices of the early Buddhists. Some modern scholars try to reach conclusions about early Buddhism — i.e. about the beliefs and practices of the early Buddhists, not including the Buddha himself — on the basis of other materials, such as early Mahåyåna sources. One example is the public lecture delivered here in Kyoto a few years ago by Paul