Akira Hirakawa, "The Life of Buddha: A Reading of the 'Buddha's Praises'" Summary and Comments - Recommended introductory book looking at the life of the superhuman Buddha based on the Chinese translation of his Buddhist biography.
This time I would like to introduce a book titled "Buddha's Life: Reading 'Butsusho Gyosan'" written by Akira Hirakawa, published by Shunju-sha in 1998.
Let's take a quick look at the book.
This is an excellent introductory book to Buddhism that tells the life and teachings of Buddha Shakyamuni Buddha in the style of a story, based on the epic poem by Bamring, India's foremost Buddhist poet. The author's simple and plain narrative, combined with the tasteful pictures by Koukyo Hatanaka, will naturally permeate the reader's heart.
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Previous ArticleThe Complete Translation of the Buddhacharita - The great source of Buddhist biography, also known as the "Praise of the Buddha's Place of Practice" by Ashvaghosha (Ma-Ming)! An epic translation of the life of the Buddha!"In the following section, we introduced the Buddhacharita, a Buddhist epic poem by Ashvaghosa, who was active around the 2nd century.
This "Buddhacharita" was translated into Chinese around A.D. 430 as "Buddhacharita" (仏所行讃) by Cloudy I-Ching. It was introduced to Japan and passed down to Japanese Buddhists. Saicho, Kukai, Honen, and Shinran must have read this Buddhist biography and thought about Buddha.
This book is an introduction to Buddhism in which the life of the Buddha is explained in an easy-to-understand manner while reading a transcript of this Chinese translation of the Buddha's Praises for the Practice of Buddhism.
The author states the following in the preface about the contents of this book and its basic position. We will read it carefully as it makes some very important points.
I am pleased to present to the reading public a book entitled "The Life of Buddha. The word "Buddha," however, is often used to refer to both Amitabha Buddha and Akshobhya Buddha, who are very different from us mere mortals. That is why they are so unapproachable to us. On the other hand, "Shakyamuni Buddha," also known as "human Shakyamuni Buddha," is a human being just like us. The word "Shakyamuni" means "a saint from the Shakyamuni tribe," and is understood to refer to Sushida Taishi, the son of the king of Jōi and the wife of Maya. That is why the understanding that "Shakyamuni Buddha is a human being" is so strong.
However, in the case of "Buddha," it is interpreted that he is a person who has appeared in the world for the sake of the salvation of sentient beings, and that he has only assumed the form of "being born of parents. It is "the Buddha of the body and the Buddha of the incarnation. For this reason, the Buddhist doctrinal standpoint has a different way of understanding and approaching the term "Buddha" than that of "Shakyamuni Buddha.
In other words, the title "The Life of Buddha" is an ideologically indigestible title because it attaches the word "life" to "Buddha," which should be "the life of Shakyamuni Buddha," but in the case of this book, since it has the subtitle "Reading the 'Buddhist Practice Praises,'" I decided to use this as a clue to find a viewpoint that sees "Buddha" and "Shakyamuni Buddha" as one. I decided to use this as a starting point to find a viewpoint from which to view the Buddha and the Buddha as one. In other words, "Butsusho Gyosan" describes the Buddha as a superhuman being, but at the same time, the Buddha is understood to be a human being born from the parents of King Jyohi and Lady Maya. From such a standpoint, the Buddha described in the "Buddhist Practice Praise Book" may seem "superhuman" from the standpoint of modern people. However, people in the past believed that the Buddha actually possessed superhuman divine powers. Therefore, they did not find it strange that Buddha manifested mysterious divine powers. Modern people, however, believe that Buddha is a human being, and therefore understand the story of Buddha's divine powers to be a "myth.
However, we would like to respect the position of Aśvaghoṣa, the author of the "Praise of the Buddhist Center," and read the "Praise of the Buddhist Center" from the same standpoint as Aśvaghoṣa. I believe that this is the most fruitful way to read the "Praise of Buddha's Place of Existence.
Shunju-sha, Akira Hirakawa, "Buddha's Life: Reading 'Butsusho Gyosan'", Pⅰ-ⅲ
The Buddha described in the "Praise of the Buddha's Place of Existence" may seem "superhuman" from the standpoint of a modern person. However, people in the past believed that the Buddha actually possessed superhuman divine powers. Therefore, they did not find it strange that Buddha manifested mysterious divine powers. Modern people, however, would understand the story of Buddha's supernatural powers as a "myth," since they would accept that Buddha was also a human being.
This is a very important issue for Buddha and Buddhism.
Buddhist studies, which began in the West, strongly emphasized a "Human Buddha" from a positivist perspective, rather than a mythologized Buddha. The history of the formation of the "Human Buddha" is explained in detail in the bookThe Discovery of Buddhism in Britain."andA History of Buddhism in New Asia 02 India II: The Formation and Development of Buddhism.will be.
Nakamura Gen's book is a Buddhist biography that strongly emphasizes such a "human Buddha.Gautama Buddha.The first is the "Buddha Biography of the Human Buddha". Although Hajime Nakamura does not generally hold the position of Western Buddhist studies as it is, I believe that this work is representative of Buddhist biographies that depict a "human Buddha" devoid of mythology.
In recent years, there has also been criticism of the idea of a "human Buddha," which is devoid of such myths. That is what Tomomichi NittaThe Abyss of the Mahayana Buddhas."The paper is called.
In Buddhist studies up to now, it has been believed that Buddha was mythologized by later generations, but this paper will clarify that Buddha was regarded as a superhuman being even during his lifetime and soon after his demise. This is a point that is also related to Akira Hirakawa's "Hashigaki" above.
It is a very important point of view that the "superhuman Buddha" in the "Buddha's Praises" was taken for granted by the people of that time, and that the historical concept of the "human Buddha" did not even exist. As Professor Hirakawa points out, it may be difficult for those of us living today to accept the "superhuman Buddha" as it is, but it was accepted as such in the past, and I think this is a very important point when considering what Buddhism is.
Saicho, Kukai, Honen, and Shinran must have all understood Buddha in this way. If we try to interpret them only from a modern perspective, we will probably find some gaps in their understanding.
Well, at any rate, right after reading Ashvaghosha's "Buddhacharita," I read a part of this Chinese translation of "Buddhacharita" through Dr. Hirakawa's work. Naturally, the language used in the Sanskrit version of the Buddhacharita is different from the Chinese translation. Of course, I read the Japanese translation of the Buddhacharita, but it was still very interesting to read it while comparing it with the Chinese translation. Even if the story has the same content, the nuance of the story changes when the words are different. It was a lot of fun to read the story with this in mind. The commentary by Mr. Hirakawa was also very easy to understand, so it was really easy to read.
This is a book I would highly recommend for an introduction to Buddhism. Why not pick up a copy?
The above is "Akira Hirakawa's "The Life of Buddha: Reading the 'Buddha's Place of Practice'" - A recommended introduction to looking at the life of the super-human Buddha based on the Chinese translation of his Buddhist biography.
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