Early Sects
The “18” schools of Buddhism that arose in India in the centuries after King Ashoka, and their relationship to the emerging “Mahayana” movements.
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Table of Contents
Articles (10)
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⭐ Recommended
A guided reading of a small section of the Abhidhamma related to how different Indian schools explained time and a hypothesis about how they may have debated the topic amongst themselves.
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it is improbable
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The literature of the Pudgalavādins is almost entirely lost. Pudgalavādin communities eventually were assimilated by others, and we can learn of their position almost exclusively through the writings of their adversaries. Fortunately, we do have, in Chinese translations, four authentic works
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We are thus spared the problem of guessing why all references to the stupa have gone missing from the text of the khandhaka
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different solutions to the Sarvāstivādin / Mūlasarvāstivādin problem: that they were two entirely separate sects, or that one was the source from which the other emerged, or that the two were different groupings within an individual sect, or even that there was only one sect known by two different terms
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texts achieve authority through use
Canonical Works (2)
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A book in the Abhidhamma Canon explicitly dealing with the doctrinal controversies that arose between the Indian schools of Buddhism and the Theravada.
Essays (1)
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while Indians like Mahinda, Buddhaghosa, Dhammapala and Ramachandra Bharati, were able to have a profound influence on Sri Lankan Buddhism, Sri Lankans were able to have equally profound effects on Indian Buddhism
Monographs (3)
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🥇 Best Of The Library
When examined closely, the doctrines of the schools cannot be explained away as simplistic errors or alien infiltrations or deliberate corruptions. It would then follow that more sympathetic and gentle perspectives on the schools are likely to be more objective