Buddhism: The First Millennium (Soka Gakkai History of Buddhism) [Paperback]

Daisaku Ikeda (Author), Burton Watson (Translator)

Book Description

Series: Soka Gakkai History of Buddhism | Publication Date: June 1, 2009

Beginning with the events immediately following the dark days after the death of Shakyamuni and continuing over a period of 1,000 years, this dynamic tome covers a vast and complex series of events and developments in the history of Buddhism. Through a thorough examination of its early development in India, a new light is cast on little-known aspects of Buddhist history and its relevance to the understanding of Buddhism today. Topics include the formation of the Buddhist canon, the cultural exchange between the East and West, and the spirit of the Lotus Sutra.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Drawing on Japanese scholarship as well as close reading of Buddhist scriptures, Ikeda analyzes how a movement in turmoil after the death of the Buddha began to codify its teachings and split into two streams, the Theravada ("Teaching of the Elders") and the Mahayana ("Great Vehicle"). He acknowledges the speculative nature of this task due to the "fragmentary bits of information" that have survived, but draws conclusions about the complex development of Buddhist thought by examining historical evidence and classic texts like the Vimalakirti Sutra. Ikeda shows how Mahayana philosophy emerged as a reform movement that followers believed was closer than Theravada to the true wisdom of the Buddha. Founder and president of Soka Gakkai International (SGI), a world-wide lay organization based on teachings of Nichiren Buddhism, Ikeda draws attention to Mahayana's emergence as a lay movement and to the importance of the Lotus Sutra. This thoughtful if sectarian introduction to Buddhism's origins describes how a movement interprets its founder's teachings, determines them to be authentic, and attempts to remain true to those ideals. An earlier version of this translation by scholar Burton Watson was published in 1977.
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Language Notes

Text: English, Japanese (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 150 pages
• Publisher: Middleway Press (June 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 097792453X
• ISBN-13: 978-0977924530
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #276,299 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Daisaku Ikeda is the president of the Soka Gakkai International and the founder of the Soka University of America. He is the author of For the Sake of Peace, Unlocking the Mysteries, and The Way of Youth.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The History of Buddhism After Shakyamuni, March 13, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Buddhism, the First Millennium (Hardcover)

The history of the Buddhist religion during the centuries following the death of its founder, Shakyamuni, is as fascinating and important as it is problematic. Little documentary evidence remains, but it was in this period that the religion split into its two major branches, the Maha sanghika and the Theravada, and spread beyond India to Central Asia and China in the north and Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia to the south.

In Buddhism, The First Millennium, the author pieces together the fabric of events from the distant past with insightful conjecture to bring to the surface the basic pattern of how and why Buddhism came to be a major world religion--spreading into Southeast Asia, China, Korea and Japan--helped along by exceptional rulers like the Indian king Ashoka and the Greek philosopher-king Menander and monks and lay believers like Vimalakirti, Nargarjuna and Vasubandu.

The author shows the relevance of the teaching and spirit of the Buddha, not only to Indian society as it was then, but to the world and humankind as they are now.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Buddhism - The First Millenium (2nd in a series of 3), May 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Buddhism, the First Millennium (Hardcover)

This book, "Buddhism - The First Millenium" is the second in a series of 3 books that chronicle the history of Buddhism. Much of the history of Buddhism during its first millenium is unlear. A major effort to formulate the Buddhist canon took place not long after Shakyamuni (Siddhartha Gautama) died, at what is known as the First Council. Subsequently, there arose differences of interpretation and a schism between the monastic community and the lay believers. Nevertheless, Buddhism survived and developed.

It came into contact with the West as early as the period when the latter was under the influence of the Greek states and it also spread to Southeast Asia, China, Korea and Japan. Contributing to this process were certain individuals - exceptional rulers like king Ashoka of India and the Greek philosopher-king Menander. Other include monks like Nagarjuna and Vasubandhu. Daisaku Ikeda pieces together the fabric of events from the distant past with insightful conjecture to bring to the surface the basic pattern of how and why Buddhism came to be a major world religion.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Spreading the early dharma throughout Asia & beyond, June 24, 2009

By 

John L Murphy "Fionnchú" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Buddhism, the First Millennium (Hardcover)

A 1977 overview translated in 1982 (to be reprinted in August 2009), this welcome history summarizes early Buddhist attempts to formulate a canon, institute practices, and solve disputes. Ikeda constantly laments the tendency of monks towards argument, but he reminds us how, unlike most religions or ideologies, debates ensued rather than for those who refused to compromise or submit to authority. For, Buddhism departs from centralized, external rulers by encouraging the seeker to look within to find the same teaching that the historical Buddha insisted can be found that leads to freedom.

A freedom based more on interior realization rather than social revolution has unfairly caused Westerners to stereotype Buddhism as nihilistic, passive, and disengaged from life. While the monastic tendencies early on strove to control the dharma's compilation and interpretation as it passed from oral to written form, their understandable worry about the dilution of the original message did push much of the control over the dharma out of the reach of lay people. Ikeda, as a leader of Soka Gakkai, a Japanese movement determined to bring the dharma into everyday, non-clerical dissemination, seeks the same tolerance and respect within the Buddhists who, in the Mahasamghika and later the Mahayana version, followed their reformist zeal.

The saga reminded me often of how St Francis of Assisi late in his life struggled against those followers who bickered over how the Rule was to be practiced; analogies to the Reformation certainly also will emerge for readers studying the dogmatist vs. revisionist tensions that may have led to schisms, but at least bloodless ones rather than burning alive heretics. This lesson teaches us all!

Ikeda, speaking of Christian parallels, considers suggestive if largely unverifiable ones that show how the spread of Aramaic throughout the Persian empire may have allowed influences to travel from India to Palestine at the time of Jesus. Even if indirectly, common conclusions about lofty wisdom, "doctrinal breadth and depth, and this invariable rejection of class distinctions and narrow racial and national concepts" can "qualify Buddhism and Christianity as world religions." (75) As in the previous volume (also reviewed by me) "The Living Buddha: An Interpretative Biography" in this newly launched (2008-9) series, Ikeda in Burton Watson's efficient translation employs "religion" for the non-theistic philosophy of Buddhism, but this does correspond to common if not technically precise usage among Westerners.

With the stories of King Ashoka, great reformer and disseminator of the dharma to even the West within Alexander's heirs in Hellenistic Asia Minor, Ikeda makes a subtle argument. Those familiar with Soka Gakkai in its Japanese manifestation as not only a social movement but a political party may recognize what's alluded to only here. Ikeda uses Ashoka's example to show how a leader can embody the dharma while still allowing others within a polity to follow freedom of religion; the dharma's universality remains untainted by reform, rather it is perfected as people bring Buddhist ethics into the world beyond the monasteries.

Naganesa's dialogue with the Greek-rooted King Menander of Bactria, in the "Questions of King Milinda," shows the power of dialogue between Eastern wisdom and Western reason as standards by which we judge truth. (A recent comparison: see my review of Jean-Francois Revel & Matthieu Ricard's "The Monk & the Philosopher.") Still, the question of how "transmigration" differs from rebirth or reincarnation deserved more elucidation.

Another interpretative crux, raised in my review of Ikeda's Buddha biography, also enters this sequel. The Therevada version of Buddhism favored monasticism, inward direction, a negative view of what keeps the person from freedom, and a liking for the pattern of earlier Hinduism repeated in the "arhat," the realized-one who as a "voice-hearer" finds enlightenment, if of a lower level. The Mahayana encourage the outward direction, the goal of a bodhisattva that after being freed stays in future incarnations to help others towards "salvation" (another word taken in this translation that may need caution for a Westerner's understanding within Buddhism).

The move from the Therevada's negatively tinged escape from this life's snares into a Mahayana embrace of the possibility of perfection by not individual endurance and renunciation so much as collective advancement may reflect again Ikeda's perspective. The Japanese title, after all's, "My View of Buddhism." Actively overcoming obstacles, bettering society, and enacting suffering as a means to rid one's self of its drawbacks give Ikeda's view energy and impact. Later chapters may flag somewhat by comparison with the historical ones about the dharma's spread, but the sincerity with which Ikeda carefully sifts legend from fact, textual claims from enduring revelation in the Lotus Sutra, do reveal the passion and the clarity of his encounter with the roots of his practice.

The book's appended with a helpful glossary and throughly cross-referenced index. Nearly all of the sources, however, are documented only in Japanese; I'd have loved to be able to read some of these that suggest fascinating research about earlier East-West contacts. In the meantime, those of us lacking Japanese can learn about the often overlooked attempts to widen the message of Shakyamuni's dharma to Asia and even beyond, as gleaned from scraps of chronicles, recovered carvings, and massive heaps of textual compendiums.