Divine Revelation in Pali Buddhism [Paperback]

Peter Masefield (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 187 pages
• Publisher: Sri Lanka Inst of Traditional; 2nd edition edition (July 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9559028022
• ISBN-13: 978-9559028024
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,088,574 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Masefield is just plain wrong!, February 18, 2003

By 

Jayarava (UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Divine Revelation in Pali Buddhism (Paperback)

Masefield's book has many flaws. The most fundamental is that it treats the Pali Suttas as a complete, and entirely accurate account, of the teachings of the Buddha. This is a mistake as the suttas show clear evidence of editorial bias, additions, and possible subtractions. Clearly no text which was recorded only after several hundred years of oral tradition can be said to represent the definitive word of the anybody.

But even if we ignore this flaw and take the Pali Canon on face value, the sheer number of examples which directly contradict Masefield's quoted ones is staggering. (I can supply refs to anyone interested)

The argument that no one gained enlightenment without the direct intervention of the Buddha is clearly wrong - as the very well known cases of Sariputta, Moggallana and Ananda demonstrate. Masefield's basic problem is that he ignores anything which doesn't fit his thesis - and counter examples are by no means hard to find. The book is one-sided in the extreme.

One of the more ironic things Masefiled does to trip himself up is to cite Milarepa as someone who gained enlightenment after accumulating a lot of bad karma - but according to Masefiled Milarepa could not have been enlightened. Although that hardly compares with his redefinition of the word sotapanna to mean "one who has entered the ear" - I'm still laughing about that one.

Masefield characterises Arahants as passive recipients of a goal they could not pass on, but in only an hour or two of hunting around I found records of *hundreds* of examples of Arahants successfully teaching other people how to become Arahants. Masefield is just plain wrong.

Don't be fooled by the volume of quotes, nor by the attitude of absolute certainty of the author. The book is neither comprehensive with regard to the Pali scriptures, nor an accurate representation of the Dhamma.

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Poorly argued, pedantic, deceptively titled, November 2, 2002

By 

Gordon Trunk (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Divine Revelation in Pali Buddhism (Paperback)

In this book, Peter Masefield basically claims to be the first person in the past two millenia to understand correctly the Buddha's teaching; and sets out his arguments to that effect. I found that Masefield, though he presents his arguments intelligently (although rather pedantically), fell well short of establishing them by a preponderance of the evidence. He does make the occasional valid argument (such as that monks can be worldlings and that laypeople can be savakas, which would not be disputed by anyone familiar with Buddhism anyway), but in many cases I had no trouble refuting his arguments from the Nikayas themselves, upon a rather myopic reading of which Masefield bases his claims. No one who is familiar with the scriptures and history of Theravada Buddhism should find much trouble seeing through Masefield's radical reinterpretations of the Nikayas. The book's most patent flaw, however, is the title. The book simply does not deal with "divine revelation" in any meaningful sense, leading one to believe the title was chosen simply to attract attention to the book.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars refreshing and challenging view of Buddhism!, October 29, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Divine Revelation in Pali Buddhism (Paperback)

This groundbreaking work, in part, earned the author a PhD, which is terrifically more than than this review could do for anyone. But, I hope it serves to encourage brave and interested Buddhist readers to read it. Why brave? Because Masefield's analysis, as the title would suggest (though, despite one reviewer's assumption, it was not chosen by the author, who seems to somewhat regret its use), presents a different picture painted by the the Nikayas than we are used to getting from modern Theravadin outlets. If one can bring oneself to follow and agree with Masefield's main argument, then quite possibly their view of Buddhism will be turned upside down (rightside up?).

In this work, Masefield does not treat the Nikayas as the unmitigated Word of the Buddha but "a literary unit"(p.xvii) which presents "a doctrine, which, whilst clearly in transition, nonetheless remains sufficiently unified to distinguish it from ideas"(p.xvii) expressed in such as the Abhidhamma and Visuddhimagga. He qualifies this further: "I do not mean by this that there is no doubt as to the historicity of the Pali Nikayas nor do I wish to imply that these texts provide either the earliest, or the most authentic, account of the historical Buddha; and when I claim that such were the case 'in the Buddha's lifetime' I mean no more than in that mythological lifetime handed down to us in the Pali Nikayas."(p.xvii).

He also admits, in the conventional manner, that the work may have shortcomings, and contradictions which, at times reflect the contradictions which occur in the Nikayan account itself.

For my view, chief among the contradictions and the book's most vulnerable weakness is the contradictory view on the Buddha's attitude toward vanna (varna: color, social function), purity of genetic lineage, and caste. He seems to vacillate between the view that the Buddha largely endorsed notions of racial--or at least vanna-based-- purity in lineage and the view that distinctions of purity were entirely spiritual, based on conduct and wisdom, and had no connection with race, vanna, or genetic lineage. The main text used to support the purity of lineage view is the Ambattha Sutta of the Dighanikaya in which the Buddha censures a brahmin on the account that his lineage is impure (based on the offspring of an indigenous slave girl) while the man claims exclusive purity for brahmins. The Buddha goes on to praise the khattiyas, for they would rather resort to incest than risk impurity of lineage. The Sutta need not be interpreted this way, and Masefields's section "The True Brahmin" suffers from his conclusion (most of the section I can agree with and is excellently discussed). Alternative to his conclusion, one might say that the Buddha is merely exposing a hypocrisy in the brahmin, turning the man's view against him. It is also barely necessary to mention that that the conclusion of the sutta itself contradicts the apparent endorsement of the purity of lineage view: "'In the supreme perfection in wisdom and righteousness, AmbaÂÂha, there is no reference to the question either of birth, or of lineage, or of the pride which says: "You are held as worthy as I," or "You are not. held as worthy as I." It is where the talk is of marrying, or of giving in marriage, that reference is made to such things as that. For whosoever, AmbaÂÂha, are in bondage to the notions of birth or of lineage, or to the pride of social position, or of connection by marriage, they are far from the best wisdom and righteousness. It is only by having got rid of all such bondage that one can realise for himself [100] that supreme perfection in wisdom and in conduct.'" Masefield is given to quote only the first half (the 'praise' of Kshatriya) of the verse: ""The Kshatriya is the best of those among this folk who put their trust in lineage. But he who is perfect in wisdom and righteousness, he is the best among gods and men."

Another contradiction, though slightly smoothed over, is admitted directly: That the main premise of sotapanna* and nibbana being only given by the Buddha (and not his arhat) is contradicted here and there by cases which state or suggest it was given by certain of the arhats. Probably the strongest statements he makes on this issue are that it is "unclear"(p.139) and "if in fact they did do this they were very much the exception and that in general this was not the case."(p.142)

Also admitted is the shifting meanings of the different types of savakas.

Despite these contradictions, Masefield has offered a serious and heavily supported look at the beliefs of the early Buddhists (in using this term I, like Masefield, stress that we do no presume the Nikayas to be the unaltered Word of the Buddha). Highly recommended as an invitation to study the Nikayas in a deeper way which goes beyond browsing through the usual much-quoted material.

*it is important to note that Masefied does _not_ render the term "sotapanna" as "one who has entered the ear" (to say so would be an ill-intended misquotation) but rather "one who has come into contact with (or undergone) the hearing"(p.134) of the "sound of the Deathless" further qualified by such commentarial glosses on "ariyasavaka" as "one who has...attained the Dhamma-ear" (p. 135). These renderings follow from a lengthy argument regarding the symbollism of the stream as craving for sense-objects, and the suggestion that Parato Ghosa does not merely mean listening to another's discourse but a transcendental sound of Dhamma. Masefield's glossary is less fanciful: "Identified with the ekabihin, kolankola and sattakhattuparama but originally perhaps a general term for the converted"