The Bodhisattva Path according to The Inquiry of Ugra
After reading Jan Nattier’s deconstruction of the predictions of the extinction of Buddhism in Once Upon A Future Time, I remembered that I had a copy of Nattier’s “A Few Good Men: The Bodhisattva Path according to The Inquiry of Ugra.” In this 2003 book Nattier deconstructs the meaning of the early Mahāyāna. Was it a new doctrinal school, a reformist sect, or simply a “movement”?
She concludes:
A Few Good Men, p195If the Mahāyāna as reflected in the Ugra thus fails to conform to any of the three major categories–a new doctrinal school, a reformist sect, or simply a “movement”–to which it has been assigned in buddhological literature to date, how then was this term used by the Ugra’s authors? Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps–given the volume of ink that has been spilled in an attempt to define the “Mahāyāna” in recent years–the Ugra offers us a very simple and straightforward answer. For the authors of this sūtra, the Mahāyāna is nothing more, and nothing less, than a synonym of the “bodhisattva path.” For the Ugra, in other words, the Mahāyāna is not a school, a sect, or a movement, but a particular spiritual vocation, to be pursued within the existing Buddhist community. To be a “Mahāyānist”–that is, to be a bodhisattva–thus does not mean to adhere to some new kind of “Buddhism,” but simply to practice Buddhism in its most rigorous and demanding form.
This conclusion originally surprised me, but upon reflection I realized that this accords well with the Lotus Sutra, which promises at the conclusion of the first chapter:
The Buddha will remove
Any doubt of those who seek
The teaching of the Three Vehicles.
No question will be left unresolved.
While the Lotus Sutra goes on to declare that there is only One Vehicle, the lesser path of the Bodhisattva vehicle is clearly a part of the Buddha’s provisional teachings. As Nattier notes:
A Few Good Men, p196If the Ugra cannot offer us a glimpse into the very dawn of the bodhisattva enterprise, it nonetheless remains a valuable witness to one of the earliest stages in the development of that path. It portrays a Buddhist community in which the path of the bodhisattva was viewed as an optional vocation suited only for the few; where tensions between bodhisattvas and Śrāvakas were evident, but had not yet led to institutional fission generating a separate Mahāyāna community; and where texts containing instructions for bodhisattva practice were known and transmitted by specialists within the larger monastic saṃgha. It emphatically does not convey a picture of the Mahāyāna as a “greater vehicle” in the sense of a more inclusive option, for the bodhisattva vehicle is portrayed as a supremely difficult enterprise, suited only (to borrow the recruiting slogan of the U.S. Marine Corps) for “a few good men.” And while the Ugra reflects an environment in which lay men were beginning to participate in such practices, there is no evidence that its authors even considered the possibility that women (whether lay or monastic) might do so as well.