The eleventh Majjhima Nikaya Sutta is the Culasihanada Sutta, the shorter lion's roar discourse. This sutra is quite short, but it's quite complicated. The gist of it is that the Buddha declares that the special and unique feature of the Dharma that he teaches is the rejection of all notions of self.
Those who follow this Dharma understand and see how self rises up. The rising up of self is samudaya, which is the second noble truth. When one fully understands the rising up of self, when one understands the danger that exists in the gratification of self, and when one understands the disappearance of self, which is nirodha, the third noble truth, then one is on the path, which is the fourth noble truth.
He says that those who do not understand in this way are vulnerable to greed, hate, and delusion, and are easily lost in papanca. Papanca is the proliferation of speculative views. When one gets carried away in papanca, one dreams up all manner of fanciful ideas that might seem very important at the time, but which actually have no basis in reality.
Now, as background to understanding this sutra, we need to remember that there was in India a strong tradition of debate. The followers of Buddha would meet the followers of other teachers, and debates would occur. Many of the sutras have a secondary, or even as in this case, a primary purpose of equipping the bhikshus to take part in such debates, and not be defeated.
The notion of the lion's roar was the declaring of a position, a thesis, at the beginning of such a debate. It has some parallel with the way that a doctoral degree is examined in a university. One has to present a thesis, and then defend it in an oral debate with scholars of the same subject.
Just so, the teachers of dharma in India were expected to present their dharma, their assertion of what is fundamental, and defend it against those who took a different view. The Buddha was very skilled at this kind of debate, but debates also took place between the disciples of different teachers. So, a teacher not only had to declare his dharma and defend it, but also to train his disciples to be able to declare and defend it.
A vestige of this can be seen in the dharma combat debates that are part of the training of Tibetan monks to this day. Also, in the ceremonies that take place in the Zen tradition in Japan, when a new teacher, or roshi, is to be appointed.
In this Zen ceremony, there is similar debate. Ahead of the ceremony, notices are posted, and teachers from other monasteries are invited. Each teacher brings a disciple. The candidate priest then debates with the other teachers, and the candidate's own disciple debates with the disciples of the other teachers. If either the candidate himself or the disciple is defeated, then he's not appointed.
One result of this tradition of debate was that in the Middle Ages, there developed within Buddhism an extensive literature on logic. The motive for this derived from the need for a reliable criteria by which to judge who actually won a debate. Simple popularity wouldn't do, since what is popular may well still be deluded. So, there was a need for a science concerned with the question of what is and what is not a valid argument or proof. A famous figure in this tradition was Dignaga.
He lived about 480 to 540. Dignaga was an Indian Buddhist scholar. His work broke new ground in the study of deductive logic. He is regarded as the founder of systematic Buddhist logic and epistemology, but the tradition of debate had been established for at least a millennium before his time. Basically, this was about being able to recognize and dismiss what is merely papanca, merely woolly thinking.
This is something for which we should all give some attention. Perhaps we're inclined to think that Buddhists are nice, gentle people who never argue, but the Buddha was evidently a formidable debating opponent, and many of his followers were won over in this way.
His disciples were expected to be clear thinkers. Of course, the situation of debate is also just the sort of place where the self is likely to arise. So, training people to be objective, clear, and logical was also a training in letting go of self.
Thank you very much. Namo Amida Bu.
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