The Fo yi jing 佛醫經 T793, a short text, discusses physical and mental health, presenting its content as the teachings of the Buddha. The Taishō presents the text as translated by Zhu Lüyan 竺律炎 and Zhi Qian 支謙. We survey bibliographic records to propose that this attribution is unreliable. Using computer assisted analysis, we locate passages in the text possibly borrowed from early Chinese sources, among them most notably An Shigao’s 安世高 Jiu heng jing 九橫經 T150A(31). These findings indicate that (...) T793 was probably compiled in China on the basis of various sources. We also find that some basic early Buddhist teachings, such as the four nutriments (āhāra) and rules regarding the eating of meat, are misunderstood or misrepresented in T793. Taking into account some terms and phrases in T793 that occur more frequently in translations in the Western Jin period, we suggest that T793 is likely a compilation made between the late third and early fourth centuries. It is thus probably one of the earliest extant Chinese compositions of this kind. (shrink)

Buddhist scholars in the West broadly agree with the proposition that Buddhism has a philosophical tradition, in many respects comparable to Western ones, while many claim that it also has a practical or empirical dimension that Western philosophies, especially the analytic tradition, lack. There is also a scholarly consensus that an implicit metaphysical system serves as the foundation for the doctrines and practices of early Buddhism as represented in the Pāli suttas. However, Buddhist scholarship to date has not distinguished clearly (...) between philosophical speculations, on the one hand, and on the other, teachings based on experience and practice. This study explores early Buddhist texts’ concept of “domain” (viṣaya/visaya, 境界), which encompasses both an experiential domain and a linguistic framework; i.e., a word is only valid within its own domain, and fails to refer beyond it. As such, it closely resembles Rudolf Carnap’s ideas of “internal” and “external” questions regarding linguistic frameworks, and his suggestion that metaphysical questions, considered as external questions, are meaningless and cannot be answered. More specifically, the Buddha’s refusal to directly answer the “unanswered” questions may indicate that early Buddhism took an attitude similar to Carnap’s rejection of metaphysics. Moreover, textual evidence suggests that teachings such as impermanence and dependent origination, though they may appear to be “metaphysical” to modern readers, are in fact empirical in the context of the early suttas. (shrink)

Presents the life and social ethics of the great Chinese sage.