HERMENEUTICS

The term hermeneutics derives from the Greek god Hermes, the messenger of the gods, whose task was to communicate between gods and humans. Since both sides had different languages and worldviews, it was necessary to interpret a god's wishes in ways that humans could comprehend. In addition, Hermes had to under-stand the god's intentions and how to translate them.

In its earliest uses in Western thought, hermeneutics was mainly associated with biblical exegesis, and specifically with the rules and standards that should guide interpretation of scripture. During the twentieth century, its scope was considerably widened, and it is now generally seen as a fundamental aspect of all the humanities and social sciences. It should be noted, however, that the term hermeneutics is not generally conceived as applying to all interpretation, but rather to the rules and methods that guide it.

In the Indian Buddhist context, hermeneutical literature is mainly concerned with identifying the intention (abhipr?ya) behind scriptural statements, particularly those that are viewed as being in conflict with other statements. The Buddhist case presents special difficulties for interpretation because of the vastness of Buddhist scriptural literatures and the plethora of conflicting doctrines and practices. According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha traveled from place to place teaching those who came to him with questions. He is compared to a skilled physician who provides different medicines specific to particular illnesses. The Buddha taught each person or group what would be most helpful soteriologically; he was not principally concerned with creating an internally consistent doctrinal system. Thus, after his death, his followers were left with a corpus of texts that all claimed canonical status, but that contained often contradictory teachings.

From an early period, Indian Buddhist exegetes strove to differentiate those statements that were of "provisional meaning" (ney?rtha) from those of "definitive meaning" (n?t?rtha). The former were expedient teachings given to a particular person or group, but they do not represent the Buddha's final thought, while the latter reflect the (often hidden) intention behind his teaching.

Buddhist hermeneutics became even more difficult around the first century c.e. when large numbers of new texts began to appear that purported to have been spoken by the Buddha when he was alive, but that often differed in style, content, and doctrine from the texts contained in earlier canons. These were the s?tras of the Mah?y?na school, which claimed to supersede earlier teachings, most of which were said to be of merely provisional meaning. Within this new literature, however, there were even more conflicting doctrines. Many texts contained statements attributed to the Buddha that claimed that a particular teaching should be viewed as his final thought, but these statements were sometimes contradicted by other s?tras.

Buddhist exegetes generally responded to this situation by privileging certain texts and basing their interpretive schemas on them. Some of the new Mah?y?na texts provided specific guidelines for interpretation. The Sa?dhinirmocana-s?tra (Tibetan, Dgongs pa nges par 'grel pa'i mdo; S?tra on Unfurling the Real Meaning), for example, states that Buddha's teachings may be divided into three "wheels of doctrine" (dharmacakra). The first two wheels— comprising certain H?nay?na doctrines and teachings relating to ??nyat? (emptiness) in Perfection of Wisdom s?tras—are said to be of provisional meaning, while the third (the teachings of the Sa?dhinirmocana) is said to be definitive.

In some Mah?y?na s?tras, an alternative strategy is proposed: The level of a particular text is determined by subject matter. The most advanced s?tras are those that directly discuss emptiness, a doctrine only taught to the most advanced disciples. Thus, if a s?tra examines emptiness as its main object of discourse, it should be viewed as representing Buddha's definitive intention.

Tibetan exegetes generally based their interpretive schemas on Indian precedents. Several, for example, used the "three wheels of doctrine" model as a basis for differentiating interpretable from definitive scriptures. In his Legs bshad snying po (Essence of Good Explanations), Tsong kha pa (1357–1419) divided his presentation into two sections, one based on the Sa?dhinirmocana-s?tra, the main scriptural source for the Yog?c?ra school, and the other on the Ak?ayamatinirde?a-s?tra (Tibetan, Blo gros mi zadpas bstan pa'i mdo; Chinese, Achamo pusa jing; Discourse Taught by Ak?ayamati), which he considered to be definitive for Madhyamaka school hermeneutics. Other Tibetan exegetes altered the three wheels schema, and claimed that the first wheel was comprised of H?nay?na teachings, the second of Mah?y?na teachings, and the third and definitive wheel was declared to be the tantric teachings of Vajray?na.

East Asian exegetes faced all the same problems as their counterparts in India and Tibet, but they also encountered difficulties related to the haphazard nature of textual transmission to the region. Unlike the relatively ordered transmission of texts to Tibet, Buddhist literature came to China via numerous different routes, and there was little coordination in these efforts. Sometimes a commentary would arrive in China before the root text, and the Chinese were faced with an enormous imported literature containing various competing and incompatible claims to authority. Several Chinese Buddhist exegetes developed classification schemes (panjiao), which were generally based on a particular text (or a related group of texts) and which ranked scriptures hierarchically. One of the most important of these was the Tiantai schema, which was based on the Lotus S?tra (Saddharmapu??ar?ka-s?tra; Chinese, Miaofa lianhua jing) and divided the Buddha's teaching career into five periods and eight teachings (wushi bajiao). Fazang (643–712) and the Huayan school had an alternative five-teaching schema, which culminated in the Perfect Teaching (yuanjiao) of the Huayan jing (Sanskrit, Avata?saka-s?tra; Flower Garland S?tra).

In Japan, the Kamakura period (1185–1333) saw the development of indigenous Buddhist schools, and most of these also developed their own classification systems. Nichiren (1222–1282), for example, used the Lotus S?tra as the basis for his teachings, and the Zen, Esoteric, and Pure Land schools also developed ranking systems in which their own doctrines and scriptures were placed at the top of the doctrinal hierarchy, while others were relegated to inferior positions.

Most traditional Buddhist exegetes have been involved in what the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) dismissed as the "Romantic endeavor," that is, attempting to discern the intention of the purported author of their scriptures (i.e., the Buddha). Underlying their efforts was a shared conviction that the experience of buddhahood is available to all and that as one approaches it, one's mind more and more closely approximates that of the Buddha. Thus it is assumed that competent exegetes are able to re-create the true intentions underlying apparently contradictory scriptural statements and arrive at interpretations that accurately reflect the Buddha's ultimate intent, which is assumed by traditional Buddhists to be free from contradiction.

See also:Commentarial Literature; Scripture

Bibliography

Broido, Michael M. "Some Tibetan Methods of Explaining the Tantras." In Contributions on Tibetan Language, History and Culture: Proceedings of the 1981 Csoma de Körös Symposium, ed. Ernst Steinkellner and H. Tauscher. Vienna: Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie zur Buddhismuskunde, 1983.

Chegwan. T'ien-t'ai Buddhism: An Outline of the Fourfold Teachings, tr. Buddhist Translation Seminar of Hawaii, ed. David W. Chappell. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983.

Gregory, Peter N. Tsung-mi and the Sinification of Buddhism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.

Lopez, Donald S., Jr., ed. Buddhist Hermeneutics. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988.

Powers, John. Hermeneutics and Tradition in the Sa?dhinirmocana-s?tra. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1993.

Ruegg, David S. "Purport, Implicature, and Presupposition: Sanskrit Abhipr?ya and Tibetan dGon?s pa/dGon?s gz'i as Hermeneutical Concepts." Journal of Indian Philosophy 13 (1985): 309–325.

John Powers