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46 EASTERN HORIZON | FACE TO FACE

The Study and

Practice of

Early Buddhism

By Venerable Ariyadhammika
Ven. Ariyadhammika is an Austrian
Buddhist monk who ordained in 2005 Benny Liow interviewed Bhante Ariyadhammika about Early
in Myanmar with Pa-Auk Sayadaw as Buddhism, its relationship to Theravāda Buddhism, Pāli Nikāyas
his preceptor and meditation teacher. and Chinese Āgamas, whether it’s another school of Buddhism,
He maintained a very simple lifestyle, and its relevance for the modern age.
living out in the open and under trees,
dedicating himself to mindfulness of Benny: How would you define “early Buddhism” – does it
breathing and later also to many other refer to a particular period in history or the teachings of the
meditation subjects. He was initiated 18 early Buddhist schools?
into the meditation techniques of Mogok,
Mahasi, Shwe Oo Min/U Tejaniya and Ariyadhammika: Early Buddhism, sometimes also called “pre-
Sunlun. He went to Thailand in 2010, sectarian Buddhism”, refers to the teachings of Gotama Buddha
where he stayed for 3 years at Wat Pah that were canonized prior to the development of different schools
Nanachat, undergoing the traditional with their different positions. It concerns itself with those
training of a Thai forest monk of the Ajahn teachings that the 18 early Buddhist schools held in common, and
excludes teachings where they differed from one another.
Chah lineage. He stayed in Malaysia from
2013 to 2015, studying Pāli, Suttanta The study of Early Buddhism is a bit like detective work. It’s like
and the Vinaya under the guidance of Sherlock Holmes putting side-by-side texts from the Chinese
Ven. Aggacitta Mahāthera. From 2015 to Āgamas and the Pāli Nikāyas, and comparing them for the sake of
2018 he stayed in Sri Lanka and returned finding commonalities, as well as identifying differences.
to Malaysia in Jan. 2018 where he was Discourses that contain parallels in several versions of a text
appointed Saṅghanāyaka of SBS Monk have a high probability of dating back to a common source –
Training Centre, Taiping, Malaysia.” allegedly the Buddha himself – whereas a text that is found
only in one version but not in others is of uncertain origin. It
may have been added to the canon of one school only after the
division into different schools had already occurred, or it may
have been forgotten by the other schools in the period of its oral
transmission.

While we cannot say for certain that texts which have no parallels
in other schools are of late origin, we can be confident that those
texts that many versions hold in common have a high chance of
originating in a common source: the Buddha.

Main Office (below) and Mediation Hall (above)