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67-540: The Buddha referred to himself as the Tathāgata , which can mean either "One who has thus come" or "One who has thus gone", and can also be interpreted as "One who has arrived at suchness". In Theravada , this term designates the nature of existence ( bhāva ), the truth which applies to things. According to the Kathavatthu , tathātā is not an unconditioned or un-constructed ( asankhata ) phenomenon. The only phenomenon which

134-614: A bhaddakappa ("bhadrakalpa", fortunate aeon). In some Sanskrit and northern Buddhist traditions, however, a bhadrakalpa has up to 1,000 Buddhas, with the Buddhas Gautama and Maitreya also being the fourth and fifth Buddhas of the kalpa , respectively. Buddhaghosa Buddhaghosa was a 5th-century Indian Theravada Buddhist commentator, translator and philosopher . He worked in the Great Monastery ( Mahāvihāra ) at Anurādhapura , Sri Lanka and saw himself as being part of

201-611: A Buddhist monk named Revata was Buddhaghosa bested in debate, first being defeated in a dispute over the meaning of a Vedic doctrine and then being confounded by the presentation of a teaching from the Abhidhamma . Impressed, Buddhaghosa became a bhikkhu (Buddhist monk) and undertook the study of the Tipiṭaka and its commentaries. On finding a text for which the commentary had been lost in India, Buddhaghosa determined to travel to Sri Lanka to study

268-558: A Sinhala commentary that was believed to have been preserved. In Sri Lanka, Buddhaghosa began to study what was apparently a very large volume of Sinhala commentarial texts that had been assembled and preserved by the monks of the Anuradhapura Maha Viharaya . Buddhaghosa sought permission to synthesize the assembled Sinhala-language commentaries into a comprehensive single commentary composed in Pali . Traditional accounts hold that

335-559: A legal case. It also explains the eventual loss of the Sinhala originals that Buddhaghosa worked from in creating his Pali commentaries by claiming that Buddhaghosa collected and burnt the original manuscripts once his work was completed. Buddhaghosa was reputedly responsible for an extensive project of synthesizing and translating a large body of ancient Sinhala commentaries on the Pāli Canon . His Visuddhimagga (Pāli: Path of Purification)

402-567: A mind resting simply in its own being. It is eternal, blissful, its own self-being and the purest simplicity; it is invigorating, immutable, free... Because it possesses all these attributes and is deprived of nothing, it is designated both as the Womb of Tathagata and the Dharma Body of Tathagata. R. H. Robinson, echoing D. T. Suzuki , conveys how the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra perceives dharmata through

469-445: A monk has a latent tendency, by that is he reckoned, what he does not have a latent tendency for, by that is he not reckoned. These tendencies are ways in which the mind becomes involved in and clings to conditioned phenomena . Without them, an enlightened person cannot be "reckoned" or "named"; he or she is beyond the range of other beings, and cannot be "found" by them, even by gods, or Mara . In one passage, Sariputta states that

536-759: Is "characterized by relentless accuracy, consistency, and fluency of erudition, and much dominated by formalism." According to Richard Shankman, the Visuddhimagga is "meticulous and specific," in contrast to the Pali suttas, which "can be vague at times, without a lot of explanatory detail and open to various interpretations." According to Maria Heim, Buddhaghosa is explicitly clear and systematic regarding his hermeneutical principles and exegetical strategies in his commentaries. He writes and theorizes on texts, genre , registers of discourse, reader response , Buddhist knowledge and pedagogy . Buddhaghosa considers each Pitaka of

603-559: Is Tathātā. Tath%C4%81gata Tathāgata ( Sanskrit: [tɐˈtʰaːɡɐtɐ] ) is a Pali and Sanskrit word; Gautama Buddha uses it when referring to himself or other Buddhas in the Pāli Canon . Likewise, in the Mahayana corpus, it is an epithet of Shakyamuni Buddha and the other celestial buddhas . The term is often thought to mean either "one who has thus gone" ( tathā-gata ), "one who has thus come" ( tathā-āgata ), or sometimes "one who has thus not gone" ( tathā-agata ). This

670-399: Is a comprehensive manual of Theravada Buddhism that is still read and studied today. Maria Heim notes that, while Buddhaghosa worked by using older Sinhala commentarial tradition, he is also "the crafter of a new version of it that rendered the original version obsolete, for his work supplanted the Sinhala versions that are now lost to us". Ñāṇamoli Bhikkhu writes that Buddhaghosa's work

737-508: Is a listing of the fourteen commentaries ( Aṭṭhakathā ) on the Pāli Canon traditionally ascribed to Buddhaghosa While traditional accounts list Buddhaghosa as the author of all of these works, some scholars hold that only the Visuddhimagga and the commentaries on the first four Nikayas as Buddhaghosa's work. Meanwhile, Maria Heim holds that Buddhaghosa is the author of the commentaries on

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804-610: Is a phenomenon of attention is one he develops with greater sophistication than has been done elsewhere. Ganeri sees Buddhaghosa's work as being free from a mediational picture of the mind and also free of the Myth of the Given , two views he sees as having been introduced by the Indian philosopher Dignāga . The Visuddhimagga ' s doctrine reflects Theravada Abhidhamma scholasticism, which includes several innovations and interpretations not found in

871-550: Is assumed to be generally accurate. While the Mahavamsa claims that Buddhaghosa was born in northern India near Bodh Gaya, the epilogues to his commentaries make reference to only one location in India as being a place of at least temporary residence: Kanci in southern India. Some scholars thus conclude (among them Oskar von Hinüber and Polwatte Buddhadatta Thera ) that Buddhaghosa was actually born in Amaravati , Andhra Pradesh and

938-535: Is interpreted as signifying that the Tathāgata is beyond all coming and going – beyond all transitory phenomena . There are, however, other interpretations and the precise original meaning of the word is not certain. The Buddha is quoted on numerous occasions in the Pali Canon as referring to himself as the Tathāgata instead of using the pronouns me , I or myself . This may be meant to emphasize by implication that

1005-511: Is not the same as what the Visuddhimagga says [...] they are actually different," leading to a divergence between a [traditional] scholarly understanding and a practical understanding based on meditative experience. Gunaratana further notes that Buddhaghosa invented several key meditation terms which are not to be found in the suttas, such as " parikamma samadhi (preparatory concentration), upacara samadhi (access concentration), appanasamadhi (absorption concentration)." Gunaratana also notes that

1072-408: Is the natural absence of intrinsic/inherent existence or nature. It is a natural absence, because intrinsic existence (or the equivalent synonyms) is a fiction, or a non-existent: Intrinsic existence is the faulty object of an ignorant consciousness. All fictions, being fictions, are naturally absent. So, because of this, the fiction of inherent existence is absent from all phenomena, and that absence

1139-615: Is the past passive participle of the verbal root gam ("go, travel"). Āgata ("come") is the past passive participle of the verb meaning "come, arrive". In this interpretation, Tathāgata means literally either "the one who has gone to suchness" or "the one who has arrived at suchness". Another interpretation, proposed by the scholar Richard Gombrich, is based on the fact that, when used as a suffix in compounds, -gata will often lose its literal meaning and signifies instead "being". Tathāgata would thus mean "one like that", with no motion in either direction. According to Fyodor Shcherbatskoy ,

1206-522: Is un- constructed in Theravada is Nibbana . According to Buddhadasa Bhikkhu , tathātā is merely the way things are, the truth of all things: "When tathātā is seen, the three characteristics of anicca [impermanence], dukkha [suffering], and anatta [not-self] are seen, sunnata [emptiness] is seen, and idappaccayata [specific conditionality] is seen. Tathātā is the summary of them all – merely thus, only thus, not-otherness." Tathatā in

1273-480: Is unlikely that the meditative tradition could have survived in such a healthy way, if at all, without his detailed lists and exhaustive guidance." Yet, according to Buswell, by the 10th century vipassana was no longer practiced in the Theravada tradition, due to the belief that Buddhism had degenerated, and that liberation was no longer attainable until the coming of Maitreya . It was re-introduced in Myanmar (Burma) in

1340-462: Is with the immediate and transformative impact of the Buddha's words on his audiences, as attested in the suttas Regarding his systematic thought, Maria Heim and Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad see Buddhaghosa's use of Abhidhamma as part of a phenomenological "contemplative structuring" which is expressed in his writings on Buddhist praxis. They argue that "Buddhaghosa’s use of nāma-rūpa should be seen as

1407-531: The Mahavamsa a composition of the second part(often called Culavamsa) of that historical poem is attributed to Dhammakitti, who lived in or about the thirteenth century records that Buddhaghosa was born into a Brahmin family in the kingdom of Magadha . He is said to have been born near Bodh Gaya , and to have been a master of the Vedas , traveling through India engaging in philosophical debates. Only upon encountering

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1474-679: The Tattvasaṃgraha Tantra there are only four Buddha families, the full Diamond Realm mandala with five Buddhas first appears in the Vajrasekhara Sutra . The Vajrasekhara also mentions a sixth Buddha, Vajradhara , "a Buddha (or principle) seen as the source, in some sense, of the five Buddhas." The Five Buddhas are aspects of the dharmakaya "dharma-body", which embodies the principle of enlightenment in Buddhism . When these Buddhas are represented in mandalas, they may not always have

1541-432: The skandhas (personality factors) that render citta (the mind) a bounded, measurable entity, and is instead "freed from being reckoned by" all or any of them, even in life. The aggregates of form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and cognizance that compose personal identity have been seen to be dukkha (a burden), and an enlightened individual is one with "burden dropped". The Buddha explains "that for which

1608-462: The Buddhavaṃsa , twenty-one more Buddhas were added to the list of seven names in the early texts. Theravada tradition maintains that there can be up to five Buddhas in a kappa or world age and that the current kappa has had four Buddhas, with the current Buddha, Gotama, being the fourth and the future Buddha Metteyya being the fifth and final Buddha of the kappa . This would make the current aeon

1675-456: The Mahayana ) were emerging, many of them making use of classical Sanskrit both as a scriptural language and as a language of philosophical discourse. The monks of the Mahavihara may have attempted to counter the growth of such schools by re-emphasizing the study and composition in Pali, along with the study of previously disused secondary sources that may have vanished in India, as evidenced by

1742-586: The Sumangalavilasini : Monks, in the world with its devas, Mara and Brahma, in this generation with its ascetics and brahmins, devas and humans, whatever is seen, heard, sensed and cognized, attained, searched into, pondered over by the mind—all that is fully understood by the Tathagata. That is why he is called the Tathagata. ( Anguttara Nikaya 4:23) Modern scholarly opinion generally opines that Sanskrit grammar offers at least two possibilities for breaking up

1809-406: The Tipiṭaka and match in every respect, the monks acceded to his request and provided Buddhaghosa with the full body of their commentaries. Buddhaghosa went on to write commentaries on most of the other major books of the Pali Canon, with his works becoming the definitive Theravadin interpretation of the scriptures. Having synthesized or translated the whole of the Sinhala commentary preserved at

1876-601: The Vibhajjavāda school and in the lineage of the Sinhalese Mahāvihāra. His best-known work is the Visuddhimagga ("Path of Purification"), a comprehensive summary of older Sinhala commentaries on Theravada teachings and practices. According to Sarah Shaw, in Theravada this systematic work is "the principal text on the subject of meditation ." The interpretations provided by Buddhaghosa have generally constituted

1943-421: The dhamma to be "well-spoken [...] visible here and now, timeless," visible meaning that the fruits of the path can be seen in the behavior of the noble ones, and that comprehending the dhamma is a transformative way of seeing, which has immediate impact. According to Heim, this idea of the transformative and immediate impact of the scriptures is "vital to Buddhaghosa's interpretative practice," concerned as he

2010-809: The 13th century; and a later biographical work called the Buddhaghosuppatti . A few other sources discuss the life of Buddhaghosa, but do not appear to add any reliable material. The biographical excerpts attached to works attributed to Buddhaghosa reveal relatively few details of his life, but were presumably added at the time of his actual composition. Largely identical in form, these short excerpts describe Buddhaghosa as having come to Sri Lanka from India and settled in Anuradhapura . Besides this information, they provide only short lists of teachers, supporters, and associates of Buddhaghosa, whose names are not generally to be found elsewhere for comparison. In

2077-599: The 18th century by Medawi (1728–1816), leading to the rise of the Vipassana movement in the 20th century, re-inventing vipassana -meditation and developing simplified meditation techniques, based on the Satipatthana sutta , the Visuddhimagga , and other previous texts, emphasizing satipatthana and bare insight. The Mahavamsa ascribes a great many books to Buddhaghosa, some of which are believed not to have been his work, but composed later and attributed to him. Below

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2144-489: The Aggi-Vacchagotta Sutta itself, it is clear that the Buddha is the subject of the metaphor, and the Buddha has already "uprooted" or "annihilated" the five aggregates. In Sn 1074, it is stated that the sage cannot be "reckoned" because he is freed from the category "name" or, more generally, concepts. The absence of this precludes the possibility of reckoning or articulating a state of affairs; "name" here refers to

2211-538: The Anuradhapura Maha Viharaya, Buddhaghosa reportedly returned to India, making a pilgrimage to Bodh Gaya to pay his respects to the Bodhi Tree . The details of the Mahavamsa account cannot readily be verified; while it is generally regarded by Western scholars as having been embellished with legendary events (such as the hiding of Buddhaghosa's text by the gods), in the absence of contradictory evidence it

2278-462: The Buddha asks him in which direction a fire goes when it has gone out. Vaccha replies that the question "does not fit the case ... For the fire that depended on fuel ... when that fuel has all gone, and it can get no other, being thus without nutriment, it is said to be extinct." The Buddha then explains: "In exactly the same way ..., all form by which one could predicate the existence of the saint, all that form has been abandoned, uprooted, pulled out of

2345-600: The Buddhaghosa's emphasis on kasina -meditation is not to be found in the suttas, where dhyana is always combined with mindfulness. Bhikkhu Sujato has argued that certain views regarding Buddhist meditation expounded in the Visuddhimagga are a "distortion of the Suttas" since it denies the necessity of jhana . The Australian monk Shravasti Dhammika is also critical of contemporary practice based on this work. He concludes that Buddhaghosa did not believe that following

2412-520: The Buddhist canon a kind of method ( naya ) that requires different skills to interpret. One of his most important ideas about exegesis of the buddha's words ( buddhavacana ) is that these words are immeasurable, that is to say, there are innumerable ways and modes to teach and explain the Dhamma and likewise there are innumerable ways in which to receive these teachings. According to Heim, Buddhaghosa considered

2479-526: The East Asian Mahayana tradition is seen as representing the base reality and can be used to terminate the use of words. A 5th-century Chinese Mahayana scripture entitled Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana describes the concept more fully: In its very origin suchness is of itself endowed with sublime attributes. It manifests the highest wisdom which shines throughout the world, it has true knowledge and

2546-694: The Five Great Buddhas, and the Five Jinas ( Sanskrit for "conqueror" or "victor"), are emanations and representations of the five qualities of the Adi-Buddha or "first Buddha" Vairocana or Vajradhara , which is associated with the Dharmakāya . The Five Wisdom Buddhas are a development of the Buddhist Tantras, and later became associated with the trikaya or "three body" theory of Buddhahood . While in

2613-586: The Mahavamsa. Early indications of this resurgence in the use of Pali as a literary language may be visible in the composition of the Dipavamsa and the Vimuttimagga , both dating to shortly before Buddhaghosa's arrival in Sri Lanka. The addition of Buddhaghosa's works — which combined the pedigree of the oldest Sinhala commentaries with the use of Pali, a language shared by all of the Theravada learning centers of

2680-747: The Mon records refer to another figure, but whose name and personal history are much in the mold of the Indian Buddhaghosa. Finally, Buddhaghosa's works likely played a significant role in the revival and preservation of the Pali language as the scriptural language of the Theravada, and as a lingua franca in the exchange of ideas, texts, and scholars between Sri Lanka and the Theravada countries of mainland Southeast Asia. The development of new analyses of Theravada doctrine, both in Pali and Sinhala, seems to have dried up prior to Buddhaghosa's emergence in Sri Lanka. In India, new schools of Buddhist philosophy (such as

2747-567: The Theravada following the reunification of the Sri Lankan (Sinhala) monastic community by King Parakramabahu I . Sariputta incorporated many of the works of Buddhaghosa into his own interpretations. In subsequent years, many monks from Theravada traditions in Southeast Asia sought ordination or re-ordination in Sri Lanka because of the reputation of the Sri Lankan (Sinhala) Mahavihara lineage for doctrinal purity and scholarship. The result

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2814-408: The analytic by which he understands how experience is undergone, and not his account of how some reality is structured." Some scholars have argued that Buddhaghosa's writing evinces a strong but unacknowledged Yogācāra Buddhist influence, which subsequently came to characterize Theravada thought in the wake of his profound influence on the Theravada tradition. According to Kalupahana , Buddhaghosa

2881-486: The arahant, both before and after parinirvana , lies beyond the domain where the descriptive powers of ordinary language are at home; that is, the world of the skandhas and the greed, hatred, and delusion that are "blown out" with nirvana. In the Aggi-Vacchagotta Sutta , an ascetic named Vaccha questions the Buddha on a variety of metaphysical issues. When Vaccha asks about the status of a tathagata after death,

2948-534: The compound word: either tathā and āgata (via a sandhi rule ā + ā → ā), or tathā and gata. Tathā means "thus" in Sanskrit and Pali, and Buddhist thought takes this to refer to what is called "reality as-it-is" ( yathābhūta ). This reality is also referred to as "thusness" or "suchness" ( tathatā ), indicating simply that it (reality) is what it is. Tathāgata is defined as someone who "knows and sees reality as-it-is" ( yathā bhūta ñāna dassana ). Gata ("gone")

3015-487: The concepts or apperceptions that make propositions possible. Nagarjuna expressed this understanding in the nirvana chapter of his Mulamadhyamakakarika : "It is not assumed that the Blessed One exists after death. Neither is it assumed that he does not exist, or both, or neither. It is not assumed that even a living Blessed One exists. Neither is it assumed that he does not exist, or both, or neither." Speaking within

3082-600: The context of Mahayana Buddhism (specifically the Perfection of Wisdom sutras), Edward Conze writes that the term 'tathagata' denotes inherent true selfhood within the human being: Just as tathata designates true reality in general, so the word which developed into "Tathagata" designated the true self, the true reality within man. In Vajrayana Buddhism, the Five Tathāgatas ( pañcatathāgata ) or Five Wisdom Tathāgatas ( Chinese : 五智如来 ; pinyin : Wǔzhì Rúlái ),

3149-593: The current kappa (kalpa) and three are from past ones. One sutta called Cakkavatti-Sīhanāda Sutta from an early Buddhist text called the Dĩgha Nikãya also mentions that following the Seven Buddhas of Antiquity, a Buddha named Metteyya (Maitreya) is predicted to arise in the world. However, according to a text in the Theravada Buddhist tradition from a later strata (between the 1st and 2nd century BCE) called

3216-516: The earliest discourses ( suttas ) of the Buddha. Buddhaghosa's Visuddhimagga includes non-canonical instructions on Theravada meditation , such as "ways of guarding the mental image (nimitta)," which point to later developments in Theravada meditation. According to Thanissaro Bhikkhu , "the Visuddhimagga uses a very different paradigm for concentration from what you find in the Canon." Bhante Henepola Gunaratana also notes that what "the suttas say

3283-408: The elder monks sought to first test Buddhaghosa's knowledge by assigning him the task of elaborating the doctrine regarding two verses of the suttas ; Buddhaghosa replied by composing the Visuddhimagga . His abilities were further tested when deities intervened and hid the text of his book, twice forcing him to recreate it from scratch. When the three texts were found to completely summarize all of

3350-579: The first four Nikayas, the Samantapasadika , the Paramatthajotika, the Visuddhimagga and the three commentaries on the books of the Abhidhamma. Maria Heim also notes that some scholars hold that Buddhaghosa was the head of a team of scholars and translators, and that this is not an unlikely scenario. In the 12th century, the Sri Lankan (Sinhalese) monk Sāriputta Thera became the leading scholar of

3417-429: The former appear outwardly superior to the latter, simply because they are allowed to remain impassible, whereas the latter must in some sense appear to rediscover "a way" or at least recapitulate it, so that others, too, may "go that way," hence tathā-gata . A number of passages affirm that a Tathāgata is "immeasurable", "inscrutable", "hard to fathom", and "not apprehended". A tathāgata has abandoned that clinging to

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3484-446: The ground like a palmyra-tree, and become non-existent and not liable to spring up again in the future. The saint ... who has been released from what is styled form is deep, immeasurable, unfathomable, like the mighty ocean." The same is then said of the other aggregates. A variety of similar passages make it clear that the metaphor "gone out, he cannot be defined" ( atthangato so na pamanam eti ) refers equally to liberation in life. In

3551-445: The mind of the Buddha cannot be "encompassed" even by him. The Buddha and Sariputta, in similar passages, when confronted with speculation as to the status of an arahant after death, bring their interlocutors to admit that they cannot even apprehend an arahant that is alive. As Sariputta puts it, his questioner Yamaka "can't pin down the Tathagata as a truth or reality even in the present life." These passages imply that condition of

3618-422: The name would be spelled Buddhaghoṣa (Devanagari बुद्धघोष), but there is no retroflex ṣ sound in Pali, and the name is not found in Sanskrit works. Limited reliable information is available about the life of Buddhaghosa. Three primary sources of information exist: short prologues and epilogues attached to Buddhaghosa's works; details of his life recorded in the Mahavamsa , a Sri Lankan chronicle written in about

3685-414: The nature of consciousness and attention. Ganeri calls Buddhaghosa's approach a kind of "attentionalism", which places primacy on the faculty of attention in explaining activities of thought and mind and is against representationalism . Ganeri also states that Buddhaghosa's treatment of cognition "anticipates the concept of working memory , the idea of mind as a global workplace, subliminal orienting, and

3752-438: The orthodox understanding of Theravada scriptures since at least the 12th century CE. He is generally recognized by both Western scholars and Theravadins as the most important philosopher and commentator of the Theravada, but is also criticised for his departures from the canonical texts . The name Buddhaghosa means "Voice of the Buddha" ( Buddha + ghosa ) in Pali , the language in which Buddhaghosa composed. In Sanskrit,

3819-560: The portal of śūnyatā : "The Laṅkāvatāra is always careful to balance Śūnyatā with Tathatā, or to insist that when the world is viewed as śūnya, empty, it is grasped in its suchness." In the Madhyamaka Mahayana tradition, Tathātā is an uncompounded permanent phenomenon, (as is Nirvana – in Madhyamaka, not being products, all absences are uncompounded and permanent – not everlasting, but not subject to decay and dissolution). Tathātā

3886-512: The practice set forth in the Visuddhimagga will really lead him to Nirvana, basing himself on the postscript ( colophon ) to the text which states the author hopes to be reborn in heaven and wait until Metteyya ( Maitreya ) appears to teach the Dharma. However, according to the Burmese scholar Venerable Pandita, the colophon to the Visuddhimagga is not by Buddhaghosa. According to Sarah Shaw, "it

3953-501: The same colour or be related to the same directions. In particular, Akshobhya and Vairocana may be switched. When represented in a Vairocana mandala, the Buddhas are arranged like this: In the earliest strata of Pali Buddhist texts , especially in the first four Nikāyas , only the following seven Buddhas, the Seven Buddhas of Antiquity ( Sattatathāgata , or "The Seven Tathāgatas"), are explicitly mentioned and named. Of these, four are from

4020-470: The teaching is uttered by one who has transcended the human condition, one beyond the otherwise endless cycle of rebirth and death , i.e. beyond dukkha . The word's original significance is not known and there has been speculation about it since at least the time of Buddhaghosa , who gives eight interpretations of the word, each with different etymological support, in his commentary on the Digha Nikaya ,

4087-671: The term has a non-Buddhist origin, and is best understood when compared to its usage in non-Buddhist works such as the Mahabharata . Shcherbatskoy gives the following example from the Mahabharata ( Shantiparva , 181.22): "Just as the footprints of birds (flying) in the sky and fish (swimming) in water cannot be seen, Thus ( tātha ) is going ( gati ) of those who have realized the Truth." The French author René Guénon , in an essay distinguishing between Pratyēka-Buddhas and Bodhisattvas , writes that

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4154-413: The thesis that visual processing occurs at three levels." Ganeri also states: Buddhaghosa is unlike nearly every other Buddhist philosopher in that he discusses episodic memory and knows it as a reliving of experience from one’s personal past; but he blocks any reduction of the phenomenology of temporal experience to the representation of oneself as in the past. The alternative claim that episodic memory

4221-435: The time — provided a significant boost to the revitalization of the Pali language and the Theravada intellectual tradition, possibly aiding the Theravada school in surviving the challenge to its position posed by emerging Buddhist schools of mainland India. According to Maria Heim, he is "one of the greatest minds in the history of Buddhism" and British philosopher Jonardon Ganeri considers Buddhaghosa "a true innovator,

4288-540: Was influenced by Mahayana-thought, which were subtly mixed with Theravada orthodoxy to introduce new ideas. According to Kalupahana, this eventually led to the flowering of metaphysical tendencies, in contrast to the original stress on anattā in early Buddhism. According to Jonardon Ganeri, though Buddhaghosa may have been influenced by Yogacara Vijñānavāda, "the influence consists not in endorsement but in creative engagement and refutation." The philosopher Jonardon Ganeri has called attention to Buddhaghosa's theory of

4355-495: Was recorded, in an expanded and likely exaggerated form, in a Pali chronicle known as the Buddhaghosuppatti , or "The Development of the Career of Buddhaghosa". Despite the general belief that he was Indian by birth, he later may have been claimed by the Mon people of Burma as an attempt to assert primacy over Sri Lanka in the development of Theravada tradition. Other scholars believe that

4422-452: Was relocated in later biographies to give him closer ties to the region of the Buddha. The Buddhaghosuppatti , a later biographical text, is generally regarded by Western scholars as being legend rather than history. It adds to the Mahavamsa tale certain details, such as the identity of Buddhaghosa's parents and his village, as well as several dramatic episodes, such as the conversion of Buddhaghosa's father and Buddhaghosa's role in deciding

4489-468: Was the spread of the teachings of the Mahavihara tradition — and thus Buddhaghosa — throughout the Theravada world. Buddhaghosa's commentaries thereby became the standard method by which the Theravada scriptures were understood, establishing Buddhaghosa as the definitive interpreter of Theravada doctrine. In later years, Buddhaghosa's fame and influence inspired various accolades. His life story

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