The Thousand and One Lives of the Buddha

One of the difficulties that one faces in Buddhist studies is the volume of literature that has been produced in different geographical regions, whether Southeast Asia, East Asia, or Central Asia, during their history of encounters with Buddhism. Specialists find such diversity within and across these regions that attempting to render textbook-style basic facts that apply everywhere appears to be a fool’s errand, rendering discussion across regions seemingly doomed to the faults of comparativism. Except, one might think, in the case of the biography of the historical Buddha—surely that should serve as a true foundation to which simple facts can be assigned. Bernard Faure’s The Thousand and One Lives of the Buddha is here to eviscerate that assessment. In so doing, he not only produces a volume accessible for advanced undergraduate- and graduate-level courses, but also addresses a breadth of material across geographic regions that should cause the specialist to cheer. 

John Strong, perhaps the foremost contemporary biographer of the Buddha, provides a brief introduction that acknowledges modern Buddhist studies has assembled a set of facts—“a very thin and generic biography, hardly doing justice to the richness and appeal of what we know from Buddhist sources about the life of the Buddha” (x)—that we agree to be that true foundation. The “richness and appeal” are precisely what Faure hopes to foreground, setting aside historicist reductionism as a misguided and harmful imposition of structure where none should exist. After all, the theory of dependent origination entails that the primary task of the Buddha is to adapt, out of great compassion, to the contingency of conditions. And the alleged objectivity of the academic perspective that defaults to this skeletal set of facts is a form of violence against the traditions that have transmitted these bare data within a multitude of larger, sometimes contradictory, narrative frames:

It is to these narratives, in their aim and their effects, that Buddhism owes much of its vitality over the centuries and up to the present day. For ordinary Buddhists, who did not have access to philosophical or doctrinal texts, the Life of the Buddha in words or images, as they heard it told or saw it represented in monasteries, was the main means of identifying with their tradition. This Life had not passed through any hypercriticism, so it was rich in prodigies of all kinds . . . All in all, a frankly mythological fiction seems better than a historical fiction that is all the more insidious because it does not speak its name. (55)

The Thousand and One Lives of the Buddha is an extended defense of this position, one that Faure characterizes as the approach of the history of religions (2), which attempts to balance the critical spirit (which, as an extreme conclusion, might reject even the existence of the Buddha) with a recognition of the traditions’ unfolding multiplicity of perspectives. “The point is therefore not to question the historicity of the Buddha, but simply to show that while it remains the indisputable origin for elements of the Buddhist tradition, it has not been for this tradition as a whole the determining factor that it is for the Western historians” (2). And Faure’s contention that narrative and philosophy play complementary roles in the dissemination of Buddhist ideals is an important subtext, one that rejects the outdated distinction between lay and monastic cultures and demands that narrative, where enacted behavior takes the place of abstract thought, be taken seriously as a form of teaching.

Faure divides the books into three parts uneven in length; the first, “Myth and History,” is a brief explanation of his own approach together with his rejection of the reigning historicist approach, which is a necessary read for anyone engaged in the academic study of Buddhism. The second part, “The Life of the Buddha as Narrative and Paradigm,” is a brilliant recounting of the “facts” but embellished within an array of alternate scenes and characters—including the Buddha’s own corporeal relics—drawn from a panoply of traditional sources, exemplifying the intrinsic multiplicity of Buddhist narrative. This is a specialist’s delight, full of narrative details, some inconsistent, that illustrate the hall of mirrors that is, in particular, the Mahāyāna perspective, which Faure discusses all too briefly at the end of this second section. The third section, “The Unending Story,” demonstrates this Mahāyāna perspective with extensive reference to Chinese and Japanese sources, Faure’s wheelhouse; the inclusion of bluntly derogatory material about the Buddha and his teachings represents the importance of Faure’s rejection of the historicist agenda, which attempts to force into its framework of linear history and single-life existence a tradition that adamantly refuses this impossibly narrow focus. Parts 2 and 3 function together, to some extent, to show what is gained and what is lost by adhering to a dismissive, foreign interpretive frame.

Two problems remain, however. First, there is an editorial one: the index does not identify “esoteric” or “Tantric” Buddhism as a distinct referent, though Faure refers directly to these enough to warrant their identification. Second, and related, though perhaps not a problem as such: Faure does not address in any significant sense the unique presentation of the Buddha and his activities in the tantric texts, a presentation that extends the Mahāyāna perspective to controversial extremes. To be fair, an entire monograph would be needed to present the identity/identities of the Buddha in the tantric context, but the radical nature of the limitless possibilities for embodiment that its context entails deserves significant comment. However, as it stands Faure barely addresses the basic Mahāyāna perspective regarding enlightened embodiment. It is unwarranted to regard these as faults, but they do indicate the extent to which the Life of the Buddha deserves further illumination along Faure’s approach. For now, however, The Thousand and One Lives of the Buddha serves as a necessary volume that anyone at all interested in Buddhism should savor.

Edward Arnold is assistant editor with the American Institute of Buddhist Studies, Columbia University Center for Buddhist Studies.

Edward Arnold

Date Of Review:

April 4, 2024