The Pali Canon
For more than 40 years, the Buddha and his growing < ?php make_anchor("sangha”) ?> of < ?php make_anchor("bhikkhus and bhikkhunis“) ?> travelled throughout Northern India, carrying nothing but a begging bowl, a spare set of robes, and the Dhamma that the Buddha had realized in the course of his enlightenment experience. The earliest record we have of that Dhamma is a set of texts known as the Pali Canon. The texts in the Pali Canon are original, profound, and interesting; although the Canon is amazingly extensive, it has a high level of internal consistency; the core texts are accepted as foundational doctrinal statements by most Buddhist traditions, even those with their own separate canon. In this article, I will look at how the Pali Canon came to exist, why I find it so remarkable, and how it can be helpfully integrated into our Buddhist practice.
Background: How the Teachings were Delivered
Let’s begin by looking back to the Buddha’s lifetime and considering how he taught, to whom he taught, and how the sangha spread his teachings through his own culture, during his own lifetime. We’ll jump into the story in the middle of the Buddha’s teaching career, when the sangha of bhikkhus and bhikkhunis had grown to a substantial size. There’s no way, of course, to accurately determine just how large the sangha was, but from various evidential bits teased from the texts, I come to a total of between 2500 and 10,000 bhikkhus throughout Northern India and perhaps one-third that many bhikkhunis.
