The Three Buddhist Councils

How the Arhats authentically preserved the Buddha's Teachings

by Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche

The Second Council

The First Council was intended to make sure that all the teachings of the Buddha were kept intact and wouldn’t be lost. This happened after the death of the Buddha. Its main function was gathering all the teachings together and keeping each category of teaching (the Sutras, Vinaya, and Abhidharma) very clear and very well defined. Each sutra was kept complete and each chapter was kept clearly separate so that nothing would get mixed up or altered. In this way, the First Council established what the teaching of the Buddha really were and under which form it had been presented.

Later, the Second Council (sometimes called the intermediate council) took place 110 years after the Buddha had passed away (in the year 376 B.C.E.).

At that time there had been a greater number of new monks joining the sangha and some of them started thinking that some of the rules of discipline laid out by the Buddha were too strict. They also tried to establish ten new rules. These new monks tried to say that these new rules were actually made up by the Buddha.

Threfore, this Second Council had to be convened to make sure that the teachings wouldn’t become modified because of these people’s initiative.

One example of what that these new monks wanted to introduce was: If you had done some negative action, then it would be sufficient to fold your hands to the heart and to say something like “hulu, hulu” and then it would be purified and you wouldn’t need to do anything else.

Another rule they wanted to introduce was that if a monk had done something wrong, that went against the discipline of the monastery, then all he would need to say was, “I’m going to confess this.” Another monk would say, “Oh, that’s very good” and that would be enough and everything would be purified. (Other such new rules included begging for gold and taking intoxicants under the pretense that it is for medical purposes).

So these monks were trying to introduce a lot of simplifications and easy ways of doing things.

During this time, there was a very exceptional being, an arhat called Yashah. He saw this happening and realized that if nothing was done, the teachings of the Buddha would be altered and perverted. To prevent this from happening, he convened this Second Council with several other famous arhats.

Where did the trouble originate about these new monks trying to create new rules? At the time in India, there were six main cities, and the group of monks who wanted to start these new rules all came from Vaishali.

The arhat Yashah invited seven hundred arhats to meet for the council in Vaishali. He led the meeting by saying, “Well, now we have these ten new items that these monks are trying to introduce. The questions we should ask ourselves are whether these ten items can be found in the Sutras or in the Vinaya or in the Abhidharma.” He asked all of the arhats that were present where these could be found and all of the arhats replied that they couldn’t be found in any of these works.

Then Yashah asked, “Are these items in contradiction with the teachings of the Buddha; of the Sutras, the Vinaya, and the Abhidharma?” And the conclusion was that they were in contradiction with the works of the Buddha.

As a result, they decided that these rules should be rejected because they didn’t agree with what the Buddha had taught and certainly were not part of the teaching of the Buddha.

It was decided that this attempt to introduce new rules should be stopped and that these ten rules should be eliminated. Then the council took advantage of this positive situation to define once again very clearly what the teachings of the Buddha were so that there was a new, complete reading of the whole of the sutras, the whole of the Vinaya, and the whole of the Abhidharma to make sure that these teachings were the only ones to be recognized as the Buddha’s teaching.

After the Second Council, little by little the different communities of monks started to split up into different groups. So at first, there were four different groups of shravakas (Hinayana practitioners, lit. 'listerners of the dharma') and then this gradually evolved into eighteen different categories of shravakas, almost like different sects.

Each group started feeling that they really held the true teaching of the Buddha and their view was the right one and all the other groups were wrong. This, of course, generated a lot of arguments and debates creating a new danger that the teachings of the Buddha might be altered and degraded. So at this time a Third Council was convened.

The Third Council

At the Third Council there were five hundred arhats led by the Arya Parsva and there were also four hundred venerables or scholars with the main one being Vasumitra. The meeting took place in the “land of the Moslems” and this is commonly used to refer to Kashmir.

It took place there in a new temple (the Karnikavana Temple) that had been built especially for the occasion by the king. The individuals at the meeting were from the eighteen different sects of shravakas and the council had to determine which ones were really true followers of the Buddha and which were not.

The guideline that was used to decide which were right and which were wrong was one of the sutras of the Buddha called the Garland of Gold Sutra. This sutra is a story concerning something that happened at the time of the previous Buddha, the one that came before Buddha Shakyamuni, called Buddha Kashyapa. At the time of the Buddha Kashyapa, there was a king called Krikin, who had ten very amazing dreams. His dreams were so unusual that he started to wonder what was happening to him. And he thought that maybe these dreams were a sign that there was going to be some very bad danger for his kingdom or even to his own life.

So he called in a Brahmin, who was a specialist in the interpretation of dreams, and asked him to say what he thought of the dreams. The Brahmin said that indeed, there was going to be a lot of trouble for the kingdom and a danger for his own life if he didn’t kill what was the closest thing to his heart.

The closest thing to the King's heart was his own daughter, who was called “Garland of Gold.” She was a Buddhist and didn’t like the Brahmins. So once the king had heard the interpretation of his dream, his daughter said to him, “Well, it’s very easy. What you should do is to go and see the Buddha Kashyapa, and ask him if he thinks it’s the right thing to kill me. Then, please go ahead. I don’t mind.”

So the king went to see Buddha Kashyapa and told him about his dreams, and Buddha Kashyapa replied that the dreams didn’t mean that there would be any trouble for the king himself or his kingdom. The dream was, in fact, foreseeing events that would happen much later on in a future time. He said each of the dreams depicted events that would take place at the time of Buddha Shakyamuni. So each of the dreams referred to a event in Buddhism with one being applicable to this particular situation.

In this dream the King saw a long piece of cloth and there were eighteen men who were each trying to get a piece of the cloth. In the end each one got a piece and there were eighteen pieces of cloth.

The Buddha Kashyapa interpreted this as, “This dream hasn’t anything to do with your own life as the king. But at the time of Buddha Shakyamuni, there will be eighteen different schools of shravakas. But one shouldn’t think that their views are in contradiction with the teachings of Buddha Shakyamuni. In fact, the whole of Buddha Shakyamuni’s teaching remains pure and intact, and each of the paths that they are following is the true path and leads to the true fruition. So one mustn’t think that some are good and some are bad. Each of the paths belongs to the true path of the Buddha.”

So this was the prophesy made by Buddha Kashyapa in the sutra. And that is why the council had to come to the conclusion that each of these eighteen sections of shravakas were all correct in their line of thought and that the teachings that they were following were all the teachings of Buddha Shakyamuni.

During this Third Council, they also completed their previous work on the gathering of the Vinaya, the Sutras, and the Abhidharma. During the previous councils, they had started to write down these three sections of the Buddha’s teachings. By the third council some of these works were already written down.

So during the Third Council they corrected the proofs of what had been written down so that these teachings were now pure and could be decisively considered as being the Buddha’s teaching.

We can say that after the Third Council was over, all of the Buddha’s teachings were finally written down and corrected; so that from that point onwards there could be no distortion, no misinterpretation, or any alteration of the Buddha’s true teaching. This was the work of all these very learned arhats who had a great deal of spiritual insight and a very clear understanding. So that through their work the whole of the Buddha’s teaching was preserved without loss, without distortion, and remained completely intact.