Heretical and extinct different sects of Buddhism throughout history

[MrAuthoritarian]

@greenfuse

Pudgalavāda- Heretical and now extincted sect of Buddhism.

“Pudgalavāda (Sanskrit for “the doctrine of a person”) was a major early school of Buddhism that asserted the existence of a real, enduring individual or “person” (pudgala). Emerging around 280 BCE from the Sthavira nikāya branch, this school attempted to solve a fundamental philosophical dilemma in mainstream Buddhism: if there is no permanent self (anātman), who carries karma, experiences rebirth, and ultimately attains nirvana?”

“While standard Buddhist philosophy rejected a substantial self, the Pudgalavādins argued that a person is real in an indeterminate, inexpressible way—neither identical to nor completely separate from the five aggregates (skandhas). Despite being heavily criticized as heretical by rival mainstream schools like the Theravāda, it was highly influential and accounted for up to a quarter of all Buddhist monks in India during the 7th century CE.”

“The Pudgalavādin thesis attempts to strike a middle path between two philosophical extremes: eternalism (the Hindu concept of a permanent ātman) and annihilationism (total non-existence)”

“The Analogy of Fire and Fuel: The school explained the pudgala using the relationship between fire and its fuel. Fire cannot exist without fuel, so it is not independent of it. However, fire is not literally the exact same thing as wood. Similarly, the person cannot exist without the five aggregates (form, sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness), yet the person is not merely the sum of those aggregates.”

“An Inexpressible Reality: The pudgala was defined as anirvacanīya (inexpressible or indeterminate). It is neither a conditioned dharma (changing, worldly phenomenon) nor an unconditioned dharma (unchanging like nirvana).”

"According to the surviving text Traidharmakaśāstra, the Pudgalavādins grouped the concept of a person into three distinct modes of designation:

Designation by Base (āśraya-prajñapti): The person grasped in the present moment based on their current physical and mental aggregates (e.g., physical appearance, feelings, and current thoughts).

Designation by Transmigration (saṅkrama-prajñapti): The person viewed as a continuous stream moving through time. This framework establishes moral accountability, explaining how an individual can legally and spiritually inherit the fruits of actions committed in past lives.

Designation by Cessation (nirodha-prajñapti): The person viewed after death has occurred following the attainment of nirvana. The school argued that it is incorrect to say a Buddha simply ceases to exist entirely after entering Parinirvana."

"To defend their views against other Buddhist factions, the Pudgalavādins relied on early scriptural citations, most notably the Bhārahārasūtra (“The Burden-carrier Discourse”). In this text, the Buddha states:

The five aggregates are truly burdens, and the burden-carrier is the person (pudgala).

They reasoned that if a burden exists, there must logically be an actual subject who steps forward to bear that burden and eventually lay it down."

[MrAuthoritarian]

Continuing Pudgalavāda

"The Sāmmitīyanikāya Śāstra

Significance: This is the most crucial surviving text for understanding the school’s doctrine of the self. It explicitly represents the Sāmmitīya sub-school, which was the most prominent branch of the Pudgalavāda tradition."

“Core Content: The text functions as a systematic philosophical debate. It lays out various competing propositions about the self—such as “the self exists,” “the self does not exist,” and “the self is identical to the aggregates”—and systematically refutes them all. Ultimately, it uses these refutations to establish its own middle-ground thesis: the pudgala is a real, functional entity, but it is anirvacanīya (indefinable/inexpressible).”

The Traidharmaka Śāstra

“An early Abhidharma text belonging to the Vātsīputrīya branch (the founding sub-school of Pudgalavāda). It was translated into Chinese twice, with a later, alternative translation known as the Ārya-vasumitra-bodhisattva-saṅgītī-śāstra.”

“Core Content: This text organizes the entire Buddhist path, cosmos, and psychological phenomena into structural groups of three. Crucially, it outlines the Three Designations (
prajñaptis of the person—by base, by transmigration, and by cessation—which provides the architectural framework for how a person exists across lifetimes without violating the law of karma.”

The Jñānaprasthāna Śāstra

While the Jñānaprasthāna is technically a foundational Abhidharma text of the rival Sarvāstivāda school, early Chinese translations and commentaries preserve Pudgalavādin structural influences. Scholars note that the unique categorization systems used in early Chinese versions of these texts mirror the lost internal Abhidharma structures of the Vātsīputrīyas.

[MrAuthoritarian]

Continuing Pudgalavāda

“The Burden-Carrier Sūtra (Sanskrit: Bhārahāra Sūtra; Pali: Bhāra Sutta) is one of the most philosophically contested discourses in early Buddhism. Found in the Samyukta Āgama (and preserved in the Pali Canon as SN 22.22), it is the foundational scriptural authority used by the Pudgalavādins to justify the existence of the “person” (pudgala).”

"For the Pudgalavāda school, this text was their ultimate proof. They raised a critical, common-sense problem: If there is only an empty sequence of changing mental states, who is suffering?

Logical Necessity of a Subject: They argued that the Buddha explicitly separated the burden (the aggregates) from the carrier (the person). Therefore, the person cannot simply be reduced to the sum of the aggregates.

The Fallacy of Self-Carrying: A burden cannot carry itself. If the aggregates were the carrier, it would mean suffering is carrying suffering, which they argued was logically absurd.

Agency in Liberation: If there is no real individual, then no one actually takes up craving, and no one actually experiences the bliss of laying it down."

[greenfuse]

So, is this your position, you’ve sided with a heretical sect? I mean, I do know that Buddhism is incredibly complicated, so I’m not saying that no Buddhist believes this, though I think they’re much less popular these days, this sect, if it exists at all now. I also think most adherents don’t really quite realize that in most of Buddhism, yes, there is an aggregate that can go on being confused and thinking it is a persistent self, but it’s not really a self. It’s just a bundle of things that are bound together, and eventually, they no longer have a binding, but there was no self up till that point when it no longer was bound to itself. It’s just a collection. It’s not a self. But anyway, so are you saying you are of that school?I mean, you’re a conservative communist, so you might as well be a heretical Buddhist. It’s gonna be very hard to find colleagues.

[MrAuthoritarian]

@greenfuse

No, I would actually describe myself following Shingon and Zen Japanese traditions of Mahayana Buddhism.

[Really into the Yogacara tradition as well.]

But even though I am a Japanese Mahayana Buddhism enthusiast I do like reading about all Buddhist traditions throughout history in the evolution of their belief systems overtime.

The reason I made this thread was out of a sort of curiosity of extinct beliefs no longer practiced and heretical outliers. It goes no further than curiosity however and I thought of you making this thread because I know you’re not a fan of the no soul/no self doctrine of Buddhism. With you in this thread I was trying to show you that this has been a historical conflict within Buddhism throughout its history.

Also, conservative communism was the norm before the 1960s when liberalism made everything about feminism, homosexuality, and one world government globalism, that’s when Marxism started going downhill, when outside liberal infiltrators decided to muck everything up with their cultural wars bullshit. Eastern Marxism or communism on the other hand retained its traditional social conservativism which is why the next century will probably be an Asian one. We can discuss all of that in another thread.

Needless to say, I am very pessimistic about western civilization’s future even being a westerner myself. Although, I do like seeing myself as a sort of bridge between western and eastern philosophies, reading them both they compliment each other very nicely.