Namdrol wrote:Because India is the source of the Dharma, the place where Mahāyāna developed, etc., and the site of Vajrāsana.
Do you deny the possibility that authentic Buddhism is not bound by geographical location? You defined a "mainstream Buddhism" as all Indian Buddhists while we both know that Buddhism there was neither unified nor static. Vajrayana claims buddhahood within one lifetime, so it is not exactly true that all agreed on the time it has to take to achieve it.
No, you are missing the point -- Vajrayānists in India accepted the lenghty time period for achieveing buddhahood based on the accumulating the two collections.
The concept of sudden enlightenment was first taught by Daosheng (360?-434), a disciple of Kumarajiva. Because he was a Chinese master and not Indian, his view of Buddhism must be wrong?
Please precise with your terms -- does sudden enlightenment mean sudden buddhahood, or sudden awakening on one of the bhumis?
The doctrine here under question is the idea promulgated by some Chan masters that Buddhahood does not require the two collections. This is unprecedented in Indian Buddhism, including Vajrayāna (as well as Dzogchen).
Saying that Indian Buddhism is the definitive because that's where it first appeared is very much an argument based on an irrelevant fact.
Indian Buddhism is definitive because Buddhism developed in India. All the texts and teachings upon which all other Buddhist doctrines, whether in line or in contrast with Indian Buddhism, depend on Indian Buddhism.
Buddhism developed pretty much independently in China after Buddhism established itself. Why would then it be inferior only because of geographical reasons?
It is not a question of inferiority - it is a question of continuity.
It is clear that certain Chan ideas about "Buddhahood" have no precedent in the Buddhism promulgated in India, including the Buddhism of Vajrayāna.
Just as in India so it was in China that there were different traditions and interpretations of the Buddhadharma. Sudden enlightenment might be inconceivable for the Theravada and early Mahayana followers, but not so for the Vajrayana.
There is no such thing as a "sudden enlightenment" in Vajrayāna which is free from the two collections. The rapid awakening in Vajrayāna is predicated on gathering the two accumulations extremely rapidly -- not, as in some Chan formulations, dismissing their importance all together.
Vajrayana developed in India and Chan developed in China. Neither of them are something you could find in such mainstream schools as the Sarvastivadins or the Dharmaguptakas.
What Vajrayāna shares with Sarvastivadins or the Dharmaguptakas is that by normal means, buddhahood requires a minimum of three asaṃkhyakalpas to acheive. In order to bypass that requirement, Vajrayāna proposes the adoption of a specfic methodology by which these two collections may be gathered in a single lifetimes, and progress through the paths and stages, including all the visionary indicators of such progress that may be measured through yoga specific indications in the experience of the meditator on both a mental and physical level.
Chan masters that promulgate the extreme notions of sudden buddhahood, by contrast, hinge their argumemts solely on the notion that paths, practice, merit, virtue, are part of relative truth and therefore are a waste of time even to consider as having anything to do with attaining buddhahood -- that in fact, buddhahood is not attainable by any relative means whatsoever. The consequence of course is that these extreme speculations of the part of certain Chan masters render their version of buddhahood unrecognizable as buddhahood. We can call it Buddhism since they insist they are Buddhist, but it resembles nothing at all like mainstream Buddhism.
But then it comes down to the spatial distance between India and China. Do you find that an important point? In my view, the source of Dharma is the Buddha and not a place, nationality, ethnicity, political system or climate.
What I find important is that there is a serious discontinuity between the idea of buddhahood promulgated by certain extreme Chan masters and the rest of the Buddhist world.
You seem to think the argument hinges on sudden verses slow. It does not. It hinges on whether buddhahood is accomplished by virtue of the two things all Mahāyāna sutras say it is accomplished by i.e. the practice of the perfections and the two accumulations. Vajrayāna differs solely from common Mahāyāna of India, in this respect, by virtue of the suggestion that there are means by which one can reduce the amount of time it takes to generate the complete two collections from the daunting three incalculable eons to one, seven or sixteen lifetimes.
These Chan speculations you have introduced, on the other hand, hinge on philosophical sleights of hand that I have already pointed out. My point is that these philosphical speculations have no precedent in Indian Buddhism.
Whether one accepts them or not is entirely a matter of personal choice. I don't accept them, since I think they represent a deviation from Indian Buddhism -- I do not believe that there was any person who became a Buddha without gathering the two accumulations in their entirety.
In the end it is not a question of valid or invalid, it is a question of definitions. For me, a Buddhahood divorced from the two accumulations is impossible.