That looks like great software. I have been using the "Layers" feature in PaintShopPro but will certainly want to explore VUE.
I think you are quite right in asking that we question the framing of paṭicca-samuppāda. Though it is usually seen as one example of a larger principle (an example of causation that describes, in my view, how dukkha is produced) it seems clear that the Buddha was saying of paṭicca-samuppāda "This is it; this is the big deal; this is the dharma." The emphasis on causality as the larger lesson distracts us with looking at the way it plays out in the physical world and has us haring off the track worrying about whether we have free will or not.
It looks to me as though the 12-step p-s is the core of the teaching -- certainly in the Pali canon it gets abbreviated down to the names for its component parts far more often than it gets either extended into longer versions or given thorough detail. The version in SN12.23 extends it into the process of liberation, which is good and useful information giving a strong sense of direction, but those parts are far down the path for most of us, and working on understanding and then seeing for ourselves the first 12 is quite a challenge.
I would guess, too, that a lot of it has to do with where teachers put the emphasis. My theory is that the majority of teachers in the various traditions put their emphasis on karma and on creating good merit through learning the basics and skillful means and that there is very little concern with the steps beyond those initial 12, those further steps leading on to liberation. When what the Buddha taught is understood to be something difficult to achieve, well nigh impossible in just one lifetime, it seems obvious that teachers are going to focus on the "beginner's" teachings rather than putting strong emphasis on gaining liberation here and now, in this life. So the initial 12 steps have the emphasis.
Then, too, those final steps seem quite clear and self-explanatory, compared to the confusion around the original 12, with the result that the parts that still need work get discussed more often.
I have studied SN 12.23 quite a lot recently and would be interested in your thoughts on why the chain (looked at in reverse) goes upadana, bhava, jati, dukkha, and then saddha. Where did jaramarana go?
Also, looking at your chart (which is magnificently detailed) I notice the word "kamma" in there -- I can easily see how it can relate to the various parts of p-a but am wondering if you've ever found a sutta focusing on p-a that describes it in terms of kamma? I have yet to.
Personally I think the 12 nidāna chain is incomprehensible, or at least not fully comprehensible, not fully self-consistent nor consistent with what we know about the world. I blogged about this: confessions. The bit going from vedanā to bhava makes sense to me, but the rest of it is a puzzle - I do not even understand some of the words. Does anyone?
SN 12.23 is not representative of lokuttara dependent arising. And if you look at other traditional DA teachings they make it clear that the escape point is between vedanā and taṇha! So I think we should not focus on SN 12.23, but see it as a slightly weird variation on AN 10.1 - 10.5 and the AN 11 repetitions. These are much more comprehensible. One starts with ethics and just keeps going with meditation and wisdom.
This is the path - the beginning, middle and end of it. Whereas the content of the 12 nidānas seems to be limited more or less to yathābhūta-ñāṇadassana. That is I see it as the opposite of what you suggest. The nidānas are actually only a small part of the upanisās.
I've uploaded my draft in-house commentary, though I think it has some problems still. I'm working on something more general - as well as identifying more suttas which use the pattern.
I can't find the word Kamma in there. Where is it!? If it's on the chart then I found it in a sutta and it should be labelled.
Kamma doesn't interest me that much. It's not something I go looking for. Except where it is described as cetanā which I have blogged about several times now.
Kamma is along side the 12 steps on the left. In red: "past kamma process" "present kamma process".
Re your post two above:
I don't think p-s is the path, unless you count the wrong path as the path. It is a description of how we go wrong, and being familiar with its workings allows us to locate the spots where we can stop the process.
But wow, Jayarava, wow. Thanks for pointing out AN 10.2! I hadn't read it. I have it in Woodward's translation and it is so lovely.
Ah. OK. That isn't in fact from a sutta, it is from Buddhaghosa's Visuddhimagga. The Three Lifetimes interpretation is not canonical but commentarial. I put that in because it is what everyone seems to talk about. But I don't believe it is what is intended in the suttas.
And yes. The 12 Nidānas are the saṃsāra process, but undoing them is what leads to nibbāna according to the Theravāda - so it is the path in that sense.
AN 10.2 is important! Read it with Suttas 1 & 3 as well. Then compare some of the others particularly AN 8.81 and MN 7. Then having read those re-read DN 2 (from para 40 onwards, p. 99 in Walsh's translation). A world opens up. And consider that this teaching was completely lost to the Mahāyāna as far as I know; and is mentioned only once in passing in Visuddhimagga and is then lost to the Theravāda as well, until 1922 when Mrs Rhys Davids points it out to her readers in the Editorial Notes to the PTS Saṃyutta translation (done with Woodward).
I have to admit that I generally dislike Woodward's translations. A bit to faux Jane Austin for my tastes.
I will read those suttas in the sequence you suggest, and see how well it fits with my current understanding. Thanks.
In just the same way I pause when I see "kamma" associated with p-s, I pause at seeing "samsara" to describe it, also, because I don't find p-s and samsara associated in the suttas, either, though I have seen it once described in terms of the aggregates, and once in terms of I-making.
I use saṃsāra in a very general way in conversation. It literally means 'going on and on'. It suggests to me 'the human condition'.
You'll find paṭiccasamuppāda and saṃsāra together in the opening paragraphs of the Mahānidāna sutta. The connection might make an interesting blog post one day - though I'm pulling on other threads at present.
We need to be cautious about saying that two concepts are not linked only because two specific words are not found in conjunction. The two concepts are clearly linked throughout the canon. Just because saṃsāra is a term taken up and popularised by the post-canonical literature we should not think that the idea of rebirth is an innovation. Yes? The idea and the terminology are not identical.
Since I'm not very interested in the idea of kamma I'm not very familiar with the suttas that describe it - except in the case of the description as cetanā. I wonder how kamma is described? Does the Buddha ask and answer the question "Katamañca kammaṃ?" I see the form in Pāli so it does seem to be a question being asked and answered. And I wonder if there is any answer which is inconsistent with paṭiccasamuppāda - going for a null hypothesis along these lines "that kamma is unrelated to paṭicca-samuppāda".
It's not something that bothers me enough to do that research myself, but I'd be interested to read a brief summary of what you find if you do it, or know someone else that has.
Certainly in many years of reading and writing about Buddhism I've seen nothing to make me doubt that kamma is an essential aspect of discussions on paṭiccasamuppāda and that the two topics are intimately related. And without much effort I found kamma and paṭiccasamuppāda clearly and explicitly linked in SN 35.146 for instance. It seems like a non-issue to me.
"You'll find paṭiccasamuppāda and saṃsāra together in the opening paragraphs of the Mahānidāna sutta."
Thanks for that. Do you know I had not realized samsara comes in two varieties? The one with a short second a I knew about but had not noticed that there is one with a long a as well. How did I miss that?
I worry less about how fond post-canonical literature is of the word samsara than that it has specific Hindu referents. Like "karma", "samsara" is a word that is well understood in one way in popular culture, and may have meant something quite different to early Buddhists.
"And without much effort I found kamma and paṭiccasamuppāda clearly and explicitly linked in SN 35.146 for instance. It seems like a non-issue to me."
On this one I think you'll need to be more explicit to help me see how you see its description of kamma having anything to do with paṭiccasamuppāda. I find SN 35.146 "Kamma" talking about the cessation of kamma; bodyparts being old kamma; the use of bodyparts being new kamma; liberation through cessation of actions in body, speech, and mind; and the eightfold path.
I did a quick search in DPR and found "katamañca adhammakammaṃ?" and "katamañca vaggakammaṃ?" and "samaggakammaṃ" and "kammaṭṭhānaṃ" and "purāṇakammaṃ" but only turned up "Katamañca kammaṃ?" twice (well, it's in MN 57 numerous times, and then there's a repeating series in AN's fours) all to do with the questions about kinds of kamma: "What is dark action with dark result?" and its brethren.
But to speculate over "if there is any answer which is inconsistent with paṭiccasamuppāda" is clearly the wrong question. Since if you see paṭiccasamuppāda you see dhamma and vice versa, nothing the Buddha teaches is ever going to be "inconsistent with paṭiccasamuppāda" but that's not what I am saying.
I am saying that paṭiccasamuppāda is framed using quite specific references and it represents a very precise view of the way we cause our own dukkha and while it can also be framed in terms of a different system, of kamma, because kamma is a different system it may distort things. A little like talking about God and meaning the way the Christian God is conceived at a folk level here in the U.S., but instead of using modern language, limiting yourself to using Old Testament words and concepts. It can be done, but the framing concepts are a little different, and the language of the Old Testament could distort what you were trying to say.
The kammic system is about obtaining good stuff for oneself in the future; it concerns itself with right and wrong, and adherence to rules. It looks to fix the problem by applying bandaids. Whereas paṭiccasamuppāda describes the illness and points to the cure -- a lot more than bandaids there. It is not concerned with obtaining good stuff for oneself in the future, it's concerned with getting rid of the self so it has no future. It doesn't need to concern itself with right and wrong and adherence to rules because it is specifically saying "through no particular fault of your own (you ignorant being) the things you are doing are causing harm -- let me show you how to stop it" -- and paṭiccasamuppāda recognizes that simply by ridding oneself of self, the behavior seen by the world as "morally right and wrong" is reoriented in a way that makes morality and blame not an issue anymore. Basically paṭiccasamuppāda says that the self is the cause of all our troublesome behaviors, and that without that self interfering, we will act in a way that the world sees as "morally right" but has a different basis for the person acting.
So I am saying that discussing paṭiccasamuppāda in terms of kamma distorts what paṭiccasamuppāda is saying by framing it in terms of a self-perpetuating system instead of framing in terms of a get-rid-of-the-self system.
I can only find one spelling of saṃsāra. PED pg 658.
As for the rest I think we've been around this circle before Star and I'm not interested in pursuing it. Yours views on kamma seem crackpot to me, and you seem blind to evidence which flatly contradicts your assertions.
All the best and everything, but time for me to get on with something more sensible.
Are the first four nidānas Jurewicz and Gombrich refer to avidyā-saṃskāra-vijñāna-nāmarūpa? And what does the latter satirise? Thanks for the link to your article!
My mistake and my apologies. I offered up, by way of explanation, one corner of something much larger; it's not going to make sense to you in the usual context; of course it seems crackpot outside its own framework. I should have known better, but live and learn, and sorry for it. I know I said this before but I'll say it again and I'll try to remember it: I'll leave you alone now. Still be appreciating your blog though.
Yes on the nidānas. The argument on how the parody or satire works is quite complex and it's been a while since I looked at the details.
The idea seems to be that what is being parodied is the cosmology found in Ṛgveda x.129 and the version of it found in chapter one of Bṛhadāranyaka Upaniṣad.
The article to look at is Jurewicz, J. (2000) 'Playing with fire: the pratītyasamutpāda from the perspective of Vedic thought. J. of the Pali Text Society. 26: 77-103.
BTW I'm about to upload a new and much better version of that article, it might pay to wait a couple of days.
Yes, context is important. I have a lot on my mind at any given time and tend to want to think and discuss the issue in the post, if anything. In this case the historical quirks which relate to complexity and simplicity
This is an aspect of the complexity thing. Yes? You have a complex idea clashing with another complex idea and a few hundred words are insufficient to convince a reluctant reader!
If one is trying to overturn a paradigm - to convince people of an idiosyncratic view - then there is a lot of work to do! One must present extensive evidence in a way that allows others to take it in, and explain why the previous paradigm is wrong, even though some very intelligent people have tested it almost to destruction, especially in the last 30-40 years. I think you have an uphill battle.
I myself hold frankly idiosyncratic views on the Dharma, but I discuss them here on my blog. I have been building up a case here over some years, based on the very solid basis of work by professional scholars who have training in both the languages involved, and the modes of thinking required to analyse what they read. I'm clear that I have neither skill to any great degree. So I don't evangelise, I just write away in obscurity - except for one or two published articles. I aspire to have more work published, but it's difficult to attain the standard of rigour and insight that is needed to get through the peer review process.
The kind of thing you are attempting, a provocative re-assessment of received views, requires a book length treatment at least. And in order to be convincing you'll have to show that you've understood the original material and have a good grasp of the literature, a wide knowledge of the relevant texts. And you have to deal with the possible exceptions and objections. You also need to spell out your starting assumptions - and especially in your case justify them.
It would make a good PhD project I think. Are you in a position to pursue it?
Thanks for the dialog, Jayarava, I agree with your points.
But, no, I'm not in the position to present and defend a PhD thesis, and I'm not likely to spend the years in a university to get to such a place either. But I am building a case that does require great length, and there is a lot of evidence to cite. It's rigorous work but it's really good to hold to a standard of showing supporting evidence, which tends to make the way the pieces fit clearer and clear to me (which is thrilling). I am hoping you'll find some value in it when it's complete, because it answers some of the questions you've been asking -- though you still may not agree with my answers! I am not ready to discuss the heart of the thing on my blog, partly because it would require a great deal of technical information to support it, and also because I haven't yet found the approach for presentation. But I do put bits and pieces there in the hope that others can point out where I go astray (what you perceive as me being "blind to evidence which flatly contradicts your assertions" is me having check marked something that fits into my understanding in a different way).
I guess, in the final analysis, at the moment you and I are working in very different ways. Because I am still in the process of synthesizing insight from anyone who has some to offer, I am interested in engaging everyone even on subjects a bit tangential to what I'm doing because I learn a great deal from every clear thinker I encounter; whereas you are very focused, perhaps because you have got enough framework in place to be working on details. I well understand wanting to think only about one subject at a time (whatever it may be at the moment).
My initial comment did focus on the reasons for the differences and I was trying to offer possibilities that would answer the questions you were asking, but I guess my thinking on pretty much any subject isn't going to be of much use to you until you've seen the larger context for it.
As for evangelism, in Wikipedia's sense of "relaying information about a particular set of beliefs to others who do not hold those beliefs" I suppose I inadvertently do that as I put the things I am discovering out for debate, but in the sense of "missionary zeal, purpose, or activity" or "preaching or promulgation of the gospel" not so much, though I do admit to zeal, but that's just intellectual excitement over discoveries that feel, to me, like falling into something even better than King Tut's tomb. I didn't set out with the expectation that I'd find anything in the suttas other than what the majority said was there; I certainly had no idea I'd see what I have seen; and I have no agenda to overturn a paradigm -- may a thousand paradigms bloom!
But here, taking one last stab at answering the question your post framed, and at the risk of still having my ideas sound crackpot to you, I don't think that paṭiccasamuppāda *is* complex. It is simple, and elegant; it's just that the simplicity and elegance has gotten lost in the forest of language -- you could say we're having trouble picking out the individual simsapa leaves.
One problem is the Vedic love of the sort of wordplay where one word is talking about several things at once; and another is that the same word gets specifically defined in the canon different ways (rupa, for example, as literal form, and -- as in the khandas -- as the way we experience form); and a third problem is that sometimes multiple levels are being used at once and sometimes they are not; and how do we sort all that out? Your chart is a grand illustration that if we try to make it all fit just from the words it's going to be quite a tangle. As I said upstream, paṭiccasamuppāda is the dharma, so in one sense everything the Buddha says makes reference to it, which, over the course of 40 years of teaching, is going to give us quite a few words to try to order into a theory of what paṭiccasamuppāda is saying. And that brings us back to context, which is really the only hope to give us a sort of Rosetta Stone.
Oh, and I wasn't using PED to look for samsara, I was using the Digital Pali Reader, which is a wonderful tool but probably needs more skill to wield well than I actually have. "Search results for sa.msara.m: Vin: 0, DN: 0, MN: 0, SN: 2, AN: 1, KN: 10, Abhi: 0." Of course, I searched more widely than that, and came up with 267 instances in various forms and compounds. I remain grateful that you pointed out an instance that showed me the error I was making.
Crackpot was a little unkind, apologies for that, and all credit to you for taking it so well.
As far as paṭiccasamuppāda being simple and clear we have the Buddha's response to Ānanda's assertion of the same claim: "say not so, say not so." It is deep and unfathomable - apparently.
All languages and all cultures use words in complex ways - the technical word for this is polysemy 'many meanings'. It is a universal feature of language, particularly abstractions and metaphors. There is no simple language, nor any simple culture. All languages, all cultures are complex.
When searching for Pāli words one has to search for all of the declensions: saṃsāro, saṃsāraṃ, saṃsārassa, saṃsārāya, saṃsārena, saṃsārā, saṃsāre, etc; and all of the potential variants as well saṃsāre, saṃsārasmiṃ etc. Then one must give thought to how it might be used in compounds. The ideal thing is to search for the stem form with a wildcard: saṃsār* or *saṃsār* which gives me 561 variants to sieve through according to CST4. Though you have to be aware of false positives.
Given that you can't see paṭiccasamuppāda in a construction "X, X-samudaya, X-nirodha, X-nirodhamagga", it suggests to me that you are not casting your net wide enough. I suggest that this is not unrelated to seeing simplicity. You're seeing simplicity because you filter out complexity - seeing what you want to see in other words. I've said this to you before: you appear to argue from unspoken presuppositions I don't share. And I'm not convinced that I should share them - and more or less convinced that I should not.
It's not that your conclusions are bad given your presuppositions - but that what I can see of your working towards that conclusion gives me reason to doubt the validity of your procedure. The method is not justified, so the conclusions are the least of your problems.
Many an eminent scholar has attempted to extract the simple original teachings from the noise of the canon and the tradition. Some of the greats! I've indulged myself in that game at times as well. But it is a complete fallacy to think you can do it, and no reputable scholar does it any more.
We may believe that it was once simpler, and that is likely to be true, but we'll never know what that simple form was like because it is completely obscured. All attempts to reconstruct it tell us more about the biases and prejudices of the person making the attempt than they do about the original form. Because what you choose to filter out cannot be based on any foreknowledge of the original Buddhism - so where do your filtering criteria come from? How do you choose them, and validate the result. Against what do you check your conclusions (and in your case I imagine it probably just "feels right", yes?). There's just no external source of validation or proof - so it all comes down to decisions we make about what is important to us. That's a hard truth, but it is true I believe.
I said crackpot was too harsh and that was true. But you have a long way to go, it seems to me, in untangling why you believe what you do. I think if you did that work thoroughly, then your conclusions would change.
Blogger is not allowing long comments these days so this is part 2 of my reply to Star:
I do find saṃsar* in CST4 as well. In verse. And mostly in repetitions and variations on a single pada describing Māra e.g. SN i.104:
Saṃsaraṃ dīghamaddhānaṃ vaṇṇaṃ katvā subhāsubhaṃ Alaṃ te tena pāpima, nihato tvamasi antaka.
Roaming the long stretch, In fair and foul forms. Enough of them, Evil One. You are slain! It is over.
So we could explain the form saṃsara metri causi - i.e. as a change to fit the meter of the verse (if I knew enough about meter I could tell you whether this was the problem, but I don't and I'm just flagging it as a possibility).
However see Bhikkhu Bodhi Connected Discourses p.412, n.267 where he argues for saṃsara as a distinct form, and that, nota bene, saṃsaraṃ dīghaddhānaṃ = saṃsāra.
This made me look into the morphology a little more closely and it seems that PED treats saṃsara (short a) as a form of the present-participle of saṃsarati < sam-√sṛ 'wander, roam, transmigrate'. If we accept this then saṃsara has an active verbal sense 'going on/around', whereas saṃsāra is the derived noun from the same verb (with the expected root vowel guṇa.) 'the round'.
Part one of your recent comment went to spam, so I didn't see it until after replying above.
I also found different things in the suttas than what I expected - a lot of uncertainty, complexity and at times contradiction. And yes a lot of different approaches are valid. Though, again, I think awareness of what your approach is, and why you choose it, are essential. I'd be interested to know if you understand why the pieces seem to fit - what view that you already hold is it resonating with? That's where study can be a vehicle for self-knowledge and even liberation to some extent.
Let me know when you have something more substantial to read.
Thanks for the detailed answers; forgiven for "crackpot ideas" -- I brought it up again to tease you for having said it.
I'll try for a short answer in the hope that we can get back to focusing on our work that way.
When I said "simple" I didn't mean "it is only simple". And as for "how do I tell if I am on the right track" it has very little to do with "feels right". A feeling or "sense" of what's being said is certainly where I start from, but then I go looking in the suttas and in the literature on Vedism to see if there's any support for a thesis. Sometimes there is and I add it in. Quite often there isn't and I set it aside. On good days the search leads me to trip across an alternative possibility I hadn't even considered.
My expectation (dangerous thing, expectation) is that you'll find the central core of what I'm working on quite useful; you'll find most of my conclusions back in the cracked pot.
Wishing you productive studies and fun while at 'em.
Knowledge progresses through conjecture and refutation. I like to think I'm open to persuasion and refutation. I have actually changed my mind about things in the past :-)
I'm quite aware of parallels between the Upaniṣads and the Pāli texts - in 2006 I attended the Numata lectures by Richard Gombrich that became his most recent book (I still have my notes, the handouts, and Richard kindly sent the transcripts which are slightly different from the book). Since then I have found a few parallels myself, and have written a number of blog posts on the subject.
How to interpret such things is one of the biggest problems in Indology at present, and full of conflicting opinions.
I look forward to reading a more considered version of your thesis.
Wow, present day geek examines old text. This is awesome. Are you going to present this at the upcoming Buddhist Geeks conference? I daresay you'd fit quite nicely:-) Well done! I can see how this can be a useful diagram!
THIS IS A DIAGRAM showing the Canonical variants of paṭicca-samuppāda in both its lokiya (left) and lokuttara (middle) forms along with the bojjhaṅgas or factors of awakening (right) which have some cross-over. The lokiya being more usually know as the 'nidānas', or in the Triratna movement the 'cyclic nidānas'. The lokuttara known as the 'Spiral Path', the 'positive nidānas', or 'progressive conditionality'. I have started calling them the upanisās and hope to popularise this. I constructed this diagram because I like to think visually - certain relationships are easier to see graphically - and because I had some new (free) software to play with in the form of the Visual Understanding Environment. If you click on the image you can see the full sized version which is 7578 x 3591 px.
When paṭicca-samuppāda is taught in traditional circumstances it is typically not this very complex view that is taught. What is taught is a synthesis which irons out all of the complexity and condenses all of the variation into the standard 12 nidānas, and usually leaves out the upanisās all together. Even in the Triratna Order, which emphasises the upanisās as being of central importance, we only teach the version found in the Upanisā Sutta (SN 12.23).
This raises two questions I think. Firstly why is the canonical account of paṭicca-samuppāda so complex, and even contradictory? Secondly, why is the presentation of paṭicca-samuppāda so simplified and coherent?
I can think of several reasons why paṭicca-samuppāda might be complex. Both scholars and buddhists believe that paṭicca-samuppāda is a general principle which can be expressed in a variety of ways. The general principle is that 'things' arise in dependence on conditions. I've critiqued this view (see A General Theory of Conditionality? and Paṭicca-samuppāda: a Theory of Causation?), but in the end I think it is inevitable that we see the general nature of the principle of conditionality. And any general principle can be illustrated using a variety of concepts, images and metaphors. So we might expect to find complexity. There is also the generally acknowledged idea that the Buddha responded to individuals, explaining things in a language, and at a level, which they could understand. This might explain some of the variation, and a certain amount of contradiction. The Buddha had the goal of liberation in mind, but allowed for any number of paths to get there. Anything which conduces to liberation is Dharma! (see What is Buddhism?) Some of the contradictions are in the order of development in the morality part of the upanisās section of the diagram. These don't amount to show stoppers, but are just different ways of presenting the dynamics of morality. I've confessed to other confusions concerning the lokiya side of things which I think are more serious problems with the model.
Another reason for complexity is that the composition and transmission of these texts, and their collation into a Canon, took place over several centuries. It also seems likely that variations emerged in different communities - what we might these days call transmission lineages. Evidence for these lineages can be found where the same story occurs in different versions. Look for instance at the story of Vaseṭṭha and Bharadvaja in DN 27, MN 98, and Sn 3.9 (and compare with DN 13 as well) - these suggest to me one story remembered different ways. Some scholars (especially Tillman Vetter, following Eric Frauwallner) have speculated that the 12 nidānas were originally two sequences that that have been joined together. One of the supporting observations they make is that there are several Canonical sequences that begin with taṇha (e.g. SN 12.52), though to suggest that this is somehow 'original', rather than merely fragmentary is actually quite doubtful - especially in light of all of the other fragments of doctrine floating around the Canon! Joanna Jurewicz and Richard Gombrich have suggested that especially the first four of the 12 nidānas were added to a shorter sequence in order to satirise Vedic cosmogony because these terms have a particular resonance for Brahmins [1]. This idea of historical process may be the only way to make sense of the various fragments, or sequences that skip steps.
The complexity of the Canonical accounts of paṭicca-samuppāda are comprehensible, and even predictable under the circumstances. But why has the tradition condensed all this to a single set of 12 nidānas, ignored variation and dropped the upanisās all together?
Obviously it makes teaching about paṭicca-samuppāda a lot easier to present it in a simplified version. The discussion of all of the variations is time consuming and is potentially confusing. So there are didactic or pedagogical reasons for beginning with a simple version. I don't understand, however, why the simple version became the only version. If the tradition goes to all the trouble to preserve this vast corpus of literature, why did it lose interest in the detailed content of that literature? After the synthesis produced by Buddhaghosa there seems little interest in critical scholarship in the Theravāda until the modern era, and that was stimulated by the Western critical traditions. And in the Mahāyāna they seem to be immersed in sorting out the significance of their own doctrinal innovations to pay much attention to these basic issues. We seem to have mistaken the map for the territory at some point.
One of the interesting quirks of history is the complete loss of the upanisā sequence in received traditions. Though the sequence occurs once in the Visuddhimagga (Vism i.32) it is given no prominence. As far as I know it does not feature in Mahāyāna texts at all, nor in contemporary Theravāda presentations of the Dhamma. [2] Sangharakshita speculates that it was a preference for via negativa arguments - what he polemically calls "one-sided negativism" [3] - that the upanisā sequence was lost sight of, but in fact we do not know the answer to this conundrum. The full recovery of the teaching has not yet been completed either, because all present published accounts of the upanisā sequence rely on the Upanisā Sutta (SN 12.23) and as I argue in my essay on the upanisā sequences (Onramps to the Spiral Path - pdf) this sutta is not representative of the other Canonical accounts.
It also seems that one of the functions of religion is to provide some certainty, or at least the illusion of certainty. A nice, simple model of reality suggests that life or the universe is actually simple and that certainty is possible. Presenting a simplified model as a beginning is fine, however in many quarters the knowledge that it is only a simplified model seems to have been forgotten. I suggest that this is a symptom of not studying our own texts - we tend to take our knowledge of Buddhism from contemporary accounts of commentarial traditions, precisely because they are simplified and easier to understand. Most people do not seek complexity, they seek simplicity; and most of us are uncomfortable with uncertainty.
Complexity is difficult to communicate or understand. One of the best ways for dealing with complexity is to look for patterns. So in the diagram above we see that many factors repeat in the various schemes, and that they clump together in related categories: many of the elements are to do with morality for instance, while others are related to meditation. So we describe the complex situation in simpler terms - the threefold path of morality, meditation and wisdom is one useful scheme for organising the complexity we find in the Pāli Canon. This is technically called a reductive explanation - and most Buddhist doctrine is highly reductive. It is important to remember that a reductive explanation only simplifies the explanation for the purposes of communication, it does not reduce the phenomena in any way. Ironically, there seems to be a prejudice against reductionism amongst many Buddhists, perhaps because of a tendency to forget about the distinction I've just made. Every conceptualisation involves some reduction of complexity, and Buddhism as communicated in texts is always reductive, always trying to communicate meaningfully about the complexity of human experience, through simplifications, generalisations, and broad categories. This is not a problem unless we take the reductive explanations literally. As Alfred Korzybski said: the map is not the territory.
Books and articles are still being written about the Dharma to supplement a commentarial tradition stretching back in all likelihood to the time of the Buddha himself. Contemporary scholars have yet to reach a full consensus regarding the complexity of the nidāna sequences, but the complexity of the upanisā sequences has received almost no scholarly attention. My own essay on the upanisā sequence is not intended for an academic audience, but aims to provide a scholarly account for the Triratna Order (I reference in-house documents and discussions that would no doubt be disqualified in an academic journal). The idea of lokuttara paṭicca-samuppāda is still mostly a lost idea.
~~oOo~~
Notes Joanna Jurewicz's idea is summarised in chapter 9 of Richard Gombrich's book What the Buddha Thought[Image]. I think Gombrich overstates the importance of Jurewizc's discovery. It is interesting, but it's not obvious that the sequence was formulated primarily as a parody. There is unexplored complexity here! There are two exceptions that I know of. Bhikkhu Bodhi wrote Transcendental Dependent Arising (1980) in response to Sangharakshita's The Three Jewels.[Image] Ayya Khema wrote about the Spiral Path in When the Iron Eagle Flies (1991) and, as she was a personal friend of Sangharakshita, I suspect she also got the idea from him.Sangharakshita (1993) A Survey of Buddhism. 7th ed., Windhorse, p.136. The latest version of the diagram is on my dependent arising webpage, where you can also find partial versions of the diagram, and some other essays. I've printed it on A1 paper, and it is just readable. A0 would be better.
23 Comments
Close this window Jump to comment formThat looks like great software. I have been using the "Layers" feature in PaintShopPro but will certainly want to explore VUE.
I think you are quite right in asking that we question the framing of paṭicca-samuppāda. Though it is usually seen as one example of a larger principle (an example of causation that describes, in my view, how dukkha is produced) it seems clear that the Buddha was saying of paṭicca-samuppāda "This is it; this is the big deal; this is the dharma." The emphasis on causality as the larger lesson distracts us with looking at the way it plays out in the physical world and has us haring off the track worrying about whether we have free will or not.
It looks to me as though the 12-step p-s is the core of the teaching -- certainly in the Pali canon it gets abbreviated down to the names for its component parts far more often than it gets either extended into longer versions or given thorough detail. The version in SN12.23 extends it into the process of liberation, which is good and useful information giving a strong sense of direction, but those parts are far down the path for most of us, and working on understanding and then seeing for ourselves the first 12 is quite a challenge.
I would guess, too, that a lot of it has to do with where teachers put the emphasis. My theory is that the majority of teachers in the various traditions put their emphasis on karma and on creating good merit through learning the basics and skillful means and that there is very little concern with the steps beyond those initial 12, those further steps leading on to liberation. When what the Buddha taught is understood to be something difficult to achieve, well nigh impossible in just one lifetime, it seems obvious that teachers are going to focus on the "beginner's" teachings rather than putting strong emphasis on gaining liberation here and now, in this life. So the initial 12 steps have the emphasis.
Then, too, those final steps seem quite clear and self-explanatory, compared to the confusion around the original 12, with the result that the parts that still need work get discussed more often.
I have studied SN 12.23 quite a lot recently and would be interested in your thoughts on why the chain (looked at in reverse) goes upadana, bhava, jati, dukkha, and then saddha. Where did jaramarana go?
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Also, looking at your chart (which is magnificently detailed) I notice the word "kamma" in there -- I can easily see how it can relate to the various parts of p-a but am wondering if you've ever found a sutta focusing on p-a that describes it in terms of kamma? I have yet to.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Hi Star,
Personally I think the 12 nidāna chain is incomprehensible, or at least not fully comprehensible, not fully self-consistent nor consistent with what we know about the world. I blogged about this: confessions. The bit going from vedanā to bhava makes sense to me, but the rest of it is a puzzle - I do not even understand some of the words. Does anyone?
SN 12.23 is not representative of lokuttara dependent arising. And if you look at other traditional DA teachings they make it clear that the escape point is between vedanā and taṇha! So I think we should not focus on SN 12.23, but see it as a slightly weird variation on AN 10.1 - 10.5 and the AN 11 repetitions. These are much more comprehensible. One starts with ethics and just keeps going with meditation and wisdom.
I've updated my current list of suttas which talk about the Spiral Path in the post which is a translation and commentary on AN 10.2.
This is the path - the beginning, middle and end of it. Whereas the content of the 12 nidānas seems to be limited more or less to yathābhūta-ñāṇadassana. That is I see it as the opposite of what you suggest. The nidānas are actually only a small part of the upanisās.
I've uploaded my draft in-house commentary, though I think it has some problems still. I'm working on something more general - as well as identifying more suttas which use the pattern.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Hi Star Again
I can't find the word Kamma in there. Where is it!? If it's on the chart then I found it in a sutta and it should be labelled.
Kamma doesn't interest me that much. It's not something I go looking for. Except where it is described as cetanā which I have blogged about several times now.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Kamma is along side the 12 steps on the left. In red: "past kamma process" "present kamma process".
Re your post two above:
I don't think p-s is the path, unless you count the wrong path as the path. It is a description of how we go wrong, and being familiar with its workings allows us to locate the spots where we can stop the process.
But wow, Jayarava, wow. Thanks for pointing out AN 10.2! I hadn't read it. I have it in Woodward's translation and it is so lovely.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Ah. OK. That isn't in fact from a sutta, it is from Buddhaghosa's Visuddhimagga. The Three Lifetimes interpretation is not canonical but commentarial. I put that in because it is what everyone seems to talk about. But I don't believe it is what is intended in the suttas.
And yes. The 12 Nidānas are the saṃsāra process, but undoing them is what leads to nibbāna according to the Theravāda - so it is the path in that sense.
AN 10.2 is important! Read it with Suttas 1 & 3 as well. Then compare some of the others particularly AN 8.81 and MN 7. Then having read those re-read DN 2 (from para 40 onwards, p. 99 in Walsh's translation). A world opens up. And consider that this teaching was completely lost to the Mahāyāna as far as I know; and is mentioned only once in passing in Visuddhimagga and is then lost to the Theravāda as well, until 1922 when Mrs Rhys Davids points it out to her readers in the Editorial Notes to the PTS Saṃyutta translation (done with Woodward).
I have to admit that I generally dislike Woodward's translations. A bit to faux Jane Austin for my tastes.
Best Wishes
Jayarava
Sunday, March 20, 2011
I will read those suttas in the sequence you suggest, and see how well it fits with my current understanding. Thanks.
In just the same way I pause when I see "kamma" associated with p-s, I pause at seeing "samsara" to describe it, also, because I don't find p-s and samsara associated in the suttas, either, though I have seen it once described in terms of the aggregates, and once in terms of I-making.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Hi Star.
I use saṃsāra in a very general way in conversation. It literally means 'going on and on'. It suggests to me 'the human condition'.
You'll find paṭiccasamuppāda and saṃsāra together in the opening paragraphs of the Mahānidāna sutta. The connection might make an interesting blog post one day - though I'm pulling on other threads at present.
We need to be cautious about saying that two concepts are not linked only because two specific words are not found in conjunction. The two concepts are clearly linked throughout the canon. Just because saṃsāra is a term taken up and popularised by the post-canonical literature we should not think that the idea of rebirth is an innovation. Yes? The idea and the terminology are not identical.
Since I'm not very interested in the idea of kamma I'm not very familiar with the suttas that describe it - except in the case of the description as cetanā. I wonder how kamma is described? Does the Buddha ask and answer the question "Katamañca kammaṃ?" I see the form in Pāli so it does seem to be a question being asked and answered. And I wonder if there is any answer which is inconsistent with paṭiccasamuppāda - going for a null hypothesis along these lines "that kamma is unrelated to paṭicca-samuppāda".
It's not something that bothers me enough to do that research myself, but I'd be interested to read a brief summary of what you find if you do it, or know someone else that has.
Certainly in many years of reading and writing about Buddhism I've seen nothing to make me doubt that kamma is an essential aspect of discussions on paṭiccasamuppāda and that the two topics are intimately related. And without much effort I found kamma and paṭiccasamuppāda clearly and explicitly linked in SN 35.146 for instance. It seems like a non-issue to me.
Monday, March 21, 2011
"You'll find paṭiccasamuppāda and saṃsāra together in the opening paragraphs of the Mahānidāna sutta."
Thanks for that. Do you know I had not realized samsara comes in two varieties? The one with a short second a I knew about but had not noticed that there is one with a long a as well. How did I miss that?
I worry less about how fond post-canonical literature is of the word samsara than that it has specific Hindu referents. Like "karma", "samsara" is a word that is well understood in one way in popular culture, and may have meant something quite different to early Buddhists.
"And without much effort I found kamma and paṭiccasamuppāda clearly and explicitly linked in SN 35.146 for instance. It seems like a non-issue to me."
On this one I think you'll need to be more explicit to help me see how you see its description of kamma having anything to do with paṭiccasamuppāda. I find SN 35.146 "Kamma" talking about the cessation of kamma; bodyparts being old kamma; the use of bodyparts being new kamma; liberation through cessation of actions in body, speech, and mind; and the eightfold path.
I did a quick search in DPR and found "katamañca adhammakammaṃ?" and "katamañca vaggakammaṃ?" and "samaggakammaṃ" and "kammaṭṭhānaṃ" and "purāṇakammaṃ" but only turned up "Katamañca kammaṃ?" twice (well, it's in MN 57 numerous times, and then there's a repeating series in AN's fours) all to do with the questions about kinds of kamma: "What is dark action with dark result?" and its brethren.
But to speculate over "if there is any answer which is inconsistent with paṭiccasamuppāda" is clearly the wrong question. Since if you see paṭiccasamuppāda you see dhamma and vice versa, nothing the Buddha teaches is ever going to be "inconsistent with paṭiccasamuppāda" but that's not what I am saying.
I am saying that paṭiccasamuppāda is framed using quite specific references and it represents a very precise view of the way we cause our own dukkha and while it can also be framed in terms of a different system, of kamma, because kamma is a different system it may distort things. A little like talking about God and meaning the way the Christian God is conceived at a folk level here in the U.S., but instead of using modern language, limiting yourself to using Old Testament words and concepts. It can be done, but the framing concepts are a little different, and the language of the Old Testament could distort what you were trying to say.
The kammic system is about obtaining good stuff for oneself in the future; it concerns itself with right and wrong, and adherence to rules. It looks to fix the problem by applying bandaids. Whereas paṭiccasamuppāda describes the illness and points to the cure -- a lot more than bandaids there. It is not concerned with obtaining good stuff for oneself in the future, it's concerned with getting rid of the self so it has no future. It doesn't need to concern itself with right and wrong and adherence to rules because it is specifically saying "through no particular fault of your own (you ignorant being) the things you are doing are causing harm -- let me show you how to stop it" -- and paṭiccasamuppāda recognizes that simply by ridding oneself of self, the behavior seen by the world as "morally right and wrong" is reoriented in a way that makes morality and blame not an issue anymore. Basically paṭiccasamuppāda says that the self is the cause of all our troublesome behaviors, and that without that self interfering, we will act in a way that the world sees as "morally right" but has a different basis for the person acting.
So I am saying that discussing paṭiccasamuppāda in terms of kamma distorts what paṭiccasamuppāda is saying by framing it in terms of a self-perpetuating system instead of framing in terms of a get-rid-of-the-self system.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Hi Star
I can only find one spelling of saṃsāra. PED pg 658.
As for the rest I think we've been around this circle before Star and I'm not interested in pursuing it. Yours views on kamma seem crackpot to me, and you seem blind to evidence which flatly contradicts your assertions.
All the best and everything, but time for me to get on with something more sensible.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Are the first four nidānas Jurewicz and Gombrich refer to avidyā-saṃskāra-vijñāna-nāmarūpa? And what does the latter satirise?
Thanks for the link to your article!
Monday, March 21, 2011
My mistake and my apologies. I offered up, by way of explanation, one corner of something much larger; it's not going to make sense to you in the usual context; of course it seems crackpot outside its own framework. I should have known better, but live and learn, and sorry for it. I know I said this before but I'll say it again and I'll try to remember it: I'll leave you alone now. Still be appreciating your blog though.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Hi Elisa
Yes on the nidānas. The argument on how the parody or satire works is quite complex and it's been a while since I looked at the details.
The idea seems to be that what is being parodied is the cosmology found in Ṛgveda x.129 and the version of it found in chapter one of Bṛhadāranyaka Upaniṣad.
The article to look at is
Jurewicz, J. (2000) 'Playing with fire: the pratītyasamutpāda from the perspective of Vedic thought. J. of the Pali Text Society. 26: 77-103.
BTW I'm about to upload a new and much better version of that article, it might pay to wait a couple of days.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Thanks, I will wait, then. And try to locate Jurewicz' article in the meantime.
elisa
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Hi Star
Yes, context is important. I have a lot on my mind at any given time and tend to want to think and discuss the issue in the post, if anything. In this case the historical quirks which relate to complexity and simplicity
This is an aspect of the complexity thing. Yes? You have a complex idea clashing with another complex idea and a few hundred words are insufficient to convince a reluctant reader!
If one is trying to overturn a paradigm - to convince people of an idiosyncratic view - then there is a lot of work to do! One must present extensive evidence in a way that allows others to take it in, and explain why the previous paradigm is wrong, even though some very intelligent people have tested it almost to destruction, especially in the last 30-40 years. I think you have an uphill battle.
I myself hold frankly idiosyncratic views on the Dharma, but I discuss them here on my blog. I have been building up a case here over some years, based on the very solid basis of work by professional scholars who have training in both the languages involved, and the modes of thinking required to analyse what they read. I'm clear that I have neither skill to any great degree. So I don't evangelise, I just write away in obscurity - except for one or two published articles. I aspire to have more work published, but it's difficult to attain the standard of rigour and insight that is needed to get through the peer review process.
The kind of thing you are attempting, a provocative re-assessment of received views, requires a book length treatment at least. And in order to be convincing you'll have to show that you've understood the original material and have a good grasp of the literature, a wide knowledge of the relevant texts. And you have to deal with the possible exceptions and objections. You also need to spell out your starting assumptions - and especially in your case justify them.
It would make a good PhD project I think. Are you in a position to pursue it?
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Thanks for the dialog, Jayarava, I agree with your points.
But, no, I'm not in the position to present and defend a PhD thesis, and I'm not likely to spend the years in a university to get to such a place either. But I am building a case that does require great length, and there is a lot of evidence to cite. It's rigorous work but it's really good to hold to a standard of showing supporting evidence, which tends to make the way the pieces fit clearer and clear to me (which is thrilling). I am hoping you'll find some value in it when it's complete, because it answers some of the questions you've been asking -- though you still may not agree with my answers! I am not ready to discuss the heart of the thing on my blog, partly because it would require a great deal of technical information to support it, and also because I haven't yet found the approach for presentation. But I do put bits and pieces there in the hope that others can point out where I go astray (what you perceive as me being "blind to evidence which flatly contradicts your assertions" is me having check marked something that fits into my understanding in a different way).
I guess, in the final analysis, at the moment you and I are working in very different ways. Because I am still in the process of synthesizing insight from anyone who has some to offer, I am interested in engaging everyone even on subjects a bit tangential to what I'm doing because I learn a great deal from every clear thinker I encounter; whereas you are very focused, perhaps because you have got enough framework in place to be working on details. I well understand wanting to think only about one subject at a time (whatever it may be at the moment).
My initial comment did focus on the reasons for the differences and I was trying to offer possibilities that would answer the questions you were asking, but I guess my thinking on pretty much any subject isn't going to be of much use to you until you've seen the larger context for it.
As for evangelism, in Wikipedia's sense of "relaying information about a particular set of beliefs to others who do not hold those beliefs" I suppose I inadvertently do that as I put the things I am discovering out for debate, but in the sense of "missionary zeal, purpose, or activity" or "preaching or promulgation of the gospel" not so much, though I do admit to zeal, but that's just intellectual excitement over discoveries that feel, to me, like falling into something even better than King Tut's tomb. I didn't set out with the expectation that I'd find anything in the suttas other than what the majority said was there; I certainly had no idea I'd see what I have seen; and I have no agenda to overturn a paradigm -- may a thousand paradigms bloom!
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
But here, taking one last stab at answering the question your post framed, and at the risk of still having my ideas sound crackpot to you, I don't think that paṭiccasamuppāda *is* complex. It is simple, and elegant; it's just that the simplicity and elegance has gotten lost in the forest of language -- you could say we're having trouble picking out the individual simsapa leaves.
One problem is the Vedic love of the sort of wordplay where one word is talking about several things at once; and another is that the same word gets specifically defined in the canon different ways (rupa, for example, as literal form, and -- as in the khandas -- as the way we experience form); and a third problem is that sometimes multiple levels are being used at once and sometimes they are not; and how do we sort all that out? Your chart is a grand illustration that if we try to make it all fit just from the words it's going to be quite a tangle. As I said upstream, paṭiccasamuppāda is the dharma, so in one sense everything the Buddha says makes reference to it, which, over the course of 40 years of teaching, is going to give us quite a few words to try to order into a theory of what paṭiccasamuppāda is saying. And that brings us back to context, which is really the only hope to give us a sort of Rosetta Stone.
Oh, and I wasn't using PED to look for samsara, I was using the Digital Pali Reader, which is a wonderful tool but probably needs more skill to wield well than I actually have. "Search results for sa.msara.m: Vin: 0, DN: 0, MN: 0, SN: 2, AN: 1, KN: 10, Abhi: 0." Of course, I searched more widely than that, and came up with 267 instances in various forms and compounds. I remain grateful that you pointed out an instance that showed me the error I was making.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Hi Star
Crackpot was a little unkind, apologies for that, and all credit to you for taking it so well.
As far as paṭiccasamuppāda being simple and clear we have the Buddha's response to Ānanda's assertion of the same claim: "say not so, say not so." It is deep and unfathomable - apparently.
All languages and all cultures use words in complex ways - the technical word for this is polysemy 'many meanings'. It is a universal feature of language, particularly abstractions and metaphors. There is no simple language, nor any simple culture. All languages, all cultures are complex.
When searching for Pāli words one has to search for all of the declensions: saṃsāro, saṃsāraṃ, saṃsārassa, saṃsārāya, saṃsārena, saṃsārā, saṃsāre, etc; and all of the potential variants as well saṃsāre, saṃsārasmiṃ etc. Then one must give thought to how it might be used in compounds. The ideal thing is to search for the stem form with a wildcard: saṃsār* or *saṃsār* which gives me 561 variants to sieve through according to CST4. Though you have to be aware of false positives.
Given that you can't see paṭiccasamuppāda in a construction "X, X-samudaya, X-nirodha, X-nirodhamagga", it suggests to me that you are not casting your net wide enough. I suggest that this is not unrelated to seeing simplicity. You're seeing simplicity because you filter out complexity - seeing what you want to see in other words. I've said this to you before: you appear to argue from unspoken presuppositions I don't share. And I'm not convinced that I should share them - and more or less convinced that I should not.
It's not that your conclusions are bad given your presuppositions - but that what I can see of your working towards that conclusion gives me reason to doubt the validity of your procedure. The method is not justified, so the conclusions are the least of your problems.
Many an eminent scholar has attempted to extract the simple original teachings from the noise of the canon and the tradition. Some of the greats! I've indulged myself in that game at times as well. But it is a complete fallacy to think you can do it, and no reputable scholar does it any more.
We may believe that it was once simpler, and that is likely to be true, but we'll never know what that simple form was like because it is completely obscured. All attempts to reconstruct it tell us more about the biases and prejudices of the person making the attempt than they do about the original form. Because what you choose to filter out cannot be based on any foreknowledge of the original Buddhism - so where do your filtering criteria come from? How do you choose them, and validate the result. Against what do you check your conclusions (and in your case I imagine it probably just "feels right", yes?). There's just no external source of validation or proof - so it all comes down to decisions we make about what is important to us. That's a hard truth, but it is true I believe.
I said crackpot was too harsh and that was true. But you have a long way to go, it seems to me, in untangling why you believe what you do. I think if you did that work thoroughly, then your conclusions would change.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Blogger is not allowing long comments these days so this is part 2 of my reply to Star:
I do find saṃsar* in CST4 as well. In verse. And mostly in repetitions and variations on a single pada describing Māra e.g. SN i.104:
Saṃsaraṃ dīghamaddhānaṃ
vaṇṇaṃ katvā subhāsubhaṃ
Alaṃ te tena pāpima,
nihato tvamasi antaka.
Roaming the long stretch,
In fair and foul forms.
Enough of them, Evil One.
You are slain! It is over.
So we could explain the form saṃsara metri causi - i.e. as a change to fit the meter of the verse (if I knew enough about meter I could tell you whether this was the problem, but I don't and I'm just flagging it as a possibility).
However see Bhikkhu Bodhi Connected Discourses p.412, n.267 where he argues for saṃsara as a distinct form, and that, nota bene, saṃsaraṃ dīghaddhānaṃ = saṃsāra.
This made me look into the morphology a little more closely and it seems that PED treats saṃsara (short a) as a form of the present-participle of saṃsarati < sam-√sṛ 'wander, roam, transmigrate'. If we accept this then saṃsara has an active verbal sense 'going on/around', whereas saṃsāra is the derived noun from the same verb (with the expected root vowel guṇa.) 'the round'.
A little knowledge...
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Hi Star
Part one of your recent comment went to spam, so I didn't see it until after replying above.
I also found different things in the suttas than what I expected - a lot of uncertainty, complexity and at times contradiction. And yes a lot of different approaches are valid. Though, again, I think awareness of what your approach is, and why you choose it, are essential. I'd be interested to know if you understand why the pieces seem to fit - what view that you already hold is it resonating with? That's where study can be a vehicle for self-knowledge and even liberation to some extent.
Let me know when you have something more substantial to read.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Thanks for the detailed answers; forgiven for "crackpot ideas" -- I brought it up again to tease you for having said it.
I'll try for a short answer in the hope that we can get back to focusing on our work that way.
When I said "simple" I didn't mean "it is only simple". And as for "how do I tell if I am on the right track" it has very little to do with "feels right". A feeling or "sense" of what's being said is certainly where I start from, but then I go looking in the suttas and in the literature on Vedism to see if there's any support for a thesis. Sometimes there is and I add it in. Quite often there isn't and I set it aside. On good days the search leads me to trip across an alternative possibility I hadn't even considered.
My expectation (dangerous thing, expectation) is that you'll find the central core of what I'm working on quite useful; you'll find most of my conclusions back in the cracked pot.
Wishing you productive studies and fun while at 'em.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Hi Star
Knowledge progresses through conjecture and refutation. I like to think I'm open to persuasion and refutation. I have actually changed my mind about things in the past :-)
I'm quite aware of parallels between the Upaniṣads and the Pāli texts - in 2006 I attended the Numata lectures by Richard Gombrich that became his most recent book (I still have my notes, the handouts, and Richard kindly sent the transcripts which are slightly different from the book). Since then I have found a few parallels myself, and have written a number of blog posts on the subject.
How to interpret such things is one of the biggest problems in Indology at present, and full of conflicting opinions.
I look forward to reading a more considered version of your thesis.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Wow, present day geek examines old text. This is awesome. Are you going to present this at the upcoming Buddhist Geeks conference? I daresay you'd fit quite nicely:-) Well done! I can see how this can be a useful diagram!
Friday, May 25, 2012