AN 5.113 english B.Sujato (error corrected)

edit 4/12: error described below has been corrected, will appear in next update of SC.

Bhante @sujato, on new suttacentral you currently are translating samma samadhi as “first absorption” within the sutta. Can you comment please? I checked the Thai and Sri Lankan pali, it’s consistent with the Burmese you translated from.

english B. Sujato

Numbered Discourses 5
  1. At Andhakavinda
  2. Right Immersion

“Mendicants, a mendicant who has five qualities can’t enter and remain in the first absorption. What five? It’s when a mendicant can’t endure sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches. A mendicant who has these five qualities can’t enter and remain in the first absorption.

A mendicant who has five qualities can enter and remain in the first absorption. What five? It’s when a mendicant can endure sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches. A mendicant who has these five qualities can enter and remain in the first absorption.”

B.Bodhi eng.

113 (3) Concentration

547“Bhikkhus, possessing five qualities, a bhikkhu is incapable of entering and dwelling in right concentration. What five? Here, a bhikkhu cannot patiently endure forms, sounds, odors, tastes, and tactile objects. Possessing these five qualities, a bhikkhu is incapable of entering and dwelling in right concentration.

548“Bhikkhus, possessing five [other] qualities, a bhikkhu is capable of entering and dwelling in right concentration. What five? [138] Here, a bhikkhu can patiently endure forms, sounds, odors, tastes, and tactile objects. Possessing these five qualities, a bhikkhu is capable of entering and dwelling in right concentration.”

Sri Lanka canon

[BJT Page 222] [\x 222/] 5. 3. 2. 3 (Sammāsamādhisuttaṃ) (Sāvatthinidānaṃ) 13. Pañcahi bhikkhave, dhammehi samannāgato bhikkhu abhabbo sammāsamādhiṃ upasampajja viharituṃ. Katamehi pañcahi:

Idha bhikkhave, bhikkhu akkhamo hoti rūpānaṃ, akkhamo saddānaṃ, akkhamo gandhānaṃ, akkhamo rasānaṃ, akkhamo, phoṭṭhabbānaṃ.

Imehi kho bhikkhave pañcahi dhammehi samannāgatato bhikkhu abhabbo sammāsamādhiṃ upasampajja viharituṃ.

Pañcahi bhikkhave, dhammehi samannāgato bhikkhu bhabbo sammāsamādhiṃ upasampajja viharituṃ. Katamehi pañcahi:
[PTS Page 138] [\q 138/]

Idha bhikkhave, bhikkhu khamo hoti rūpānaṃ, khamo saddānaṃ, khamo gandhānaṃ, khamo rasānaṃ, khamo phoṭṭhabbānaṃ.

Imehi kho bhikkhave pañcahi dhammehi samannāgato bhikkhu bhabbo sammāsamādhiṃ upasampajja viharitunti.

Thai canon

(12) 2. andhakavindavaggo, 3. sammāsamādhisuttaṃ (AN 5.113) (Thai)

[113] Pañcahi bhikkhave dhammehi samannāgato bhikkhu abhabbo

sammāsamādhiṃ upasampajja viharituṃ katamehi pañcahi idha bhikkhave

bhikkhu akkhamo hoti rūpānaṃ akkhamo saddānaṃ akkhamo gandhānaṃ

akkhamo rasānaṃ akkhamo phoṭṭhabbānaṃ imehi kho bhikkhave pañcahi

dhammehi samannāgato bhikkhu abhabbo sammāsamādhiṃ upasampajja viharituṃ.

Pañcahi bhikkhave dhammehi samannāgato bhikkhu bhabbo sammāsamādhiṃ upasampajja

viharituṃ katamehi pañcahi idha bhikkhave bhikkhu khamo hoti rūpānaṃ

khamo saddānaṃ khamo gandhānaṃ khamo rasānaṃ khamo phoṭṭhabbānaṃ

imehi kho bhikkhave pañcahi dhammehi samannāgato bhikkhu bhabbo

sammāsamādhiṃ upasampajja viharitunti.

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The proofreading, which is still in progress, should address this, no?

Maybe people should PM Ven Sujato with these kinds of messages.

I do not mean to presume to be able to divine the intentions of the OP, but it looks bad, at least from my end. Maybe I am the one who is wrong, and it shouldn’t “look bad”, but I think these things are best dealt with in-person, in the form of PMs, rather than on a public forum.

If I had a question about X person’s translation, and I knew and could easily speak to X person, rather than publishing an article in public addressing it, I would first just ask them.

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I’m not part of the proof reading team, I wouldn’t know. If they’re checking English for grammar and typos, then no it would not catch that potential error I’m questioning.

In general I agree. I do go case by case though. For people who I see as truth seekers who don’t seem like the type who’d be worried about how their ego looks in public, I speak plainly and directly.

Notice how I framed my question though. I’m asking if it is an error, not stating that it is. The fact that I went and dug up the pali for 2 other tipitakas shows I wondered perhaps there was an error in the Burmese pali script, and maybe B. Sujato had consulted PTS or something. I don’t know who’s error it is, that’s why I’m asking. I have more follow up questions as well, that will be of more interest to the public, which is why I directly went that route (contigent on how this first question is resolved).

Thanks for pointing it out, it is indeed a significant error, and I have corrected it.

I’m more than happy to have errors pointed out and discussed on a public forum, in fact it is an intrinsic part of the process for me. By doing so, we not only harness the power of many eyes and many minds, but we learn about the different perspectives that people have, and why they have those perspectives.

Generally speaking, I’ve mentioned that it’s a little premature to post corrections just yet, as proofing is ongoing. In fact a revised version is in the pipelines, which contains several thousand corrections (most of them much more minor than this one!) That will still be flagged as a draft, and the fully proofread version will be in a subsequent update. But even then, in a project of this size, we cannot hope to eliminate all errors in such a short time, so I hope to keep updating and correcting things indefinitely.

Just as a note, when posting apparent errors, it’s usually enough just to give the English text and the sutta reference, with a remark as to what the error seems to be. If I need more info, I’ll ask.

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Bhante @sujato,

What’s your plan for footnote type of information, and other important supplementary information (english glossary of important EBT terms, etc)? That is, the very valuable type of explanatory detail that appears in B. Bodhi’s English translations as footnotes, currently are nonexistent in your English series. Thanissaro’s translation series has a very nice feature at the end of each sutta, it lists similar suttas.

On SC, it shows parallels, but many of the “similar suttas” under Thanissaro’s would not qualify as a true parallel (having shared identical pali text), but in terms of ideas they parallel.

For example, I found a sutta similar to this one, AN 5.113, roughly a couple dozen suttas further down in AN 5, that is not a true parallel, but a sutta any reader would definitely want to know about it if they’re exploring the same theme as AN 5.113.

I know you tagged all your SCDD threads with an ID with your translation notes.

So let’s say for example this thread, for sutta AN 5.113, you had some footnote type information, some translation notes, and “similar sutta” references. Is having “AN 5.113 english” in the thread title enough for “SuttaCentral” to automatically link to any SCDD threads?

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That’s an interesting feature, perhaps we might be able to implement it somehow.

As for the more general situation regarding footnotes, I have written at length on it here:

Normally you can simply write the sutta ID and it will create a link to the main SC. This is broken at the moment, however, but will be fixed in due course.

Getting links between discussions on D&D is more tricky, due to the limitations of the underlying search, which uses a database (PostgreSQL) rather than a fully-featured search engine. But we’ll see.

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Thanks for that explanation, and I remember reading it before as well.

So by SC linking to SCDD that means once that bug is fixed, when I’m on the page s://suttacentral.net/an5.113
it should display all the threads on SCDD that have “AN 5.113” in the title (or body of text as well?)

And as SCDD grows in size, cummulative posts, how are the search results sorted? For example, lets say MN 10 has hundreds of threads with “MN 10” in the subject title.

Maybe there can be some standardized tags that can assure getting better placement near the top.

I’m OK with the lack of footnotes discussing details of translation. There are plenty of footnotes in other translations, and the ability to list the Pali in parallel, and look up the dictionary automatically, is very helpful if one is unsure how certain technical terms are being translated.

However, references to similar suttas, as noted by @frankk, or references to suttas where key terms are discussed in detail, are, I think in a different category. For example, referring readers to SN56.11 SuttaCentral and MN141 SuttaCentral for discussions of the four noble truths. That sort of cross-reference is very helpful for navigation .I gather from the link that such things may well be added in future.

Well, we’ll think about it. SC is built on the idea of texts as closely interrelated parts of a corpus, so connecting things is in our DNA. The problem is collecting the data.

Take, for example, the sets of parallels listed by Ven Bodhi at the end of Connected Discourses. There’s a lot of very useful information in there, and much or all of it could certainly be adapted for SC. But of course, it’s time and effort to go through it all.

Same with the suggestions of the “related suttas”. How do we get all these into the strict, consistent JSON data format that SC can use? That’s the tricky part!

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I feel this is heading towards the concept of a dharma skandha, (of which there is supposed to be 84,000 of) and isolating the dhamma concepts perhaps could be automated…?