Anapanasati Sutta MN 118 recommendations for commentaries

[Ceisiwr]

I’ve read Ven. Analayo’s book. I even tried his method. I found it lacking when I compared it to the orthodox method. At this point I can only repeat that I do not agree with Ven. Analayo and his modern commentary. I agree with the Visuddhimagga. Have a good day

[Adutiya]

I’ve heard Bhante Sujato say that Pa Auk holds very closely to the Commentaries and that approach to the Dhamma rather than the EBTs.

[Ceisiwr]

The Pa Auk method is essentially the Visuddhimagga method, which is from the classical commentarial tradition. The suttas themselves are just the bare bones of the practice. Anyone who explains the method is essentially commentating on the sutta. Ven. Analayo’s book on mindfulness with breathing is as much a commentary as the Visuddhimagga.

[thomaslaw]

@Ceisiwr

The Pa Auk method is essentially the Visuddhimagga method, which is from the classical commentarial tradition. The suttas themselves are just the bare bones of the practice. Anyone who explains the method is essentially commentating on the sutta. Ven. Analayo’s book on mindfulness with breathing is as much a commentary as the Visuddhimagga.

I think Analayo is mainly to promote his own Theravada teaching, not early Buddhism, by using Agama texts.

[Ceisiwr]

I’m not so sure about that. However, I don’t think we can get an “early Buddhist” teaching on mindfulness of breathing just by looking at the sutta (and Agamas ). It’s too bare bones, being stripped back for memorisation. I think the only early Buddhist anapanasati method we can get is from the commentaries, which are only a few short centuries after the Blessed Ones’s parinibbana. This is the earliest method for practicing it.

[Adutiya]

@Ceisiwr

Of course, but the Visuddhimagga is the understanding of the elders who were closer in time to the Buddha than contemporary commentators. The Visuddhimagga is how the Noble Sangha understood and practiced the Dhamma just a few centuries after the Blessed One’s parinibbana, based on the older material that it is.

@Ceisiwr

The suttas themselves are just the bare bones of the practice. Anyone who explains the method is essentially commentating on the sutta.

I certainly won’t criticize your practice of anapanasati. About the Dhamma in general, I don’t think the suttas are merely “bare bones” of any practice. One thing I’ve learned is, when interpreting the suttas and establishing one’s understanding of the Dhamma in generalor any of the Buddha’s particular teachings, placing a higher value on the Abhidhamma or the other commentaries simply because they are closer to the Buddha’s lifetime can lead to problems. Here is a graceful, brief synopsis of the Pali Commentaries:

@sujato

On the Pali Commentaries

The Pali canonical texts are accompanied by an extensive and detailed set of commentaries ( aṭṭhakathā ) and subcommentaries ( ṭīkā ). These texts are, for most people, even more mysterious than the canon itself, so let me say a few words on them.

The main commentaries were compiled by the monk Buddhaghosa at the Mahāvihāra monastery in Anuradhapura, then the capital of Sri Lanka, in the 5th century. Buddhaghosa inherited a series of older commentaries in the old Sinhalese language, now lost. These had been compiled over the centuries in Sri Lanka, mostly between around 200 BCE–200 CE; that is to say, the main content of the commentaries was closed several centuries before Buddhaghosa.

It was all a bit messy, with text in Pali and commentaries in Sinhala, and a variety of different commentarial texts. Buddhaghosa aimed to streamline the situation by combining all the old commentaries into a single system, translated into Pali.

Buddhaghosa’s work remains as an extraordinary accomplishment of traditional scholarship. He had an almost preternatural mastery of his materials, and the clarity and rigor of his texts make light work of what must have been an exceedingly difficult task. It is crucial to remember that he saw his work as that of an editor, compiler, and translator. That is what he claimed to be doing, and from everything we know about his work, he was a scholar of integrity who did exactly what he said. When he felt a need to express his own opinion he said so; but such interventions were rare and hesitant. The commentaries are the record of discussions and explanations of the Pali texts handed down in the Mahāvihāra tradition, not the opinions of Buddhaghosa.

While Buddhaghosa compiled commentaries on the major texts, he left some incomplete. It is not always certain which commentaries were by him; but in any case later scholars completed his work. Subsequently, subcommentaries were written to clarify obscure points in the commentaries.

In modern Theravāda the commentaries have become a sadly and unnecessarily divisive issue. Some people take the entire tradition uncritically and regard the commentaries as essentially infallible. Others flip to an extreme of suspecting anything in the commentaries, rewriting Theravādin history as a conspiracy of the commentaries. But any serious scholar knows that the commentaries are often helpful, even indispensable, on countless difficult and obscure points. Without them, there is no way we would have been able to create the accurate dictionaries and translations that we have today. Yet they cannot be relied on blindly, for, like any resource, they are fallible, and must be read with a careful and critical eye. On some doctrinal issues, the position of the commentaries had shifted considerably from the stance in the suttas, and not in illuminating ways.

I once read some advice from a Burmese Sayadaw—I am afraid this was many years ago and I have forgotten who it was—on how to use the commentaries. He said—and I paraphrase—something like this. First read the sutta. Try to understand it. Read it and meditate on it again and again. If there’s anything you don’t understand, see if it can be explained elsewhere in the suttas. If, at the end of the day, you still cannot understand it, check the commentary. If it answers the question, good. But if, after equally careful study, the commentary is still unclear, then check the subcommentary.

This has always seemed like sound advice to me, and I have tried to follow it. The purpose of the commentary is to help explain the suttas. Where the suttas are clear—and mostly they are—there is no need to refer to the commentary. The only extra thing I would add is that, in addition to the commentaries and subcommentaries, we now also have Chinese and Sanskrit parallels to help us understand difficult passages.

In these introductions, I almost completely leave aside the commentarial explanations. In several places the explanations I have given differ from those in the commentaries. I am aware of this, and have written on most of these things elsewhere, but I do not want to burden the introductions by re-litigating every controversy. I don’t contradict the commentaries out of ignorance or stubbornness, but because after many years of study, contemplation, discussion, and practice, I have come to see some things differently.

[Ceisiwr]

@Adutiya

I certainly won’t criticize your practice of anapanasati. About the Dhamma in general, I don’t think the suttas are merely “bare bones” of any practice. One thing I’ve learned is, when interpreting the suttas and establishing one’s understanding of the Dhamma in generalor any of the Buddha’s particular teachings, placing a higher value on the Abhidhamma or the other commentaries simply because they are closer to the Buddha’s lifetime can lead to problems. Here is a graceful, brief synopsis of the Pali Commentaries:

When I said “the suttas themselves” I was referring to the suttas on mindfulness with breathing specifically. There isn’t enough detail in them to re-construct what the exact method was. The earliest detail on what the method involves is in the commentaries. That being said, i think the commentaries are a good guide to any sutta.

[thomaslaw]

@Ceisiwr

I’m not so sure about that. However, I don’t think we can get an “early Buddhist” teaching on mindfulness of breathing just by looking at the sutta (and Agamas ).

Yes, we can, including other early Buddhist teachings
(cf. The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism: A Comparative Study Based on the Sutra-anga portion of the Pali Samyutta-Nikaya and the Chinese Samyuktagama, by Choong Mun-keat, in Series: Beitrage zur Indologie Band 32; Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2000).

@Ceisiwr

I think the only early Buddhist anapanasati method we can get is from the commentaries, which are only a few short centuries after the Blessed Ones’s parinibbana. This is the earliest method for practicing it.

I think I disagree with that. The commentaries are clearly sectarian texts. It will be better one seeks an understanding of early Buddhist teachings by studying the early Buddhist texts comparatively, particularly SN/SA suttas. Cf. the above-mentioned book, pp. 7-11.

[Ceisiwr]

Yes, we can, including other early Buddhist teachings
(cf. The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism: A Comparative Study Based on the Sutra-anga portion of the Pali Samyutta-Nikaya and the Chinese Samyuktagama , by Choong Mun-keat, in Series: Beitrage zur Indologie Band 32; Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2000).

The suttas are stripped down teachings, to aid with memorisation. I doubt the Buddha’s teaching would be so short and lacking in detail, accept for a few occasions. His teachings would have been delivered like our Dhamma talks of today. The conversations he had we will never know in full. So, in order to understand the suttas they have to be explained to fill in the detail. Once you have done that you have commented on them. Given that we place faith in the sangha, and assuming there were at least stream-enterers if not higher among the sangha of old, I see no reason to reject works such as the Visuddhimagga, the commentaries and other like texts in favour of modern reconstructions of what the suttas mean. The commentaries stretch back to just around 2-3 centuries after the parinibbana. In my view they are a valuable source for understanding what the Buddha taught. Now of course, there is sectarianism in Buddhism. There were schisms, but we know what those differences were. That means we can detect an obvious sectarian view within a text. For example, if we read a Sarvastivadin text that stresses the tri-temporal reality of the dhammas then we can surmise that this was a doctrinal understanding for that school. We can do that without jettisoning the whole commentarial corpus and its view of the Dhamma. To focus on the suttas alone, and to even to go to the extreme (in my view) of only focusing on suttas with direct parallels, would be to severely handicap ourselves when it comes to understanding and practicing the Dhamma.

I would also add that to completely tear down and ignore the abdhidhamma and the commentaries with a view to focus on the suttas alone was and is a sectarian position. The modern neo- sutravadin position of today is just as much sectarian as the sautrāntika of old. The sautrāntikas of course eventually having to resort to writing their own forms of abdhidhamma and commentaries in the end, since the suttas needed explaining. That is to say, in the end they had to be commented upon.

[thomaslaw]

I think the commentaries and abhidhamma are new ideas, not found in the SN/SA sutras. They are also not useful and practical in the sati practices in daily life.

[Sanghamitta]

Hello JiminBC. I’m not sure if this is considered a commentary. It’s certainly a wonderful teaching of the practice a Anapanasati. It’s a series of 10 talks by Bhante Sujato. Here is the link for part 1…hopefully you can trace the next 9 parts from this:

[Sanghamitta]

Mmmm, I see it didn’t post the link, just the audio. It is found on santifm.org under retreats.

[JimInBC]

Thank you, @Sanghamitta!

Do you know offhand what year he did the talks? I see where the retreat links are, but haven’t found the specific talks yet.

Thank you!

[Ceisiwr]

I think the commentaries and abhidhamma are new ideas, not found in the SN/SA sutras. They are also not useful and practical in the sati practices in daily life.

The basis for the Abdhidhamma and the commentaries is in the suttas, so I wouldn’t say that they are totally new ideas since they draw heavily on that material. They are an interpretation of the Dhamma/suttas, yes. That is no different to modern “early buddhists” who also interpret and explain the Dhamma based on the suttas. Out of interest, have you read much of the Abhidhamma or commentaries? I ask because i’m interested in why you think they are not useful for practice?

[Sanghamitta]

Hello JiminBC. The metta retreat talks were given in 2007. On santifm.org, go to audio dhamma, then Archive audio then retreats, then 2007 Metta Meditation Course. Best wishes, Sanghamitta

[JimInBC]

Thanks, @Sanghamitta

[mikenz66]

And also here, kindly organised by musiko:

Bhante Sujato---Metta Meditation Retreat---2007

Deeper dhamma talks and meditation instructions for developing loving kindness (metta) given by Bhante Sujato, including Q&A sessions on 9 day intensive retreats. Large archive of retreat talks is also maintained and published occasionally here. The following archive provides a collection of all publicly available meditation retreats led by Bhante Sujato for easy and mobile friendly access (hour and a half long talks usually do not exceed 15 MB of download). Bhante Sujato metta meditation ins…

[thomaslaw]

You may explain why they are useful in the sati practices in daily life?

[JimInBC]

Thank you, @mikenz66!

[Ceisiwr]

By offering clarification and explanation of the practice:

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/soma/wayof.html#body