As @Vaddha offered in his post, ponobbhavikā / punabbhava mean rebirth. Fortunately, words like these,and their contexts in the suttas have clear definitions and uses, (perhaps less so in some verses, which as we know can be more poetical with broader meanings).
There are many examples of other words that point to rebirth as well. Again, even jāti, as noted in my first post, means rebirth in some contexts. Then there are uppapatt*(birth and rebirth), pubbenivāsa, and many other examples.
So if someone doesn’t wish to believe in or entertain the teaching of rebirth that’s up to them. But it doesn’t appear tenable to take a position that it isn’t an integral part of the Buddha’s teachings in the Nikayas. I know you’re not arguing this point, but many folks, particularly in the secular-Buddhism movement do.
Regarding believing vs knowing – again, in MN101 the Buddha leads the Jain practitioners in a logical way so they could understand how untenable their utterly deterministic views/beliefs of kamma were. They appeared to accept this teaching, but there’s no clear evidence they experientially knew kamma as the Buddha taught them. So should they have discarded it? Or would it have been better for their spiritual practices to accept the Buddha’s teaching even provisionally until, with Right View, they eventually knew it? It’s a choice they and all practitioners have to make with respect to aspects of the Teachings that may not yet be seen and known clearly.
This, imo, is different from the “clinging to views” that the Buddha spoke about.
This is a half-continuation from the other comment I tagged you both in. It is its own subject though.
In regards to the Dīgha Nikāya and DN 14/15, I’m really interested in the missing avijjā and sankhārā links (plus missing salāyatana). It seems that the DN bhānakas had their own stock of somewhat unique concepts, formulas, and narrative motives / structures that they were drawing from (some of which can be found in smaller form in the SN as well). These narrative structures vary somewhat from the other nikāyas, while still having other things in common with the canon as a whole (unsurprisingly).
The alternative to a select group of bhānakas having their own proto-stock of formulas is that the reciters responsible for constructing and compiling DN-type discourses did so intentionally (to some extent) with particular motives and purposes behind them. I think we can observe these motivational and narrative distinctions descriptively across the nikāyas, so long as we understand them as generalizations. I also find this approach more hypothesis more plausible.
For example:
SN is clearly focused on more plain doctrinal formulae, technical Buddhist terminology and concepts, etc.
DN is overflowing with Brahmanical motifs and references: from deities and beings, to parallel myths and cosmologies, to genealogies and lineages, to speculative and contemplative philosophical refutations or discussions, and much more.
MN, especially the first two books, seems especially interested in more daily interactions of the Buddha and his disciples in monastic life. They include a range of philosophical and narrative material woven together in a neat balance without a tendency to veer to either extreme.
AN is kind of its own thing, but is full of advice for lay people, classifications of Buddhist concepts and cosmology in terms of lists, etc.
So to my first point on dependent origination and the DN, we can observe that the interplay between nāmarūpa and viññāna is especially relevant to the DN because of its relevance to the cosmological and philosophical speculation/theory of, especially, the contemplative brahmins. @sujato has made a post on DN 14, where we first see this interplay in the collection, and has shown how even the underlying, unspoken narrative elements are interacting with Brahmanical mythology and dialectics on several levels.
Then at DN 15, I and others have pointed out that the sutta contains the closest resemblance to the Brahmanical motif of the Ātman descending into nāmarūpa to make contact with itself/reality in the canon, and that the sutta goes into a following section precisely on very refined attā speculation. I have also pointed out that the 8 liberations seem pre-Buddhist and likely Brahmanical, and we can see that the formulaic definitions for the links are modified. For instance, the definition of jāti at DN 15 differs from the more common formula in the MN/SN/etc. and it contains more Brahmanical beings (gandhabbas, etc.). I have also shown that this seems to refer to parallels in the Brhadāranyaka Upnisad!
When we look at suttas like the Aggañña Sutta, scholars have already demonstrated it being a parallel to philosophical cosmologies in Brahmanical texts, and I have made a post here doing an extensive comparison with the BĀU/SB. We have seen that DN 3 makes early references to Krishna or a character much like him. The Tevijjā Sutta has been a subject of much scholarship on Upanisadic and Brahmanical ideas discussed in the suttas. The list of examples goes on and on.
When we do a survey of the DN in general, it’s actually much easier to list suttas that aren’t an obvious narrative related to Brahmanical dialectics and packed with Brahmanical motifs/imagery. Once we set those aside, we also have the complex sections related to the “Mahāparinibbāna cycle” and all of the suttas that are extensions of it, and clearly later forms of narrative compilation and developing mythologies, etc.
Really it seems DN 1 and DN 2 are the only good examples of suttas that contain good chunks of early material and compilation. But then again, DN 1 has Brahmanical dialectics in various forms and is also at the very beginning of the canon: how convenient for this to be the sutta that goes into the analysis of views rejected by Buddhists. Things like the Mahāsatipatthāna Sutta are also just very late compilations for copies of the sutta in the MN, and the last two recitation suttas of the DN have a transparent function as well.
So, while at first it seems tempting to see DN 15 as very early, that hypothesis starts to fade away as I see that, actually, the question of early or lateness is far less relevant and deducible than the fact that DN 15 and its narrative/doctrinal formulas, structure, etc. all fit into the larger basket of characteristics that the DN as a whole exemplifies: long narrative discourses imbued with Brahmanical motifs and philosophical interplay. Having seen that the DN commonly contains discourses which are elaborate re-tellings and expansions on smaller formulas/suttas in the SN/MN, we can also note that DN 15 bears much resemblance to Snp 4.11 as some of us have discussed before.
Now we can turn and observe the things found in the SN that are missing in the DN, for instance. No technical and plain variations on doctrinal formulae like the characteristics on the sense fields, the aggregates, or the noble truths. It becomes unsurprising that no such correspondences exist: the two collections seem to be intentionally distinct in purpose and composition. When I consider many of Shulman’s points about the dynamics involved with formulas and narratives, it contributes to this understanding.
I think @josephzizys has raised some really good points about the content of the SN. Thanks for putting so much interest in shedding light and looking at this! Despite some methodological differences of opinion and whatnot, there are very important questions to be asked that are not being pursued much, and you (joseph) are helping to demonstrate that need.
I think the picture we get when considering all of this is that the nikāyas, especially the DN/MN/SN, are in many ways intentionally distinct types of collections compiled with the help of historical, doctrinal, narrative, literary, etc. information / tools, such as formulas and recitation structure.
The SN is a kind of oral doctrinal manual that records more detailed categories for practice and philosophical self-inquiry. This type of material is clearly more useful for those who were interested in the later Abhidhamma project/movement in the tradition, and so it is a great stepping-stone and work base. The fact that they are similar would only be natural even if the SN and its organization were the earliest.
If I’m not mistaken, @josephzizys used to (or still does?) think that the SN contained the more advanced/technical material in comparison to the more beginners material in the DN, which I find is a fair hypothesis (if taken generally/loosely) and could be close to the truth. The DN places Buddhism in relation to other religions, especially Brahmanism, and the types of views at the time. It gives a history of the Buddha and his life/death, as well as of past buddhas and the coming Buddha. It contains interesting mythology and narratives to welcome people to the religion and thought-world while also bearing a lot of resemblance (more, even, than the other nikāyas) to contemporary non-Buddhist religious beliefs, like the cosmology/deities. The MN goes further into the doctrine of Buddhism and monastic life and the SN goes further into doctrine. The AN contains easily accessible lists for giving sermons, teaching laity, etc.
Setting aside the whole discourses and nikāya as a whole though, it is still possible that some of the formulas within the DN are early — and that the DN was distributed certain types of early formulae not as common elsewhere for the contextual reasoning behind its compilation. For example, the sekha patipadā formulas may very well be ‘earlier’ ideas than the noble eightfold path and the formulas discussing it, and we may see those versions of the formulas found in the DN, and yet the DN as a whole is not as early nor are the individual discourses within it that are made up of some early formulas. Still, these I find rather marginal anyway; a minority of DN suttas contain these types of early formulas it seems.
I’m interested in your (and everyone’s) opinions on this. Its relationship to the khandhas discussion is because the khandhas discussion is inherently tied into dating the types of material found in the SN and other nikāyas. If I were to summarize my main points, it would be that different formulas, all of which can be early to some degree at least in the general content matter, are distributed across the nikāyas according to other literary, narrative, and functional purposes. We can see some of this in the dynamics of the use of formulas and by looking at the types of formulas/discourses made of formulas that result. The DN’s play of formulas and underlying narrative motives appear later, even if some formulas within it appear earlier than those underlying compilation motives.
I’m not sure if you are aware, but Bhikkhu Bodhi has made the point that the DN seems to be aimed at converting people to the religion, MN is for the newly initiated, SN is for the learned members as a repository of core doctrinal points whilst AN is more of a repository of material aimed at popular teaching (resources for Dhamma talks to the laity etc). Of course you do find more technical aspects in other collections, the AN for example, possibly indicating that whilst the AN was for preaching to the lay community and such the organisers of the cannon still wanted the reciter monks to have a well rounded Buddhist education too, as in have some core principles in their texts for them to practice with as well.
Yes, I believe Ven Bodhi presents the idea that the original compilers divided up the teachings into the various Nikayas seemingly with this general principle.
Hi @Vaddha I think you raise some very good points, and for the record, I am not a beleiver in the “different audience thesis” but you have just put together perhaps the best defense of it that I have seen, more power to your arm!
In relation to DN15, I would really only point out that once again, SN acknowledges the “10DO” in SN12.67 while DN never acknowledges the “12DO”. similarly SN41.3 refers to DN1 by name and SN22.4 refers to DN21 so we have 3 instances of SN looking to DN by name or by unique doctrine, while wer have no such examples of DN ever appearing to depend on SN (except, IMO, for the marginal case of the phrase cattāro satipaṭṭhānā cattāro sammappadhānā cattāro iddhipādā pañcindriyāni pañca balāni satta bojjhaṅgā ariyo aṭṭhaṅgiko maggo which appears to me at least to refer to the original structure of SN)
So SN refers to DN but DN does not refer to SN. The counterargument given is always by way of a kind of a dodge, along the lines of “this logically proves nothing other than that in the specific instances you mention one sutta is later than the other, so while it is true that SN41.3 is later than DN1 and SN22.4 is later than DN21, we cannot infer from that anything about the collections as a whole.”
This rebuttal is disingenuous on multiple levels, first the examples are never presented as a logical argument, it is merely suggestive that in one collection we can occasionally find references to the other but not vice versa. It is also not even logically necessary to accept any of the individual cases, the quotes could logically be inserted at some much later date than the composition of either sutta, and either could in fact be earlier than the other.
Anyway, a couple of points about SN12.67, koṭṭhika, apart form one sutta in MN, is mostly present in SN and AN, and he gives the 12DO after Sariputta, the more venerable figure, is given the 10DO, and the two are “reconciled” by mere juxtaposition.
On the view that DN is the late work we are expected to believe that this sutta was added to SN much later than the bulk of the nikaya, but not so late as to be sectarian (it has an Agama parallel at SN288), and that it elected to give the new and modified doctrine to the more senior monastic and the original, orthodox doctrine, to the junior.
(SN288, just to complicate matters, makes sariputta the questioner and koṭṭhika the main speaker, omits the duplication that includes the 12DO and appears somewhat divergent in other minor ways also)
(and just as an aside to my aside, this is a great example, perhaps even more stiking in the Agama parallel, of the relationship between the undeclared points and DO, a perennial interest of mine as you know)
My main problem with the “distinct audiences” thesis is the striking lack of jhana pericopes in SN, if it where the “monastic specialists” nikaya, we should expect the meditative system that is the final step of the 8fold path to be a prominent feature, however we see the exact opposite, with DN giving the formula 24 times, the same number as the probably 5 times as long SN, and AN giving it 61 times, almost three times as often as the similarly long SN, when AN is meant to be “for the laity” and SN for the “specialist monk”.
Overall I think I agree with you that there really is probably no solution to these questions of strata that is not inherently speculative, and I my own thinking has really shifted away from X is earlier than Y to something more along the lines of “the seeds of X appear to be earlier than the bulk of Y but X and Y probably both emanate from the same approximate milieu and develop over long periods of time so who knows”.
Finally on the audience picture, could it not simply be that the birth of the religion itself was the cause of its similarity to its braminical parent, and the loss of that resemblance is precisely due to it’ growth?
(What I mean is that DN has braminical motifs because when it started there was no Buddhism to resemble, but as the community grew and differentiated itself, its distinctive identity emerges gradually in MN and then strikingly in SN?)
(of and one last one, while I don’t think that the “audience” argument can account for the origin of any or all the nikayas, i do think its a good explanation, potentially, for the evolution of the NIkayas/Agamas, it may explain for example, why the Sarvastivadans decided to move so many aggregates suttas from MA to SA, assuming of course that it wasn’t the Theravadans who moved them from SN to MN.)
Anyway, as ever you are an ornament to this board and I think your evidence is, as I have said, much more detailed than many of those who have defendecd the “audience” thesis before you, keep up the good work!
This part in SN/SA mainly refers to the major collection of SN/SA on the core teachings in Early Buddhism. SN/SA also contains two minor parts (Geya/Geyya and Vyakarana/Veyyakarana), which are linked to the development of DN/DA, MN/MA, and AN/EA collections in Early Buddhism, according to Ven. YinShun:
I’m going to go through some of your counter-examples, but heads up: I actually find them to all point to the same thing I was saying, and thus they are further examples of the ‘different audience’ case rather than counter-examples to me.
I should say though, I think ‘different audiences’ is a bit of a misnomer for what I’m presenting. There are other factors which we see are obviously at play, for example the fact that tradition was clearly interested in fairly distributing/levelling out material for each nikāya so that the reciters weren’t stuck with less than a full curriculum, and at the same time, each nikāya is meant for one audience: Buddhists or those interested. It is more that the fundamental discourses in each nikāya are compiled with specific intentions and play of formulas that distinguish them literarily, maybe.
If SN comes ‘after’ DN in that DN is more about conversion, essential background, narrative introductions, etc., then of course SN will contain both forms of dependent origination and DN will only contain one particular version relevant to its goal: namely, countering Brahmanical consciousness outside of nāmarūpa and creating parallel models with Brahmanical terminology/cosmology.
The 12 links are also more “technical”, if that’s an appropriate adjective here, in that they contain not just the ‘mother’ (craving), but also the ‘father’ (ignorance), which are parallel conditions for suffering and samsāra in complex ways. The Buddha often talks about avijjā and tanhā together in this way (as mother/father or parallel conditions that co-exist); the 12 links formalize that relationship and lay out a more complex map. The 9-10 links on the other hand are a bit more straightforward: we exist on the basis of a mutual relationship between viññāna and nāmarūpa, and thus existing, we experience contact, feeling, and craving leading to all kinds of problems. This is straightforward.
These two ‘often’ appear in question-and-answer forms. It seems they had some kind of close relationship in training or habitation. Ven. Sāriputta is often used as a figure for more technical, doctrinal formulas or (proto-)Abhidhamma material, so the fact that he is not doing that here is significant in that it is less clearly literary, and more just a circumstance of the discourse; not everything is a literary device.
But who is expecting us to believe this? I sure am not. As I said in my post, some of the formulas or structures present in DN can be early, despite the dynamics between and play with those formulas being later or of a more narrative intention. At Snp 4.11 we see nāmarūpapaccayā phasso and similar discussions of tanhā leading to all kinds of factors that lead to conflict, and then discussion of altered meditative states. It is quite similar to DN 15. So many of the ideas there, content-wise, are just fine being early.
Moreover, I am not arguing that the DN itself is later than say the SN. I am saying that the material within each nikāya was distributed and arranged with certain intentions in mind. So there’s a reason the DN has very common motifs as does the SN, and there’s a reason they don’t overlap. I am saying that much of the underlying narrative motives and mythology of the DN is clearly later, but individual suttas and especially formulas, again, do not need to partake of that.
Again, this is exactly what we would expect. SN is meant to be for more technical doctrinal formulas and Buddhist philosophical categories for praxis. It is the best place to comment on other suttas or ideas related to these as well. The DN is more of a conversion/context/beginner point. Why would the beginner material reference advanced material, and advanced material not reference back beginner material? That’s how the stratification of it naturally falls.
Then of course there is the point that just because the SN contains some later material, if these passages were later and not just earlier material standardized in the SN references, that does not disqualify the SN from having lots, if not almost overwhelmingly, early material. If we were to follow this principle with the DN, wooh, the whole collection would be discarded as apocryphal. Rather, all we observe is that the more technical ‘manual’ collection has references and comments to other earlier material quite unsurprisingly — whether early, late, or somewhere in the middle.
About this, though, you seem to say:
which I unfortunately cannot really understand the counterpoint. Could you re-phrase this part maybe?
And yet there are whole chapters in the SN just repeating the jhāna formulas. A couple of points:
The jhāna formulas are always the same. The only new insight we really get on them is with the similes about them, and then information found, for one example, … in the Samyutta Nikāya(!) on vitakka-vicāra, the bojjhangas and meditation advice, etc.
The related point that the SN contains lots of meditation advice related to cultivating jhāna that is more detailed (as we would expect) than the plain gradual training or tacking the jhāna formula in a narrative discourse
The SN material on the establishments of mindfulness leans towards it being for the development of samādhi and jhāna, UNLIKE the Theravādin MN and DN Satipatthāna Suttas which, as @sujato has shown in ‘A History of Mindfulness,’ tend towards the sectarian understanding of the satipatthānas being for ‘insight practice’. This is evident in the chapters on the satipatthanas themselves, and in ones like Anuruddha Samyutta etc. where psychic powers come from deep sstipatthāna (which was originally mainly normal meditation, as on the breath, etc.). This all to say: the mindfulness / meditation teachings preserved in the SN are doctrinally earlier and less sectarian than those of the MN/DN.
If the DN and MN come before the SN in ‘raw’ doctrinal material, and, as we see, they are mainly concerned with the practical aspects of daily monastic life and the gradual training, then it would be sensible that SN not spend so much time just repeating all of that in a worse way? It was already done in those nikāyas: that distribution of material is part of the package.
These points, on top of the fact that the jhānas DO appear repeated as we would expect in the SN, are quite enough to set that question aside IMO. Going off of mere word-count as just meaningless statistics, the SN may appear to be less concerned with samādhi. But when we look at the content itself, it is full of meditation similes for deep samādhi, advice on cultivating deep samādhi, alternative frameworks for going into jhāna (iddhipādas, bojjhangas, etc.), and of course the jhāna formulas themselves.
As I’ve discussed some above, it is. But the point on ‘monastic specialist’ I find relevant as well. This is a bit of a re-iteration, but if the gradual path and jhānas are covered elsewhere, we should expect SN to go into more detail on what it has been said to be for thus far: doctrinal formulas and categories with examples, explanations, variations, similes, etc. The specialist monk doesn’t need more repetitions of the jhāna formula; they need more examples of technical, deep philosophical matters that lead to paññā and insight into their experience. They are expected to be following the gradual training, including jhāna, already.
‘Follow the rules, be sense restrained, and put forth effort to meditate and set aside the hindrances in order to enter samādhi’ is quite the simple instruction, and a summary of the gradual training. But “see the impermanence of all the sense fields and aggregates,” “understand the development of consciousness vis the 12 links of dependent origination,” or “consider all these various similes on the four noble truths” are far more advanced and harder to understand for most people. They need to be heard at a different time.
This is a good question, and there’s a two part answer.
First, I should have been more clear: in the DN, the Brahmanical references and imagery are later than the rest of the canon. That is, the gods and beings they mention, the mythological narratives, etc. It is often much closer to things like the epics/Purānas. The DN also shows more aggression to brahmins and anti-Brahmanical narratives which is a sign of later Buddhism, not the very earliest Buddhism (all within the early period). See, e.g. Snp 4 and 5 (or much of the Sutta Nipata in general), where the Buddha’s relationship to brahmins is much more nuanced, gentle, and respectful. The same is true for a good amount of the MN and SN.
As the Buddhist identity grew and conversion became more commonplace, Brahmanism was more of a competitor and opponent to the community — especially with the Buddha gone. There are nuances here of course though.
Second, there are Brahmanical motifs in the DN which, although a minority for the collection, are not necessarily signs of lateness. An example might be DN 15 again with the nāmarūpa-viññāna emphasis. But this again remains more part of underlying, smaller-scale formulas or basic content which is also shared with other parts of the canon and which is situated within the larger context of the DN in a way which does appear later (conversion, us vs. them, etc.). I’ll ditto the above line on nuances still.
Yeah. I mean, ultimately, I don’t know how this all originated. I’d say there’s a strong case for the distribution of material being highly relevant even since the formative period(s) and much of this is apparent in that the texts in, say, the DN are fundamentally built and structured according to specific narrative functions we can observe. This suggests to me that they originated with this intentional motive to some capacity. Still, there are other factors, like historicity, that are relevant.
Glad to discuss this some Let me know your thoughts. I really appreciate your viewpoints here on the forum!
EDIT: Sorry for the funky editing. Accidentally deleted the ending! Should be all good now
You will have to give me time to read your entire post in detail, but just on this, I agree, however I am not sure it goes to much more than to the idea that DN22 and MN10 are late additions to those Nikayas. DN22 does not even make it into DA, and come to that, the Satipatthanavibhanga quite possibly gives us an even earlier picture of cattāro satipaṭṭhānā than either MN10 or DN22 and we do not for that reason think that the Vibhanga is an earlier work than MN for example.
In fact it is a major point of mine that outside of those 2 suttas and the cattāro satipaṭṭhānā cattāro sammappadhānā cattāro iddhipādā pañcindriyāni pañca balāni satta bojjhaṅgā ariyo aṭṭhaṅgiko maggo pericope cattāro satipaṭṭhānā hardly ever even occurs in DN and MN, it being mentioned in SN more often than the other 3 principle Nikayas combined, and it’s even worse if you remove the 37 wings, which account for 4 out of 10 in DN and 4 out of 11 in MN (DN22 and MN10 accounting for 2 more each, leaving DN with 4 mentions, in DN18, DN29 DN33(sariputta) and DN34(sariputta), and MN with 5, at MN44 (dhammadina) MN51 (no parallel) MN118 (all parallels in SA) MN125 and MN151 (parallel in EA))
MN125 refers to MN107 by name, replicating the sekkha patipada sequence from there (which in turn seems to take it from DN2 etc) and inserting the cattāro satipaṭṭhānā after the hinderances but before the jhanas. It is, again, the only mention of cattāro satipaṭṭhānā outside of the 37 wings pericope and MN10 that is 1. taught by the Buddha, 2. Has an Agama parallel and 3. Has that parallel in the same collection.
So DN18, DN29 from DN, MN125 from MN, nothing in the first 7 books of AN before AN8.19 mentions the 37 wings, AN8.28 is the same pericope modified, AN9.63 gives the bare “what four?” pericope, the next 9 suttas merely repeat the previous with permutations of other doctrines, AN10.61 and AN10.62 give a unique sequence of dependence, and AN10.90 gives the modified wings pericope again.
KN has 1 mention out of 44 in Ud, the rest are in the late books.
All mentions in AB are in Vibahnga or Kathu except for one mention of the wings in Dhātuk
All 3 mentions in VN are the wings.
basically when one compares and contrasts sati/aggregates/annata with jhana/asava/kamma a clear pattern emerges whereby all the common core of all 4 collections share once cluster of ideas, while SN/SA have the vast preponderance of the other.
I am simply not convinced that this can be explained by audience.
I am not sure what you mean by that @thomaslaw , I have a great respect for your tireless promotion of the thought of Mun-keat Choong and Yin Shun, but I have a different assesment to those scholars as to the structure and content of the EBT’s, and so I do not expect agreement from you on these matters, however I also do not expect unsubstantiated hostility amd denigration, which I think are beneath you.
If you have actual arguments about the points I raise, please post them, of not, please restrain yourself.
The discussion on early or late nikayas, the audience-hypothesis etc suffer, IMO, from a simplified view on the construction and development of the material.
Leaving aside the orthodox dogma that most suttas directly came from Buddha or Ananda, we’d have to assume that all nikayas are late. Bhanakas were distributing the suttas organized in nikayas. And bhanakas were a very late institution.
So what happened before that? Was there a pile of old palm leaves or bark lying around and a senior monastic divided it and said “You, āyasma, take this pile, learn it by heart, and preach it to the monastics. And you āyasma take this pile and convert…”? Or who “invented” the late suttas? Who dared to, or had the authority to do it?
I think we have to engage in these speculations because we’re otherwise stuck in the early/late debate, guided by our personal proclivities. 100 years ago the DN was seen as the earliest, lately it was more the SN, or it fizzles into the level of individual suttas or sutta clusters.
We’ll never find out how and when exactly the suttas were composed, but those of us speculate on the development of the material can’t limit ourselves to sutta parallels and doctrinal concepts. We need to come up with hypotheses of transmission and the organization of the proto-sanghas in order to make sense of the differences in the nikayas. People have done this before: Salomon, Allen, Gethin, Cousins, Prebish, Ellis, Choong, and so many others, and it’s necessary to continue these informed speculations.
you are surely pulling my leg here no? If you are refering to SN53 then the 5 “whole chapters” amount to about one printed page of text, it just gives the jhana formula and then literally says, “do it like SN45” and that’s the whole samyutta!
but again, this is exactly what SN does do it repeats the formulas mechanically, in permutation with other formulas, over, and over, again.
Here we will have to disagree. jhānas are to my mind the buddhist doctrine that is indesputibly common to all the 4 principle NIkaya/Agamas, and the (relative) lack of the formula in SN is something that absolutely cries out for explanation.
people keep telling me that word counts are meaningless, I have yet to hear one single reason why they are meaningless, with your efforts probably coming closest to actually articulating a position around the “leveling” and “audience” arguments. I do not in the end find even your picture of this convincing, and I am growing somewhat tired of people repeating the phrase, so I will try to be as clear and succinct here as possible: if a string of text occurs 10 times as often as another string, it is never, ever, ever, ever, ever meaningless it is always meaningful. Numbers matter. It matters if the first jhana is mentioned in DN more than twice as often as the four foundations, because it begs the question why is the culmination of the eightfold path mentioned twices as often as the preceding step in DN, but the preceding step mentioned more than twice as often as the final one in SN? btw if you control for the wings it is more like 4 times as often that DN mentions the first jhana than the four foundations, again, if the numbers are meaningless why is there this difference between the occurrences in DN MN and AN with the occurrences in SN, why is SN the odd one out? ALL the other Nikayas mention first jhana more than twice as often as the four foundations, ONLY SN reverses this pattern, what is the “leveling” argument that makes sense of that?
When you decide to look deeper because these numbers strike you as being definitely not meaningless and actually very hard to explain you look deeper and find that the four foundations in the other three Nikayas practically evaporate before your eyes with just about any constraint you care to put on them: insist on parallels, you lose instances, insist on parallels form the same collection (the debate is about this after all), you lose more, insist on the Buddha as the speaker, more still, it just goes on and on. (exclude the 37 wings for example, as being most likely an insertion of the earliest matrika, and you lose well over half of them in a single stroke, including their entire presence in the Vinaya, you don’t, strangely enough, lose a single instance from SN, I wonder why that would be?)
As I showed above, this simply does not occur with the jhanas, which you can easily find in all 4 principle collections, spoken by the Buddha, with parallels that sit in the same collection in both traditions.
This point is well made, however I think it really only shows that DN is open later than SN, MN, and does not really speak to beginnings of it as a collectoin, where I think one has to look to the sekkha patipada as the nucleus or “ur text” that really stands at the heart of the entire narrative sutta collection (i.e DN and MN combined.)
Likewise @Vaddha !! you are a breath of fresh air here, I am very much enjoying having someone with whom I can get stuck into these issues in a robust but still respectful way!
And it’s my point that this is intentional: SN is meant for the containing the formulas on the bodhipakkhiyā dhammā. So in other words, rather than saying they are later, I am saying they are intentionally separated into different types of collections in content and structure. It’s important we keep in mind that the SN/SA material is extremely well attested across several early schools too of course.
The fact that it is found in e.g. MN 118 which has a parallel in SA is something relevant that came up earlier. All this points to is that the redactors saw these formulas as primarily part of the bodhipakkhiyā dhammā and as patterning with them, and that those were primarily SN/SA-type formulas. We of course can observe the importance given to it though, considering the MN 10 / Satipatthāna Sutta has so many parallels. The difference is that the play of formulas and dynamics between them is different in the different parallels. We don’t need to set aside the discourse as irrelevant; we just need to look closer, beyond the level of ‘discourse’ and more at the level of ‘formulas and dynamics of their arrangement.’
As I mentioned earlier, the gradual training, jhāna, asava, kamma, etc. sequence is the basic fundamental outline for the holy life. It does not go into technical detail or into much analysis of experience. It also contains much more pan-contemplative ideas: sense restraint, begging, solitude, developing deep meditation, seeing rebirth and ending it. None of this is really unique to Buddhism apart from the specific details of it including the four noble truths for instance. But the four noble truths aren’t ever explained except in the SN/SA-type formulas! And ending the āsavas requires insight knowledge of the 4NT/anicca/dukkha/anattā/etc.
Well, we’ve gone over why this would be abbreviated, considering it is only one formula already prevalent in the DN/MN as part of their gradual path-emphasis. I agree that it is somewhat strange the jhānas themselves don’t appear as often, but recitation shortening comes from a later time to some extent by definition, otherwise the suttas and their unique names just wouldn’t exist. When we add in the fact that the SN talks about samādhi, defined as the 4 jhānas, in the pañcindriya, pañcabala, bojjhanga, etc. it also helps shed light on the fact that the SN is offering a more detailed, technical analysis for getting into deep meditation — just as you said you would hope to see if this collection were for containing more advanced formulas!
I apologize if the statement was unclear and came off this way. That’s not what I’m saying. Obviously the appearance and occurrence of words is meaningful. What I was referring to is if we look at word counts as mere statistics, rather than the content that covers related subject matter. When we do this, the SN/SA contains less statistical occurrences of the jhāna formulae, but it contains lots of content on detailed, deep samādhi and meditation / insight for liberation in a way that is compatible and complementary to the gradual training of say, MN.
It sure is hard to explain other than ‘the SN must be later than the DN,’ which almost overwhelmingly looks like later apocryphal literature, unless you start to see that there is a rhyme and reason to the distribution and structure of content and formulas in each nikāya. And this method is not just a fix-it for the SN/SA fans. It is something we can observe starting from multiple methodological angles and from really any nikāya or avenue within the nikāyas.
Apart from the arguments I’ve presented here, have we really read through the suttas in the DN? It’s so blatant how only a handful of suttas are in line with the Buddha’s message of dukkha and its cessation. Much of the collection literally assumes a later date, considering it is about the Buddha’s death and the community’s effort after his death to have a lasting identity, memory of the teacher, powerful spiritual guide accessible through story and myth, etc. This is not to overstate my case: I still think the SN, like all the nikāyas, contains late material and some of the time the common formulas may be relatively later than other ones found more prominently in the DN. But these are more details and nuances than the types of broad generalizations we can see when observing the collections as a whole IMO.
Let’s not forget that many of the verses in the Sagāthāvagga of the SN have been said, e.g. by Warder, to be just as early as those of the Pārāyana- and Atthakavagga. These verses often repeat throughout the canon in different places and collections. On the other hand, the verse in the DN is radically different, later, often not shared throughout the canon, and extremely devotional (again pointing to it assuming the Buddha’s death and physical absence in many ways).
Could you mention the suttas in the DN where you find this to be the case? As I mentioned, DN 1 is an obviously intentional placement of the sutta, length, etc. It’s an outlier. DN 2 is a natural candidate. But apart from that, which do you have in mind? It would be good to do some actual surveying of that material, considering much of it, as we’ve discussed, is late. It’s also not just that it was ‘open later,’ because it’s the majority of the relatively few discourses. Long recitations are also much less accessible than shorter narratives and formulas like those of the SN/AN/MN. While the DN is very sporadic in lots of different complex mythological subjects, the MN is full of repeating stock passages and formulas which make it easy to memorize, recite, and practice with. Same for the SN and AN. The DN stands out in this impracticality again, and once again it’s fundamental purpose as a more literary collection can shine through if we take notice, IMO.
once again I will need time to read your post in detail, however I did come across something in the meantime, and perhaps others know more about this than me, but at DA18, the parallel to DN28, the parallel to the 37 wings gives a different list, including the 4 jhanas to give 41 “wings”. This also occurs at DA2.
So there is no occurrence of the 37 wings in the “common core” of DN/DA.
I have since re-read the wikipedia article and see that this is well know, once again, I feel given my stance, someone could have told me!
So, we have evidence that this list at least, was a disputed one in the early schools, with the dharmaguptas claiming it included jhana, while the sarvistavada/theravada claimed it did not.
I note in contrast that all three schools agreed on the wording of the 4 jhana formula.
josephzizys
Anumodana
Your dhamma-chanda, dhamma-vicaya, and expression of willingness to share (compassion) is much appreciated.
Please continue to challenge the current sthit (established) assumptions of the EBTs in the service of those of us who are seeking an authentic base of the heartwood of the dhamma as taught by the Buddha.
Now that we have been empowered to use digital tools for investigating (dhamma (vicaya) the EBTs in Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, and Gandhari, it behooves us to make use of them in the quest to identify the core teachings of the Buddha, so that we may have confidence in our understanding of Right View as the basis for practice of the Eight-Fold Path.
Back to the topic of this thread: Are khandas early or late EBT?
One might inquire: Why is it important if khandhas are early or late EBT? Since we all accept the [Nikaya/Agama] EBTs, what difference does it make if a particular (EBT) doctrine is early or late EBT in terms of our practice for liberation? However, if some of the EBTs in the Sutta Pitaka or the Agamas might be fake or distortions of the teachings of the Buddha, then it is important to identify them and set them aside.
Serious Buddhists are seeking the “Authentic Teachings of the Buddha”, and we have narrowed down the target to the EBTs. It is like an archeologist digging to find evidence of the roots of a civilization.
For us passionate seekers like Joseph, we seek the Truth as revealed by the Buddha.
The major obstacle to seekers of the Truth as revealed by the Buddha is access to accurate translations of his teachings into current language – THIS is what brings us together on this site.
It might be useful to step back and reflect upon our identification as an EBT enthusiast.
Since we have been given the gift of access to English translations of the Agamas, Sanskrit and Tibetan translations of the suttas, the information provided by the Buddha seems to exceed our ability to process and apply in our daily lives.
The Buddha taught for 45 years and it would only be natural that he learned how to better communicate his vision throughout his lifetime, learning from his experiences in trying to communicate the ineffable to Brahmins, Sramana followers of other teachers, advanced practitioners, and to the dedicated laypeople.
Starting with the 4 elements + space + Atman (Upanishads),
He taught 4 elements + space + Vinnana.
So the main issue was: How is Atman different from Vinnana?
Thus began an exercise in packaging of information for behavior change communication:
Rupa (4 elements) + Nama (vedana, sanna, sancetana, phassa, manasikhara) + Vinnana = Purusa, the individual person
3 components of the purusa: (nama-rupa) + vinnana
Superseded by Theravada Abhidhamma + Buddhagosa such that nama became (vedana, sanna, sankhara, + vinanna)
Then vinnana was demoted to function as one of the khanda as 6 types of perception according to 5 senses + mano.
“At first man was simply analysed into body and mind. Citta or vinnana covered the latter entirely. This is the stage revealed in the expression "Savinnake kaye”, and in the six Dhatu conception. In several texts the Kaya- citta distinction is the only one present.”
With the growth of analysis man came to be conceived as a quincunx; vinnana then became its centre.
The lateness of the Khandha theory. -Still later, vinnana tended to lose its centrality. This is the stage represented by the full-fledged Khandha theory.
Pande: Studies in the Origins of Buddhism, page 496-497
What happened to vinnana as the essential counterpart of nama-rupa, as the “stream of consciousness” that provides continuity? Or that which descends into the womb? How did vinnana become the 6 types of knowing/perception?
These types of questions might be more important than issues about the distribution of dhamma doctrines among the Nikayas.
It seems that the EBTs are fixed temporally with the closure of the Theravadin Canon.
At this point in the life of Digital Buddha Dhamma, let us continue to engage in dhamma-vicaya and share the results of our investigation for the benefit of all beings.
This is again where we seem to disagree I think, the purpose of the Nikayas/Agamas is to collect the teachings of the Buddha, the collections themselves may have evolved to serve different needs in the community, but the original purpose was simply to record teachings.
anyway, lets recap a bit:
cattāro satipaṭṭhānā in DN
DN16 (the 37 wings, DA2 gives a different list)
DN18 (DA4)
DN22 (no DA parallel)
DN28 (37 wings, DA18 differs as per DA2)
DN29 (DA17 in both versions the occurrences are first the wings, and then the forfold observation at the very end of the sutta)
DN33 (sariputta)
DN34 (sariputta)
So DN has DN18 /DA4 and DN29 /DA17
cattāro satipaṭṭhānā in MN
MN10 (the satipatthana sutta)
MN44 (dhammadina)
MN51 (no parallel)
MN103 (no parallel)
MN104 (the 37 wings, parallel at MA196)
MN118 (all parallels in SA; SA815 SA803 SA812 SA811 SA810)
MN125 (MA198 has substantial differences in the extended similie)
MN151 (parallel at EA45.6)
So outside MN10, MN has only one sutta that is paralleled in MA that discusses cattāro satipaṭṭhānā, MN125 /MA198
cattāro satipaṭṭhānā in AN
AN8.19 (the wings, parallel at EA42.4 disagrees about their location in the numerical simile)
AN8.28 (parallel at SA694-SA698)
AN9.63-72 (no parallel)
AN10.61-62 (parallel at MA51-MA53)
AN10.90 (parallel at SA694-SA698)
So AN has no suttas that discuss cattāro satipaṭṭhānā that have parallels in EA.
OK, now of course the string cattāro satipaṭṭhānā is not the only pericope related to the practice, so if we add
kāye kāyānupassī viharati:
this phrase gives us the following additional suttas:
DN26 (DA6)
MN77 (parallel MA207 omits the passage)
MN141 (MA31 MA98 Sariputta)
AN1.382 (no parallel)
AN3.157 (no parallel)
AN4.274 (no parallel)
So we are able to add DN26 as a sutta spoken by the Buddha with a parallel in the same Agama collection.
SO to summarize the summary,
Outside of SN, the phrases cattāro satipaṭṭhānā or kāye kāyānupassī viharati are spoken by the Buddha, in a sutta with a parallel in the same collection in the Agamas, in a context that is not simply a list of doctrinal topics, at
DN18 /DA4
DN26 /DA6
DN29 /DA17
MN125 /MA198
And as I understand your claim, we should be entirely unsurprised by this fact.
I will spend some time on the other side of this picture in the coming days and try to show how often we see jhana mentioned in the “common core” since I think this is an elegant and germaine contrast between the two most prominent meditation systems in the EBT’s.
Thanks for your support @Jimh with regards to the above, I see no reason to think that the 5A are “fake” or “distortions”, nor do I see any real reason to set them aside, I just think they may be somewhat later on the timeline of Buddhism than the jhana/asava/kamma picture, and that seeing how these pictures fit together and evolve give us a better appreciation of the broader contours of the teaching.
If the aggregates teaching developed somewhat after the lifetime of the Buddha as a way of clarifying certain aspects of the teaching or as a response to external critiques, I see no reason why this should render those elaborations problematic, it would merely mean that the are what they appear to be; somewhat later, more scholastic, elaborations consistent with earlier presentations of the teachings.
My interest is not to get to “what the Buddha really said” in the NIkayas, I suspect that the NIkayas are more or less entirely post the lifetime of the Buddha, and as it was said a hundred or more years ago by Rhys Davids, in all likelihood the things that where actually said by the Buddha are those short statements of doctrine that recur in all the 4 principle collections.
Even these, IMV, could well be the collective product of the first generation of the Buddhist community, and may not really get us back to the actual teaching career of the Buddha themselves, we simply have no way of knowing sans a time machine or a miraculous archaeological find.
Having said that the question becomes what are the “short statements of doctrine that recur in all the 4 principle collections”? And I beleive that there is a pretty strong case to make that 5A/anatta/satipathanna do not succeed in meeting this criteria.
Once again, I don’t really see this as a problem, as the dhamma is self verifying, comprehensible to the intelligent for themselves, so if it was the Buddha who spoke the 5A, fine, if it was a teacher in the line of Sariputta a generation later, fine, whats the problem?
I guess all this is to say that I am simply not motivated by a desire to get to the “true” teaching of the “historical Buddha”, I merely want to understand the contents of the earliest teaching we do have, which outside cryptic and very brief poetry, are the 4 principle collections shared between the Nikayas and Agamas, and their fragmentary parallels in other languages.
I think a clear advancement is possible in our understanding of the strata of these texts based on the evidence in this thread, and that to comprehensively maker that case would constitute an advancement in Buddhist Studies and be of interest in it’s own right.
Hello! Hope you are both well.