Are the Satipathana suttas not original? (DN22, MN10)

@Luisito

Personally, I have found that when I’m feeling like this, it is useful to explore - why one is feeling the distress. Really working backwards/inwards through thoughts and feelings :slight_smile: A marvellous tool to work through attachments that are otherwise invisible.

with metta :anjal::dharmawheel:

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Consider that the material that was added at a later period is still consistent with other EBT materials. So its really a matter of editing, its not like mindfulness of breathing or the four noble truths are later inventions.

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I don’t think we should look down on practices that might have been developed and perfected later than the earliest period. The suttas often seem to describe states to be cultivated without a lot of detail about how to cultivate them.

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If the Satipathana is not an authentic sutta, What are groups like Goenka or Mahasi going to do now? They can’t keep on preaching this sutta. I feel like I wasted my time attending all these retreats following the steps of the Satipathana. :frowning:

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Hi Luisito,

Just see it as part of the path and learn from it :slight_smile:

When I started reading the suttas I was blown away and elated but I also got disillusioned by all the books I read previously that seem so far from the suttas! To be honest I still have some negative views about the whole vipasanna/satipathana/Mahasi/Goenka movement, but I’ve started to soften a bit :grin:

One thing that helped me was to understand it in its historical context. The history of the Sangha and meditation is full of reform movements, followed by domestication of these reformist groups and the cycle continues. These changes also seem to be accompanied by temporary favoured techniques or approaches. They seem to ebb and flow spatially and temporally. The Vipasana movement arised and spread like wild-fire for some specific reasons, but it has to be understood in its historical context. I now recognize that some good things emerged from it, such as easier access to meditation teachings for lay people (previously it was not common at all), access to monasteries for long retreats (e.g. the typical 10-days retreat), and also a method that seem to work quite well for many people.

Another thing that helped is to realize that a lot of the misunderstandings come from having different definitions of words and using different framework of analysis (e.g. EBTs vs commentaries vs secular Buddhism etc). When reading a book from a certain tradition, I now try to understand their writing using their own analysis framework (so if I were to read a Mahasi technique book, I would try to understand their words using the framework provided by the commentaries, not the EBTs). But I have limited time and energy so I prefer to focus on the EBTs mostly nowadays.

If you have time, try to read about the history of Buddhism in SEA and the West during the 19th & 20th century, it helps a lot to understand why we are here today.

Bets of luck :anjal:

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Though samadhi ( concentration ) involves insight. See for example SN35.99:

“Bhikkhus, develop concentration. A bhikkhu who is concentrated understands things as they really are.
“And what does he understand as they really are? He understands as it really is: ‘The eye is impermanent.’ He understands as it really is: ‘Forms are impermanent.’… ‘Eye-consciousness is impermanent. ’… ‘Eye-contact is impermanent.’… ‘Whatever feeling arises with eye-contact as condition—whether pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant—that too is impermanent.’…"

https://suttacentral.net/sn35.99/en/bodhi

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Not so much a comparison (given this is, I think, true to some extent for all the techniques) but more a bemoaning of this gap, but, yes, sure, I agree. Or maybe even the Buddha wasn’t big on technique specifics in the first place (students having to figure it out for themselves or perhaps there was a well-known pre-existing suite of sramana techniques that just needed to be adapted and drawn on somewhat at the time).

Just the same.

What Mahasi taught was not according with Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta even for many of burmese scholars.
Experience is what has demonstrated the authenticity of what the sutta contains and the particular Mahasi approach.

Which parts of Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta do you consider fake?

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Bhante @sujato
In your opinion where does fit the Four Noble Truths in the Eightfold Path?

In Right View.

I know, right? But it’s not all that bad! They got some things wrong; but that doesn’t mean that they got nothing right. It just means that, at the end of the day, we have to maintain an independence and a sense of inquiry, rather than believing wholesale what is said by one school or lineage.

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Right view is the forerunner of Noble Eightfold Path hence Four Noble Truths are part of Satipathana.

Thanks for the reply Bhante.

I am not that knowledgeable on the Suttas yet, so it is really difficult to knows whats what. I am still learning and there is from what I have learned so far a major emphasis put on this Sutta. I always keep an open mind, at least a I try to. Can you please recommend some books on mediation?

Luis R

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Just as forgery is a bit strong, I feel that original doesn’t quite apply either. When we read the suttas we have access to printed versions of texts that were copied multiple times by hand after they had been handed down by oral recitation during hundreds of years. Pali is as close as we can get to the language the Buddha spoke, but chances are that there are differences between his way of speaking and the language we see. Of course, translating into English and other modern languages produces another layer of subtle changes.

Key passages in one sutta turn up in lots of other suttas, identically or lengthened or summarised; this can be because the Buddha repeated his message over and over to differs groups of people or because later followers accidentally ‘moved things around a bit’. For example, even if the 4NTs were not originally part of the Satipatthana Sutta they are the foundation of the Buddha’s message and we don’t need to think of them as forgeries. Ven Sujato’s and Bhikkhu Anālayo’s work give us the best up-to-date accounts of the historical development of the sutta. Possibly the fact that the Satipatthana underwent so much ‘development’ can be taken as a sign that it was valued and shared more than other suttas; perhaps this can lead us to appreciate it even more.

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Following video in Sinhalese language, Ven. Kumara Kasspa clearly explain that Stipatthana is about the Magga and Magga Satya.
Which means that Satipathana is more deeper than it semms and cover both Samatha and Vipassana aspect of the teaching.
Ven. Kumara Kassap is a learnard experienced monk and deliver his Dhamma talk based on his personal experince as well.

https://youtu.be/bVE0tz5O7YE?t=5456

Fair enough. In my book, I emphasized that the issue is not that any of the specific parts were later inventions, but that the inclusion and arrangement of them in this form was late.

This kind of thing happens all the time, of course, and normally it is not a problem. But in this specific instance, the choice of things to include, and the way they were included, allowed or encouraged a manner of interpretation which grew more pronounced over the years, until eventually it was essentially only the latest and least authentic parts that were taught and practised, while the rest—the specific meditations and their meanings—was mostly ignored.

Just to clarify, the 4NTs are part of the shorter (MN 10) version, and may have been original (although I suspect not). But what is clear is that the extended analysis of them found in DN 22 was added later.

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That is what I was trying to get at. Thank you for your comments Bhante. Your book, and your final paragraph here, have given me a deeper understanding of what it means for a set of teachings to be expressed through a whole tradition rather than in a single sacred text. Perhaps it’s only an affective response, but to me this adds more value to the teachings.

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I like “satipatthanering”, so I’m going to continue. :yum:

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I may be oversimplifying things, but I believe that Buddhism is the Eightfold Path and the rest is commentary of various degrees of quality. If a sutta helps me understand or practice it than I value it more. Your time on retreats was well spent since mindfulness is the seventh step of the eight.

@Luisito

It doesn’t matter if we want to distinguish between Satipatthana and Satipatthanasutta. Satipatthana itself is the basic practice foundation for the perfection of attainment of the Noble Eightfold Path.

Please continue the study of the suttas dealing with Satipatthana. What we have to catch is the framework. Debating the text word for word may be interesting academically, but in practice it will be more to feel directly, experience it directly so that insight arises in our hearts.

Satipatthana as a framework is to recognize the four bases (physical body, bodily and mental sensations, mind and dhamma), penetrate and see the original reality as it really is. As to how it is practiced on each of the bases of contemplation, you can explore also from the other suttas. For example, while other suttas talk about contemplation of the physical body, meaning that it is part of Kayanupassana in Satipatthana, it doesn’t matter whether the word-for-word description is exactly as it is in Satipatthanasutta or not. So it is with the bases of bodily/mental sensations (vedana), mind (citta) and dhammas.

The aim of the contemplation of the four bases is to truly understand what it really is and then look at it with the perspective of boredom and let it go.

Reading the results of the Pali studies of the masters is certainly very useful too. But masters who are so good at understanding language may not necessarily have reached the stage of being able to “taste the dhamma”. Yet the words in the suttas are a semantic representation of “the experience of tasting the dhamma”.

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Forgery or not? Try it. Practice it. Then we shall know it is real or not.

Maybe it is another forgery, Ehipassiko … but it worth a try. Anyway, we are living in a world of delusions. Those who hold the power can edit the history as they like.

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