Criteria for deciding if a text is an EBT

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Thank you very much for this kind response and link. It shows me, however, that my post was not specific enough. What was intriguing about @Senryu 's post was the claim that

Even with the caveat that jhāna is not “the goal,” this is still a somewhat bold, categorical statement–or, at the very least, one that calls for some discussion, I think (unless there’s already some discussion in the archives).

Yes, surely a different discussion, if you’d like to start a new thread?

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Interesting enough that it appears that other than 8 and 10 , there are 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9 powers also !!!

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It sounds as if you mean anything pre-Mahayana is ‘Early Buddhism’? I feel sure that is not how ‘Early Buddhism’ is used as a term in the field of Early Buddhism.

Sure, the bodhisattva concept is older than the Mahayana. But it’s not from the Buddha’s teachings. It must have taken a while for this misunderstanding to develop. (The misinterpretation of ‘bodhisatta’, them taking the adjective ‘satta’ meaning ‘sakta’, to be the noun ‘sattva’). Incidently, the Buddha only used this adjective in describing himself specifically in the period after he left home, until he became enlightened. I.e. all the time he was striving for (sakta) enlightenment.

Once that concept was popularised, and many stories added to the collection of teachings, such as folk tales supposed to be the ‘lives of the bodhisattva’, the logical conclusion became that if there are two paths - the path the Buddha taught his disciples, resulting in arahantship; and the 3 countless aeon length path of the bodhisattva, to become a Buddha, then, it’s logically to want to have a go for the better, higher goal. Especially since as time went by, the level of the Buddha had been progressively increased, as is the natural tendency of religions regarding their founder.

So ‘arahant’ was still great, but ‘buddha’ was becoming increasingly better. And now you have a category of being, created by a linguistic misunderstanding and the tendency to mythologise, who are on the path to that bigger better goal. Is your mouth watering yet?

So, a few textual compositions were created, for the few men who were fanatic enough to want to undertake this 3 countless aeon long path. They would even have to avoid even attaining stream entry, for all that time until their last life or last few lives (attaining stream entry automatically and immediately limits your number of future lives). But they were into the idea. So, this new movement arose, only for men, and was explicitly not meant to be followed by most people. They were meant to follow the standard teachings, the arahant path. And that was seen as the proper thing to do for most people, and also what they would themselves teach their disciples in that extremely distant future when they become a buddha in a land devoid of Buddhism.

Now, it took a while for that to catch on. Centuries. I heard it caught on abroad first, probably because the local people didn’t know what was what, it was all new to them so they didn’t know these were newly created ideas. And I guess the Chinese elite liked magical thinking and the various fancy elements of these new teachings. Eventually popularity spread back to India, and when they had enough dominance, they pushed the difference between arahants and buddhas even more, demoting arahants as selfish and not really enlightened, etc. And that path, which the Buddha taught, they then named ‘Hīnayāna’, the vile/despicable/deficient vehicle/path.

So yes, there are old bodhisattva texts. There are also old abhidhamma texts. But the Buddha did not even use the bodhisattva concept.

Sure. What do you want to know?

Ah, about that. Well, the Buddha tried various methods, none of which succeeded. He then remembered being a kid entering jhāna. To cut a long story short, he concluded 'that (jhāna) is the path to enlightenment.

He then practiced jhāna and as a consequence, became enlightened. And then he taught the jhāna path to his disciples. Specifically, in the formula of doctrine, this is expressed as the Noble Eightfold path, which he specifically taught as being a path of successive steps, each one being requisite for the next. Well, what is the final step? Jhāna. (Sammā samādhi is specifically defined as the 4 jhānas - see Mahāsatipatthāna sutta for example). That is the whole point of the path, it is specifically to get you to the last step. And what is the result of that? The 2 fruits.

Every argument against this I have ever seen, has failed to stand up to analysis.

If you have a question about it, let’s discuss!

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A new thread has been opened, if you’d care to join.

The problem with the presentation that you’ve made, which is well done by the way, is that it has no solid data to place these logical events in time. When we say “later” it could mean a year or two after the Buddha’s Parinirvana or it could be a couple centuries later. We don’t actually know these specifics because there’s no way to judge beyond looking at textual canons that were put together when writing became more common.

Some of the trouble we still have I think is, again, I’ve looked closely at the Chinese materials and I come from a different background than say, Bhikkhu Analayo. It’s great that Pali scholars are involved in this; they have important perspectives to add. But we still haven’t had much input from the other side of Buddhist studies beyond Yinshun and a few scholar who followed up on some of his ideas.

Okay, something I’d like to do next is to get back to looking at actual parallels. It may take me a couple days to put together the post, but I want to present a full set of parallels for a small sutra, MA 1 (AN 7.68 for Pali readers). It’s a lot to compare, so I may end up creating a Google Sheet or something. Then, we can think about the specifics and the issues that arise from the picture that we see in front of us, rather than endlessly summarizing well-known consensus theories and critiquing them.

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Sounds interesting. Look forward to it.

Even more difficult and problematic in all this is that, most of the texts we are comparing are Sthavira texts. We have very few Mahasamghika texts (relatively speaking, though if EA is Mahasamghika, we have way more than we think). So even if we compare, say, all the parallels in Chinese, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Gandhari and Pali, most of these are Sthavira. So, to be really sure that a text was shared by all or most early schools, we’d need something from the Mahasamghika to compare it with, since they were the other main school after the first schism.

Because of this, we need a lot of comparative studies on the Mahasamghika texts that do survive (and how they compare to the other EBTs), but there’s not that much work being done on these (or zero…?), like the Mahavastu, Salistamba sutra, Mahasamghika Vinaya, Śariputraparipṛcchā and so on. I don’t even know of any comprehensive survey of all the surviving Mahasamghika material (does anyone else know of any recent scholarship which looks into their surviving texts?). That’s sad because they are a very important missing link in comparative studies, since they are the other big branch of early Buddhist schools.

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We’re all waiting for you to get your PhD and do the research for us!

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Only if Patton agrees to help me learn hybrid Buddhist chinese

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Greetings ,
Just enquiring , do we have an english translation version ? I tried search at SC no info .

No translations into English yet

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You may certainly be correct, but it’s super important to consider what the Buddha learned from recalling his childhood jhana experience.

I think that there’s a good chance that the Buddha didn’t suddenly recall a long lost memory of his jhana experience as a child. Since the Buddha was brilliant and penetratingly inquisitive in his path towards awakening, I find it hard to imagine that he completely forgot about a first jhana experience. The key was that he finally questioned his assumption that any pleasure was to avoided.

Here is a quote from chapter 9 of Analayo’s book “A Meditators Life of The Buddha” where the Buddha’s trajectory towards awakening is culminating in discovering the path:

"The mistaken notion that happiness needs to be avoided at all costs comes to the fore in a passage found next in the Mahasaccaka-sutta, according to which the future Buddha thought to himself: “Why am I afraid of that happiness which is a happiness apart from sensuality and unwholesome states?” This imples that earlier he had indeed been afraid of happiness, even of the type of happiness that is not related to sensuality or other unwholesome states.

The type of reasoning behind such apprehensions recurs in a discussion with Jain ascetics, reported in the Culadukkhakhandh-sutta and its parallels. In the course of this discussion, the Jains assert that happiness cannot be gained through happiness, but instead requires going through pain. The belief that happiness is to be gained through pain comes up again as an opinion voiced by a prince in the Bohirajakumara-sutta and its Sanskrit parallel, in a reply to which the Buddha then relates his own pre-awakening quest. In the Pali version, the Buddha leads over to this account of his former practices with the following statement:

"Before my awakening, when still being an unawakened bodhisattva, I thought as well “Happiness is not to be reached through happiness, happiness is to be reached through pain!”
(end of Analayo quote)

In the next paragraph, Analayo goes on the say that was at this point where the Buddha recalled his childhood jhana experience and was ready to change his belief about happiness through pain, that no longer being afraid of wholesome happiness could be the way.

I think there’s a good chance that it wasn’t that he didn’t remember the experience, but that putting happiness back into jhana is what changed and opened up the path for him.

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For the Indic material, your sentence there is basically simultaneously referring to 3 different periods in history hat all all separated by centuries:

  • the time the/a canon was formed
  • the time it was first written
  • the/a canon we actually have available to us now

I mention this because I wonder if you noticed, and, I felt before that you sometimes don’t seem to differentiate in your thinking between oral and written traditions and it seemed to be potentially causing issues in the reasoning.

Well, I’ve only been writing forum posts - there’s limit to how much detail I can provide here! Most of my time is spent in deep analysis of the evolution of music… but is there something specific you want a time sequence for? Now of course we can’t usually tell exactly which person on what date changed a specific idea millennia ago! But as with biological evolution of species, we can observe trends and narrow down various changes to specific regions in time and space, with varying degrees of tolerance.

And of course for the evolution of Mahayana doctrine, the Chinese is very useful for dating! Since they made multiple translations, and had a habit of caring about dates, which the Indians didn’t seem to care about! Though for me personally, exact dates do not interest me. The trends of evolution are more interesting for me, and the earliest period is the most interesting for me. So I don’t require a high degree of exactitude in dating for my purposes.

Oh also aside from the Chinese, there are other ways to narrow down dates of course. Such as mention of kings, and towns and cities in the texts which we know to have not existed before a certain time, etc.

What do you mean by ‘the other side’? And I would think scholarship in Pāli and or Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit would be rather essential for adequately translating the Chinese Āgamas, no? In fact the most suitable language to translate them into might be one of those two languages! I mean, if we want to understand what they *mean, then that would be the most logical step. The Chinese is an attempt to convey the Indic which it translates, so really, the Indic is the primary meaning, the Chinese a reflection of that. So to translate to English, the best option would seem to be to put it back into the original Indic first, and from there translate it into… say English for example.

Otherwise, taking it straight from Chinese to English makes it 2 steps removed from the original. That would be trying to convey (English) what a text is trying to convey (Chinese) about what a text is trying to convey (Indic). Thus likely straying further and further away from the intended meaning of the original text.

Now of course it’s not necessarily an easy task to do that! And realistically, it’s probably easier to do those steps simultaneously. So I’m guessing that the āgama translators know both ancient Chinese and Pāli and maybe BHS in order to do their work? It would seem a huge disadvantage to not know Pāli or at least BHS in such a task.

Sounds like a worthy cause! Do we have any of their āgamas? If not, how many early suttas do we have from them? Are there parallels on Suttacentral? And, please translate them :pray: :stuck_out_tongue:

Well let’s check what the Buddha said, in MN 85 after giving up Jainism:

But I have not achieved any superhuman distinction in knowledge and vision worthy of the noble ones by this severe, gruelling work.
Na kho panāhaṁ imāya kaṭukāya dukkarakārikāya adhigacchāmi uttari manussadhammā alamariyañāṇadassanavisesaṁ;
Could there be another path to awakening?’
siyā nu kho añño maggo bodhāyā’ti.

Then it occurred to me,
Tassa mayhaṁ, rājakumāra, etadahosi:
I recall sitting in the cool shade of the rose-apple tree while my father the Sakyan was off working. Quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unskillful qualities, I entered and remained in the first absorption, which has the rapture and bliss born of seclusion, while placing the mind and keeping it connected.
‘abhijānāmi kho panāhaṁ pitu sakkassa kammante sītāya jambucchāyāya nisinno vivicceva kāmehi vivicca akusalehi dhammehi savitakkaṁ savicāraṁ vivekajaṁ pītisukhaṁ paṭhamaṁ jhānaṁ upasampajja viharitā;
Could that be the path to awakening?
siyā nu kho eso maggo bodhāyā’ti.
Stemming from that memory came the realization:
Tassa mayhaṁ, rājakumāra, satānusāri viññāṇaṁ ahosi:
That is the path to awakening!
‘eseva maggo bodhāyā’ti.

Well, that’s the only actual evidence we have. So we can either go by the evidence, or we can imagine something different. The choice is ours!

Yes, indeed, he was obscured by his cultural conditioning that pleasure is bad. It was at that point that he reevaluated his preconceptions. The sutta continues:

Then it occurred to me,
Tassa mayhaṁ, rājakumāra, etadahosi:
Why am I afraid of that pleasure, for it has nothing to do with sensual pleasures or unskillful qualities?’
‘kiṁ nu kho ahaṁ tassa sukhassa bhāyāmi yaṁ taṁ sukhaṁ aññatreva kāmehi aññatra akusalehi dhammehī’ti?
Then it occurred to me,
Tassa mayhaṁ, rājakumāra, etadahosi:
‘I’m not afraid of that pleasure, for it has nothing to do with sensual pleasures or unskillful qualities.
‘na kho ahaṁ tassa sukhassa bhāyāmi yaṁ taṁ sukhaṁ aññatreva kāmehi aññatra akusalehi dhammehī’ti.

Now as we have seen, the world abounds with anti-jhāna PR warning us against it. But the Buddha clearly said it should not be feared. So, as Buddhists perhaps we would be wise to abandon that mistaken preconception that the Buddha specifically abandoned! Also, this is precisely why jhāna is the middle way, beyond the two extremes of indulgence of sensual pleasure, and self-harming asceticism. Because it is pleasurable but it is not sensual pleasure. [Ah, I now see you also explained a bit about his preconceptions… sorry since I am writing as I read.]

I think Anālayo is silly to translate that as “an unawakened bodhisattva” since he is aware that this is based on a misinterpretation. I propose a better translation being something like this:

“Before my awakening, when still being unawakened, striving for enlightenment…”

You cannot attain jhāna without attaining happiness. So I cannot follow your logic there. Plus, his own narrative has him experiencing jhāna only one single time before leaving Jainism, when he was a kid. And his narrative makes perfect sense. So, why would you disbelieve it?

One thing I do recommend disbelieving is that the day he realised this, he ate some food, attained all 4 jhāna, and became enlightened. That’s just silly. But for that we do have an alternative sutta narrative, of him actually needing extended time to even retrain himself in the first jhāna. And then, gradually, through the next 3. Likely for weeks of months though the passage is not specific. It’s in his instructions to Anuruddha and his buddies, and has Chinese paralell/s.

Likely the Ekottara Āgama: Ekottara Āgama and the Mahāsāṃghikas - Discussion - Discuss & Discover (suttacentral.net)

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The wikipedia page on the school gives an overview of the main texts which have survived.

And yes, we have the Mahavastu translated (albeit a bit dated translation), we also have various Salistamba sutra translations (possibly Mahasamghika), the Lokānuvartanā sūtra has also been translated too.

Also, its possible that some Prajnaparamita sutras were originally composed by Mahasamghikas. Though they are not EBTs, they contain some EBT ideas, so these too could be surviving Mahasamghika texts. Some scholars have also argued for the same attribution for some Buddha nature sutras.

I’ve collected some Mahasamghika EBTs in a compilation, “Early Buddhist Teachings”.

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Honestly, I don’t think it matters much whether it was a long lost memory or not, but I think you’ve just laid down a superb case that it wasn’t merely the recalling of the rose apple tree experience, but that it was the realization that “severe and grueling work” wasn’t the way , rather the “rapture and bliss born of seclusion” is the path to awakening.

I also agree with you that it’s silly to think that he ate food, attained all 4 jhana and awakened all in one day.

There’s clearly written texts that show the mnemonic devices needed to memorize them. Even during the classical period when writing became common in northern India (after 0 CE), there were monks memorizing whole Agamas and reciting them for translation projects. So, yes, I am aware of the differences between a later literary work and a text designed to be memorized and recited.

The situation is more complicated than there being later literary works and older oral Agamas. The official canons we have today have been written documents for at least 1000 years, if not longer. It was only after block printing and printing presses were developed that they could be reproduced without the problem of human errors entering them each time they were copied. Over that time, they’ve been disordered, miscopied, edited, reformatted, had material inserted into them, and so forth that changed them.

And then we have another more subtle problem: What did the words in the documents actually mean in ancient times? Sometimes, it’s a difficult thing to discern. I’ve repeatedly discovered terms that modern Pali scholars insist mean one thing, but the older Chinese Agamas disagree. I even recently discovered a case of this in which the Theravada commentary agrees with the Agama translator, but modern scholars are convinced it means something else. It’s just bewildering, the complex web of issues that are involved with this.

Of course it is. But attempting to translate classical Chinese without being fluent in the language leads to issues as well. The language barrier has created a practical split of Buddhist studies in the world between Europe and East Asia. So, it’s difficult for scholars to get a full and accurate picture without good translations of the Agamas and access to the scholarship on their language that available in Chinese and Japanese. The same situation is the case for scholars like myself if we look at Sanskrit and Pali material. We’re improving on this, definitely, but it’s been a slow process. SuttaCentral has been a big step forward in bringing these two sets of language skills together in one place.

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Over that time, they’ve been disordered, miscopied, edited, reformatted, had material inserted into them, and so forth that changed them.

In relation to the Pali cannon isn’t that speculation? Unless of course you are aware of some substantial differences between the different retentions?

And then we have another more subtle problem: What did the words in the documents actually mean in ancient times? Sometimes, it’s a difficult thing to discern. I’ve repeatedly discovered terms that modern Pali scholars insist mean one thing, but the older Chinese Agamas disagree. I even recently discovered a case of this in which the Theravada commentary agrees with the Agama translator, but modern scholars are convinced it means something else. It’s just bewildering, the complex web of issues that are involved with this.

This is true. Personally I think this is where the Vedas and Upanishads come in handy. By understanding Yājñavalkya we could better understand the Buddha and the Dhamma.

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