Hi Charles ,
趣 here refers to practice , it can means realm also .
Actually ,
「正趣」synonymous with「等向」which means 朝向正確目標而(修)行 or practicing rightly directed towards (ending the asava漏盡) .
Please refer to annotation no.13
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It does, but it doesn’t actually mean practice. You’re headed for the end of the contaminants because you’re practicing correctly. That is pretty clear looking at the other occurrences of 正趣 in the Madhyama and Samyukta. I attempted to find parallel with the Pali to see if I could identify what the Indic word might have been, but no luck.
Anyway, I think you’re objection is just that I’m being fairly literal. I personally am not an interpretive translator. I like to preserve the actual metaphors and idioms in the original when the reader should be able to work it out for themselves.
Thanks for the input, though! Would you happen to know who’s annotations those are at buddhaspace.org?
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Thanks. This definitely looks like a good resource when I need to find other opinions about difficult passages. I don’t always agree with them, but it’s tough to form an opinion when you have no evidence of how others read odd expressions. The lack of commentaries makes the Agamas tough to work with sometimes.
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Glad it might contribute to your works . I always revise and amend my understanding with so many resources conveniently nowadays .
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June has been a month of editing, editing, and more editing. While the new translation work will be focusing on a new sponsor’s requests, I will continue to edit and translate from the MĀ for my patrons at Patreon. This month, I cleaned up the draft of MĀ 9 that has been sitting for a few months, MĀ 10 and 186 that were 16 years old (yikes!), and MĀ 82, which was drafted last month.
Below are quick summaries of the sutra released today. You can quickly reach them from the “What’s New” page.
MĀ 9: Seven Chariots (MN 24)
This sutra relates when Sariputra met Purna Maitrayaniputra for the the first time. When he gets a chance to talk to Purna, he asks him why he practices the Buddha’s teaching. He asks whether it’s one of seven reasons, all of which Purna denies. Purna explains that it’s really all of those reasons because they lead to Nirvana. He illustrates this with the parable of seven chariots, which King Prasenajit uses to travel between two cities in a single day.
MĀ 10: Ending the Contaminants (MN 2)
The Buddha gives a discourse on seven strategies that a renunciant uses to end the contaminants. By identifying the sources of affliction and grief, they systematically eliminate them in one of these seven ways.
MĀ 82: Crickets (AN 6.60)
This sutra is named after one of the analogies used about being able to hear the chirping of crickets in a quiet place. A monk named Citra Hastisariputra causes trouble at a meeting of monks by interrupting the senior monks and wrangling over what they were saying. Mahakausthila rebukes Citra and tells him to wait his turn to speak and do so respectfully. When Citra’s friends attempt to intervene with Mahakausthila, he gives them a discourse on how monks who achieve great peace of mind can revert to the lay life because they socialize with the laity. Citra indeed decides to return to the lay life at the end of the sutra.
MĀ 186: Inquiry (MN 47)
The Buddha discusses how a disciple who isn’t yet able to know other’s minds can determine for himself whether the Tathagata’s enlightenment is genuine. He details a program of careful observation and questioning to discover any hidden defilements that’s akin to a detective’s investigation. In this way, unenlightened disciples can develop the faith needed to practice the Dharma fully.
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These are such a pleasure to read 
Literally the words make my eyes happy on the way in to the mind 
Sadhu! Sadhu! Sadhu!
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Hi, everyone. This month I’ve added 26 new translations to Dharma Pearls, which includes 4 new Madhyama sutras and 22 Samyukta sutras. You can quickly see the list of additions at the What’s New page, but briefly these translations focus on parallels to a handful of important Pali texts.
- DN 2: The main Agama parallels for the Sāmaññaphala Sutta will be coming next month. These SA sutras replicate the descriptions of the different heretical wrong views found in DN 2.
- MN 10: MA 98 is the direct parallel to the Pali Satipaṭṭhāna sutta.
- MN 118: SA 803 and 810 are close parallels to parts of the Pali Ānāpānassati sutta.
- MN 141: MA 31 is a direct parallel to the Pali Saccavibhaṅga sutta.
- AN 3.65: MA 16 is a direct parallel to to the Kalama sutta.
- SN 45.8: SA 770, 784, 785 are parallels detailing the Eightfold Path.
- SN 46.3: SA 723, 724, 733, 736, 737, 740 are partial parallels for the Sīla sutta.
- SN 56.11: SA 379 is the Samyukta version of the Dhammacakkappavattana sutta.
In addition to these parallels, I’ve also edited and released my 2004 translation of MA 11 The Rock Salt Parable Sutra, a sutra on karma that makes it clear that the severity of bad results depends on the whole context of a person and not just the act committed.
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Is this a parallel to AN 3.100, A lump of salt?
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Yes. That’s the parallel for MA 11.
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Thanks, Charles. Do you plan on translating AN 3.70’s (Uposotha Day) parallel anytime soon? Thanks for your translations!
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Dear @cdpatton,
When you start translating the Ekottarika Agama from Chinese? AFAIK, the EA has been less translated into English than other Agamas collection. Thank you 
I can certainly add it to the queue. Thanks for the suggestion.
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Next month, I’ll be releasing a few EA parallels to the Pali texts above. The Ekottarika is proving to be more difficult to translate. It reads like the older translations before the Madhyama and Samyukta were translated even though it’s date is listed as around the same period. The texts themselves are quite interesting though because they diverge more from the Theravada/Sarvastivada tradition. The parallel to DN 2, for example, shines a much more sympathetic light on Ajatasatru. His repentance plays a bigger part of the narrative in EA, whereas he is treated more like a villain in the other traditions.
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Thank you! There is a simile in that sutta that’s interesting and seems to have more than one meaning. I’m curious how the simile reads in the Chinese version.
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I read somewhere that that’s the problem with Agamas date. Transmission sometimes was earlier in India.
I’m looking forward. 
@cdpatton I guess your project now is parallels. I would like to read the ones maybe we had but was lost. Of course there is some later text. But there must be some are genuine.
I’ve been working on a set of parallels that I was commissioned to translate, but that isn’t my only focus. My overall goal is to translate the Agamas with priority on materials not translated yet, but I do have funding from supporters and I prioritize their requests as best I can. I am just one human being, alas.
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Yeah, of course we are blessed your doing this. Thanks for starting.
You know what is maybe interesting it seems that when the transmission came to South Asia they tried to keep the transmission short right? I guess it’s a natural thing to do. Since it was from Indian language to Sinhala. But that didn’t happen alot I guess in Indian languages because they are still close related. I met a couple Sri lankan with a Indian, they cant of course understand each others
So I think that why it a sort of summary
We tend to believe the Indians expanded the transmission. But actually that’s probably the real detailed versions of original before King Asoka
Are you meaning that the texts were concise rather than verbose? Or that the Pali texts have more abbreviations? The Agamas do abbreviate, though it’s not always that clear in the Chinese. Sometimes it just looks like a list of items, but I think it’s really abbreviation of expanded passages.
Also, some things get abbreviated in the Agamas that aren’t in Pali. For instance, the Agamas often abbreviate the four dhyanas (jhanas) whereas it looks like the Theravada traditioned considered those passages more important and kept them fully stated. There’s many types of incongruities like that that I see when I compare the two traditions. Sometimes the Agama text is expanded more than the Pali and vice versa, which I suspect is because that particular text was more important in one tradition compared to the other. So, it was elevated and expanded. It’s hard to generalize without sitting down and studying these things statistically.
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