Fill us with happiness: tell us about all our mistakes!

Samyutta Nikaya 12.49

Fourth Question the Buddha asks:

What what exists do the six sense fields … contact … feeling … craving … grasping … continued existence … rebirth … old age and death come to be?’

Shouldn’t this be “When What

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It is.

They are the things that, when attention is paid to them, do not give rise to unarisen defilements and give up arisen defilements; the defilements of sensual desire, desire to be reborn, and ignorance.

But looking now, they should use colon, I’ll change that.

It should indeed, thanks.

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Ah, thank you, makes it much clearer! I think Māra had pulled a bit the wool over my eyes on this one … :sheep:


Here’s another one:

SN16.5:7.2: Bahujanahitāya kira tvaṁ, kassapa, paṭipanno bahujanasukhāya lokānukampāya atthāya hitāya sukhāya devamanussānaṁ.
You’re acting for the welfare and happiness of the people, for the benefit, welfare, and happiness of gods and humans.

lokānukampāya is lacking in translation.

Actually happens a bunch of times, I think I have fixed them all.

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https://suttacentral.net/an6.17/en/sujato?layout=plain&reference=none&notes=asterisk&highlight=false&script=latin

“ The Buddha spent most of the night sitting meditation” Missing a word?

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In MN140 there is the inspiring statement:

‘They have four foundations, standing on which the streams of identification don’t flow. And when the streams of identification don’t flow, they’re called a sage at peace.’
‘Yattha ṭhitaṁ maññassavā nappavattanti, maññassave kho pana nappavattamāne muni santoti vuccatī’ti—
SuttaCentral

The grammar in the translation is a little confusing. I guess the “they” is the implied subject of “standing on” (it surely isn’t the streams). So, spelling it out, I think it’s saying:
‘They have four foundations. [When they stand on these four foundations] the streams of identification don’t flow. And when the streams of identification don’t flow, they’re called a sage at peace.’

Apart from this subject issue (which could be solved by some reordering - see Bhikkhu Bodhi’s attempt below) the simile sounds logically clumsy. How does standing on a foundation halt a stream? Standing on a foundation would prevent one being swept away by a stream, it wouldn’t stop the stream itself (you’d need a dam to do that!).

Here’s Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translation:

The tides of conceiving do not sweep over one who stands upon these foundations, and when the tides of conceiving no longer sweep over him he is called a sage at peace.

Sorry if this sounds picky. I was studying this sutta with group of friends this week, and I found it very useful to have both translations to work with. I really appreciated this, and the subsequent paragraph:

For this is the ultimate noble generosity, namely,
Eso hi, bhikkhu, paramo ariyo cāgo yadidaṁ—
letting go of all attachments.
sabbūpadhipaṭinissaggo.

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change to “sitting in meditation”

Not at all, see my extended discussion here:

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yathākāmakaraṇīyo is used either for a hunter, a fisher, or for Māra the Wicked.

In most cases it is translated as “can do what he wants with them”, but in SN 17.3 there is “can treat them however he wants”. In MN 26 and 49 it is “vulnerable”, which may be a slightly different context.

Use this throughout, except MN 49, where “subject to my will”.

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We have two parallel Suttas, SN 17.23 and 24. The following phrase is in two segments in Pali each time, but the English follows the Pali in SN 17.23, and has all in the first segment in SN 17.24.

SN17.23:1.6: Sace kho tvaṁ, tāta, agārasmā anagāriyaṁ pabbajasi;
‘But my darling, if you go forth from the lay life to homelessness,
SN17.23:1.7: tādiso, tāta, bhavāhi yādisā sāriputtamoggallānāti.
please be like Sāriputta and Moggallāna.’

SN17.24:1.6: Sace kho tvaṁ, ayye, agārasmā anagāriyaṁ pabbajasi;
‘But my darling, if you go forth from the lay life to homelessness, please be like the nuns Khemā and Uppalavaṇṇā.’
SN17.24:1.7: tādisā, ayye, bhavāhi yādisā khemā ca bhikkhunī uppalavaṇṇā cāti.


SN14.37:1.5: Ye hi keci, bhikkhave, samaṇā vā brāhmaṇā vā imāsaṁ catunnaṁ dhātūnaṁ assādañca ādīnavañca nissaraṇañca yathābhūtaṁ nappajānanti,
There are ascetics and brahmins who don’t truly understand these four elements’ gratification, drawback, and escape for what they are.

Here, as well as in SN 14.38, we have the idiom assādañca ādīnavañca nissaraṇañca yathābhūtaṁ nappajānanti.

Elsewhere, like for example in AN 3.106, we have the similar idiom assādañca assādato ādīnavañca ādīnavato nissaraṇañca nissaraṇato yathābhūtaṁ nappajānanti.

In all these cases, “for what they are” has been added at the end in English, which, I think, stands for the duplication assādañca assādato ādīnavañca ādīnavato nissaraṇañca nissaraṇato. So it should be removed in SN 14.37 and 38.


There’s one blurb for SN 17.37-43, but the Suttas are actually SN 17.37 and SN 17.38-43. On the website, for none of those a blurb is shown because the ID sn17.37-43 doesn’t exist.


Cattālīsanipāto niṭṭhito has not been translated in Thag 18.1.

Hello

Just a little mislabelled sutta wanted to report:
SN 1.8 is actually Snp 1.8 in Romanian
https://suttacentral.net/sn1.8/ro/dhammadharo

Edit: looks like others have the same issue:
https://suttacentral.net/sn2.4/ro/dhammadharo

SN translations by Marian Victor Busoi seem okay, only “Dhammadha.ro community” seem mislabeled so far…

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Not really a mistake, but the numbering of questions in the Parayanavagga, SuttaCentral is not in line with Bhikkhu Bodhi’s numbering (whereas for the SN and AN SuttaCentral uses the same numbering). This may well be unavoidable — in BB’s version the Introductory Verses and Epilogue don’t get section numbers at all.

In the end, it’s easy enough for the reader to work out, but it would be nice if it were obvious that there are 16 questions, and I wondered if the question numbers could be incorporated into the titles in some way.

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thx, fixed.

Yes, this expresses the Pali ending -ato, which is the so-called “ablative of viewpoint”.

To the examples you supply, add sn48.28, sn48.21. All these cases have been corrected. :pray:


Oh, thanks for letting us know! These should be correct when we next update the site (usually every week.)

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Yes, in this case we pre-existed BB’s edition. To align the numbers, you’d have to call the vatthugatha snp5.0. Which would be fine, except it’s too late for that.

I don’t know if there’s a really satisfactory solution. If you add the numbers to the heading, this is bad, because we are elsewhere removing numbers from the heading. And worse, it means you’d have something like “Snp 5.2: 1. Ajita’s Questions”. Then chaos would rain down.

Too much negativity…

It’s like a great rain cloud, which nourishes all the crops for the benefit, welfare, and happiness of the people. SuttaCentral
:rofl:

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Looks like there is an uncontained span snp3.9

Segment 2.3

You can see it’s hanging out there between a closing and opening p tag
image
I only caught this by chance in my random sutta getter app. I style all the text in p tags and this line didn’t get styled.

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Thanks, fixed now! Let us know if you find anything else.

I wonder if a test could be written to look for these. Is it true that there should never be a sequence like ...</p>{}<p>... as we have here? That there should always be a block level tag wrapping {}?

yes, there should always be a wrapper, which must be:

p, hx, li, dd, dt

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The phrase Tamenaṁ gijjhāpi kākāpi kulalāpi anupatitvā anupatitvā vitacchenti virājenti occurs in many Suttas of the 19th Saṁyutta.

In most cases, it is translated “Vultures, crows, and hawks kept chasing it (him, her), pecking and clawing”, while in a few it is “Vultures, crows, and hawks kept chasing him, pecking, plucking, and hacking”. In SN 19.1, there’s the extra term phāsuḷantarikāhi which is not translated.

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