Hi everyone,
I am new to reading the suttas and sometimes I feel little lost.
Some parts are easy to understand, but many places I read same paragraph few times and still don’t fully get the meaning. Then I start thinking maybe I am reading in wrong way.
Do you keep reading until things become more clear over time, or do you stop and study every word before moving to next sutta?
I would like to hear how other beginners handled this. Thanks for any advice.
When you find a sutta that you don’t understand, you can go to the Buddhist Society of Western Australia website, type in the Sutta number (i.e. MN 38) into the keywords feild and listen to a teacher explain it. You might stick with Ajahn Brahm at first because he explains things very carefully so that beginners can understand. Once you find a teacher that you like, you can expand your experience.
Most people, myself included, don’t understand the suttas, because if we did we would be stream enterers. The biggest problem is having the view that you understood a bit of the Dhamma and take that for granted. If you ask around if someone understands what vedāna (feeling) is you would conclude either that the world is full of stream enterers or that most (if not all) of these people don’t know what vedāna is.
Even ask around, look for the definitions, different translations, use on the suttas, none of these will help you understand. They can actually make it worse. And it means that you want the other people do the work for you even though vedāna needs to be understood by you and no one else.
So keep reading, try to get a general grasp of what is being said, but don’t content yourself with general grasp, only with full understanding, that is, right view.
Welcome to the forum! if you have problems with getting the meaning, you probably have issues with misunderstood terms. Dictionaries are the source of meaning of the words. It’s very important to use them in your studies in order to properly understand the meaning of the words.
Each word is found to exist in some kind of context, given by the whole sentence. Words usually have several distinct meanings, each corresponding to some kind of context. If you read something and the material doesn’t make sense, you probably hold some word in wrong context.
While studying, you should always be wary of the symptoms of misunderstood terms. You may feel dizzy right after stumbling upon one. You may have irrational urge to stop your studies and do something else. Other symptoms include lightheadedness, feeling sleepy, uncomfortable somatic experiences and anger towards the teachings of teacher. When you discover that you are experiencing symptoms of misunderstood terms, you should stop your studies and go back when you didn’t have problems with understanding the meaning of the text. When you find your misunderstood term, you should look it up in a good dictionary.
The real standard of knowing is very high. If you can’t quote the exact definition of the word for a given context, you don’t actually know the meaning of the word. Please do yourself a big favour and start reading the dictionary.
If everyone understood the suttas this forum wouldn’t exist! Welcome AnneMarie.
A lot of understanding comes from repetition. Quantity has a quality all of its own. Keep learning and reflecting on the suttas, and the picture they paint will become more clear.
Learn in a way that’s interesting and engaging. The approach may change from one time to another.
Its best to start with something engaging such as the Middle length discourses (MN) which are set in a story format. Some chapters of AN and SN tend to be too heavy on doctrine, DN has massive mythological and devotional elements which are off putting for many modern people.
One can begin with suttas which the Buddha delivered to lay people - such suttas are quick and easy to understand. The “level” of the suttas is illustrated in the place cards using graphic icons - the seedling suitable for beginners, the pot plant suitable for intermediate and the tree suitable for advanced students.
You don’t need to read in any particular order… the suttas aren’t in any particular ordered arrangement anyway!
If some kind of order is important to one, then using the subject index might be a good idea.
Its totally fine to not understand everything! Read casually- the MN contains an engaging set of characters who are always up to something. The doctrinal elements will seep in later.
When you find yourself intrigued by some doctrinal element, research it in greater depth. Reading about it here on discourse is fantastic.
Over time you will find the Dhamma ‘clicks into place’ randomly during your day. For example you might be speaking with friends about the difficulties someone is having with their teenage daughter and the thought might pop up “The Buddha said that our loved ones are a source of sorrow, lamentation, pain, sadness and distress”.
That teeny weeny bit of Right View is where we all start…
I’ll add that if you are new to the suttas, using a structured introduction can accelerate your learning and make it easier to piece things together. There’s no better thing for this than In the Buddha’s Words by Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi.
There are grades of understanding. If you start from middle length discourses the first sutta categorizes a truck load of concepts to 3 levels of understanding. The ordinary person, the noble disciple and the saint. With the training and the progress in the path towards the sainthood one understands more and more. Yet how to make any progress without knowing the teaching at all? So there is no reason to be disheartened by things that are unclear.
I would agree with that, although the thought that someone’s difficulties with their teenage daughter are an affirmation of “loved ones are a source of sorrow…” might not occur to me immediately.
I think Bhikkyu Bodhi was quite right when he wrote:
… not only are the texts themselves composed in a clipped laconic style that mocks our thirst for conceptual completeness, but their meaning often seems to rest upon a deep underlying groundwork of interconnected ideas that is nowhere stated baldly in a way that might guide interpretation … the nikāyas (EBT sermons) embed the basic principles of doctrine in a multitude of short, often elusive discourses that draw upon and allude to the underlying system without explicitly spelling it out. To determine the principles one has to extract them piecemeal, by considering in juxtaposition a wide assortment of texts.
(Bodhi, “Musīla and Nārada revisited: seeking the key to interpretation,” in (edd) Blackburn & Samuels, Approaching the Dhamma, Buddhist Texts and Practice in South and Southeast Asia, Pariyatti, 2003; parenthetical added)
Gautama recommended seated meditation to begin mindfulness, over and over. When you feel the necessity to understand your experience of mindfulness (or the lack thereof) in seated meditation, then you will have an approach to the sermons!
How’ma doin’.
Very good advice! Actually that is where I fall back all the time. Bhikkhu Bodhi is a great teacher. He explains suttas clearly and simply.
I find reading sutta translations by Ajahn Sujato and Bhikkhu Bodhi complement each other.
Huh, I didn’t know the meaning of those icons. Thanks for the explanation.
