Is there a contradiction in the Kevatta Sutta?

Wait a second, this is a transmission of an old Indic text of the Sarvastivada school. The main contents of the text are highly probably of a pre-sectarian origin and stem from the same proto-version as the Pali discourse. Any descrepancy between this text and the Pali version will lend significant credence to my hypothesis, while if its semantics correspond to the Pali version one-to-one, my hypothesis will be refuted. You can’t deny the efficiency of using Chinese Agama texts because it would mean that almost the entire fruitful research by Ven. Analayo (some of his books and articles are available here) and a large chunk of Ven. Bodhi’s work were made in vain, which I honestly think is a point hard to prove. Moreover, if it turns out there is no or little punctuation in the ancient Pali manuscripts there will be literally no way to find out how one should punctuate the verse apart from looking into the Chinese version hoping it will be helpful. Finally, denying that you can use a later translation to clarify unclear points in the hypothesized original text equals to saying you cannot use the Septuaginta in the Bible studies, which is, honestly (and I am sorry if I sound rude), absurd.

It is not. Please kindly read the abstract provided for this book.

Moreover, one of the current theories regarding DN texts is that they were primarily directed at the non-Buddhist audience with the proselytizing purposes (just listen to the opening discourse of the Ven. Bodhi’s series of lectures on the MN or read pretty much any more or less scholarly book on the structure of the Nikayas). As such, they had to meet at least two requirements: they had to be understandable for Non-Buddhists and they had to be entertaining. The latter point explains why there is so much palaces and magic jewels and lute-playing gods in the DN. Refuting a Brahmanical householder in a quasi-dispute situation using a brilliant rhetoric device is certainly something that the audience could dig a great deal. But in order to appreciate it, they had to understand what ‘this Buddha’ was actually saying to the poor Kevaṭṭa. Now, this is all purely hypothetical, as I don’t have any hard evidence and don’t claim to be an Indologist, but that would certainly explain the form this Sutta is having now.

But even if it were a specific Buddhist term, it would be far from rational to think that the Pali discourses are literal transcriptions of the talks between the Buddha and some other people. The are rather re-tellings, second-hand accounts circulating for centuries in mostly Buddhist culture where you don’t have to explain to people what ‘khandha’ or ‘namarupa’ means. This is why I am sometimes surprised by how people conclude ‘the five khandhas’ might be of the pre-Buddhist origin because the Buddha didn’t explain the term to his first five disciples. I mean, it is possible, but the absence of an explanation in a text doesn’t mean anything. The Buddhists as the primary audience of these discourses for centuries didn’t need any explanation, so it could easily be deemed redundant. You don’t explain the priest to explain in each and every sermon or each and every theological text what ‘sin’ or ‘purgatory’ means.

Some very interesting discussions here, and I’m sorry I can’t contribute more, but just on a couple of details.

There might be some punctuation; even in Brahmi there is punctuation. Devanagari uses | and ||. However manuscript editions would use little or no punctuation. Here’s a closeup of a Burmese palm leaf manuscript.

No real punctuation. Manuscripts typically didn’t even observe line-ending conventions. They just broke the word whenever they ran out of space.

Early printed editions quickly adopted western punctuation conventions. See here a page from the Rama 5 edition of Thailand, late 19th century.

It uses quote marks, paragraphs, and so on. These are added at the editor’s discretion. I am currently working closely with the Mahasangiti edition, which on the whole is probably the best edited of any modern Pali text. However there are still quite frequent punctuation errors and inconsistencies.

Sometimes, yes. We can only know after checking the specifics. In a case like this, we need all the help we can get, and both the pre-Buddhist texts and the Chinese are useful.

But to answer your question, nāmarūpa is a pre-Buddhist term, and in fact it is clearly used by the Buddha in response to and critique of Brahmanical ideas. The Kevaddha Sutta itself is one example of this.

To put yourself in the brahmins’ shoes, think of it something like this. The rūpas are the diverse manifest forms that appear in the world; the “things”, if you will. The nāma are the “names” we give to those forms; i.e. the inner concepts that map onto the external realities.

These are felt to have a fundamental connection. This connection is, in fact, the basis of magic. By naming something or someone, you have a power over it. A name, in other words, is not just an arbitrary symbol assigned to something (as held by Buddhists and by science) but is part of its essence.

The brahmins believed that language—real language, i.e. Vedic Sanskrit—was created by the divinity; more, it is the living expression of divinity in the world. This belief system dominated older Brahmanical thought.

Not long before the Buddha, however, a new generation of more sophisticated philosophers arose, most importantly Yajnavalkya, and the made a radical new proposal. All the “forms” of the world and their corresponding “names” are in reality just expressions of the underlying divinity, which is the true self, i.e. consciousness (vijnāna). Just as all the individual rivers, with their specific “shapes” and “names” disappear when they merge into the ocean, so too all the individual “names” and “forms” which we mistakenly (neti! neti!) take to be our self disappear when they return to the ocean of vijnāna.

Thus we no longer merely participate in the expression of divinity (by reciting Vedic texts), we become that divinity (by meditative absorption in infinite consciousness).

The Buddha’s teachings are specifically phrased as a refutation of these views. This is why he emphasizes that viññāṇa and nāmarūpa are interdependent, and equated Nibbana with the cessation of consciousness.

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Thanks a lot, bhante. :anjal: So it may be the case that the text was wrongly punctuated with European characters when it was prepared for the first punctuated editions. Considering the state of the Pali scholarship back then and the complexity of the verse, it is plausible. So, the Chinese translation would now be especially interesting :flushed:

By the way, here’s a nice digital library of Northern Thai manuscripts:
http://lannamanuscripts.net/en
and the less user-friendly but still very useful digital library of Lao manuscripts:
http://laomanuscripts.net/en/index

If you ever need the very old texts in your work, you know where to go :slight_smile:


@Deeele
So, here’s a link to a monolingual Pali mansucript. The verse from the Kevaddha Sutta is supposedly :sweat: on p. 65 (see the picture below).

This one is a bilingual Pali-Lao manuscript with the relevant verse being supposedly on p. 68 (see the picture below).

If my identification of the relevant places in the manuscripts is wrong - and that is totally a possibility - more competent people are always welcome to correct me :slight_smile: anyway, I don’t really see any punctuation at all, so false punctuation of ‘Ettha dīghañca rassañca, aṇuṃ thūlaṃ subhāsubhaṃ’ as referring to the ‘luminous consciousness’ was not impossible.

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Thanks so much for the site, it’s awesome. I’ll add SC integration to our 2-do list!

Sorry I can’t help with the readings, the script is too hard for me. Perhaps @Dheerayupa can help?

No wonder, is seems to be in the archaic Khmer script the Thai people are still keen on using for yantras and the like.

But my maybe it’s just a weird looking Thai script :disappointed_relieved:

The search page on the site offers these possible scripts:

  • Tham Lue
  • Tai Khuen
  • Tham Lao
  • Shan
  • Thai Nithet
  • Thai
  • Burmese
  • Khom
  • Lao Boran

So there’s that. Although in truth, most (all?) of them are closely related, so it’s not as hard as all that. But it takes time to get familiar with them.

Oh, I found it. It’s Tham Lan Na. I will try to look into it tomorrow. It will be slow and painful, but hey, per aspera ad exstinctiōnem :slight_smile:

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You my already know this, but Ven Ñāṇananda discusses the idea of the luminous consciousness quite a bit in his Nibbāna sermons and also in his more recent work “The Law of Dependent Arising”.

Just as your asavas, if some of them cease without remainder, you become a stream-enterer.

I think you must mean fetters, as none of the three āsava usually mentioned in the Nikāyas (kāmāsava, bhavāsava, avijjāsava ) cease with stream-entry (although of course sakkāya-diṭṭhi) does). But of course there are lots of terms for the defilements in the suttas that are all realted in one way or the other.

hmmm, I treid to paste this under your appropriate post but it didnt seem to work :confused:

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I have a very complicated relationship with the Venerable’s works. Still, one day I will overcome myself and delve deeper into his books, they are definitely worth it.

Right, thanks for the correction :anjal: I always get a little bit confused when it comes to asavas, fetters, roots and all that stuff :slight_smile:

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Oh, I find his work the most profound outside of the suttas themselves (and of course it’s all based on the suttas). And as you say definitly worth it. In fact, worth reading and re-reading…:anjal:

My impression was always that it is more of a hit and miss. Sometimes brilliant beyond measure, sometimes pretty odd and unconvincing. But I agree, his books are profound and challenging.

So you appear to be saying this is reason why DN suttas, such as the Maha-Nidana Sutta (DN 15) have definitions in them that are different to the stock suttas on the same subject in the other Nikaya (eg. MN 9; SN 12.2). For example, DN 15 excludes ignorance, sankhara & sense-spheres; has a different definition of consciousness, nama-rupa & birth; and does not define aging-&-death. The definition of nama-rupa in DN 15, to me, sounds like the Brahmanistic nama-rupa Bhikkhu Sujato described in his earlier post. Given the omissions in DN 15 of at least three nidanas, I wonder why it is called ‘Great’ when it only has 9 nidana & other suttas have 12 nidana? In your opinion, do such sutta (such as DN 15) still count as being ‘Buddha-Dhamma’ or are they a Brahmanism is disguise?

Due to your clear explanation, I am able to put myself in the brahmins’ shoes or sandals.

In the old translations of Bhikkhu Nanamoli & others, the term ‘nama-rupa’ was generally translated as ‘mentality-materiality’ rather than ‘name-form’, which appears to have recently become fashionable among Western scholars. I do recall Bhikkhu Bodhi explaining somewhere in one of his introductions why he changed from ‘mentality-materiality’ to ‘name-form’.

Sujato. Possibly, you have shed some light on the ‘contradiction’ I sense in the Kevatta Sutta.

Possibly, the term ‘nama-rupa’ can be translated as ‘mentality-materiality’ in the Buddhist contexts, such as Dependent Origination, SN 12.67, etc, and ‘name-form’ in the Brahmanistic contexts, such as the Kevatta Sutta (DN 11; MN 49), Jata Sutta (SN 7.6), etc.

Instead of Bhikkhu Bodhi having to choose one translation over the other, the venerable bhikkhu could use both.

What do we think about that?

Dear Ajahn @sujato and @Vstakan,

I can’t read the script, either. I went to the website you gave for the bilingual Pali-Lao manuscript – the first page explains that the alphabets used are Tai Yuan and the language is Tai Yuan - Pali. The text was recorded in Laos in 1836. This Thai Yuan language is the same as https://th.wikipedia.org/wiki/อักษรธรรมล้านนา.

Sorry that I cannot be of much help. :cry:

With much respect,

Dheerayupa

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I don’t think it’s as simple as that. DN was primarily a text collection for Non-Buddhists, but it doesn’t mean no other texts could be added to it earlier or later for any other reason. Take the two last Suttas in DN: they are just long lists of Dhamma topics. DN 15, due to its highly speculative doctrinal contents could not be possibly directed at the non-Buddhist audience. If I would show it to my girlfriend, she wouldn’t really understand much, whereas she could easily connect to much of the Mahaparinibbana Sutta.

How, why and when DN 15 was compiled and how it can be compared to other Suttas is a difficult question that I am not really ready to answer without first consulting any papers on its Chinese Agama counterparts. Unfortunately, I have no information on such papers except this one by Bucknell :sweat: Anyway, I should warn you I am very sceptic about how unconvincing Bucknell’s arguments are: the shorter version of the Dependent Origination fits the teachings by Venerable Sariputta so nicely it can hardly be a coincidence. Besides, as I said multiple times elsewhere, in my opinion it is crucial that the Buddha says ‘to this extent designations etc. go’, as if specifying the difference between the shorter and longer DO formulae. In other words, I think, it may well be possible the first two nidanas cannot be satisfyingly described linguistically. And don’t forget there is one more deviating DO formula, in the Udana, a book that is scarcely Brahminical.

Just as I mentioned above, I don’t think specifically DN 15 is ‘Brahmanism in disguise’ because it fits so perfectly with Ven. Sariputta’s simile of two bundles supporting each other and otherwise doesn’t contradict the Buddhadhamma in any way, neither does it disavow the longer version. Honestly, I know of no Sutta that is Brahminical (even though my competence is limited), but I know of certain interpretations of Suttas that are kinda itty-bitty Brahminical, and the Original Mind or vinnana-nibbana theories kinda smack of, you know, the Upanishads :slight_smile:

Thanks for your help, it is very much appreciated! :anjal:

Well, looks like tomorrow I will have to make a nice pot of coffee and slowly decipher or try to decipher the manuscript with p. 65 in one hand and the Lanna character table in the other one. It won’t actually be that bad: I need only a couple of neighbouring words to see if my identification of the page as the end of DN 11 was correct :grin:

Those works I find very long & difficult to read. I am not a very good reader. In the context of my reading of those works being not complete, my impression of those works is they appear to focus on the cessation of thinking (‘sankhara’) as here-&-now Nibbana rather than the cessation of craving.

There must be a difference between cessation of thinking & cessation of craving since, I imagine, a mind free from craving can remain in here-&-now Nibbana and continue to think when necessary; where as a mind in ‘non-thinking-Nibbana’ must enter & exit Nibbana when simply talking.

I read Concept & Reality once (or maybe Magic of the Mind) &, at the time, it did not make sense to me because it seemed to keep emphasising non-thinking & non-perception as Nibbana.

A definition of Nibbana I read in MN 26 refers to ‘calming of all sankhara’ (sabbasaṅkhārasamatho) & destruction of craving (taṇhakkhayo) where as I have gained the impression those works focus on 'sabbasaṅkhārakkhayo ’ (destruction of thought concepts).

@Deeele
Hmm, I didn’t quite get the same impression from his work. He does talk quite a bit about papañca… AN 8.30 is a lovely sutta showing the connection between nonproliferation and nibbāna.

There must be a difference between cessation of thinking & cessation of craving

Of course, I agree. For example thinking ceases in jhana, which of course is not Nibbāna

I would say non-proliferation does not necessarily mean ‘non-thinking’. In my experience, thinking alone does not proliferate. Instead, proliferation of superficial thinking is driven by proliferation of underlying ignorance, craving & the energy of other defilements. Therefore, here-&-now Nibbana will always be the destruction of craving (greed, hatred & delusion) and ‘non-proliferation’ is not something different to the end of craving.

In my opinion, a different ‘core teaching’ will not be found in small obscure suttas tucked away in a corner of the Nikayas which may use different terms/words that are somehow misconstrued due to translations. I think the ending of the Kevatta Sutta is similar to this. The same verse is found in MN 49, another adventure with Brahma gods.

I would like to thank everyone for their contributions. I have come to the personal conclusion the verse about ‘luminous consciousness’ was a teaching specifically for Brahmans rather than about Nibbana. It seems like the Buddha essentially instructed these Brahmans & Brahma Gods to give up their Brahmanistic pre-occupation with Brahmanistic ‘nama-rupa’, i.e., believing their naming of rupa was an essential dharma.

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