SuttaCentral
Someone in the internet mentioned a sutta where Buddha advises monks how they should think and talk of someone by giving the simile of a monk who picks up from the path an old-cloth-rag, crops out the impure parts, throw them away, and uses [thinks and talk about that someone] only the pure-clean-patch that resulted from that old-cloth-rag.
Anyone has any idea of the sutta being referred here?
AN5.162 Dutiya ÄghÄtapaášivinaya
I had expected to find it in the CIPS under cloth but unfortunately it wasnât there. Had to look under resentment. But Iâll put it under cloth too so it is there the next time you need it.
One of my all time favorite suttas.
Thank you so much.
(I looked for the words: cloth , rag , and patchbefore shamelessly ask for help).
It is a pity AI are so hated there that are banned. A snowbird_ai would be awesome!
Yes, it appears the day I indexed that sutta I was asleep at the wheel. I appreciate hearing what you searched for. I have added rag as well as a lacking xref between cloth and rag.
Feeding my data into a LLM wouldnât have helped since the data was completely missing.
The built in search would have worked for rag, rag author:sujato. Only 30 results and the one you wanted is towards the top. Cloth would have been disappointing because there are 70 results and none of them what you want.
An LLM might have gotten thrown off by your parameter that it was said by the Buddha, although who knows.
I was overcome by curiosity and put your request as a prompt in ChatGPT. It did indeed know the story but as I expected went along with your statement that the Buddha said it. And it gave a completely incorrect citation. So, a bit worse than useless.
Despite the fact that I have spent hours working on the CIPS and have given less (but not insignificant) time to the search feature on SC, I still value most of all asking someone for the thing I am seeking. The CIPS was really only intended to be a substitute when a knowledgeable human is not available. One of the benefits of talking to a human is that it opens the possibility to receive even more than what you wanted.
Sadly, the suttacentral is too complicated for me. I am not sure what it is - scrolling -, but the few times Iâve tried to used it was of no avail.
Why would a manufacturer sell a product that resolves problems? Economy is based on generating problems.
Do you imagine google were to work like in the earlies 2000s? There would be no need for AI to begin withâŚ
To be honest, thatâs the best. However, I try not to disturb others unless thereâs an important issue Iâve not been able to solve on my own.
pd: I mainly look for similes⌠itâd be nice if there were a way to list all the suttas that carry some simile, since as a section of the index would be impractical because there are so manyâŚ
I think youâll find that there are many knowledgeable people here who are able and eager to help others find sutta references.
Yes! Itâs a win-win situation all around.
CIPS is also very helpful and I hope it officially becomes part of Sutta Central if it isnât already. Iâve noticed that the âIndexesâ section of Sutta Central is very similar to CIPSâŚ
Are you talking about in the CIPS? I have tried to make things uniform so it should be possible to find similes easily. For example you could look up the tenor (what the Buddha is trying to clarify or make more understandable), such as anger:
The similes all start with âlikeâ.
Or you could look up the vehicle (the thing that is being compared to the tenor). For example âfireâ:
There they all start with âsimile forâ.
The indexes on SuttaCentral are (more or less) identical with those on AccessToInsight.org. As such they are limited to the suttas on that site (far from complete). It is true, though, that the CIPS is verbose like those indexes, in contrast to the very susinct style of the typical back of the book index you would find in the Wisdom editions. However the CIPS is an original work.
Indeed! It is the gift of Dhammaâthe greatest gift.
