On not-self, existence, and ontological strategies

[josephzizys]

@Vaddha

This is not exactly true. This concept and the related words appear consistently in many suttas. SN 22.53-55, SN 12.38-40, SN 12.64, and DN 28 come to mind. That particular declension of the word may be unique to these suttas, but the word itself, as well as the concept, is not.

Oh thank you @Vaddha ! this is where my lack of sophistication in Pali often comes to bite me I still think that a given declension of a word being rare is indicative of it being potentially late, it’s not a philological argument per se rather a sort of naive statistical one, as in if you have a bunch of suttas using a particular technical term always in a particular declension, and then one sutta all by itself puts it in a different way, then it may be because the outrider is a late or corrupt version of the term.

Also, although it is out of neccecity and ignorance that I have confined myself to literal stings of letters as my match criteria, I also think it is a reasonable approach to take in many cases, avoiding as it does any questions of similitude of concept, a very slippery slope in my opinion.

@Vaddha

This does not surprise me considering the uniqueness of the material. How many mentions to dead monks spread out on a cot for people to see are there in the canon, especially arahants?

Yes, i’m sure your right, I guess the point I am making is more along the lines that while suttas often repeat frame stories here we have a repetition that occurs only once, that is that it’s not that the two suttas resemble each other because a whole lot of suttas resemble them, it is just these two in particular that share the same frame with each other and no one else.

@Vaddha

This line is rather famous

Yes, I put the question mark in because, per my poor Pali, I wasn’t sure if it didn’t have other EBT occurrences with differing declensions etc? It is very similar to

yo paṭiccasamuppādaṃ passati so dhammaṃ passati; yo dhammaṃ passati so paṭiccasamuppādaṃ passatīti

at MN28

and yo dhammaṃ passati, so bhagavantaṃ passati in Milindapahna.

@Vaddha

that they would invent a story about the Buddha giving advice that lead to a bunch of people killing themselves is highly unlikely IMO.

I am not as sure about this, it seems to me that it could well be the case that the suicide craze occurred after the Buddha’s time, and the textual response was a way of deterring it and modifying the meditation practices that where seen as the cause of it.

The invention would then be of the Buddha giving advise that stopped people from killing themselves.

This to my mind just seems more likely than a religious leader just failing to notice a wholesale slaughter in their own community, but I suppose this just goes to show how intuitions differ.

@Vaddha

verses from another source

So stricken with sorrow
Tassa sokaparetassa,

that his harp dropped from his armpit,
Vīṇā kacchā abhassatha;

that spirit, downcast,
Tato so dummano yakkho,

vanished right there.
Tatthevantaradhāyathāti.

at least is from Snp 3.2

Metta