Please report any errors or typos!

I don’t know whether this a typo or a variant but in my printed edition SN47.1 has “Ekāyano ayaṃ” (Saṃyutta Nikāya, Theravada Tipitaka Press, 2009, p.654, based on World Tipitaka Edition), same as in MN10.
The SuttaCentral Pāḷi Text of SN47.1#2.1 has “Ekāyanvāyaṃ”.

(My Pāḷi-knowledge converges to 0.)

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Yes, these are genuine variant spellings for the same word, not typos. The resolved form is ekāyano ayaṁ, but in some cases the words are compounded to ekāyanvāyaṁ, with the v appearing as a sandhi (“joining”) consonant.

The Pali text on SC is static. It is a very carefully proofed text, and rarely has mistakes in the text itself (as opposed to the punctuation, which is fairly accurate, but not 100%). Since we do not have access to the source files on which the Pali text is based, and are thus not in a position to properly assess any issues, we do not make any changes to the Pali text.

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Just realized that the site logos and favicons are mismatched.

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MN 85: With Prince Bodhi

  • When I said this,Uddaka, son of Rāma, declared the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception. (SC 13.3)

    —Space lacking before ‘Uddaka’.

  • So I approachedUddaka, son of Rāma, and said to him: (SC 13.12)

    —Space lacking before ‘Uddaka’.

  • Suppose there was a green, sappy log, and it was lying in water.
    Then a person comes along with a drill-stick, thinking
    to light a fire and produce heat.
    What do you think, Prince?
    By drilling the stick against that green, sappy log on dry land far from water, could they light a fire and produce heat?” (SC 16.5)

    —Switched to the second example.

  • ThatUddaka, son of Rāma, is astute, competent, clever, and has long had little dust in his eyes. (SC 47.5)

    —Space lacking before ‘Uddaka’.

  • Sir,Uddaka, son of Rāma, passed away just last night.’ (SC 47.9)

    —Space lacking before ‘Uddaka’.

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Thanks so much, I have fixed these.

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AN 8.33 introduces eight grounds for giving, but only describes seven. Seems a little miserly to hold back the best one… :wink:

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I think, DN2 at SC 37 needs a clean-up. I highlighted the respective part:

“I can, great king. Well then, I’ll ask you about this in return, and you can answer as you like. What do you think, great king? *BB’s “ever on the lookout to see that you are satisfied” is not correct, see mukhaṃ ullokentī at MN 79, SN 56.39 VAR: kammakāro → kammakaro (bj, s1-3, km, pts1) VAR: mukhullokako → mukhullokiko (s1-3, km, mr)*Suppose you had a person who was a bondservant, a worker. They get up before you and go to bed after you, and are obliging, behaving nicely and speaking politely, and gazing up at your face. They’d think: ‘The outcome and result of good deeds is just so incredible, so amazing! For this King Ajātasattu is a human being, and so am I. Yet he amuses himself, supplied and provided with the five kinds of sensual stimulation as if he were a god. Whereas I’m his bondservant, his worker. I get up before him and go to bed after him, and am obliging, behaving nicely and speaking politely, and gazing up at his face. I should do good deeds. Why don’t I shave off my hair and beard, dress in ocher robes, and go forth from the lay life to homelessness?’

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Yikes, a comment has made it into the text. @blake, can you look into this?

Oops, I’ve fixed this.

Continuing with DN2 at SC 97, 99 etc. there is the following phrase:

When their mind has become immersed in samādhi like this

I am wondering, should samadhi be left untranslated? I understand that “immersed in immersion” does not sound good.

Dear Ven. Sujato – regarding your translation of M 18 The Honey-Cake, paragraph 7, near the end:

"You are capable of explaining in detail the meaning of this brief passage for recitation given by the Buddha. Please explain this, if it’s no trouble.”

The Pāli you translate ‘if it’s no trouble’ is agaruṃ katvā. This means (translating word-for-word), ‘making [it] non-heavy’, i.e. it means, ‘making it less difficult’, ‘making it easy for us to understand’. It is not that the monks are being polite to Mahākaccāna, saying, please explain the Dharma, if it’s no trouble; rather they are saying, please explain it so we can understand it.

This understanding is borne out by what the commentary says and in at least one other translation, so you might like to incorporate it into yours.

Thanks and good wishes, Dhivan

DN9 SC 21 starts with

Bhagavā avoca What do you think, Poṭṭhapāda?

SN 1.38: A Splinter

Maybe that’s just a minor detail, but i’ll mention it anyway:

In the Pali-English line-by-line view, in the verses in the end of the sutta the indentations as well as the spaces between the lines are not everywhere the same:

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In the English-only view they are fine:

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In the two other Pali-English versions there are also slight irregularities.

It seems, going by the English translation, that the paragraphs at DN14 SC 95-96 should not be split. Also, SC 93 is missing.

Since this repeats at SC 99-100, 103-104, I assume now it is not a mistake.

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Continuing with DN14 at SC 97 it reads:

‘He’s called an sick man …

This should be ‘a’ sick man, I assume.

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DN15 SC 13 starts with a lower case:

‘continued existence is a condition for rebirth’

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DN25 SC 72 is missing a sentence:

When this was said, those wanderers sat silent, dismayed, shoulders drooping, downcast, depressed, with nothing to say, as if their minds were possessed by Māra. Then the Buddha thought: “All these foolish people have been touched by the Wicked One! For not even a single one thinks: [HERE]

Then the Buddha, having roared his lion’s roar in the lady Udumbarikā’s monastery for wanderers, rose into the air and landed on Vulture’s Peak. Meanwhile, the householder Sandhāna just went back to Rājagaha.

As per Rhys Davids translation the paragraph should continue with: “‘Come, let us now live the holy life taught by the Samaṇa Gotama, that we may learn to know it. What does an interval of seven days matter?’”

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Thanks for this, it’s always a pleasure to revisit my translation and look more closely at the Pali. I think you’re right.

Just checking Ven Bodhi’s rendering, he uses “without finding it troublesome”, a wording he has stuck with in MN, SN, and AN. And in the various sets of notes by different scholars I can’t find any discussion of this point. You mention a translation that renders it in the way you suggest: can you let me know which one it is?

I made a note on the idiom when translating it, in which I suggested “without making a problem out of it” as a possible meaning, but I thought it sounded too passive-aggressive!

There is a closely related idiom sace te agaru, which clearly must mean “It is is no trouble for you”. I guess Ven Bodhi and myself assumed that the idiom agaruṃ katvā (also spelled agaruṃ karitvā) was more or less a variation on that.

But the context is always in this specific kind of instance: the monks ask for an explanation, only to be put off by the senior monk. So it seems they’re saying to him, “don’t make it difficult”. It’s a bit tricky to translate this in a way that’s idiomatic English, without sounding rude.

Here is the commentary on MN 18, which appears to be the only place where this idiom is commented. I give a quick and dirty translation:

Agaruṃ katvāti punappunaṃ āyācāpentopi hi garuṃ karoti nāma, attano sāvakapāramīñāṇe ṭhatvā sinerūpādato vālukaṃ uddharamāno viya dubbiññeyyaṃ katvā kathentopi garuṃ karotiyeva nāma. Evaṃ akatvā amhe punappunaṃ ayācāpetvā suviññeyyampi no katvā kathehīti vuttaṃ hoti.
“Not making a problem out of it” means: “Making [us] ask again and again is making a problem out of it. Or relying on your own knowledge born of a disciple’s perfections, teaching in a way that makes it hard to understand, like extracting a grain of sand from the base of Mount Sineru, is also making a problem out of it. Without doing this, without making us ask again and again, please speak in a way that makes it easy for us to understand.” That’s what was said.

I actually think the first explanation here sounds more reasonable. I think the monks are saying, “don’t put obstacles in our way, don’t put us off any further.” I suspect that if the sense was “make it easy to understand”, a different idiom would be used.

I will change this, but I’m still not 100% sure what the best idiom is for it. I’ll give it some thought.

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Hello again Ven Sujato. Ven Ṭhanissaro translates agaruṃ katvā as “without making it difficult” (on Access to Insight). My translation of the commentary is:

Making it less difficult (agaruṃ katvā): making them ask again and again is making it difficult; and also teaching when remaining in his own knowledge of the disciple’s perfections – like someone digging up sand from the foot of Mount Sineru – and making it hard to comprehend is really making it difficult; not making it difficult in this way. What is meant is: without making us ask again and again, please teach, making it really easy for us to comprehend.

I was reading this with Rupert Gethin here in Bristol. We didn’t really understand the reference to digging sand from Mt Sineru though!

The expression sace te agaru would mean ‘if [there is] no difficulty for you’, hence ‘if it’s no trouble’, and perhaps here the difficulty would be for the teacher, whereas in agaruṃ katvā in M 18 the difficulty is for the monks.

Okay, thanks.

Yes, it’s a bit obscure. I think it’s “getting blood from a stone” somehow, but I’m not sure exactly how the idiom works.

Nice, I am glad to hear that. Please give Rupert my respects!

I wonder if it means the opposite of that- it might be really easy to get sand from the foot of a mountain. I assume due to weather erosion mountains crumble and we are left with sand. A mount might be the ‘go-to’ place for sand! :grinning:

with metta