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Introduction page

Under “Parallels” in the section “Content”:

“The existence of these parallels shows the connections between of the scriptures underlying all Buddhist traditions”

… shows the connections between of the scriptures underlying all Buddhist traditions.

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That is the usual way it’s explained, at least in Thailand, stemming, I guess, from the Pubbasikkha. I haven’t looked at this question myself, but I believe @Brahmali has come to a different conclusion.

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Yes, it definitely would be good to do. There’s just so many things! This has been an outstanding issue for some time now.

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It seems to me that the Thai practice is based on the Vibhaṅga itself, for if any 24-hour separation from the robe (e.g. 3 pm to 3 pm) is an āpatti, then what need for the Vibhaṅga’s specification of dawn as the time when the robe becomes forfeitable ?

Nissaggiyaṃ hotīti: saha aruṇuggamanā nissaggiyaṃ hoti.

Entailing relinquishment: it [i.e. the robe] becomes subject to relinquishment at dawn.

Still, I should be interested to hear Ven. Brahmali’s explanation.

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Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply otherwise; generally speaking (as I understand it) the Pubbasikkha is closely based on the canon, although I haven’t read it myself, my Thai is not that good! But the usual avenue of learning has, at least in the forest tradition, been from the Pubbasikkha rather than study of the canonical texts themselves. Usually in the forest monasteries the Vinaya classes consist of readings from the Pubbasikkha.

That’s not always the case, of course. I remember staying in a forest monastery, just a little village in Isaan, with an old monk named Luang Po Hom. He wasn’t particularly learned, but he had a sharp mind. A visiting monk had fallen into sanghadisesa, and Luang Po had not done the procedure for years, so he checked it out in the Vinaya. He noticed that some of the things it said there were different from what he remembered doing with Ajahn Chah at Wat Pa Pong, and there was some discussion about it.

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@anyatama, @Dhammanando, and @sujato.

I’ve been meaning to get back to this, but as usual it takes time!

First, I am quite satisfied with translating ratta as “day”. The idiom is the same in Pali as it is in English, just that a different word is used. I do not wish to add too much interpretation to the translated text.

But the interpretation is certainly interesting. I remember thinking how silly it all seemed when I first heard of monks taking their saṅghāṭis along when they went out to urinate around dawn. It seemed like a typical example of keeping the letter of a rule, but without questioning whether their actions were sensible. This led me to investigate whether this rule perhaps should be interpreted differently.

I then realised that the Vibhaṅga does not actually say you have to be with you three robes at dawn, but that the offence occurs at dawn. This is quite different. The offence occurring at dawn is a standard description in the vinaya to show when the offence occurs given that other conditions are fulfilled. For example, one commits a nissaggiya pācittiya under bhikkhu NP1 at dawn on the tenth day. The important point is not what you do at dawn, but what you have done in the previous ten days. And there are a number of similar instances in other rules. Based on this, it seems likely that the stipulation of dawn in NP2 does not relate to what you do at dawn.

Indeed, the rule itself says that you commit an offence if you are separated from your robe for one night/day. On the face of it, it is a bit curious to interpret this to mean dawn. Rather, if we assume the normal meaning of ratta as a period 24 hours, then the offence is incurred at dawn only if you have been away from your robe for the preceding 24-hour period. To me this gives a far more satisfactory interpretation of the rule, which also happens to agree with the meaning of dawn in the other rules. In practice, you would then have to check on your three robes at least once in every 24-hour period, which often might mean staying with your robes at night. In this way we avoid the standard rather artificial and often inconvenient interpretation.

Any takers? :grinning:

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And thanks again for your continued support. It’s much appreciated.

Just to let you know, you don’t actually have to note the occurrences of underscores. These are necessary in the raw text to mark italics. It’s just temporary flaw. Once the file gets resubmitted to SuttaCentral, there will be no more underscores, but italics instead.

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Anything to help Venerable. I imagine this translation to be an extensive undertaking yet to my surprise the discovered errors are quite minor. This will hopefully garner more readers to the Vibhaṅga and subsequently the Vinayapitaka. BMC is a wonderful reference but there is nothing like going to the source.

The interpretation is certainly reasonable. Out of curiosity, how has this been received when visiting the rest of the Theravāda world?

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I haven’t really shared my ideas with many others.

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AN1.268: “It is impossible, mendicants, it cannot happen for a person accomplished in view to take any condition as permanent. That is not possible. But it is possible for an ordinary person to take some condition as permanent. That is possible.” Double. In the following suttas it isn’t.

MN82: “When you were twenty or twenty-five years of age, were you proficient at riding elephants, horses, and chariots, and at archery?” Missing tharusmimpi katāvī? sword?

Methodology page

In “Vinaya parallels”, fifth paragraph:

While the method might seems a little arcane at first

Should be "While the method might seem a little arcane… "


In “Vinaya parallels”, last paragraph:

In almost all cases, it is clear that a particular rule is a full parallel of the other rules, in the sense that they different versions of the same “thing”.

Should be “…in the sense that they are different versions …”

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AN 10.61 Avijjā Sutta

#SC 4.1
“Seyyathāpi, bhikkhave, uparipabbate thullaphusitake deve vassante () taṃ udakaṃ yathāninnaṃ pavattamānaṃ pabbatakandarapadarasākhā paripūreti”

()”?

Methodology page

Under “Sutta parallels”, “Implied paralels”:

Discourses listed as full parallels to a given Pali discourse can safely be assumed to be full parallels to one another. For example, DN 22 is shown as having full parallels in MN 10, MA 98, and EA 12.1, and from this one can safely infer that MA 98 is a full parallel to MN 10 and EA 12.1.

However, for discourses listed as partial parallels to a given Pali discourse, no such inferences can be drawn. For example, DN 22 is shown as having partial parallels in MN 141, MA 31, and T 32. From this one cannot infer any correspondence between MA 31 and T 32 (though in fact they are full parallels of each other), or between MA 31 and EA 12.1 (which in fact are quite unrelated).

In the example for partial parallels the suttas mentioned as parallels to DN 22 are MN 141, MA 31, and T 32. When those suttas are compared to each other, EA 12.1 is mentioned which stems from he previous section on full parallels. So it should possibly be MN 141 instead.

Pc 12 - “harassment”
Generally harassment is when someone is being verbally exhaustive and provocation. The most common phrase is sexual harassment. Seldom is it used in a form when someone is being silent. However, I do catch the meaning.

NP 29 - I found the placement of the comma’d clause strange.
—> “a monk who is staying in such a dwelling may, if he so desires, store one of his three robes in an inhabited area, so long as…”

Pc 19 - the Pāli is misarranged

The pacittyas thus far have been errorless. You’ll have to forgive me for looking for something :sweat_smile:

Yes, I see your point. The strange thing is that this discrepancy is reflected in the Pali. The Pali word vihesā really does mean something close to “harass”, and is then defined in the Vibhaṅga as remaining silent. Yet a slightly milder translation might capture the meaning even better. “Bother” or “trouble” might be preferable. I shall reconsider this. Thanks for picking up on it.

It seems OK to me. Perhaps it is a generational thing. If you an alternative suggestion, I’ll consider it.

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Taisho numbers are wrongly represented in the parallels tables:
For instance, I was looking at T198 here: https://suttacentral.net/lzh-ja and could not figure out what the numbers meant. Comparing that with the original data, I noticed that the letters inside the t-numbers have been omitted. So t198#t0183b17-#t0184b02 has become T198: 018317--018402.
Looking at other entries I noticed this is the same throughout.
Bhante @Sujato, this would need a bug-report.

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Vehesa, in Sinhalese means ’tiring’.

with metta

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Oh dear, this is a bad bug. I will make a report for it.

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I had a look but this is a very complicated issue. The problem you have is in utils/suttaplex.js in the line:

const idPart = getParagraphRange(rootId).replace(‘–’, ‘–’).replace(‘#’, ‘: ‘).replace(/[a-z]+/g,’’);

The replace(/[a-z]+/g,’’) replaces all alphabetical characters from the number.
I had a look through parallels.json to see where this would impact. I suppose your intention was to remove the vgns from the numbers in the id. However, the id are often so complicated that I cannot see one single way of filtering out specific id.

I think the only way is determining exactly which parts of the id you want to remove in the list and just remove those specific ones. But even that would be complicated in areas where there is a mixed range of id for some reason like for instance in the case of t212.10#vns306-#t0669b10.
Parallels where you probably do not want to filter out the letters are things like: san-lo-mvu17#sbvi128 or d6#tha82a.

So it is either removing only specific ones like vns and vgns or remove that replace statement altogether.

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I remember someone saying that this whole process was a mess. We should take a step back and reconsider our approach: it shouldn’t be that complicated.