This is actually a whole new topic. I am not sure how to create a new one from here, linking them together, so if any of the moderators were to help me, I would be grateful.
We still have true dhamma which is mixed with untrue dhamma. This whole topic arose from the fact that maybe Pali texts are wrong and edited. So how is this pure dhamma? And I am not even talking about ideas of other schools that sometimes are the opposite of the Pali texts. So no, we do not have pure dhamma anymore. Every edit to a sutta is a stain on the dhamma. And you know there are edits.
The best we can do is: analyze, try to grasp the core ideas and practice as best as we can without trying to make it even worse by editing further.
So I do not see any proofs that the prediction is wrong, quite the opposite.
Have a look at SN20.7.
So what I am saying is: do not attempt to edit the texts anymore because you personally don’t like something in them. It is no better than those making those previous edits. It will just add more noise to the signal.
I think that if anyone realizes the truth of the Dhamma directly through one of the Noble attainments, based on whatever existing original texts and treatises there are, and especially if they teach to others - then one can say that the true Dhamma is still in existence.
This sutta talks about the inevitable editing of Dhamma:
"Monks, there once was a time when the Dasarahas had a large drum called ‘Summoner.’ Whenever Summoner was split, the Dasarahas inserted another peg in it, until the time came when Summoner’s original wooden body had disappeared and only a conglomeration of pegs remained. In the same way, in the course of the future there will be monks who won’t listen when discourses that are words of the Tathagata — deep, deep in their meaning, transcendent, connected with emptiness — are being recited. They won’t lend ear, won’t set their hearts on knowing them, won’t regard these teachings as worth grasping or mastering. But they will listen when discourses that are literary works — the works of poets, elegant in sound, elegant in rhetoric, the work of outsiders, words of disciples — are recited. They will lend ear and set their hearts on knowing them. They will regard these teachings as worth grasping & mastering.
"In this way the disappearance of the discourses that are words of the Tathagata — deep, deep in their meaning, transcendent, connected with emptiness — will come about.
