Reading SN 12.15 in light of its parallel SA 301

[mikenz66]

Thanks for the analysis:

@Raftafarian

SN12.15 ends by inserting the following not found in SA 301

SN 12.15
‘All exists’: this is one extreme.

‘All does not exist’: this is the second extreme.

and then seems to confirm that the state found by the right transitions is the middle way. Remember that the paragraph this relies on was stuffed between two sentences that were together in SA 301.

We discussed the loss of that line by the Northern schools some time ago.

Here’s a quote from Sylvester:

@mikenz66

Sylvester’s argument was as follows:
http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=26456#p380455

… the loss of the "The All exists"and “The All does not exist” passages proved particularly acute for the Northern Buddhists, as their sutra became dislocated from the pre-Buddhist context. It does not help that SN 12.47 and SN 12.48 do not seem to have survived in the Agamas either. Even if echoes of the Upanisadic “sarvaṃ asti” survived in the memory of the Northern schools, it did not help that the Sarvastivadins adopted a similar-sounding but unrelated motif, which gave rise to so much spilled ink over the issue of svabhāva that detains Ven Nanananda today.