The Counterfeit of the True Teaching

Essays
15

I use it, and I’m a serious modern translator, so. I am following a long line of translators. A quick search for “transmigration” or “transmigrating” on SC shows that others using this word include such translators as Ven Thanissaro, Jonathon Walters, TW Rhys Davids, Khantipalo Mills, Ven. KL Dharmajoti, BC Law, Guang Xinfg, W. Rockhill, Ven Analayo, Samuel Beal, Shwe Zan Aung and C.A.F. Rhys Davids.

This question doesn’t belong on this thread, and it’s framed in an unhelpfully aggressive way. If you are genuinely interested in why I made the choice to use the word transmigrate, then by all means you are welcome to ask in another thread.

This is a misleading quote. In this dialogue (Mil 3.5.5), the contested term translated as “transmigration” is saṅkamati not saṁsāra. Elsewhere TW Rhys Davids uses “transmigrate” for saṁsāra unproblematically, as for example Mil3.6.9.

Thanks, yes. “Transmigrate” is literally “wandering from place to place”, which is exactly what saṁsāra means. The quote by Ven Pesala is missing the point. The Buddhist theory is that there is no self-same entity that wanders, not that there is no wandering.

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16

According Buddha teaching the wandering in Samsara doesn’t happens by means transmigration. It happens by means rebirth according dependent origination. In dependent origination there is no transmigration This is explained in SN 12.2
https://suttacentral.net/sn12.2/en/sujato

even in translations inside Suttacentral, where it seems “transmigration” word is accepted, we can see how here there is no mention of transmigration:

“And what is rebirth? The rebirth, inception, conception, reincarnation, manifestation of the aggregates, and acquisition of the sense fields of the various sentient beings in the various orders of sentient beings. This is called rebirth.”

Why so?. Because it would lack of coherence regarding the Sutta context talking about dependent origination. Then here is absent. However, this logical necessity is forgotten in other hundred pages in where “tranmigration” appears.

Therefore we see here the “reincarnation” word which is also a clumsy choice regarding the dependent origination, and with some theist reminiscences which are very strange for a buddhist text.

Here it sound much better the Bhikkhu Bodhi translation in order to get that missed coherence with dependent origination:

“And what, bhikkhus, is birth? The birth of the various beings into the various orders of beings, their being born, descent [into the womb], production, the manifestation of the aggregates, the obtaining of the sense bases. This is called birth.”

The B.Bodhi translation shows there is no need to use “transmigration”, “reincarnation” or other miselading terms which are more proper of some old jesuit priest translation or freemason teosophist from the past.

Difficulty to understand the wandering without transmigration is a main point of the Buddha teaching. It should be solved by the person. The solution cannot be using contradictory terms (with DO) like “transmigration” to pacify our own perplexity .

no aggressive Bhante. Sorry if I show that impression. I try to keep respect to everybody.

I didn’t know you are the author of that choosing, I believe other people was, perhaps without good knowledge.
Then I’m very surprised because I believe you are a good knower of pali. I’m not. Although “transmigration” to me sounds really incoherent by logics.

Hope to see some day a good elaboration of your choosing.

Sorry for my suppositions about the authorship! :flushed:
** yes please. Another thread to read about this choosing will be good to read. Thank you.

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17

No worries, I’m always here and happy to help. :pray:

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18

Thanks so much :slightly_smiling_face::pray:

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19

Oh, please do! This is a saying of enormous relevance here in China, to the point where I have heard it used in earnest at the university level in discussions on comparative text-critical history. Hearing that pushed me to look into the matter once; and, as I remember, I came across similar statements in EBT discourses, but I believe they were actually more along the lines of: “whatever is the word of the Buddha is well-spoken.” I have not as yet found the origins of this particular saying. Therefore, I hope you are able to find the time to do a short essay on it. Thank you.

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Actually the Pali version is one of those that puts the saying the other way round:

Ven. Uttara:
‘Yaṃ kiñci subhāsitaṃ sabbaṃ taṃ tassa bhagavato vacanaṃ arahato sammāsambuddhassa.

“… whatever is well spoken is all the word of the Blessed One, the Arahant, the Perfectly Enlightened One.”

Uttaravipatti Sutta

In contrast with East Asian Buddhism, where quite a big deal has been made, and continues to be made, of this saying, in the Theravada tradition it seems to have fallen completely by the wayside. The commentary and sub-commentary to the sutta are very brief, merely remarking on a point of grammar, but making no attempt to delineate the permissible scope and application of Uttara’s saying. Nor is the saying ever cited in any other commentary. It’s almost as if it didn’t exist.

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21

It is an interesting one. There was an article about it by AK Warder, I think? It’s been a while! Maybe someone else will know? @dhammanando @Bodhipaksa

But basically the idea is that it started out as “whatever is spoken by the Buddha is well-spoken”, then gradually became “whatever is well-spoken is spoken by the Buddha”. With obvious implications, especially for the development of the Mahayana, but in Theravada as well.

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22

I wrote about that saying here: The Buddha on Fake Buddha Quotes (1) - Fake Buddha Quotes

TL;DR. It was originally like saying. “Whatever is helpful in this book should be credited to my teachers. The faults are all mine.” It wasn’t saying that anything that anyone said, if well said, could be regarded as the word of the Buddha.

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23

Yes as @Bodhipaksa notes, AN 8.8 involves Ven. Uttara who seems to be coming up with a dhamma teaching on his own. When asked as to its source, he replies that “whatever is well spoken is spoken by the Blessed One, the perfected one, the fully awakened Buddha.”

This at least appears to allow for the creation of new teachings as the word of the Buddha so long as they are “well spoken”.

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I have to say I read the sutta completely differently.

There’s no indication anywhere, as far as I’m aware, of the Buddha holding the view that anything that’s well-said can be attributed to him.

Uttara gives a teaching and when asked about its origin he says that it’s like grain taken from a grain pile (i.e. it is the Buddha’s teaching). We then see the Buddha repeating the same words Uttara spoke, and adding to them. And then Uttara is asked to memorize this expanded teaching.

I took it that Uttara is in fact teaching something he’s heard from the Buddha, rather than him coming up with a Dharma teaching on his own. The Buddha is invariably scathing if someone quotes him wrongly or puts words in his mouth, and he doesn’t do that here. I take the Buddha’s using the same words as Uttara to confirm that what Uttara had taught was a indeed quote from the Buddha.

With that in mind, I take Uttara’s comment that “whatever is well said is the word of the Buddha” to be a form of modest attribution. In other words he’s saying “the well-spoken words I have uttered are the Buddha’s” rather than “Any well-spoken words can be credited to the Buddha.” The last statement makes no sense in terms of what we know about the Buddha’s often-expressed concern for the preservation of his teaching in a verbatim form.

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25

I think it can be read in various ways. For example in a footnote to this passage, Bhante Bodhi writes,

As stated, it expresses the idea that whatever good teachings the disciples speak, even when they themselves have originated them, can be regarded as buddhavacana because they are based on the Buddha’s own teachings. (Numerical Discourses, p. 1791n1627).

Another similar passage is in AN 8.53 where Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī asks the Buddha for a short dhamma teaching. The Buddha basically tells her that whatever leads to dispassion, fewer desires, contentment, seclusion, (etc.) “are the teaching, the training, and the Teacher’s instructions.” I think once again one way to read this is that “the Teacher’s instructions” include more than simply the actual words he has spoken, but can include our own instructions so long as they lead to the same skillful ends and are therefore relevantly “well-spoken”.

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That’s the way that makes sense to me.

To me, that seems like a very dangerous path to head down.

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27

Indeed. No wonder we are all still here, most of us completely unawakened, 2,500 years after a fully awakened Buddha passed by, and stayed and taught for so long…

It’s exactly that slippery slope to leads to bogus translations and transmissions, all only serving to perpetuate confusion, disinformation, perplexity and rebirth…

Hence the tragicomedy of samsara… :man_shrugging:t2::man_facepalming:t2:

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28

It’s a great example of motivated reasoning that I completely forgot about that teaching to Mahāpajāpatī, despite having quoted it many times. If Bhikkhu Bodhi’s understanding of what Uttara says is correct, and mine is wrong (the most likely option) then we have two examples (maybe there are others) of teachings suggesting it’s OK to put words in the Buddha’s mouth, but many more examples where the Buddha says that’s not OK.

If I’m understanding Uttara correctly, and Bhikkhu Bodhi is understanding him incorrectly (who knows, maybe that could happen!), then we might have just one example.

The Mahāpajāpatī passage is fascinating, but I realize I’m very suspicious of anything that appears to say that you can essentially just make it up as you go along, when that’s very much not what the Buddha’s general approach was. This is something I need to reflect on, because it’s not sitting easy with me.

I’ll of course discover certain things I can do in meditation or in life that aren’t included in the Buddha’s teachings, but are helpful at stilling the mind and making me kinder. And those things strike me as “dhammic.” They’re aligned with the Buddha’s Dhamma as a set of principles, but I’d never say “This is what the Buddha taught” because that’s simply not true. Maybe the issue is that the word “Dhamma” being so infamously multivalent, we get into trouble when we shift from Dhamma as “underlying spiritual principles” to Dhamma as “specific instructions of the Buddha.”

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29

Me too. I don’t think this passage should be read to indicate “anything goes” though. It’s a very specific set of instructions given to an advanced practitioner.

I certainly don’t agree with false translations or “fake Buddha quotes”! :anjal:

Yes!

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30

Right, but we can see how the meaning can gradually slip. It’s not just a matter of someone deciding, “Today I will destroy Buddhism by counterfeiting the teachings!” It’s gradual. And that’s why, sometimes, there has to be a line in the sand.

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31

Precisely. This is why it’s important to understand the Pāli and not get too caught up on the connotations of English translations.

This sutta is obviously just a compass for guiding our hermeneutics - that is to say, when we’re trying to understand the Buddha’s words, how can we know if we’re understanding it correctly or if our understanding is being twisted by delusion and motivated reasoning.

Because that’s the sutta’s goal, it’s a bit ironic (inevitable?) that it becomes a target for misreading.

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32

Agreed. This was an interesting thing that evolved during my translation work. I always try to follow what I call the “principle of least meaning”, which essentially means to translate in the simplest, most obvious, and thinnest way possible per context. Since “teachings” is a “thin” translation compared to the philosophically pregnant “underlying spriritual principles” or whatever, I tended to translate dhammā as “teachings” unless a more subtle meaning was required by the context. And I found, to my my surprise, that such contexts were fairly rare. Not non-existent, to be sure, but in most cases you can translate “teachings” and it works just fine.

I definitely think there’s a tendency to imbue the word dhamma with more meaning, and the temptation to do that is one of the key differentiators between a teaching who sees their role as conveying the “teachings”, and one who sees their role as interpreting “the way things are”. Not that there’s anything wrong with the latter for a spiritual teacher per se, but as a translator, i want to know the difference.

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33

Thank you to all who contributed to this slightly tangential thread stemming from my query.

This indeed makes the most sense to me: not only based on “the Buddha’s often-expressed concern” mentioned above, but also in light of the discourse itself–specifically, Inda’s reaction; which is typical of discourses where an interlocutor remarks on how a disciple’s response to a question mirrors one previously given by the Buddha (or, the other way around). I think teachings being transmitted verbatim is certainly the emphasis here.

An inspiring and edifying discourse all around. Thank you for the clarification.

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34

I absolutely agree! Couldn’t help but think of Malunkyaputta in MN 64 who made a (seemingly) inconsequential mistake while enumerating the five lower fetters and got thoroughly rebuked for it!

Venerable sir, I remember identity view as a lower fetter taught by the Blessed One. I remember doubt as a lower fetter taught by the Blessed One. I remember adherence to rules and observances as a lower fetter taught by the Blessed One. I remember sensual desire as a lower fetter taught by the Blessed One. I remember ill will as a lower fetter taught by the Blessed One. It is in this way, venerable sir, that I remember the five lower fetters as taught by the Blessed One.”

“Mālunkyāputta, to whom do you remember my having taught these five lower fetters in that way?

I had to read it thrice and reflect on it to spot the error! The Buddha was certainly not OK with misinterpreted teachings!

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