Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 7, 2023 9:39 PM
Title: Re: What is scanning? What is the Pali word?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 6, 2023 2:54 PM
Title: Re: Fasting for uposatha...
Content:
I think it was actually cleared up on Sunday, when Frank kindly posted a link to a page on his blog, on which all or most of the sutta passages relevant to bhojane mataññutā are conveniently collated. 

https://lucid24.org/tped/g/goldcraft/index.html#3.1.1


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 6, 2023 2:12 PM
Title: Re: Bodhisatta Path
Content:
Ajātasattu: “Just as if on being asked about a mango a man were to describe a breadfruit-tree, or on being asked about a breadfruit-tree he were to describe a mango, so Pūraṇa Kassapa, on being asked about the present fruits of the homeless life, explained non-action to me.”
(Sāmaññaphalasutta, DN 2)

Similarly, asahi, upon being asked how and when a non-Bodhisattva becomes a Bodhisattva, spends two posts describing how a novice Bodhisattva becomes a Super-Bodhisattva.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 6, 2023 10:48 AM
Title: Re: perception of anatta has the characteristic...
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 6, 2023 6:02 AM
Title: Re: Bodhisatta Path
Content:
Mahayana texts that exhort people to undertake bodhisattvaship give much the same reasons as those which we find in the chapter on Great Compassion in the Paṭisambhidāmagga or in Dhammapāla's Treatise on the Paramīs. None that I've seen contains any hint that it might be fun. They do, however, (pace asahi) present the entrance into bodhisattvaship as a far less demanding undertaking than Pali sources do.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 6, 2023 5:41 AM
Title: Re: Fasting for uposatha...
Content:
But whether or not reasons are given, any conscientious monk will assume that the Buddha knew what he was doing, for to assume otherwise would be illogical for one who has taken the Buddha as his refuge and gone forth in his Dhammavinaya.

For further examples see the Medicine chapter of the Mahāvagga.

https://suttacentral.net/pli-tv-kd6/en/brahmali


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 4, 2023 10:03 PM
Title: Re: Bodhisatta Path
Content:
It was only the commencement that I was asking about, not the complete path. At which point is a Mahayanist accounted a "Bodhisattva"? 

After mahābodhi-praṇidhāna? After undertaking the bodhisattva-saṃvara? When he starts developing the brahmavihāras? After some development of bodhicittotpādaḥ? After some lifetimes of developing the paramitās? After receiving a Buddha's vyākaraṇa?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 4, 2023 9:14 PM
Title: Re: Why does Vasavatti not stop Mara?
Content:
But by "devas" I just meant those in the six sensual heavens.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 4, 2023 6:15 PM
Title: Re: Bodhisatta Path
Content:
If I wish to become a Bodhisattva...

Will I need to be a male human?

Will I need to be a homeless renunciate?

Will I need to have already mastered the eight vimokkhas in this life?

Will I need to be someone whose past development is sufficient for me to attain arahantship in this very life if I chose to pursue this?

Will I need to be someone whose zeal and compassion are such that I can say in good faith: “I shall gladly be tortured in hell for four incalculables and 100,000 eons if bodhisattvaship requires this of me!”

Will I need to appear before a Sammāsambuddha, make known to him my resolve and receive from him a prediction of my eventual buddhahood?

In Theravāda expositions of bodhisattvaship, the answer to each question would be yes. As far as I know, in Mahāyāna expositions the answer would be no.

Or do you know of an exception? Do you know of a Mahāyāna treatise on entrance to the Bodhisattva path in which it's a prerequisite that the aspirant be already a highly accomplished dhammic virtuoso?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 4, 2023 3:40 PM
Title: Re: Why does Vasavatti not stop Mara?
Content:
Well tried, but no.  

Two clues...

In the suttas what does Māra do when he's animated?

And how do high-ranking devas move about?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 4, 2023 3:26 PM
Title: Re: Bodhisatta Path
Content:
I don't think you've understood my exchange with Tamdrin.

The phrase "sugarcoating things" was not used in connection with the Bodhisatta path, but in connection with the contrast between Mahāyāna texts that make it sound easy to embark upon as opposed to Theravādin ones that make it sound exceptionally hard.

I get the impression from your last couple of posts that you think I have some problem with bodhisattvaship. If that's so, then you must be confusing me with someone else. Since I've no problem with it at all and have never disputed that its roots lie in the suttas, I don't know why you keep harping on about this.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 4, 2023 1:17 PM
Title: Re: how many brahmas are there at present?
Content:
I believe so, but I don't think it's common.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 4, 2023 12:35 PM
Title: Re: Bodhisatta Path
Content:
“If anyone carrying around this body were to claim to be healthy even for a moment, what is that due to other than foolishness?”
(Nakulapitasutta, SN22.1)

And so it goes without saying that my health is bad – though much less so than that of almost anyone else I know. Thanks for asking.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 4, 2023 7:14 AM
Title: Re: Bodhisatta Path
Content:
Note that the passage doesn't say that the Bodhisatta will actually be “tortured in hell for four incalculables and 100,000 eons”. It just says that his zeal is such that he would be willing to. In fact in the Theravada conception of bodhisattvaship a Bodhisatta is never reborn in hell after receiving his prediction of buddhahood.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 4, 2023 2:03 AM
Title: Re: Fasting for uposatha...
Content:
The commentary takes siyā kukkuccaṃ siyā vippaṭisāro to mean that Bhaddāli is worried that he won't be able to live the brahmacariyā his whole life if he's only permitted a single meal.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 4, 2023 1:14 AM
Title: Re: Why does Vasavatti not stop Mara?
Content:
No, Māra's retinue resides with Māra. I don't know what kind of relations exist between the Paranimittavasavattī and Nimmānaratī devas.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 4, 2023 12:57 AM
Title: Re: Bodhisatta Path
Content:
... then it would no longer involve a breach of the first precept and so would cease to be relevant to the point Asanga wants to make, namely: The end justifies the means and killing people (and the rest of the akusala kammapathas) are highly meritorious acts when done by Mahāyāna Bodhisattvas for the right reasons.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 3, 2023 11:34 PM
Title: Re: Origin of blessing
Content:
It's from the Mahāvihāra's oldest extant paritta collection, variously titled the Parittapotthaka, the Catubhāṇavara or the Pirit Potha. I don't know when it was compiled, but it must predate Buddhaghosa because he includes it in a list of texts that a bhikkhu needs to have memorised before he can be released from dependence on a teacher.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 3, 2023 10:33 PM
Title: Re: Why does Vasavatti not stop Mara?
Content:
It certainly takes considerable merit to get to one of the six sensual heavens. Having got there, the average deva, though typically somewhat better than the average human, still has plenty of defilement. Even puthujjana Brahmā devas have, and sensual devas are greatly inferior to these.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 3, 2023 9:52 PM
Title: Re: Bodhisatta Path
Content:
Like Patrul he then goes on to repeat the same claptrap for the rest of the akusala kammapathas.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 3, 2023 9:06 PM
Title: Re: how many brahmas are there at present?
Content:
This one.

https://suttacentral.net/ja405/en/francis-neil


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 3, 2023 8:03 PM
Title: Re: Why does Vasavatti not stop Mara?
Content:
There are two reasons.

The first is that if Vasavattī tried to launch an assault on the territory held by Māra and his host, then he would probably lose. One must bear in mind here that the geo-political status of Māra's territory in Paranimittavasavattī is not that of a sovereign enclave, like the Vatican City State in Italy or Lesotho in South Africa, but rather, that of a pene-exclave. A pene-exclave is territory that's located in country A and belongs to country A, but is only accessible from country B. An example in the human realm would be Kleinwalsertal, an Alpine valley in Austria. It belongs to Austria but you can't get to it from Austria because the Alps are in the way. Instead, you need to drive to Germany and enter via the Bavarian town of Oberstdorf. Similarly, if Vasavattī wants to enter Māra's territory, he has to descend to Nimmānaratī and then enter the territory from below. Consequently, if he attempted to attack Māra and his host, then he would face exactly the same tactical disadvantage as Vepacitti and the asuras when they attempt to attack Tāvatimsa from below.

As for the second reason, I'll save that for another day.

By the way, you may be wondering why it is that Māra's territory is a pene-exclave and not an enclave. Unlike with Kleinwalsertal there are are no whopping great mountains obstructing the way. So why can't Vasavattī travel there directly? A for anyone who can guess the answer.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 3, 2023 4:17 PM
Title: Re: how many brahmas are there at present?
Content:
The Baka Jātaka has 10,000 Brahmās attaining arahatta, so that gives you a minimum figure. I don't know of any data for a maximum figure.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 3, 2023 1:12 PM
Title: Re: Bodhisatta Path
Content:
This too is irrelevant, for the quotation from Dza Patrul isn't a Vajrayāna teaching. That is, it's neither a Tantric teaching nor an exposition of a common Mahāyāna teaching from a Tantric perspective. Rather, it's an exposition of a common Mahāyāna teaching (i.e., the Secondary Vows) from a common Mahāyāna perspective.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 3, 2023 12:50 PM
Title: Re: Bodhisatta Path
Content:
This doesn't conflict with what Dza Patrul was quoted as saying. Patrul wouldn't accept that he's mixing up vice and virtue. Rather, he would claim that one and the same action might be a vice when performed by an aspirant to arahantship or paccekabuddhahood (because it transgresses Hinayāna sīla), but a virtue when performed by a Mahāyāna Bodhisattva (because it's required by the Secondary Vows of a Mahāyāna Bodhisattva's sīla).

The two kinds of sīla are based on wholly different premises. The former is based on complete avoidance of of actions of body and speech that are regarded as necessarily arising from defiled states of mind. The latter is based on premises like, "the end justifies the means" and "charity covereth a multitude of sins". For a Mahāyāna Bodhisattva, when the two sīlas conflict, conformity to the Secondary Vows is adjudged the virtuous course.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 3, 2023 12:14 PM
Title: Re: Fasting for uposatha...
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2022 11:02 AM
Title: Re: Match the Buddha’s teachings
Content:
Hi, welcome to Dhamma Wheel.

I have a couple of suggestions regarding your videos.

Firstly, when a block of text is being displayed it would be better to let it stand for a few seconds longer so that viewers can read it all without needing to pause the video.

Secondly, it would be better to add subtitles since some of the Burmese monks speak heavily-accented English that's hard to understand.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 3, 2022 8:40 PM
Title: Re: The Eye
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 3, 2022 6:40 PM
Title: Re: byādhidhammānaṁ
Content:
Byādhidhammānaṁ (var. vyādhidhammānaṁ) is the form that the adjective byādhidhamma would take if the noun that it qualifies is in the dative or genitive plural.

Its meaning is "subject to sickness" or "of the nature to get sick".

This is an example where it's being used in the dative plural:

Byādhidhammānaṁ, āvuso, sattānaṁ evaṁ icchā uppajjati: ‘aho vata mayaṁ na byādhidhammā assāma; na ca vata no byādhi āgaccheyyā’ti. Na kho panetaṁ icchāya pattabbaṁ.

To beings subject to sickness, friend, there comes the wish: ‘Oh, that we were not subject to sickness! That sickness would not come to us!’ But this is not to be obtained by wishing.
(MN 141)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 3, 2022 5:57 PM
Title: Re: Monks and Thai Government Hospitals
Content:
In 26 years living here as a monk I've had three hospital stays (one government hospital and one private, and one stay in a sangha hospital), dozens of dental check-ups, and one trip to an A&amp;E on account of the above-mentioned earphone incident. Also, for five years I was on the team of visiting chaplains at the Sangha hospital in Bangkok.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 3, 2022 4:32 PM
Title: Re: The Eye
Content:
The word cakkhussa comprises two homonyms. One is the genitive of the noun cakkhu, but the other is an entirely different word, an adjective that's cognate with Skt. cakṣuṣya. The latter isn't a very common word.

An example (AN 5.208):

Dantakaṭ­ṭha­sutta

“Pañcime, bhikkhave, ādīnavā dantakaṭṭhassa akhādane. Katame pañca? Acakkhussaṃ, mukhaṃ duggandhaṃ hoti, rasaharaṇiyo na visujjhanti, pittaṃ semhaṃ bhattaṃ pariyonandhati, bhattamassa nacchādeti. Ime kho, bhikkhave, pañca ādīnavā dantakaṭṭhassa akhādane.

Pañcime, bhikkhave, ānisaṃsā dantakaṭṭhassa khādane. Katame pañca? Cakkhussaṃ, mukhaṃ na duggandhaṃ hoti, rasaharaṇiyo visujjhanti, pittaṃ semhaṃ bhattaṃ na pariyonandhati, bhattamassa chādeti. Ime kho, bhikkhave, pañca ānisaṃsā dantakaṭṭhassa khādane”ti.

Chew Sticks

“Mendicants, there are these five drawbacks of not using chew sticks. What five? It’s not good for your eyes, you get bad breath, your taste-buds aren’t cleaned, bile and phlegm cover your food, and you lose your appetite. These are the five drawbacks of not using chew sticks.

There are these five benefits of using chew sticks. What five? It’s good for your eyes, you don’t get bad breath, your taste-buds are cleaned, bile and phlegm don’t cover your food, and food agrees with you. These are the five benefits of using chew sticks.”


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2022 4:44 PM
Title: Re: Clad in the refuse's rag robe and asubha real practice experience?
Content:
Hi venerable,

Welcome to Dhamma Wheel.

If the Dhammanando you're seeking is the Burmese Pali teacher and abbot of Wat Tha Ma O, I'm afraid he passed away some years ago. But if it's his student, the English Dhammanando, then that would be me.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2022 4:19 PM
Title: Re: Skilful Thoughts of Renunciation
Content:
If the commentaries are right in their understanding of abyāpāda-vitakka and avihiṃsā-vitakka (and you haven't yet shown them to be wrong), then all ariyan disciples develop mettā and karuṇā, for without these there'd be no eightfold path but only a seven-and-one-third-fold path.

Now if you can offer me some substantive reasons for why avyāpāda and avihiṃsā can only be conceived as mere absences and not as anything positive, then I'll be glad to hear them. But if all you can bring to the table are more question-begging declarations as to what abyāpāda and avihiṃsā must be, then I'll let this be my final reply in this thread.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2022 3:16 PM
Title: Re: Pali Pronunciation Critique
Content:
Yes, I believe so.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2022 2:38 PM
Title: Re: Skilful Thoughts of Renunciation
Content:
I don't think so. If the commentary is right to equate abyāpāda with mettā, then it would mean that the monk begins with a mind of mettā that's of a limited extent and then proceeds to develop it to an unlimited extent.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2022 2:31 PM
Title: Re: Skilful Thoughts of Renunciation
Content:
This is a question-begging question, for it simply assumes that abyāpāda is nothing more than the absence of ill will, i.e., that the a- prefix in abyāpāda is privative rather than invertive.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2022 10:55 PM
Title: Re: Good Indian History Books?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2022 2:15 PM
Title: Re: Pali Pronunciation Critique
Content:
The avagga cluster vh occurs (e.g., jivhā, "tongue"; avhayati/avheti, "to call") but isn't common. Commoner ones are vy, yh, ḷh. All such are examples of the second case, except where the first consonant is a pure nasal.

jivhā = ji-vhā [*]
avyāpāda = a-vyā-pā-da
mūḷho = mū-ḷho

Pure nasal

aṃsa = aṃ-sa


[*]. But since vh isn't a native phoneme in most SE Asian languages, the tendency in practice is to ignore the rule and insert a schwa or some other unstressed vowel between the two consonants. And so in Thai Pali chanting, depending on the region, jivhā is variously realised as:

/tɕʰiwəhaː/ with inserted schwa
/tɕʰiwahaː/ with open front unrounded vowel, or...
/tɕʰiwɯhaː/ with closed back unrounded vowel


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 17, 2022 7:49 AM
Title: Re: Uposatha Observance Club
Content:
He may strengthen his motivation to observe the Uposatha precepts by reading and regularly re-reading the various Anguttara Nikaya suttas that outline the advantages in doing so.

When tempted to break a precept he may resist the temptation by resort to the three ādhipateyyas ("authorities", "predominances", "bases of self-governance").

https://suttacentral.net/an3.40/en/bodhi

But if he's such a deep-dyed akratic that the ādhipateyyas don't work for him, then he may seek out more enkratic Buddhist friends with whom to spend the Uposatha, rather than spending it alone.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 17, 2022 5:49 AM
Title: Re: Pali Pronunciation Critique
Content:
The pronunciation seems ok, but I noticed some mistakes in the syllabification.

1. Only the initial syllable of a Pali word can begin with a vowel. Every medial and final syllable has to begin with a consonant.

For example, dipamattano is syllabified as "dī-pa-mat-ta-no", not "dīp-am-at-tan-o."

2. The consonants are divided into vaggas (stops) and avaggas (liquids). The vaggas are the 25 consonants from ka to ma. The rest are avaggas.

When a vagga follows another vagga they are pronounced separately:

pubba = pub-ba

Likewise when an avagga follows another avagga:

tassa = tas-sa

But when an avagga follows a vagga they are pronounced together:

patvā = pa-tvā, not pat-vā
ratyo = ra-tyo, not rat-yo


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Feb 16, 2022 8:14 PM
Title: Re: Uposatha Observance Club
Content:
One would observe the precept from dawn on the 16th until dawn on the 17th.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2022 10:38 AM
Title: Re: Jataka births- how all during the time of Brahmadatta?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2022 7:45 AM
Title: Re: Attā nirattā na hi tassa atthi
Content:
https://suttacentral.net/snp4.3/de/nyanaponika


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2022 11:05 PM
Title: Re: Stream Entry and rebirth- seven bhava before Nibbana could mean many more than seven lives?
Content:
The Pure Dhamma page linked to in the OP offers only one proof text in support of this contention: the account of Bimbisara in the Janavasabha Sutta. But as santa100 pointed out, the sutta doesn't actually support the view at all.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2022 11:07 AM
Title: Re: Seven factors of enlightenment is not limited to Buddhists?
Content:
"Faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration and wisdom" are elsewhere in the suttas termed either indriyas or balas, not bojjhangas.

Perhaps your monk is inferring that the indriyas are what's intended here, and then further inferring that someone possessing the indriyas will also possess the bojjhangas. But for him to claim that, "the Buddha very clearly said that Alarakalama and Uddakarama also had the seven factors of enlightenment," seems to be going too far.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Feb 9, 2022 2:44 AM
Title: Re: Help in Time of Need
Content:
There's a sort of Buddhist Gideon Bible published by a Japanese outfit called BDK. It's been translated into about forty languages and can be found in hotel rooms all over Asia. Its contents are mainly from the Nikayas and Āgamas, but it also includes passages either from Mahayana sutras or else non-Mahayana texts that have been influential in East Asia (the Lalitavistara, Mahavastu and suchlike).

https://bdk-seiten.com/scripture-download.php?lang=en

Then there's a thematically arranged book by the Aussie monk Ven. Shravasti Dhammika, Guide to Buddhism A-Z.

http://www.buddhisma2z.com/subject.php


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Feb 9, 2022 2:17 AM
Title: Re: Hello from Dhammanando
Content:
Sure. Perhaps you'd like to start a thread about it.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Feb 8, 2022 9:23 PM
Title: Re: Hello from Dhammanando
Content:
Hello. Welcome to Dhamma Wheel.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2022 6:47 PM
Title: Re: Who is Vimalakirti?
Content:
Sure, but that's no concern of mine.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2022 12:12 AM
Title: Re: Who is Vimalakirti?
Content:
To start with a clarification of my terms.

Where a text's character is based upon an historical personage but is being portrayed with much poetic license, then I call him "fictionalized". Shakespeare's Cymbeline, for example, is a fictionalised version of the Celtic king Cunobelinus. Mahākasyāpa in Mahayana sutras is a fictionalized version of the Mahākassapa of early Buddhist texts.

As for "fictitious", by this I mean where a character is either wholly a product of someone's magination (like Shakespeare's Prospero and Caliban) or else a borrowing of someone else's fictitious product (like Shakespeare's Shylock).

Neither term can be equated with "not in our normal sense experience". Sakka, Sahampati, Manjushri and Kwan Yin are all outside our normal sense experience, but the first two are reported to exist in texts that Theravadins deem authoritative, while the other two are just Mahayana fictions.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Feb 4, 2022 5:39 PM
Title: Re: Who is Vimalakirti?
Content:
The characters who feature in Mahayana sutras are of broadly two kinds: the fictionalised and the fictitious. 

The fictionalised consist mainly of the Buddha and his arahant disciples, but with non-arahants like Anathapindika and Devadatta putting in an occasional appearance.

The fictitious consist mainly of mythical and godlike Buddhas and Bodhisattvas (Manjushri, Avalokitesvara, Amitabha and suchlike) but also human Bodhisattvas like Sudhana in the Avatamsaka Sutra and Dragon Girl in the Lotus Sutra.

Since Vimalakirti doesn't feature in any non-Mahayana source we can place him in the second category.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Feb 3, 2022 7:07 PM
Title: Re: Stream Entry and rebirth- seven bhava before Nibbana could mean many more than seven lives?
Content:
It's the Pilindavacchasutta in the Udana.

https://legacy.suttacentral.net/en/ud3.6

The Vinaya story you're probably thinking of concerns someone else - a monk who after meals would involuntarily regurgitate his food because he'd been an ox in five hundred former lives.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2022 7:47 AM
Title: Re: The teachings of Ven. Waharaka Abhayaratanalankara Thero
Content:
I should imagine that like Ven. Ñānavīra he is going with the variant reading sabbatopahaṁ. But whereas Ñānavīra parses this as sabbato + apaham (the negated present participle of pabhavati or pahoti) and translates as "wholly non-originating", Ven. Sujāto's parsing would be sabbato + paham, the latter being the present participle of pajahati, to abandon.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jan 23, 2022 10:58 PM
Title: Re: Pali Dictionaries
Content:
Hi Kåre,

Nice to see you back.

Margaret Cone gave an interview back in 2015 when she was still working on the third volume. In it she said that she didn't expect to complete the fourth in this life. If that's still how matters stand today, then I suppose if/when it gets completed will depend on whether there's some other scholar willing to carry the baton.

.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jan 23, 2022 2:13 AM
Title: Re: Buddha wasnt bald-headed !
Content:
Exactly, "bald" is the wrong word.

In Pali the relevant words are, firstly, accha and khalita, which mean bald (i.e., lacking hair in places where hair would be expected); secondly, muṇḍa or muṇḍita, which mean with one's head hair closely shaven; thirdly, kesamassum avahaṭa, meaning with one's hair and beard both shaven; fourthly, virala, meaning that one is going bald or has very thin hair"; and fifthly, bhaṇḍu, which can mean either bald or shaven.

In the texts the Buddha is described as muṇḍa or as kesamassum avahaṭa, but never as accha, khalita, virala or bhaṇḍu. He, along with his disciples, is also jeered by brāhmaṇas using the derogatory expression muṇḍaka samaṇaka, "shaveling ascetic".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 22, 2022 4:34 PM
Title: Re: Buddha wasnt bald-headed !
Content:
The razor that you're given at your ordination is a straight-edge, but in Thailand nowadays very few monks ever use it. The preferred tool is an old-fashioned 3-piece single-blade Gillette with the safety bar removed.

.


./download/file.php?id=7467&mode=view


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 22, 2022 4:10 PM
Title: Re: Buddha wasnt bald-headed !
Content:
It's not customary to do so and I've never heard of it happening. However, if a barber were to offer a bhikkhu a free shave or if a layperson were to offer to pay for one, then there's no prohibition against accepting the offer.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 21, 2022 7:10 AM
Title: Re: Ajahn Pramote & "out of control"
Content:
I don't think there's anything distinctive or unusual in what the ajahn is quoted as saying in this thread.

Any Thai teacher giving an exposition of anatta that's informed by the commentarial understanding will frequently use the phrase mai pen pai nai amnaat (ไม่เป็นไปในอำนาจ), which is the Thai translation of the Visuddhimagga term avasavattana.

Example:

‘‘Yaṃ dukkhaṃ tadanattā’’ti pana vacanato tadeva khandhapañcakaṃ anattā. Kasmā? Avasavattanato, avasavattanākāro anattalakkhaṇaṃ.

Those same five aggregates (which are impermanent and suffering) are not-self because of the (sutta) phrase 'What is suffering is not self.' Why? Because there is no exercising mastery over them. The mode of insusceptibility to the exercise of mastery is the characteristic of not-self.

(Visuddhimagga Ch. XXI)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 15, 2022 9:59 AM
Title: Re: If you become a Sotapanna will you know that?
Content:
The abandoning of certain defilements by a sotāpanna is an "abandoning by cutting off" (samucched-pahana). This means that it's an irreversible abandoning; the three fetters are cut off, never to arise again. As such, the sotāpanna's state is not one from which he can fall away.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 15, 2022 9:46 AM
Title: Re: Path attainment
Content:
That's true enough if you're going shopping in your own neighbourhood. But an apter simile, it seems to me, would be a shopping trip in a strange town where you know neither where the shops are nor by what route they can be reached. On a shopping trip in such a town it would be no solecism to speak of attaining/discovering the path to the shops as a prelude and a prerequisite to attaining the shops.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 15, 2022 9:01 AM
Title: Re: If you become a Sotapanna will you know that?
Content:
If you are asking if it can be inferred from your past breaches of the first precept that you are now a sotāpanna, then no, no such inference can be drawn.

If you are asking if it can be inferred from your past breaches of the first precept that you are not now a sotāpanna, then again, no such inference can be drawn. That is, you might, for all I know, have repented and established yourself in purity of sīla at some point since your last breach of the precept.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 15, 2022 7:43 AM
Title: Re: If you become a Sotapanna will you know that?
Content:
https://archive.org/details/PaliCommentariesCollection/05.01%20Khuddakapatha%20Commentary%2C%20Minor%20Readings%20and%20Illustrator%20%28PTS%29%20%28OCRed%29%20%28384p%29/page/n3/mode/2up


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 15, 2022 7:20 AM
Title: Re: Nibbana under the effect of ayahuasca
Content:
Ah, what a shame.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 15, 2022 7:09 AM
Title: Re: Björn Natthiko Lindeblad
Content:
Hi Sam Vara,

Your second link is to the Swedish-only version. Here's the one with English subtitles:


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2022 5:15 PM
Title: Re: If you become a Sotapanna will you know that?
Content:
Having lived for a decade in Iceland I can assure you it's quite possible to get by there without killing or eating fish. Although the fishing industry is a major part of the country's export sector it isn't very labour intensive and employs only about 10,000 of the country's 217,000 labour force (about 5,000 on the trawlers and 5,000 in the processing factories). And so the great majority of Icelanders never need to kill a fish to appease their hunger.

But suppose, for discussion's sake, there is some place in the world where fishing really is essential for survival and where the entire population is obliged to participate in it. In that case, my view would be that, (1) the Dhamma is unlikely to take root there; (2) those with the potential for sotāpatti are unlikely to be reborn in places where there's no Dhamma; (3) in the unlikely event of sotāpatti being attained in such a place, the attainers of it would emigrate or die rather than kill fish.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2022 2:50 PM
Title: Re: If you become a Sotapanna will you know that?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2022 10:09 AM
Title: Re: Nibbana under the effect of ayahuasca
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2022 7:28 AM
Title: Re: If you become a Sotapanna will you know that?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2022 9:30 PM
Title: Re: Do negative thinkers go to hell?
Content:
Thoughts of burning would be an instance of vihimsā (the mode of dosa that aims at the affliction of its ārammana). Thoughts of killing would be an instance of vyāpāda (the mode of dosa that aims at the non-existence of its ārammana).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2022 9:23 PM
Title: Re: Do negative thinkers go to hell?
Content:
I think there are two questions here. 

Firstly, what does it take to create one of the three kinds of mental akusala kammapatha (covetousness, malice, wrong view)?

Secondly, having created such a kamma, how likely is it that it will be this kamma, not one of the millions of others, that gets to be the one that determines our next birth?

The traditional answer to the first question is that it takes very little at all. For example, in the case of wrong view the commentary to the Sāmaññaphalasutta states that the kammapatha is created merely by ahetukavāda, natthikavāda or akiriyavāda persisting in the mental continuum for the duration of seven javana cittas.

See pages 77-81 in Bhikkhu Bodhi's translation.

https://archive.org/details/PaliCommentariesCollection/01%20DN%2002%20The%20Fruits%20of%20Recluseship%2C%20The%20Samannaphala%20Sutta%20and%20its%20Commentaries%20-%20The%20Fruits%20of%20Recluseship%20-%20Bhikkhu%20Bodhi%2C%20BPS-Kandy%2C2008%281989%29%20%28197p%29/page/77/mode/2up

The second question seems to take us into acinteyya territory, for there are just so many variables. The relevant teaching is that of the fourfold order of ripening in chapter 5 of the Abhidhammatthasangaha and chapter 19 of the Visuddhimagga.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2022 3:59 PM
Title: Re: Do negative thinkers go to hell?
Content:
Yes, if the thoughts consist in any of the three mind-door unwholesome kammas, i.e., covetousness, malice or wrong view. (The third is traditionally taken as referring to the extremer forms of wrong view that deny ownership of kamma: fatalism, haphazardism, moral nihilism, etc.).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2022 12:27 PM
Title: Re: VLOG#29: The Ultimate Comeback Kid
Content:
I recall when Ven. Samahita first began posting to various online forums he would often use out-of-date translations like Kindred Sayings for the SN and Gradual Sayings for the AN. But as I never followed him closely I don't know if he continued to do so.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2022 12:31 PM
Title: Re: VLOG#29: The Ultimate Comeback Kid
Content:
I haven't watched the video, but if he's referring to kāyapassaddhi and cittapassaddhi then one source would be the Kāyasutta, SN 46:2.

https://suttacentral.net/sn46.2/en/bodhi


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jan 1, 2022 1:49 PM
Title: Re: Jesus the Messiah and Buddha
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Dec 16, 2021 2:00 AM
Title: Re: Snp 5.17 missing 'birth'?
Content:
No doubt that happens, but the burden of proof here lies with the one proposing that the original reading was something other than what it is now. For example, K.R. Norman's translation of the Suttanipāta contains many revised readings, but he doesn't just pull these out of thin air. Most of his proposals are advanced on the grounds that they would better fit the particular metre in which the verse is written. But no such case can be made for jāte originally reading jāti, for here the metre requires that the second vowel be a long one.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Dec 15, 2021 8:00 PM
Title: Re: Snp 5.17 missing 'birth'?
Content:
Guesswork translations like this may or may not be "in line with Dhamma", but they will very seldom convey the Pali meaning accurately.

Firstly, santāpa is a noun, not a past participle: "torment". The past participle of the verb santappati is either santatta or santāpita.

Secondly, jāte isn't jāti.

The latter means "birth". The former is the past participle jāta ("born", "arisen") in the accusative case, as it is qualifying manuje ("humans") which is the object of the sentence.

But even if the word was jāti, to translate it as "tormented by birth" the word jāti would need to be the first item in the compound and the participle second. It's just like in English compound-formation, where we say "ill-gotten" and "grass-covered", not "gotten-ill" and "covered-grass".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Dec 13, 2021 12:09 PM
Title: Re: Budddhist cosmology and heirarchical structures
Content:
It seems to me that the Suddhāvāsas are part of samsāra. For example, the fifth type of anāgāmin, the uddhamsota-akanitthagāmī, starts off being born in the lowest of the Pure Abodes and then is born four more times, each time ascending to a higher Abode until he attains arahatta in the Akanittha realm. But even if this type didn't exist and all anāgāmins were to attain arahatta in whichever Abode they first arose, the Abodes would still count as samsāric, inasmuch as they are places within which one arises and from which one passes away.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Dec 9, 2021 10:58 AM
Title: Re: Budddhist cosmology and heirarchical structures
Content:
I think my signature hints at the answer: it's a hierarchy of peacefulness, rarifiedness, ethereality.

Cappuccino's proposal of a hierarchy of purity is tempting, but doesn't seem to quite cut it. It breaks down when we get up to the higher echelons of the Brahmā world, for the five Pure Abodes, inhabited solely by anāgāmins and arahants, are ranked lower than the four formless realms, in which many of the beings are worldlings and therefore less pure than the inhabitants of the world beneath them.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Dec 9, 2021 10:42 AM
Title: Re: Best first world country to live as buddhist?
Content:
Though not all are First World countries, these would be my own preferences...

Western Europe
Iceland, Switzerland, Andorra or Liechtenstein

Eastern Europe
Poland or Hungary

Middle East
Israel

Northern Africa
Morocco

West Africa
São Tomé and Príncipe

East Africa
The Seychelles

Central Africa
Nowhere

Southern Africa
Botswana

North America
One of the Southern states of the USA, probably Georgia.

Central America
Belize or Costa Rica

South America
Argentina

Central Asia
Nowhere

Southern Asia
The Maldives

Eastern Asia
Macau or Taiwan

Southeast Asia
Singapore or East Timor

Oceania
Fiji, the Solomon Islands, the Pitcairns, or pretty well anywhere except those two hotbeds of woke dreariness called Australia and New Zealand.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2021 5:34 PM
Title: Re: Maria Heim on love and compassion in the Visuddhimagga
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2021 4:28 PM
Title: Re: Present or Past
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Nov 6, 2021 9:46 PM
Title: Re: what does ariya savaka and sekha actually mean?
Content:
No.

Inferential knowledge (anvaye ñāṇa) is indicated in the suttas by a number of stock phrases, but the phrase "having pierced it through with wisdom, he sees" (paññāya ativijjha passati) is certainly not one of them.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Nov 6, 2021 7:11 PM
Title: Re: what does ariya savaka and sekha actually mean?
Content:
That their seeing of it isn't the same as an asekha's possession of it can be seen from any of the suttas that describe sekhas as disciples who still have more work to do.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Nov 6, 2021 2:22 PM
Title: Re: what does ariya savaka and sekha actually mean?
Content:
And my answer to that is that what the sekha pierces through wisdom is Nibbāna as glimpsed at the time of the sekha path and fruition attainments.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Nov 5, 2021 11:45 PM
Title: Re: what does ariya savaka and sekha actually mean?
Content:
Once the sangha has declared a family to be sekha-sammata then it comes under the protection of the rule quoted. That is, bhikkhus can no longer just show up uninvited in the expectation of being given alms.

I'll address the other questions tomorrow.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Nov 5, 2021 9:35 PM
Title: Re: what does ariya savaka and sekha actually mean?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Nov 4, 2021 7:13 AM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma Resources
Content:
It didn't work for me. This link is for the pdf

http://abhidhamma.com/Patthana_light_Nanavamsa.pdf

And this one for the epub

http://abhidhamma.com/Patthana_light_Nanavamsa.epub


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Nov 2, 2021 5:01 PM
Title: Re: whose Buddhism is truest?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Oct 30, 2021 8:00 PM
Title: Re: Paṭṭhāna Pāḷi Chanting
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Oct 30, 2021 7:12 PM
Title: Re: Paṭṭhāna Pāḷi Chanting
Content:
A common Burmese rationale (much encouraged by the late Patthana Sayadaw, U Narada) is similar to that which leads some Chinese Mahayanists to devote themselves to the memorisation and recitation of the Shurangama Sutra. They do so believing that this sutra will be the first one to be lost to the world when the sāsanā is declining. Therefore as long as there are some people who devote themselves to preserving this sutra, the longevity of the sāsanā is assured. And because those who do this are ensuring the sāsanā's survival, they accumulate a vast amount of merit. The Burmese reasoning is much the same except that it's the Patthana that's believed to be the first text that will disappear.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Oct 30, 2021 6:18 PM
Title: Re: 'The Four Sublime States' by Nyanaponika Thera
Content:
Yes


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Oct 29, 2021 10:48 PM
Title: Re: Why does Bodhisatva look for a mother?
Content:
But no such inference is possible.

The sutta merely affirms that the Bodhisatta was mindful and aware during the rebirth process. But you made this point earlier and I didn't dispute it. What I disputed is whether the fact of his being mindful at this time allows the inference that the Bodhisatta chose where he would be reborn. To me that doesn't seem to follow at all. A person can be mindful and aware both when deliberately performing an action and when passively undergoing some experience. As such, your sutta quote is neutral on the question of whether the Bodhisatta selected the circumstances of his birth.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Oct 29, 2021 10:33 PM
Title: Re: 'The Four Sublime States' by Nyanaponika Thera
Content:
Can you be more expansive? It's not clear to me what you're asking.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Oct 28, 2021 6:07 PM
Title: Re: Significance of spheres in Thai iconography
Content:
As for the crystal balls, these weren't very much in evidence when I first came to Thailand in the early 1980's and at that time were uniquely associated with the meditation practice taught at Wat Paknam and Wat Dhammakaya and their respective satellites. That one nowadays sees them all over the place is probably a consequence of Wat Dhammakaya's expansionism


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Oct 28, 2021 2:52 PM
Title: Re: 'The Four Sublime States' by Nyanaponika Thera
Content:
I agree. And as such it neither supports nor contradicts Nyanaponika's claim.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Oct 28, 2021 12:48 PM
Title: Re: 'The Four Sublime States' by Nyanaponika Thera
Content:
I hadn't yet read your post at the time I was replying. 

However, your sutta quote seems to me to be quite neutral on the question raised in the OP. That is, the proposition, "Whatever they do, for good or for evil, to that will they fall heir," is logically compatible with both Nyanaponika's claim that everything which befalls us is vipāka and also with the contrary view that only part of what befalls us is so. The quote doesn't say that we are the heirs of our kamma and nothing else, but nor does it rule out such a possibility.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Oct 28, 2021 9:09 AM
Title: Re: 'The Four Sublime States' by Nyanaponika Thera
Content:
Some would argue that Nyanaponika's statement is contradicted in the Buddha's discourse to Moliyasīvaka.

https://suttacentral.net/sn36.21/en/bodhi

On the other hand, it's not contradicted if the said discourse is read according to the commentarial understanding.

To summarize the two readings of the sutta:

Sutta-onlyist Theravadins

Wrong view: all painful feelings arise from the ripening of past kamma.

Right view: some painful feelings arise from the ripening of past kamma. Others arise from other causes and have nothing to do with past kamma.

Classical Theravadins

Wrong view: all painful feelings arise solely from the ripening of past kamma.

Right view: some painful feelings arise solely from the ripening of past kamma. Others arise from past kamma operating in conjunction with other causes (i.e., bile disorders, phlegm disorders, etc.).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Oct 28, 2021 7:24 AM
Title: Re: Why does Bodhisatva look for a mother?
Content:
This doesn't answer my question regarding a source where such a thing is reported. Are you talking about accounts that a Theravada Buddhist would want to take seriously or about Chinese or Tibetan folk myths and suchlike?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Oct 22, 2021 7:37 PM
Title: Re: Why does Bodhisatva look for a mother?
Content:
Choosing death wilfully is of course an easy enough thing to do.

But where are these supposed cases of practitioners choosing the circumstances of their next birth? Are you referring to Pali texts or to Tibetan hagiographies and suchlike? If it's the former, then the closest we get to this is that a person might wish for such and such type of birth (e.g., in a Brahmā heaven, or in a place where he can be reunited with his spouse, or as a human in the time of some future Buddha), make an effort to cultivate the appropriate sort of merit and then keep his fingers crossed that things will eventuate according to his wishes. It would be rather a stretch to call this "choosing" one's next birth


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Oct 21, 2021 5:40 PM
Title: Re: Why does Bodhisatva look for a mother?
Content:
To clearly discern what's happening is not the same as choosing it to happen.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Oct 21, 2021 5:29 PM
Title: Re: English Poems To Translate to Pali for Intermediate Learners ?
Content:
I agree with Coëmgenu, it's best to start with something a little less ambitious than Robert Frost. 

HUMPTY DUMPTY

Humpati Dumpati kuḍḍe nisīdati,
Humpati Dumpati kuḍḍā opatati

Sabbe rañño assā sabbe rañño mantī,
Humpatim paṭisaṅkharituṃ na sakkonti.

But if you really must start with Frost, I'd suggest Fire and Ice as a relatively easier one to start with...

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Oct 21, 2021 4:50 PM
Title: Re: Why does Bodhisatva look for a mother?
Content:
In the commentarial texts the Bodhisatta surveys the world and foresees the circumstances of his final birth, e.g., whether his family will be khattiyas or brahmanas.

The change of this act of foreseeing into an act of choosing is a folk Theravada misunderstanding of what the texts say. A Bodhisatta's birth, like anyone else's birth, is determined by his kamma. For example, the fact that he will always be either a khattiya or a brahmana is not because he has any choice in the matter, but because by the time of his final life his accumulated merit will always guarantee birth in whatever happens to be the highest varna.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Oct 19, 2021 11:24 AM
Title: Re: diṭṭhamattaṁ, etc.
Content:
The second item in the compound is matta, not atta.

https://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/pali_query.py?qs=matta&searchhws=yes


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jul 24, 2021 5:37 PM
Title: Re: Ceto-Vimutti
Content:
It's an adaptation of the rendering "thinking process" used in volume II of Margaret Cone's dictionary.

I came across it when the volume was first published and initially didn't much take to it. In fact I thought it nearly as dodgy as Thanissaro's ridiculous rendering. However, having learned to hold Cone's scholarly judgment in high regard I decided to look into the matter. I went through the Tipiṭaka checking every occurrence of ceta and its compounds, along with the commentarial glosses to the same. I found there was no place where "thinking process" didn't fit, many places where it seemed the best fit, and even a couple where it seemed the only reasonable fit. And so I was converted, began using it in my own dhammacintā and bhāvanā, and was pleased with the changes this wrought.

In my post, however, I shortened "thinking" to "thought" just to make it one syllable less of a mouthful.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 23, 2021 2:41 PM
Title: Re: Astro(nomy/logy)
Content:
The above seems to mostly fall under astronomy up to the words "such will be the result...", but after that it's all astrology.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 23, 2021 11:45 AM
Title: Re: Sex is always unwholesome
Content:
Clearly this sutta is a neyyāttha teaching, for the form of a woman doesn't obsess the mind of a male homosexual, nor the form of a man the mind of a lesbian, nor the form of either sex the mind of an asexual.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jul 22, 2021 2:54 PM
Title: Re: Ceto-Vimutti
Content:
It's a noun and the compound is traditionally treated as either an instrumental or a genitive tappurisa.

Instrumental

"Deliverance [from defilements] by [the training of] the thought-process."

Genitive

"Deliverance of the thought-process [from defilements]."


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jul 22, 2021 12:48 PM
Title: Re: Infected by virus due to kamma ?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2021 7:40 PM
Title: Re: Poetry
Content:
Four come to mind...

Yann Lovelock, a veteran supporter of the Burmese vihara in Birmingham.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yann_Lovelock

Grevel Lindop, a longstanding member of the Samatha Trust.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grevel_Lindop

https://grevel.co.uk/about/

Paul Merchant, Oregon-based British poet. I don't know if he identifies as a Theravada Buddhist, but back in the 80s he was one of the regulars at Ajahn Khemadhammo's former monastery in Kenilworth.
http://oregonpoeticvoices.org/poet/77/

James Robert Matthew Murphy
An occasional Chithurst visitor and fine poet, but his work is only visible to his Facebook friends, so you'll need to look him up and add him.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2021 4:59 PM
Title: Re: Infected by virus due to kamma ?
Content:
I don't think I can make it much clearer, but I'll have a try...

MN 135: Some thuggish people are reborn in the lower realms. Others are reborn as sickly humans.

Proposed inference from MN 135: All the doctors and nurses who fell sick and succumbed to the virus did so because of past-life thuggishness.

Thls inference is a non sequitur. It depends on the unstated assumption that there can be no instance of fatal sickness that is not caused (at least in part) by past-life thuggishness. But neither MN 135 nor any other sutta supports this assumption.

Also, though I didn't mention it earlier, it depends on the unstated assumption that the vipāka of thuggishness can not only cause one to be reborn as a sickly human but can also cause a healthily born human to later become sick. While the latter may be true, it's not inferrable from what MN 135 actually says.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2021 4:39 PM
Title: Re: Beings with little dust in their eyes
Content:
The Buddha eye by which this could be accomplished is a faculty unique to Buddhas. It's not shared even by very psychically accomplished disciples like Anuruddha and Moggallāna.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2021 2:37 PM
Title: Re: Pāpimā Devaputta Pajāpati Māra Namuci
Content:
Māra devaputta is used to specify that you're talking about the deva called Māra, as opposed to the figurative senses of the word: māra as the aggregates, māra as death, māra as the defilements, etc.

The others are epithets.

Māra: Killer

Māroti sattānaṃ kusalaṃ māretīti māro, kāmadevo.

"Māra: a desire-world deity; he kills what is wholesome in living beings, thus he is called "Māra".

Papimā: Evil One.
Pajāpati: Lord of this Generation.
Adhipati: Overlord.
Namuci: Grasper or Captor.
Pamattabandhū: Kinsman of the Heedless.
Antaka: End-maker.
Kaṇha: Dark One.
Maddana: Intoxicator.
Dabbaka: Obdurate / Persistent One.
Kandapa: Drinker of Tears.
Ratipati: Lord of Delight.
Pingalacakkhu: Red-eyed One.
Kāma: Desire
Kusumāyudha: Wielder of Flower Weapons.

Etc., etc.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2021 12:50 PM
Title: Re: Infected by virus due to kamma ?
Content:
Your conclusion would necessitate a sutta that declares former-life thuggishness to be either the sole possible cause, or at least one of the necessary conditions, for all human sickness. But there isn't one.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2021 6:56 AM
Title: Re: Beings with little dust in their eyes
Content:
In canonical texts the term is usually (perhaps always) found in contexts where the central focus is on the Buddha and his "Buddha eye" (or his Tathāgata power of discerning the faculties of beings - in the commentaries the two things are treated as synonymous) not the beings with little dust in their eyes, and so naturally not much is said about the latter. The passage I posted earlier is about as expansive as the canon gets on the subject and the commentaries don't add much more.

In the commentaries it's a recurring theme that EVERY Buddha puts on a show of not wanting to teach the Dhamma, precisely in order to induce Brahmā Sahampati to make an appearance. Then when word gets around that Sahampati himself has requested the Buddha to teach, it will give the teaching more credibility. The Buddhavamsa commentary goes as far as making this one of the thirty regularities (dhammatā) in the final life of every Buddha. And yes, after being requested, each Buddha will then survey the world with his Buddha eye.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jul 20, 2021 5:49 PM
Title: Re: Beings with little dust in their eyes
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jul 20, 2021 2:26 PM
Title: Re: The Mind of Māra and Is Samsara / Māra in itself impermanent?
Content:
Yes, both the office of Māra and the current office-holder are impermanent.

The office-holder is impermanent, for he's a mortal deva. The office itself outlasts the office-holder, but is impermanent nonetheless. It can only last as long as the Paranimittavasavatti heaven lasts and the said heaven gets periodically destroyed.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jul 20, 2021 6:47 AM
Title: Re: Sex is always unwholesome
Content:
Please give a source when claiming to quote the Buddha.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jul 20, 2021 6:44 AM
Title: Re: Sex is always unwholesome
Content:
Funnily enough, when I first arrived at Wat Pa Ban Tard in 1985 I learned that there had been another English monk, also called Dhammanando, who had lived at the wat a few years before me. I was told that he was gay but luckily had a very low sex drive and so living in an all-male community was no problem for him. Nevertheless, in the end he disrobed. Apparently he had been a classical musician before he ordained and after a decade as a monk he finally decided (pace Ñāṇavīra) that he really couldn't live without Beethoven.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jul 20, 2021 5:43 AM
Title: Re: Infected by virus due to kamma ?
Content:
No, that doesn't follow.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jul 19, 2021 6:53 PM
Title: Re: Can a monk refuse to teach dhamma ?
Content:
See the Velāmasutta.

https://suttacentral.net/an9.20/en/sujato


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jul 19, 2021 4:06 PM
Title: Re: Can a monk refuse to teach dhamma ?
Content:
Is this the fellow with the "secret teaching"? If so, why are Theravada Buddhists even giving him the time of day? It should be an absolute red flag for them.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jul 19, 2021 3:31 PM
Title: Re: Can a monk refuse to teach dhamma ?
Content:
No doubt it would "make sense" in the sense that the monk would have some motive for declining to answer. Whether the motive was good or bad I couldn't say. 

There can be good motives for such behaviour, as in the Buddha's silence in response to Vacchagotta's questions. And then there can be bad ones, as with the evasions of the endless equivocators of the Brahmajālasutta.

https://legacy.suttacentral.net/en/sn44.10

https://legacy.suttacentral.net/en/dn1


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jul 19, 2021 2:42 PM
Title: Re: Termination of volitional kamma
Content:
Moggallāna and Angulimāla represent two contrasting cases.

Past-life kamma is only applicable in the case of Moggallāna, whose untimely death is said (in the commentaries) to have been the vipāka of murdering his parents in a past life. In the case of Angulimāla, his post-arahatta tribulations are stated to be the vipāka of the murders committed by him in the present life.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jul 19, 2021 10:33 AM
Title: Re: Can a monk refuse to teach dhamma ?
Content:
But this is plainly not the case. The great majority of Theravada monks are Asian village monks, most of whom will at the very least give a dhammadesanā to the laity on every Uposatha day, as well as funeral sermons and weekly talks to school pupils. The next largest group are city monks; of those with more than about ten rains, the majority will be full-time teachers.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jul 19, 2021 10:12 AM
Title: Re: Can a monk refuse to teach dhamma ?
Content:
But a mahāthera who claims to have a "secret teaching" would be a highly untypical and unrepresentative Theravādin.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jul 19, 2021 1:49 AM
Title: Re: What is wisdom n compassion according to Buddha's teachings ?
Content:
The evidence would be people following the teaching and being successful in attaining the ariyan paths and fruits. The commentaries and chronicles have plenty of accounts of such successes during the period in question.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jul 19, 2021 1:31 AM
Title: Re: What is wisdom n compassion according to Buddha's teachings ?
Content:
What would count as evidence? And what do these questions have to do with the topic?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jul 19, 2021 1:09 AM
Title: Re: The Bodhisattva Ideal in Mahayana Buddhism
Content:
It's non-standard but macrons are to be found in romanised editions of Moggallāna's grammar, for Moggallāna (in contrast with Kaccāyana) held that e and o could be either long or short, depending on how many consonants followed. They're also found in some treatises on Pali prosody.

ettha, ēsa
oṭṭha, gōṇa


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jul 19, 2021 12:49 AM
Title: Re: Termination of volitional kamma
Content:
As I already said, nobody is claiming that an arahant's unripened kammas might be unlimited in number. But there's no logical necessity why their finite number should require all of them to have been performed in recent lives only.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jul 18, 2021 12:20 PM
Title: Re: Termination of volitional kamma
Content:
This seems like a straw man to me. To say that there are some kammas which may not ripen until the distant future is not to deny that there are other kammas which will ripen in this life or the next life. And to say that some presently experienced vipākas may be from kammas performed in the distant past is not to deny that other vipākas may be from kammas more recently performed.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jul 18, 2021 11:16 AM
Title: Re: Yama devas
Content:
Though some modern scholars have speculated that there may once have been a connection between the Yāmas (i.e., the inhabitants of the Yāma heaven) and the Yamas (i.e., Yama, the lord of the underworld, and his retinue), in Pali sources the Yāmas and the Yamas have nothing to do with each other. The former are devas, the latter are vemānikapetas, i.e., beings whose mixed kamma causes them to spend half their time living like devas and the other half living like ghosts.

See their respective entries in the Dictionary of Pali Proper Names.

http://aimwell.org/DPPN/yama.html

http://aimwell.org/DPPN/yaamaa.html

For mnemonic purposes:

A long A Yāma is a celestial faery,
A short A Yama is downright scary.
But I'm willing to bet a silk pyjama
No one's ever met a double M Yamma.

(with apologies to Ogden Nash)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jul 17, 2021 8:13 PM
Title: Re: What is wisdom n compassion according to Buddha's teachings ?
Content:
In the case of the garudhammas, I think that those of us who accept them as buddhavacana and believe that they should be upheld should not seek reconciliation with those who either deny that they are buddhavacana or who accept them as buddhavacana but believe that nowadays they should be discarded. 

I mean it's not as if there's anything intrinsically good about "reconciliation". Sometimes you have to be against something, and especially in cases where a "reconciliation" would likely amount to no more than a fudge.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jul 17, 2021 5:23 PM
Title: Re: Tipitaka protection act Sri Lanka
Content:
https://www.ft.lk/opinion/Catch-22-of-the-Tripitaka-Conservation-Act/14-719566


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jul 17, 2021 5:12 PM
Title: Re: Tipitaka protection act Sri Lanka
Content:
I can't immediately think of any statement in the suttas to that effect. In the commentaries, on the other hand, it's the kind of thing that gets said about the Abhidhamma Piṭaka, and especially about its seventh book, the Patthāna.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jul 17, 2021 9:33 AM
Title: Re: Tipitaka protection act Sri Lanka
Content:
https://ceylontoday.lk/news/proposed-tripitaka-conservation-bill-a-challenge-within


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jul 17, 2021 2:00 AM
Title: Re: What is wisdom n compassion according to Buddha's teachings ?
Content:
That's all. There's nothing said here about whether women are equally capable of attainment, or less capable or more capable than men. They are merely said to be capable, with no comparison made to men's capability at all.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 16, 2021 5:56 PM
Title: Re: Monastics accepting medicine
Content:
No, it's not a defeating offence.

If a bhikkhu temporarily dresses in householders' clothes because his robes were stolen (e.g. while bathing) it's no offence.

If he does so for any other reason it's a misdemeanor.

If he continually dresses like a householder then he can be banished by the sangha for persistent bad conduct. He will then remain banished until he abandons the prohibited practice and applies for the banishment to be lifted.

At least this is what the Vinaya prescribes. But in modern Thailand and Myanmar the state would take the matter out of the hands of the sangha by arresting the improperly dressed monk and forcibly disrobing him.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 16, 2021 4:59 PM
Title: Re: Did Ven buddhaghosa really say in his visuddhimagga that in the end one should merge with the nimitta ?
Content:
Yes, thanks for the clarification.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 16, 2021 3:58 PM
Title: Re: Monastics accepting medicine
Content:
As BKh mentioned, there is a Vinaya rule that bhikkhus should conform to the wishes of kings, i.e., obey secular laws.

There is also an exception to the rule in cases where the king's wishes are contrary to Dhamma.

So what if bhikkhus are living in a country whose government decrees that everyone must be vaccinated?

Since the average bhikkhu is in no better position than anyone else to judge whether getting vaccinated is a good or a bad thing, we can reasonably anticipate that there'll be much the same diversity of opinion among bhikkhus as there is among the general populace. And so those bhikkhus who think that it's a good thing will "conform to the wishes of kings" by getting vaccinated. Those who think it's a bad thing will regard the king's wishes as contrary to Dhamma and so won't view the mandatory vaccination law as one that they're obliged to obey.

For the time being, however, the question seems academic, for no country has yet made vaccination mandatory.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jul 15, 2021 10:44 AM
Title: Re: Did Ven buddhaghosa really say in his visuddhimagga that in the end one should merge with the nimitta ?
Content:
And so as with most modern Burmese meditation systems, there may be room for debate on the question of whether the Visuddhimagga is being correctly read and applied by the sayadaw, but there isn't any dispute that he intends this to be the foundational text of his system.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jul 15, 2021 3:36 AM
Title: Re: Paranimmitavasavatti Realms and Devas
Content:
They're actually a bit of both. The heavenly side of the Māras is that they sincerely wish for beings to perform deeds of merit of the kind whose vipāka will manifest in the sense-sphere. Dāna and sīla, for example. So long as you're doing just this and nothing more, Māra won't mess with you. Indeed there are even accounts of Māra positively encouraging such activities.

What vexes Māra and triggers him to act demonically is when someone sees the danger and drawback in sense-pleasures and starts taking steps that will lead him out of the Kāmaloka. In other words, Māra doesn't like people undertaking samatha-bhāvanā, for if they're successful in attaining rūpa and arūpa states, then they'll come to view sense-pleasures as coarse. And he certainly doesn't like people undertaking vipassanā-bhāvanā, for if they're successful in attaining supramundane states, then even rūpa and arūpa states will be viewed by them as coarse, which will place them completely outside of Māra's range. And so it's in order to proactively obstruct any such success that Māra and his host may start to play rough with people.

To give another political simile, Māra might be compared to a well-intentioned but misguided communist dictator who is reluctant to allow his citizens to travel abroad. His reluctance stems from the knowledge that once citizens see how much more pleasant life is in capitalist countries, they're sure to become disillusioned with the communist project.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jul 14, 2021 11:21 PM
Title: Re: Population reduction
Content:
No. With the lone exception of the prediction made at the time of the founding of the bhikkhuni-sangha, the prophetic material in the canon never stipulates any time period for when something will come to pass. Instead it merely describes tendencies (especially among bhikkhus), events and patterns of events.

See, for example, the four Anāgatabhayāni Suttas ("Discourses on Future Dangers") in the Anguttarā Nikāya and the Great Dreams Birth Story in the Jātakas.

https://legacy.suttacentral.net/en/an5.77
https://legacy.suttacentral.net/en/an5.78
https://legacy.suttacentral.net/en/an5.79
https://legacy.suttacentral.net/en/an5.80

https://legacy.suttacentral.net/en/ja77


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jul 14, 2021 10:28 PM
Title: Re: The Mathematics of Buddhaghosa
Content:
Probably because he was a brahmin before he was a Buddhist and the apprenticeship of his youth almost certainly included a thorough grounding in Brahminical rhetoric (alaṅkāraśāstra). And so as an expository writer we find him constantly enlivening his prose by means of all kinds of alaṅkāric devices: upamās, atiśayoktis, rūpakas, ādidīpakas, kāvyaliṅgas, aprastutapraśaṃsās, etc., etc.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jul 14, 2021 9:58 PM
Title: Re: The Mathematics of Buddhaghosa
Content:
As I already pointed out, this is a mistranslation. The figure is actually "one out of hundreds or one out of thousands."

Going with your literalistic take ... "out of hundreds" would mean any number between 200 and 999; "out of thousands would mean any number between 2,000 and 999,999.

That's some ball park!


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jul 14, 2021 3:08 PM
Title: Re: Akkosa Sutta and kamma
Content:
In the case of intentional killing, for the kamma to come to completion depends on something external to the killer, namely, the termination of the life faculty in his victim. 

But the four kinds of unskilful verbal kamma differ from killing in that nothing external is required for their completion. If I tell you a deliberate lie, for example, then I commit the akusala kamma of false speech merely by speaking the falsehood to you. The completion of the kamma does not depend on your believing my lie. Even if you disbelieve me, even if you don't understand what I'm saying, or even if you don't hear me, will make no difference at all to the fact of transgression. Nor will these variables affect the weightiness of the transgression.

The above applies also to divisive speech, harsh speech and frivolous speech. And it applies both to kammic weightiness and to legal weightiness in the context of Vinaya offences.

For example, in the case of false speech, the Vinaya offence is equally weighty whether or not anyone believes the bhikkhu's lies. In the case of divisive speech, the offence is the same whether or not the bhikkhu succeeds in sowing division. In the case of insulting speech, it's the same whether or not the victim feels upset. And in the case of frivolous speech, it's the same offence whether or not anyone laughs when a bhikkhu tells one of the prohibited kinds of jokes (i.e., jesting about the Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha or training).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jul 13, 2021 12:55 PM
Title: Re: Did Ven buddhaghosa really say in his visuddhimagga that in the end one should merge with the nimitta ?
Content:
Thanks for the clarification.

Since the sayadaw doesn't speak of the delimiting or extending of the sign, I would suppose that his account is intended as a description of the earlier "method for guarding of the sign" (rakkhaṇavidhi).

For the Visuddhimagga's account of the same, the OP might like to look at Path of Purification IV 34ff.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jul 13, 2021 10:47 AM
Title: Re: Did Ven buddhaghosa really say in his visuddhimagga that in the end one should merge with the nimitta ?
Content:
Could you quote the sayadaw's own words? The meaning of your paraphrase isn't very clear. For example, which nimitta are you talking about? Parikamma, uggaha or paṭibhāga?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jul 12, 2021 9:01 PM
Title: Re: Phra Khantipalo
Content:
Thank you.

By the way, the Khantipālo book that Ajahn Nissarano praises in his talk, Buddha, My Refuge, is available from the Buddhist Publication Society as a pdf file.

https://www.bps.lk/library-search-select.php?id=bp409s


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jul 12, 2021 8:17 PM
Title: Re: The Mathematics of Buddhaghosa
Content:
Comparing Nyanatiloka's rendering with Nyanamoli's I note two important differences. The first is the one you brought up in your post:

Nyanamoli:
"previously completed his development"

Nyanatiloka: 
"in früherem Leben noch keine geistige Entfaltung geübt hat"
("exercised any spiritual development in previous lives")

The Pali is pubbe abhāvitabhāvano, which would literally mean "[one] undeveloped in development in the past." Though there are many places where contextually we need to take pubbe as referring to a person's samsāric past (i.e., not just the past of his present life), it doesn't seem at all evident that the context here requires us to do so. On the other hand, since Nyanatiloka wasn't the sort of man to go pulling things out of thin air, I would guess that his more expansive translation may reflect a gloss from one or another of the commentaries to the Visuddhimagga.

The second important difference concerns the two numbers:

Nyanamoli:
"only one in a hundred or a thousand can do it."

Nyanatiloka:
"nur einer unter Hunderten oder Tausenden ist dazu imstande"
("only one out of hundreds or thousands can do it").

In the Pali the numbers are indeed given in the plural: satesu sahassesu vā. So here I think Nyanatiloka's translation is to be preferred. 

Note that the fact that the numbers are in the plural makes the figure even vaguer than it is in the English translation. This in turn adds weight to the figurative interpretation proposed by Coëmgenu rather than the mathematico-literalist one assumed by the OP.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jul 12, 2021 12:13 PM
Title: Re: The Mathematics of Buddhaghosa
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jul 11, 2021 5:27 PM
Title: Re: Lifespan in Buddha's time
Content:
That's an obvious non sequitur. The fact that animals coexist with humans in every era doesn't mean that humans will always kill them in every era. Nor does it mean that in those eras when they do kill them they will always do it with the same frequency.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jul 11, 2021 4:21 PM
Title: Re: International Institute of Theravada
Content:
The stubble on Ven. Maggavihārī's chin is merely a sign that he shaves his beard only when he shaves his head - a common practice among Sri Lankan forest monks.

The Vinaya prohibits the growth of a long beard but doesn't require a bhikkhu to be always clean-shaven.

https://www.dhammatalks.org/vinaya/bmc/Section0040.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jul 11, 2021 3:29 PM
Title: Re: Lifespan in Buddha's time
Content:
Now you're mixing up two different things:

1. The Cūlakammavibhangasutta's teaching on individual longevity in the next life and how this is affected by a person's individual killing of living beings or his individual abstention from this.

2. The Cakkavattīsutta's teaching on the general longevity of the human populace over an extended period in particular eras and how this is affected by the general state of human virtue.

Up to now in this thread we've been discussing 2 and nothing but 2. But now you've suddenly reverted to 1 - a topic we already discussed in that earlier thread, but which is irrelevant to the present one.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jul 11, 2021 2:59 PM
Title: Re: The full moon and Buddha vs the lunatics?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jul 11, 2021 2:30 PM
Title: Re: Lifespan in Buddha's time
Content:
But the time span that the Cakkavattīsutta is referring to is one that extends far beyond recorded history. As such, the claim we're discussing is not subject to falsification by what we know (actually very little) of historical fluctuations in human longevity.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jul 11, 2021 1:52 PM
Title: Re: Mara question
Content:
In the case of human beings, even tree devas can kill us if they want to. Happily they don't usually want to. And nor does Māra. What Māra wants is that beings living in his world - the kāmaloka - stay in that world and don't move beyond it.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jul 11, 2021 12:29 AM
Title: Re: Lifespan in Buddha's time
Content:
Whether you find the sutta logical or illogical, my citing it does at least answer your question as to what the suttas teach about the increase and decrease in longevity. That is, it corrects the erroneous suggestion in the OP that these increases and decreases occur merely through the elapse of time and instead makes them dependent on the general state of human virtue.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jul 10, 2021 9:05 PM
Title: Re: Help me im confused and scared if im going to the deepest part of hell
Content:
It means "the Buddha" in Indonesian and Malayan.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jul 10, 2021 6:43 PM
Title: Re: Lifespan in Buddha's time
Content:
I think you should read the Arakasutta, AN 7.74 for what the Buddha said about lifespan in his generation, and then the Cakkavattī-sīhanādasutta, DN 26, for his account of how human lifespan increases or decreases according to whether humans in general are given to virtuous or vicious habits, and not according to the mere passing of time.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jul 10, 2021 6:28 PM
Title: Re: Why obsession ?
Content:
My impression is that he fails to realise that there are actually two Pali verbs with the form anuseti. These are homonymous cognates of two different Sanskrit verbs.

And so we have anuseti #1, corresponding to the Sanskrit anuśeti, and meaning to lie latent, to underlie, to inhere; and anuseti #2, corresponding to the Sanskrit anuseti, and meaning to cling to, to be occupied with, to have an obsession with.

The fact that in Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit the spelling of anusaya (in the context of the seven anusayas) is anuśaya, not anusaya, tells us that anuseti #1 is the relevant verb and so "underlying tendency" (or something to that effect) is the correct translation.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jul 10, 2021 4:30 PM
Title: Re: Recommendation for a Pali-English dictionary?
Content:
There is the Pali Text Society's Pali English Dictionary, which can be searched here:

https://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/pali/

There are also pdf copies of it available somewhere online.

But by far the best is Margaret Cone's dictionary. Three volumes have so far been published, which will take you up to the letter bha.

https://store.pariyatti.org/A-Dictionary-of-Pali-Dr-Margaret-Cone-3-Volume-Set_p_2114.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 9, 2021 6:05 PM
Title: Archaeology of Indian Buddhism - introductory course
Content:
A course of thirteen lectures given earlier this year by Jason D. Hawkes, Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies at Leiden University.

Lectures

https://video.leidenuniv.nl/channel/The%2BArchaeology%2Bof%2BBuddhism/201230153

Dr Hawkes' LinkedIn profile

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-hawkes-477a03145?originalSubdomain=uk


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jul 7, 2021 6:29 PM
Title: Re: Bhikkhu Bodhi’s “The Buddha's Teaching As It Is”
Content:
As antobudh66 hasn't logged in for the last four years, I'm afraid you're unlikely to get a response to your queries.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jul 6, 2021 4:28 PM
Title: Re: Phra Khantipalo
Content:
./download/file.php?id=6735&mode=view


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jul 6, 2021 10:40 AM
Title: Re: 8 precept and life span
Content:
See attached file.


 ./download/file.php?id=6734
(475.72 KiB) Downloaded 41 times


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jul 6, 2021 10:03 AM
Title: Re: 8 precept and life span
Content:
But if you're going to side with the non-Theravadin understanding of "kappa" here, then it wouldn't be "another thousand or few thousand years." It would be millions of years.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jul 5, 2021 10:40 AM
Title: Re: 8 precept and life span
Content:
In the lifespan specification, "a hundred years or a little more", the phrase "a little more" (appaṃ vā bhiyyo) is rather vague. Obviously "a hundred years more" would be far too much, but "25 years more" might well fit within the range.

My main point, however, is that if you did live to be 125, it would not mean that you had been conceived with a lifespan of, say, 100, but had managed to extend it by 25 years. Rather it would mean either that you'd been conceived with a lifespan of 125 and had lived it in full and then passed away due to exhaustion of the āyusankhāras, or, you had been conceived with a lifespan of more than 125 years but had died an untimely death, e.g., because of killing living beings in the present life or because of unhealthy habits.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jul 4, 2021 5:48 PM
Title: Re: 8 precept and life span
Content:
That would be a baseless assumption.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jul 4, 2021 5:40 AM
Title: Re: 8 precept and life span
Content:
Yes, that's another word for it.

https://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/pali_query.py?qs=%C4%81yu&searchhws=yes

https://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/pali_query.py?qs=kappa&searchhws=yes


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jul 3, 2021 11:23 PM
Title: Re: 8 precept and life span
Content:
Yes, that's the Mahāparinibbānasutta. The commentary takes the word kappa to mean his full life-span rather than aeon. In other words, by means of the iddhipādas the Buddha could have lived on to be a hundred if Ānanda had petitioned him to do so.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jul 3, 2021 11:07 PM
Title: Re: 8 precept and life span
Content:
Those activities might increase the likelihood of your being able to live out the full life-span that was handed to you at conception. They wouldn't add to your years in this life, though abstention from killing might add to them in a future human life.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jul 3, 2021 10:29 PM
Title: Re: Why Buddhism's Decline in India?
Content:
This thread is about the causes of the pre-modern near-disappearance of Buddhism from the Indian sub-continent. Its later 20th century revival is off-topic.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jul 3, 2021 4:24 AM
Title: Re: Why Buddhism's Decline in India?
Content:
The speaker doesn't make it an either/or thing in this way. On the contrary, he acknowledges (as virtually all scholars of Indian Buddhist history do) that Islam was one factor in Buddhism's decline and disappearance. He sides, however, with those historians who see Islam as playing a minor rather than a major role in the decline.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jul 3, 2021 4:08 AM
Title: Re: 8 precept and life span
Content:
The commentary to the Cūḷakammavibhaṅgasutta.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 2, 2021 5:15 PM
Title: Re: antevāsūpaddavo
Content:
Was it the Mahāsuññatasutta? If so...

Ñānamoli: "the pupil's undoing".

Thanissaro: "the student's undoing".

Sujāto: "peril for a spiritual practitioner".

I.B. Horner: "affliction for pupils".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jul 2, 2021 12:23 PM
Title: Re: Parajika - Consequences
Content:
Neither of your statements are supported in the Pali texts, but rather seem to reflect notions common in Chinese folk Buddhism, where it's typically held that a pārājika monk is either entirely beyond hope for the rest of his present life, or, that his only hope lies in submitting himself to Amitabha or Kwan Yin or some other imaginary entity from the Mahayana pantheon.

The correct position is this...

• The four pārājika offences are all instances of akusala kammapathas.

• Any of the ten akusala kammapathas may be the cause for birth in the lower realms if it happens to be the particular kamma that gets to determine your next birth.

• Since a pārājika offence is an especially weighty instance of an akusala kammapatha, there is a higher than usual chance that it will be the kamma that gets to determine your next birth.

So that's the bad news. As for the good news....

• A "higher than usual chance" doesn't mean an inevitability. If the defeated monk has done the honourable thing and disrobed, and if he repents and is earnest in his pursuit of puñña, then the likelihood of his misdeed being the determinant of his next birth can be attenuated or even voided. In other words, provided you haven't killed your parents or an arahant, a pārājika offence is not an anantariyaka kamma.

• The door to stream-entry in the present life remains open. Although the texts acknowledge obstruction by weighty akusala kamma as one of the things that can prevent attainment in the present life, none of the lists of these types of kammas mentions pārājika offences. The lists include the five anantariyakas, apostasy committed while one is still ordained as a monk, committing a sanghādisesa offence and not having yet undergone penance and rehabilitation for it, and living "in communion by theft". The last category would include pārājika bhikkhus who remain in the robes, knowingly concealing their guilt, but it doesnt include those, like your friend, who have confessed their offence and returned to lay life.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jul 1, 2021 10:38 AM
Title: Re: Paññavuddho Bhikkhu - introduction
Content:
Hi Venerable,

Welcome to Dhamma Wheel.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 30, 2021 9:35 AM
Title: Re: In Praise of Virtue
Content:
The next one in the list is also worth a listen....


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 29, 2021 9:49 PM
Title: Re: Buddhism,free speech and Right speech.
Content:
I think that could only be justly said of Milton, who basically wanted freedom of expression for dissenting Protestants who expressed the same views as he did, but not so much for anyone else. 

In any case, the whole point of my supplying the timeline was to show what an historical novelty is the liberal conception of free speech that most of us nowadays take for granted, and what a long time it took us to arrive at it.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 29, 2021 7:02 PM
Title: Re: Buddhism,free speech and Right speech.
Content:
I don't know about worldwide, but within Europe freedom of speech was unthinkable before Milton's Areopagitica and even after Milton the broadening of the scope of the conception was quite a gradual one. 

Something like this:

John Milton: freedom of the press but no tolerance of “popery, and open superstition,” nor that which is “impious or evil absolutely either against faith or manners.”

Spinoza: freedom of speech, “but not out of anger, hatred, or a desire to introduce any change in the state on one's own authority”.

Locke: freedom of speech, but only within the law and not for “opinions contrary to human society, or to those moral rules which are necessary to the preservation of civil society”.

Montesquieu: liberty, but not “unlimited,” consisting “only in the power of doing what we ought to will, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to will”.

Kant: freedom of speech, but not of action (“argue, but obey”).

Jefferson and Paine: liberty of the individual as against government, but not against “public opinion” or “society”.

Macaulay: freedom, but under conditions of “order and moderation”.

Tocqueville: liberty, but not “without morality, nor morality without faith”.

J.S. Mill: freedom of thought, speech and action absolute and inviolable except where it harms others.

(Based on historian Gertrude Himmelfarb's Looking into the Abyss).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 29, 2021 6:22 PM
Title: Re: About dana and the term sponsorship
Content:
The related verb is upaṭṭhahati and action noun upaṭṭhāna. Upaṭṭhāna is indeed classed as a form of dāna.

All three words are ambiguous, however, for a personal attendant (e.g., Ven. Ånanda) is also called an upaṭṭhāka.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 29, 2021 12:41 PM
Title: Re: Demon and Mara
Content:
Because it's a term with a wide range of applications, just like a "nāga" can be an ordinary snake, a magical snake, an elephant, an arahant or the name of a certain tribe.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 29, 2021 5:40 AM
Title: Re: Are all ariya-sacca paramattha sacca?
Content:
Kāmacchanda = lobha
Byāpāda = dosa
Thīnamiddha = thīna and middha
Uddhaccakukkucca = uddhacca and kukkucca
Vicikicchā= vicikicchā

And thus the five become seven.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 29, 2021 5:09 AM
Title: Re: Parajika - Consequences
Content:
Just to clarify, has your friend already returned to lay life or does he continue to wear the robe?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 28, 2021 8:20 PM
Title: Re: Demon and Mara
Content:
The appellation "yakkha" gets applied to quite a variety of beings, including the Buddha himself on one occasion. Best to start with the Dictionary of Pali Proper Names 

http://aimwell.org/DPPN/yakkha.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 28, 2021 1:14 PM
Title: Re: Does Pāli have a "Prātiśākhya" ?
Content:
In the ancient Pali grammars, starting with Kaccāyana, the function of a prātiśākhya is performed by the sandhikappa with which most grammars commence. Whether there are any Pali texts that are exclusively prātiśākhyas, I don't know. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were, as it's the sort of thing one could easily imagine a Sanskrit-literate mediaeval Burmese monk composing, but I don't know of any actual examples.

Aleix Ruiz Falqués has much to say on the subject in his Role of Pāli Grammar in Burmese Buddhism.

https://kabbasetu.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Ruiz-Falques-2017-Role-of-Pali-Grammar.pdf


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 28, 2021 12:42 PM
Title: Re: Bad dana
Content:
I doubt any meat that you see in the supermarket was killed for the sake of monks.

One kind of situation where there will be strong grounds for such suspicion is when there's a large gathering of monks in a remote rural location, e.g., at the funeral of a famous forest ajahn. Some monks who are strict about this rule will either eat vegetarian food for the duration of their stay or will simply avoid attending such events, knowing that it's a near-certainty that animals will be killed for the sake of the attending monks.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 28, 2021 12:22 PM
Title: Re: Pudgalavādin Abhidharma
Content:
Two highly regarded academic studies...

Bhikshu Thich Thien Chau, The Literature of the Personalists of Early Buddhism

https://archive.org/details/literatureofthepersonalistsofearlybuddhismnumbhikshuthichtheinchaumlbd_541_P/mode/2up

Leonard Priestley, Pudgalavada Buddhism - The Reality of the Indeterminate Self.
https://archive.org/details/pudgalavadabuddhismpriestleyleonard_202003_503_u


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 27, 2021 8:26 PM
Title: Re: Arahants and Lying
Content:
When observing the eight precepts on Uposatha days you aren't pretending to be like an arahant in all respects. You are imitating an arahant's conduct "in just this respect" (imināpi aṅgena).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 27, 2021 8:16 PM
Title: Re: Arahants and Lying
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 27, 2021 6:18 PM
Title: Re: Arahants and Lying
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 27, 2021 3:09 PM
Title: Re: Venerating Tara
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 27, 2021 9:29 AM
Title: Re: Why recollection of your Sila (Silanussati) and Dana (Caganussati) is better than observing Sila and Dana?
Content:
Answered by Sunnat.

If you've not already seen it, the BPS has a good collection of articles on dāna, comprising:

Introduction (Bhikkhu Bodhi)
The Practice of Giving (Susan Elbaum Jootla)
Giving in the Pali Canon (Lily de Silva)
Giving from the Heart (M. O'C. Walshe)
Generosity: The Inward Dimension (Nina van Gorkom)
The Perfection of Giving (Acariya Dhammapāla

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/various/wheel367.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 27, 2021 8:47 AM
Title: Re: Why recollection of your Sila (Silanussati) and Dana (Caganussati) is better than observing Sila and Dana?
Content:
So if you met a very hungry person, do you think that offering him a couple of peanuts would be just as meritorious as offering him a full meal (assuming you could afford both)?

I think the monk's statement is correct provided that we add the gigantic qualification: "other things being equal."


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 27, 2021 8:16 AM
Title: Re: The Buddhist Schools of the Small Vehicle - The Mahāsāṃghika
Content:
I think the text you're alluding to (whose name I can't remember) is a sort of Jain riposte to the Buddhist refutation of Jain kamma theory in the MN's Upāli Sutta. It represents a Buddhist as arguing that since kamma is cetanā, a bhikkhu who eats a breadfruit believing it to be a baby is guilty of cannibalism, while a bhikkhu who eats a baby believing it to be a breadfruit enjoys a blameless meal.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 27, 2021 7:53 AM
Title: Re: in Abhidhamma book 2 Vibhanga, what does it mean to be derived from suttas versus derived from Abhidhamma?
Content:
I understood (or perhaps misunderstood) the question in your OP to mean something like, "Is the suttabhājaniya exposition intended to be merely quotations from the suttas and exegesis of the same?" It was to this (imagined) question that I replied in the negative.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 26, 2021 10:07 PM
Title: Re: in Abhidhamma book 2 Vibhanga, what does it mean to be derived from suttas versus derived from Abhidhamma?
Content:
The subject of the debate seems easy enough to understand: the Andhakas hold that the dhammas that are the objects of mindfulness are themselves mindfulness. The Theravādins disagree 

What's puzzling, at least to me, is how on earth anyone could come to hold such an absurd view. With most of the Kathāvatthu debates one can easily empathise with how the paravādins came to arrive at the views they did, but in this case it seems quite a mystery. Then the other difficulty is following the reasoning in Moggalliputtatissa's refutation, which to me is clear enough in a few places but mostly rather opaque.

Sorry I can't be of much help here. If you haven't already seen it, here's the commentary:


./download/file.php?id=6721&mode=view




./download/file.php?id=6722&mode=view


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 26, 2021 4:13 PM
Title: Re: 10th Century Theravada
Content:
Robert Buswell doesn't actually state any of the things that your Wikipedia entry attributes to him. He was merely the editor of the Encyclopedia of Buddhism but the relevant entry was composed by Patrick Pranke, a former bhikkhu and now a buddhologist and Burma specialist at Louisville. If nobody here can answer your queries satisfactorily you might try contacting Dr. Pranke himself. He's a very friendly and approachable prof. He and I go back a long way, so feel free to mention my name.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-pranke-6598bb38


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 26, 2021 3:14 PM
Title: Re: in Abhidhamma book 2 Vibhanga, what does it mean to be derived from suttas versus derived from Abhidhamma?
Content:
No.

To understand the arrangement in the Vibhanga and the distinction between suttabhājaniya and abhidhammabhājaniya I recommend you download U Thittila's translation and read R.E. Iggledon's lengthy introduction, esp. pages xxix onwards.

https://archive.org/details/vibhanga_202009


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 26, 2021 2:12 PM
Title: Re: What remains when the nidanas cease?
Content:
No, they are the twelve items that make up the commonest way of describing dependent arising: ignorance, formations, consciousness ... birth, aging and death. The six sense bases are just one nidāna.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 26, 2021 2:06 PM
Title: Re: Suttas which say we should oppose people who say bad things or distort dhamma?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 26, 2021 1:18 PM
Title: Re: Usefulness of Learning Prosody
Content:
I think it's rare nowadays for monks to compose an entire work in Pali verse, but it's very common for Asian scholar monks to compose a Pali verse preface and colophon to any works that they intend for publication. If it's a critical edition of an ancient text then it's virtually obligatory to do so in order to assure the reader that you're qualified for the task.

Also, in Thailand if you're the resident poet monk in one of the royal monasteries, then you'll occasionally be called upon to compose funerary verse, epithalamia and other kinds of pièce d'occasion connected with the doings of the royal family and the Sangharāja.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jun 25, 2021 2:28 PM
Title: Re: Are all ariya-sacca paramattha sacca?
Content:
All four truths are treated in the Abhidhamma as paramattha dhammas.

All forms of dukkha are ultimately comprehended under the five khandhas. The truth of the origin of dukkha, along with each factor of the eightfold path, are identified with particular mental factors; and Nibbāna is the unconditioned element.

Right speech, action and livelihood consist in the arising of abstinence mental factors (virati cetasika).

The five hindrances likewise comprise seven mental factors when they are described abhidhammically.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jun 24, 2021 8:37 PM
Title: Re: Overlord and Mara
Content:
The word can be both a proper noun, meaning Māra the Malign, and a common noun, meaning the members of Māra's host.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jun 24, 2021 12:36 PM
Title: Re: Usefulness of Learning Prosody
Content:
In traditional monastic education the study of chandalakṣaṇa serves two main purposes.

The first is to make a monk competent to decide between variant readings in Pali verse works by considering which of the variants best fits the metre, or even proposing tentative readings that are not found in any extant editions at all. This then allows him to do the kind of work that's been done by the likes of K.R. Norman and Ven. Ānandajoti, namely, producing high quality critical editions of works like the Dhammapada and Suttanipāta, and translations based on the same.

The second is to enable the monk to compose versified works of his own.

If you email Ānandajoti (or contact him on Facebook) he may be able to offer you some further reasons.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jun 24, 2021 11:43 AM
Title: Re: Question metta
Content:
Only if you use some construction that serves the same purpose. For example, you can abbreviate a well-known list of items by just naming the first item and then adding -ādi to it. It literally means "beginning with ..." but performs the same function as "et cetera".

https://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/pali_query.py?qs=%C4%81di&searchhws=yes


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 23, 2021 1:42 PM
Title: Re: Overlord and Mara
Content:
As for the meanings of their names, Abhibhū literally means "One Become Superior" and Pajāpati literally means "Lord of the Generation". 

I think "Overlord" would be a defensible rendering for either name (if one is going to insist on translating them), though if the text contains both then it would be better to give them different names.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 23, 2021 1:17 PM
Title: Re: Did Buddha prohibit monks from criticises another monk on the basis of Vinaya or the Dhamma teaching?
Content:
https://suttacentral.net/pli-tv-bu-vb-pc64/en/brahmali


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 23, 2021 12:43 PM
Title: Re: The Dhamma is simple (if we want it to be)
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 23, 2021 10:25 AM
Title: Re: Question metta
Content:
https://suttacentral.net/an3.68/en/sujato


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 22, 2021 7:34 PM
Title: Re: 108 recitations of Itipiso a day
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jun 18, 2021 2:06 PM
Title: Re: Sam Vara returns as a moderator
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jun 18, 2021 1:59 PM
Title: Re: Focusing like an Owl
Content:
Thanks for the clarification.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jun 18, 2021 10:21 AM
Title: Re: Focusing like an Owl
Content:
I suppose one could assume that, but I don't think it would be a reasonable assumption at all.

Firstly the meditating bhikkhus are described as "possessed of moral habit and of a lovely nature" (sīlavantā kalyāṇadhammā) - words that strongly imply that they were doing things right and weakly imply that they were ariyasāvakas.

Secondly the words "He meditates, premeditates, out-meditates, and mismeditates ... just as a jackal on a river-bank waiting for fish," are the tendentious judgment of hostile Māra-inspired householders. Why would anyone want to assume that they'd got things right?

Suppose I said to you, "I saw some Muslims praying in the marketplace today. They were baying and bawling, squealing and squalling, yowling and yawping, ululating and caterwauling like banshees, and annoying the heck out of everybody with their uvular consonants." Which would be the more reasonable assumption:

"Dhammānando's report is that of a hostile witness who has an aversion to Islam or to praying in public places or to the sound of the Arabic language."

Or:

"The Muslims weren't praying properly?"


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jun 17, 2021 8:35 PM
Title: Re: anattā”ti and natthattā”ti
Content:
The constructions "There is no + substantive" and "There isn't a + substantive" differ only in phrasing, not in meaning.

There is no elephant in the room = There isn't an elephant in the room.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jun 17, 2021 12:14 PM
Title: Re: Translating "satipaṭṭhānānaṁ" in dative case ???
Content:
I was referring to his book A History of Mindfulness in which DN 22 is referred to as the "Piltdown Sutta". Nearly everyone I encounter who takes a dim view of this sutta does so under the influence of this book and so I thought this might be the case with you. Since it isn't, the point of my post was rather beside the point.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 15, 2021 8:27 PM
Title: Re: Tasawwuf and Theravada
Content:
Posts split from the topic "Jesus is the only way?"


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 15, 2021 8:10 PM
Title: Re: Unable to open a post
Content:
I don't know why my post initially failed to appear, so I reposted it and now it does. This is the first time this has happened to me.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 15, 2021 4:59 PM
Title: Re: Can a monk tell his followers that he is not fully enlightened?
Content:
No, at the lower levels of insight one is still a worldling, albeit a kalyāna one.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 15, 2021 4:18 PM
Title: Re: Translating "satipaṭṭhānānaṁ" in dative case ???
Content:
Would you be referring to Bhante Sujāto's theory to this effect? If so, I would note that even he doesn't allege the entire suttas to be fraudulent, but merely that in their proto-form they were much shorter, with dhammānupassanā being limited to just the five hindrances and seven enlightenment factors.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 15, 2021 12:45 PM
Title: Re: Can a monk tell his followers that he is not fully enlightened?
Content:
The attainment of all the ariyan paths and fruits are insight knowledges. As such, there would be no way that a sotāpanna's arrival at sakadāgāmitā and the resultant attenuation of kāmarāga and byāpāda could be mistaken for an attenuation of these due to some non-ariyan cause, like a decline in the body's testosterone production in old age, a regular abiding in jhāna or whatever.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 15, 2021 12:19 PM
Title: Re: Can a monk tell his followers that he is not fully enlightened?
Content:
In Ven. Jayasara's post Bhante G. wasn't asked if he was a sotāpanna.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 15, 2021 11:33 AM
Title: Re: Can a monk tell his followers that he is not fully enlightened?
Content:
Not arahantship. The bhikkhu attained jhāna but without realizing that it was jhāna he had attained. Later, presumably for the sake of name and fame, he boasted that he had attained jhāna even though he believed that he hadn't. Even though what he was saying was factual he was adjudged pārājika because his intention was to deceive.

The Vinaya has no analogous cases of bhikkhus arriving at ariyan attainments but not realising it.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 14, 2021 9:21 PM
Title: Re: Pali Resources
Content:
Chris's resources file now updated, with thanks to Assaji for the new links.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 14, 2021 8:31 PM
Title: Re: Can a monk tell his followers that he is not fully enlightened?
Content:
I've sometimes done this myself, but usually I just reply that laypeople should never ask a bhikkhu about his attainments, for such a question is in effect an invitation for the bhikkhu to commit a Vinaya offence.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Jun 14, 2021 5:27 AM
Title: Re: How many versions of canonical Theravada Abhidhamma exist?
Content:
Considering the thread's current trajectory, I believe it belongs more properly in the Early Buddhism than in he Abhidhamma sub-forum. I've moved it accordingly.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 13, 2021 7:31 PM
Title: Re: Pali Resources
Content:
Thanks. I've put asterisks under all the dead links so that if anyone notifies me of updated links to the same resources I can add them.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 13, 2021 3:25 PM
Title: Re: How many versions of canonical Theravada Abhidhamma exist?
Content:
Yes, the account has the Buddha descending each day to teach the Abhidhamma to Ven. Sāriputta in a form that's digestible to humans (who unlike devas can't sit still for three months). While doing this he leaves behind a mind-made replica of himself that continues teaching the devas.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 12, 2021 11:54 PM
Title: Re: How many versions of canonical Theravada Abhidhamma exist?
Content:
In the case of the Sarvāstivādin Abhidharma Piṭaka, each of its seven books is attributed to some named ācariya. I don't know what the other schools claimed regarding theirs.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 12, 2021 5:39 PM
Title: Re: Is it compulsory to accept Abhidhamma as a part of doctrine to be considered as Theravada?
Content:
Just a list of synonyms meaning "subjective".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 12, 2021 4:34 PM
Title: Re: How many versions of canonical Theravada Abhidhamma exist?
Content:
In the Atthasālinī's account (see the link below) it was taught to devas who'd gathered from ten thousand world-systems, so hardly secretive. Ven. Sāriputta was taught an abridged version and transmitted this to his five hundred pupils. Ven. Ānanda recited it at the First Council, but whether he learned it from Ven. Sāriputta or from one of his pupils isn't stated in the Atthasālinī.

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.92596/page/n25/mode/2up


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 12, 2021 1:48 PM
Title: Re: Why buddhist monks being called samana ?
Content:
In my opinion it would be better not to. Listeners may think that they are using it in its valorized sense and claiming ariyan attainment.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2021 6:04 PM
Title: Re: Why buddhist monks being called samana ?
Content:
In all three cases the term denotes ariyan ascetics.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2021 3:27 PM
Title: Re: Buddhism and Capitalism.
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2021 10:49 AM
Title: Re: How many versions of canonical Theravada Abhidhamma exist?
Content:
The main sources for the Theravādin emic view are the introductions to the Dhammasaṅgaṇī and Kathāvatthu commentaries. The said view is that six of the seven books never changed - they're the same now as they were when recited at the First Council. The exception is the Kathāvatthu, which at the First Council was recited only in summary form (i.e., a prediction of what heresies would arise and outline accounts of how to refute them) and assumed it's current expanded form only at the Third Council when the debates had taken place and the heresies had been refuted.

The etic views (i.e., those of academic scholars and monks influenced by them) are many and various, but afaik nobody has proposed that the Abhidhamma Piṭaka underwent any further revision after the Third Council, with the exception of the Kathāvatthu which is held to consist of an early stratum of pre-Ashokan heresies and a later stratum of (mainly proto-Mahayana) heresies that arose later. The Abhidhamma Piṭaka as a whole is held to be chronologically stratified (e.g., the Dhammasaṅgaṇī and Vibhanga are early, the Yamaka and Patthāna late), but afaik nobody posits any stratification within any of the Piṭaka's books, with the exception of the Kathāvatthu.

Three influential sources of etic opinion are 

Fumimaro Watanabe, Philosophy and Its Development in the Nikāyas and Abhidhamma

David Kalupahana, A History of Buddhist Philosophy: Continuities and Discontinuities

Erich Frauwallner, Studies in Abhidharma Literature and the Origins of Buddhist Philosophical Systems


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2021 4:26 PM
Title: Re: How many versions of canonical Theravada Abhidhamma exist?
Content:
The differences between different regional recensions of the Abhidhamma Piṭaka are much slighter than those in the different recensions of the other two Piṭakas. Just randomly select any page from any of the seven books and you'll see for yourself that the variant readings are very seldom anything but the same word spelled different ways.

For example, these are the 23 variants in the 
Kāmāvacarakusala section of the Dhammasaṅgaṇī's Cittuppādakaṇḍa. Of these 20 are just variant spellings, two are obvious misspellings, and one is a different but synonymous word.

vīriyindriyaṁ → viriyindriyaṁ (bj, sya-all, pts-vp-pli1)

vīriyabalaṁ → viriyabalaṁ (bj, sya-all, pts-vp-pli1) 

kāyapassaddhi → kāyappassaddhi (sya-all)

cittapassaddhi → cittappassaddhi (sya-all)

kāyujukatā → kāyujjukatā (bj, pts-vp-pli1, mr)

cittujukatā → cittujjukatā (bj, pts-vp-pli1, mr)

cetayitattaṁ → sañcetayitattaṁ (sya-all); saṁcetayitattaṁ (pts-vp-pli1)

anusandhānatā → anusandhanataṁ (si, mr); anusandhanatā (sya-all, pts-vp-pli1)

vīriyārambho → viriyārambho (bj, sya-all, pts-vp-pli1)

ussoḷhī → ussoḷhi (bj, pts-vp-pli1)

vīriyabalaṁ → viriyabalaṁ (bj, sya-all, pts-vp-pli1)

asammussanatā → apammussanatā (bj); asammusanatā (sya-all)

bhūrī → bhūri (si)

iriyanā → irīyanā (bj)

hirī → hiri (bj, pts-vp-pli1)

paṭipassaddhi → paṭippassaddhi (bj, sya-all)

paṭipassambhanā → paṭippassambhanā (bj, sya-all)

paṭipassambhitattaṁ → paṭippassambhitattaṁ (bj, sya-all)

adussanā adussitattaṁ → adūsanā adūsitattaṁ (sya-all)

abyāpajjo → avyāpajjho (bj); abyāpajjho (cck); avyāpajjo (pts-vp-pli1)

ujukatā → ujjukatā (bj, pts-vp-pli1)

cittujukatā → cittujjukatā (bj, pts-vp-pli1)

ṭhapetvā → thapetvā (mr)

https://suttacentral.net/ds2.1.1/pli/ms


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 9, 2021 1:35 PM
Title: Re: 108 recitations of Itipiso a day
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 9, 2021 12:00 PM
Title: Re: Why are ancient statues of Buddha depicted as sitting in full-lotus?
Content:
Archaeology and historiography.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 9, 2021 6:45 AM
Title: Re: What is the kamma result of a monk who eats after noon time?
Content:
In between these two extremes there's the bhikkhu who is respectful of much of the bhikkhu's training but not of this particular rule. In commentarial narratives it seems to be common for such to be reborn as pretas of the kind encountered by Ven. Mahamoggallāna in the Vinaya's account of the fourth pārājika rule.

https://suttacentral.net/pli-tv-bu-vb-pj4/en/brahmali


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 9, 2021 6:23 AM
Title: Re: Atman in Buddhism? (Nikaya)
Content:
See the posts of member ancientbuddhism in the "Anattā thread".

https://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=24760


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 9, 2021 5:30 AM
Title: Re: Why are ancient statues of Buddha depicted as sitting in full-lotus?
Content:
Art historians who posit an Hellenic influence on early Buddha statues are not referring to their postures or mudras. What they're referring to is, firstly, the very idea of making statues of one's heroes, and secondly, to the statues' facial features.

Having said that, cross-legged Greek statues do exist but they're not common. The Greek sculptors preferred to have seated subjects sitting on chairs or thrones.

Here's one example, a cross-legged anonymous philosopher at the Acropolis.



./download/file.php?id=6679&mode=view


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Jun 9, 2021 2:02 AM
Title: Re: Which heavens may one attain stream entry?
Content:
Nothing is said in the texts about stream-entry being easier to attain in one heaven rather than another. All we have to go by are the attainment narratives and in most of these the attainers are actually terrestrial devas. But as I remarked earlier, nothing much can be concluded from this because of the paucity of any sort of narratives involving the higher devas and brahmās.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 8, 2021 6:33 PM
Title: Re: Why are ancient statues of Buddha depicted as sitting in full-lotus?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 8, 2021 5:42 PM
Title: Re: MN 125 in pictures, vism. and ajahn brahm "real jhana"
Content:
If Frank's thread doesn't interest you, then stay out of it. Or, if you wish to argue for the uselessness of this kind of discussion, then start a thread of your own.

.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 8, 2021 5:29 PM
Title: Re: Personal experience of the heavenly realms
Content:
Split from the thread "Which heavens may one attain stream entry?" in the Beginners Forum.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 8, 2021 4:53 PM
Title: Re: MN 125 in pictures, vism. and ajahn brahm "real jhana"
Content:
This thread has to do with the controversy about what jhāna is. The controversy about whether jhānic development is necessary is off topic.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 8, 2021 3:06 PM
Title: Re: Which heavens may one attain stream entry?
Content:
In theory in all of them except the realm of impercipient beings and the four formless realms. I suppose we could also add the five Pure Abodes since you need to be already a non-returner to get born in one.

In practice, however, it's noticeable that attainment narratives get fewer and fewer the higher you go. In fact accounts are rare for any realm higher than Tavatimsa. Whether this because attainment happens less often in the higher heavens or merely because narratives of any sort about these places are rather thin on the ground, I've no idea.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 8, 2021 11:13 AM
Title: Re: The Pali term 'parinibbāyī' ???
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 8, 2021 11:04 AM
Title: Re: The Theravada Abhidhamma with Bhikkhu Bodhi
Content:
Multiple posts removed that violate the terms of service for the Abhidhamma and Classical Theravada sub-forums. 

Note that for discussion purposes the Abhidhamma Piṭaka and Pali commentaries are treated as authoritative in these two sub-forums. When replying to a post here, if your intention is to make the case that the Abhidhamma or commentaries are in error (e.g., that they conflict with so-and-so's conception of what early Buddhism taught), then copy the post you're replying to and paste it into a new thread in some other forum, e.g., General Theravada or Early Buddhism.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 8, 2021 12:54 AM
Title: Re: The Pali term 'parinibbāyī' ???
Content:
I've never heard anyone claim that parikkhayā always refers to full extinguishment.

If only the destruction of the first three or first five fetters is stated, then it's surely self-evident that it is only stream-entry or non-returning that is referred to, not full extinguishment.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 6, 2021 5:59 PM
Title: Re: The Pali term 'parinibbāyī' ???
Content:
Note that I've taken the adverb tattha as being used in its temporal sense rather than its locational or spatial ones: "in due course", "eventually", "sooner or later".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Jun 6, 2021 1:37 AM
Title: Re: is anyone not scared of death?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Jun 5, 2021 8:22 PM
Title: Re: The Vinaya as a detailed legal system
Content:
Sure, nobody in the thread is disputing that. The disagreement is about what it means to be protected by one's parents and at what point a girl or woman ceases to be so.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Jun 4, 2021 5:19 PM
Title: Re: Theravāda and Suttavādins
Content:
We know from Buddhaghosa's introduction to the Atthasālinī that there were individual bhikkhus who didn't admit the Abhidhamma Piṭaka to be buddhavacana. Though he doesn't identify them, it seems likely that he is talking about bhikkhus of Theravada Vinaya lineage, for it is specifically the Theravada Abhidhamma Piṭaka that they were rejecting. I can think of three possible reasons why they might not have wished to form a breakaway school:

1. There may have been too few of them.
2. It may have been politically inexpedient. That is, the Mahāvihāra could have called upon royal power to suppress them, just as it did with the Abhayagiri and Jetavana Viharas.
3. They had other fish to fry. That is, their desire to just get on with their own practice may have weighed more heavily with them than any missionary zeal to persuade Ceylonese Buddhists to revert to what they imagined to have been the proto-Canon.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jun 3, 2021 9:08 PM
Title: Re: Criminal Background
Content:
No, it's one of the many impediments that aren't asked about in the ordination interrogation. What you're referring to is the requirement that one not be required for military service.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jun 3, 2021 6:50 PM
Title: Re: The Vinaya as a detailed legal system
Content:
Here there's a rather lengthy thread on the subject, with the American monk Ven. Subhūti arguing for the correctness of the popular modern Burmese understanding of the third precept and me arguing that this understanding is a deviation from how the precept was understood in ancient times. My contributions start on the second page.

https://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=32761


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jun 3, 2021 5:13 PM
Title: Re: Jesus is the Only Way?
Content:
The two kinds of wrong view are asymmetrical. Holding to annihilationism is unavoidably an unwholesome mind-door kamma, for one can't espouse it without also espousing kammic inefficacy. Whether the same is true of eternalism depends on what it's conjoined with. For example, eternalism + theistic determinism is just as bad as annihilationism, but eternalism + the doctrine of ownership of kamma (or a doxastic commitment that's functionally analogous to this) is no impediment to merit accumulation and a bright rebirth.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Jun 3, 2021 4:29 PM
Title: Re: Work hard play hard
Content:
It exists only in the sense that a small number of individual Sri Lankans have converted to Zen, Vajrayana, Soka Gakkai, etc. But not in the sense that the Vetulyavāda of ancient times has survived unbroken to the present day. The heresy was extirpated centuries ago.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Jun 1, 2021 10:43 AM
Title: Re: A Manual of the Excellent Man
Content:
I don't know of any English language sources for the Ledi vs Sumangalasāmi controversies, other than the handful discussed in Bhikkhu Bodhi's CMA.

The Pali of Ledi's Paramatthadīpanī is available online from the Goenka folks and on their Tipiṭaka CD. 

The phrases to look for are na yujjati or na yuttaṃ ("this is untenable") and na sundaraṃ ("this is inelegant"). The former phrase is used when Ledi is challenging the substance of Sumangalasāmi's interpretation; the latter is used when he agrees with the substance but thinks the author has used clumsy, ambiguous or misleading phrasing.

Edit:

I forgot to mention that Sumangalasāmi's work was translated by R.P. Wijeratne and then put into publishable form by Ven. Pesala and Rupert Gethin. It's available from the PTS as Summary of the Topics of Abhidhamma.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 31, 2021 9:16 PM
Title: Re: Right view and Nibbana
Content:
No. Only that the removed post in no wise addresses the questions.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 31, 2021 6:30 PM
Title: Re: Right view and Nibbana
Content:
The only reply is one that talks solely about your interlocutor's drug use and mental state, and contains no sutta citations at all.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 31, 2021 5:45 PM
Title: Re: Feminines of adjectives
Content:
The same goes for adjectives.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 31, 2021 5:42 PM
Title: Re: DN 31: Sigalovada Sutta — The Buddha's Advice to Sigalaka
Content:
Michel Clasquin's MA thesis on this sutta.

Early Buddhist interpersonal ethics : a study of the Singalovada Suttanta and its contemporary relevance


https://www.academia.edu/3612052/Early_Buddhist_interpersonal_ethics_a_study_of_the_Singalovada_Suttanta_and_its_contemporary_relevance


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 31, 2021 3:59 PM
Title: Re: married but separated?
Content:
It's okay if it's Dhamma-based counsel, as opposed to, say, setting up shop as a psychotherapist. When I lived in Iceland about a third of the Icelanders who showed up on my doorstep were from Alcoholics Anonymous. They'd reached step #11 in the Twelve Step program, where one is encouraged to take up some practice of prayer or meditation, and were shopping around for advice on how to do so.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 31, 2021 1:20 PM
Title: Re: Feminines of adjectives
Content:
There aren't any reliable rules for determining whether the feminine form of any given masculine noun will end in ā, ikā, akā, ī, ikinī, nī or inī, or whether one has a choice of endings (e.g., khattiyā or khattiyāni for khattiya). All that any grammar can provide is a survey of the various attested patterns, which is what chapter 6 does.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 31, 2021 10:14 AM
Title: Re: Feminines of adjectives
Content:
See the list of possible forms in chapter 6 of Duroiselle.

http://www.pratyeka.org/duroiselle/


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 31, 2021 9:36 AM
Title: Re: married but separated?
Content:
Whether it's legal or not will vary from country to country. But my answer wasn't concerned with what's permitted by law. It was based on Vinaya rulings about what counts as a couple - particularly in connection with the fifth sanghādisesa rule which prohibits bhikkhus acting as matchmakers. Under this rule a bhikkhu is permitted to mediate to help an estranged couple to reconcile, but only if they haven't yet divorced. Trying to get them to reconcile when they've already divorced would count as matchmaking.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 30, 2021 11:11 PM
Title: Re: married but separated?
Content:
It depends on how separated they are.

If they've become estranged (e.g., after a quarrel) and are now living apart, but haven't yet decided what to do, then they should be regarded as still a couple. Sex with either of them would break the third precept.

Likewise if they've separated and one wants a divorce but the other doesn't and still hopes to save the marriage.

But if they've separated, have both agreed to a divorce and are just waiting for this to be legally finalized, then they are no longer classed as a couple.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 29, 2021 9:47 AM
Title: Re: Vatican urges Buddhists, Christians to a culture of care and solidarity
Content:
When you've answered Sam Vara's question, can you tell me if I'll be making a long journey over water any time soon? (I'm Gemini, if that's any help).

.


./download/file.php?id=6648&mode=view


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 27, 2021 3:51 PM
Title: Re: Saddhammappakāsinī
Content:
This is the link to the Chatthasangiti edition for mobile users. I don't know if it will work on computer browsers too.

https://tipitaka.org/ios/romn/atthakatha/suttapitaka-atthakatha/khuddakanikaya-atthakatha/patisambhidamagga-atthakatha.html

And this is from the Thai Tipiṭaka:

https://84000.org/tipitaka/read/?index_31

But it's not so easy to navigate if you can't read Thai. For each chapter in the text there are seven links. The three relevant ones are:

1. [PALI ROMAN] - gives the Patisambhidamagga chapter in question in romanised Pali, but based on the Royal Siamese edition, not the PTS.

2. AtthakathaPaliRoman - gives the commentary to the chapter in question in romanised Pali. Also based on the Siamese edition of the commentary.

3. อรรถกถา - gives the Thai translation of the commentary to the chapter in question. You might then be able to get the gist of the meaning using Google translator, but mostly you'll probably get gibberish.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 26, 2021 10:09 AM
Title: Re: Confession for lay people
Content:
The Vinaya requires that if a bhikkhu commits an offence in the daytime he should confess it before sunset; if he commits one at nighttime he should confess it before dawn. If he neglects to do so he commits the dukkata offence of concealing an offence. But if there's no bhikkhu to confess to, or if the only bhikkhu available has himself committed the very same offence (and is therefore prohibited from receiving his confession), then he can avoid a dukkata by making a mental resolve to confess as soon as he meets a suitable bhikkhu.

In modern monastic practice, the bhikkhus in strict monasteries will follow the above to the letter. In lax monasteries they will "save up" their offences until the next Uposatha day and then make general confession just before the Pātimokkha recital.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 26, 2021 6:55 AM
Title: Re: How to pronounce Theravāda
Content:
To be really pedantic, IPA is the only game in town...

[t̪ʰeːɾəʋɑːd̪ə]


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 26, 2021 6:38 AM
Title: Re: Confession for lay people
Content:
Confession in what sense? Do you mean that there's a lot of emphasis on the ritualistic recital of a confession formula, e.g. as the opening part of certain Mahayana pujas? Or do you mean that Mahayanists are encouraged to regularly approach a kalyanamitra to tell him all about their misdeeds, as Roman Catholics would do with their priest?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 24, 2021 12:41 PM
Title: Re: anaj-jhāpanno: Is this a causative for dhyana jhana, or "fire burning" jhāpeti?
Content:
Yes, assuming of course that my conjecture is right.

If it's wrong then I'm simply mystified as to why the commentator would gloss the term as taṇhāya anotthaṭo apariyonaddho.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 24, 2021 12:32 PM
Title: Re: The kalama sutta,ignored?
Content:
I'm locking this thread, since after fifteen pages and several requests to do so, the OP has neither substantiated nor attempted to substantiate the contention in the thread's title and opening post.

.


./download/file.php?id=6643&mode=view



By all means start new threads if you wish to pursue any of the sub-topics that have arisen in the course of this discussion.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 23, 2021 7:04 PM
Title: Re: anaj-jhāpanno: Is this a causative for dhyana jhana, or "fire burning" jhāpeti?
Content:
It's nothing to do with either of those.. 

It's an + ajjhāpanna, the past participle of ajjhāpajjati (= adhi + ā + pajjati), "to transgress".

If we go with the reading as it stands, then the meaning would be "not having transgressed", "blamelessly", "innocently".

However, the translators you cite seem to be following the commentarial gloss, taṇhāya anotthaṭo apariyonaddho, "not veiled by or covered with craving".

As it's implausible that anajjhāpanno could mean this, I suspect that the commentator was working with a text that actually read anajjhopanno, a variant reading found in other suttas in conjunction with amucchito. But as this is a lectio difficilior variant, I suspect what happened is that some latterday scribe decided to hypercorrect it to its present form. (Rather than the principle of modern textualists that the more difficult reading is to be preferred (lectio difficilior potior) traditional Theravādin scribes seem to have tacitly favoured its opposite: lectio facilius potior, "the easier (i.e., less problematic) reading is to be preferred").


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 22, 2021 5:35 PM
Title: Achim Beyer on Sudinna Kalandaputta
Content:
https://www.academia.edu/40301746/A_Case_for_Celibacy_The_Sudinna_Tale_in_the_P%C4%81li_Vinaya_and_Its_Interpretation


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 22, 2021 2:27 PM
Title: Re: How likely the Buddha make an error ?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 22, 2021 2:02 PM
Title: Re: Torture in the Buddha’s Time
Content:
"La journée sera rude." ["It's going to be a rough day."]
- Robert-François Damiens, on being sentenced to be publicly tortured to death

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert-Fran%C3%A7ois_Damiens


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 22, 2021 10:18 AM
Title: Re: Bad Makkhali
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 22, 2021 6:16 AM
Title: Re: Angels and Needles
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 22, 2021 5:59 AM
Title: Re: Angels and Needles
Content:
AN 2.36


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 22, 2021 5:40 AM
Title: Re: from Mahayana to Theravada
Content:
Yes, I meant that they don't stipulate whether they're meant for monastics or laity.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 22, 2021 5:00 AM
Title: Re: from Mahayana to Theravada
Content:
Only a few have survived, but many were composed that are now known about only by their names.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 21, 2021 7:51 PM
Title: Re: from Mahayana to Theravada
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 21, 2021 3:19 PM
Title: Re: Stream enterer have more than 7 times rebirth !
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 20, 2021 7:02 PM
Title: Re: Transliterating Lao Script Pali
Content:
I forgot to mention, you also have the option of the older Lao Dam script.

ᨡ ᨥ ᨨ ᨫ ᨮ ᨰ ᨳ ᨵ ᨹ ᨽ
ᨡᩣ ᨥᩣ ᨨᩣ ᨫᩣ ᨮᩣ ᨰᩣ ᨳᩣ ᨵᩤ ᨹᩣ ᨽᩣ
ᨡᩥ ᨥᩥ ᨨᩥ ᨫᩥ ᨮᩥ ᨰᩥ ᨳᩥ ᨵᩥ ᨹᩥ ᨽᩥ
ᨡᩦ ᨥᩦ ᨨᩦ ᨫᩦ ᨮᩦ ᨰᩦ ᨳᩦ ᨵᩦ ᨹᩦ ᨽᩦ
ᨡᩩ ᨥᩩ ᨨᩩ ᨫᩩ ᨮᩩ ᨰᩩ ᨳᩩ ᨵᩩ ᨹᩩ ᨽᩩ
ᨡᩪ ᨥᩪ ᨨᩪ ᨫᩪ ᨮᩪ ᨰᩪ ᨳᩪ ᨵᩪ ᨹᩪ ᨽᩪ
ᨡᩮ ᨥᩮ ᨨᩮ ᨫᩮ ᨮᩮ ᨰᩮ ᨳᩮ ᨵᩮ ᨹᩮ ᨽᩮ
ᨡᩮᩣ ᨥᩮᩣ ᨨᩮᩣ ᨫᩮᩣ ᨮᩮᩣ ᨰᩮᩣ ᨳᩮᩣ ᨵᩮᩤ ᨹᩮᩣ ᨽᩮᩣ


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 20, 2021 6:43 PM
Title: Re: Transliterating Lao Script Pali
Content:
Have you tried using Vinodh Rajan's Aksharamukha converter?

https://aksharamukha.appspot.com/converter

It's also available as an Android program.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.cordova.quasar.aksharamukha

If you type in "dhamma", selecting IAST for the input text and Lao for the output, then the word will be given in its popular form: ທັມມະ

But if you select Lao Pali for the output, then it will appear in its scholarly form: ຘມ຺ມ

Likewise with all the aspirates:

kha gha cha jha ṭha ḍha tha dha pha bha
khā ghā chā jhā ṭhā ḍhā thā dhā phā bhā
khi ghi chi jhi ṭhi ḍhi thi dhi phi bhi
khī ghī chī jhī ṭhī ḍhī thī dhī phī bhī
khu ghu chu jhu ṭhu ḍhu thu dhu phu bhu
khū ghū chū jhū ṭhū ḍhū thū dhū phū bhū
khe ghe che jhe ṭhe ḍhe the dhe phe bhe
kho gho cho jho ṭho ḍho tho dho pho bho

Popular
ຂະ ຄະ ຈະ ຊະ ຖະ ທະ ຖະ ທະ ຜະ ພະ
ຂາ ຄາ ຈາ ຊາ ຖາ ທາ ຖາ ທາ ຜາ ພາ
ຂິ ຄິ ຈິ ຊິ ຖິ ທິ ຖິ ທິ ຜິ ພິ
ຂີ ຄີ ຈີ ຊີ ຖີ ທີ ຖີ ທີ ຜີ ພີ
ຂຸ ຄຸ ຈຸ ຊຸ ຖຸ ທຸ ຖຸ ທຸ ຜຸ ພຸ
ຂູ ຄູ ຈູ ຊູ ຖູ ທູ ຖູ ທູ ຜູ ພູ
ເຂ ເຄ ເຈ ເຊ ເຖ ເທ ເຖ ເທ ເຜ ເພ
ໂຂ ໂຄ ໂຈ ໂຊ ໂຖ ໂທ ໂຖ ໂທ ໂຜ ໂພ

Scholarly
ຂ ຆ ຉ ຌ ຐ ຒ ຖ ຘ ຜ ຠ
ຂາ ຆາ ຉາ ຌາ ຐາ ຒາ ຖາ ຘາ ຜາ ຠາ
ຂິ ຆິ ຉິ ຌິ ຐິ ຒິ ຖິ ຘິ ຜິ ຠິ
ຂີ ຆີ ຉີ ຌີ ຐີ ຒີ ຖີ ຘີ ຜີ ຠີ
ຂຸ ຆຸ ຉຸ ຌຸ ຐຸ ຒຸ ຖຸ ຘຸ ຜຸ ຠຸ
ຂູ ຆູ ຉູ ຌູ ຐູ ຒູ ຖູ ຘູ ຜູ ຠູ
ເຂ ເຆ ເຉ ເຌ ເຐ ເຒ ເຖ ເຘ ເຜ ເຠ
ໂຂ ໂຆ ໂຉ ໂຌ ໂຐ ໂຒ ໂຖ ໂຘ ໂຜ ໂຠ


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 20, 2021 10:05 AM
Title: Re: Uttarakuru lifestyle in jambudivipa?
Content:
More to the point, we can see Tibetans, Mongolians and Kashmiris, which means that they belong to Jambudīpa, the one quarter of the human realm that is visible to us, as opposed to the three quarters (Uttarakuru, Aparagoyāna and Pubbevideha) that are invisible to us


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 19, 2021 7:54 PM
Title: Re: Uttarakuru lifestyle in jambudivipa?
Content:
In Jambudīpa we have millions of homeless people who live in most respects like the humans in Uttarakuru, but with the difference that they don't usually possess the Uttarakuru humans' contentment. Actually even when Uttarakuru humans move to Jambudīpa they can only retain their contentment by bringing some of their Uttarakuru creature comforts with them. For example, when Sakka arranged for Jotiya to be married to a young maiden from Uttarakuru, the bride insisted on bringing her wish-fulfilling magic saucepan with her so that she wouldn't suffer any gastronomic hardships.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 19, 2021 7:40 PM
Title: Re: Early Buddhism and the oral tradition
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 19, 2021 9:57 AM
Title: Re: Early Buddhism and the oral tradition
Content:
The text at this link should be kosher, though it only allows the book to be borrowed for an hour at a time, not downloaded.

https://archive.org/details/oralityliteracyt00ongw


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue May 18, 2021 6:15 PM
Title: Re: White clad followers
Content:
Though I can't absolutely rule out such a possibility, I doubt it.

If that were the case, then I should somewhere expect to find passages where a contrast is drawn between householders dressed in white (indicating that they're disciples of somebody) and householders dressed in some other colour (indicating that they're not). But there aren't any. The only things that "dressed in white clothes" is ever contrasted with are "dressed in ochre clothes (of one gone forth)" and "dressed in soiled clothes".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue May 18, 2021 12:20 PM
Title: Re: Early Buddhism and the oral tradition
Content:
https://archive.org/details/OngWalterOralityAndLiteracy/mode/2up

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_J._Ong

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orality


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue May 18, 2021 6:30 AM
Title: Re: Paññobhasa's reflections
Content:
Not really. Sāmaṇeraship is a kind of limbo state, which in early Buddhism seems to have been occupied exclusively by juveniles who wanted to be bhikkhus but weren't yet old enough. Since a sāmaṇera "has gone forth" (pabbajjita) he is never referred to as a householder, but since he's "not yet fully accepted" (anupasampanna) he is never referred to as sangha and doesn't participate in transactions of the sangha.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue May 18, 2021 5:56 AM
Title: Re: from Mahayana to Theravada
Content:
then what matters is whether the texts deemed canonical in the Vajrayāna tradition include the Pali Tipiṭaka. The answer is no.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue May 18, 2021 5:32 AM
Title: Re: from Mahayana to Theravada
Content:
That's not so. The traditional Theravada view is that it's possible for householders to attain arahatta, but not possible for them to continue in the household life after doing so. This is corroborated by the fact that in the suttas we find several householder non-returners but no householder arahants.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 17, 2021 4:26 AM
Title: Re: White clad followers
Content:
The six senses of "brahmacariyā" according to the commentaries, with examples from the Suttas...

1. Abstinence from sexual activity as an uposatha day observance.

“He undertakes the rule of training to abstain from what is not-brahmacariyā.”

2. Abstinence from sexual activity for the sake of samādhi and the path.

“Having abandoned what is not-brahmacariyā, he is one who lives the brahmacariyā (i.e., is celibate).”

3. The life of a samaṇa.

“Do you, friend, live the brahmacariyā under our Blessed One?”

“I recollect, Sāriputta, living a brahmacariyā possessing four factors.”

4. The Dhamma

“I will not attain final nibbāna, Evil One, until this brahmacariyā of mine is successful, abundant, widespread, and popular.”

“This brahmacariyā is successful and flourishing.”

5.The path

“This noble eightfold path, bhikkhu, is the brahmacariyā, that is, right view, right thought, right speech, etc.”

“But this brahmacariyā of mine, Pañcasikha, is for complete disenchantment.” 

6. Marital fidelity

“We do not transgress against our wives,
and our wives do not transgress against us.
Except for them, we live the brahmacariyā.
Therefore our young ones do not die.”


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 16, 2021 10:19 PM
Title: Re: from Mahayana to Theravada
Content:
How can it include what it doesn't have?

You said the same thing six years ago, but it was wrong then and hasn't become right in the meantime.

https://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?p=341013#p341013


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 16, 2021 5:56 PM
Title: Re: Transmitting wrong dhamma is slandering
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 16, 2021 12:37 PM
Title: Re: Help with Pāli
Content:
Sabbehi me piyehi vinābhāvo ("I shall be be separated from all that is dear to me") will get it down to 24 characters, unless spaces count as characters.

In that case try, Piyehi me vinābhavo (I shall be separated from what is dear to me").


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 16, 2021 12:22 PM
Title: Re: Digha Nikaya Commentaries
Content:
Translations of the commentaries to four of the DN Suttas are available at archive.org. 

The four are the Brahmajāla, Sāmaññaphala, Mahānidāna and Sampasādanīya Suttas.

https://archive.org/details/PaliCommentariesCollection/01%20DN%2001%20Brahmajala%20Sutta%2C%20The%20Discourse%20All%20Embracing%20Net%20of%20Views%20-%20Bhikkhu%20Bodhi%28OCRed%29%20%28372p%29


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 16, 2021 11:11 AM
Title: Re: Transmitting wrong dhamma is slandering
Content:
In the context of AN 2.23 and similar suttas, "slandering" is just a klutzy translation by Ajahn Thanissaro, along with several others who put too much trust in the PTS dictionary and don't consult other sources.

The verb abbhācikkhati *can* mean to calumniate or accuse, but it also means to misrepresent or misreport. Unfortunately the PED gives only the first meaning. There's little doubt that in AN 2.23 "misrepresent" ( as used by Bhikkhus Bodhi and Sujāto) is the intended meaning.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 15, 2021 7:06 AM
Title: Re: White clad followers
Content:
The brahmacarī vs kāmabhogī distinction has celibate vs non-celibate as its basic meaning, but then each term has other ramifications. In the case of kāmabhogī the extended meaning encompasses any sort of conduct that's at odds with renunciate norms and values. For example, in the Vinaya any time bhikkhus are seen to be overly acquisitive or to be indulging in any kind of luxury, the stock criticism of the laity is: "Just like kāmabhogī householders!"

In the case of brahmacarī the extended meanings are several. I'll post them later today.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 14, 2021 10:16 PM
Title: Re: The word buddha
Content:
https://suttacentral.net/snp3.7/en/mills-sujato


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 14, 2021 9:58 PM
Title: Re: Viññātesu & Rūpesu
Content:
Contextually when rūpa and viññāta occur in the locative case, the meaning is most often "in/with regard to..."

idha diṭṭhasutamutaviññātesu, piyarūpesu hemaka;
chandarāgavinodanaṁ, nibbānapadamaccutaṁ.

"In regard to likeable forms here seen, heard, sensed, and cognized, Hemaka,
the dispelling of desire and passion for them—this is the undying Nibbāna."
Hemakamāṇavapucchā, Sn. 5.9


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 14, 2021 2:38 PM
Title: Re: White clad followers
Content:
"Householders dressed in white" (gihī odātavasanā; Skt. gṛhī avadātavasanā) is simply a term for householders in general, presumably based on the most commonly worn colour. All Indian religions used the term and it doesn't specify that the persons referred to belong to any particular class or caste or creed. To specify this, other words need to be added. For example:

Upāsakā gihī odātavasanā sabrahmacārino.
"Male lay followers (of the Buddha) who are white-clad celibate householders."

Upāsakā gihī odātavasanā kāmabhogino.
"Male lay followers (of the Buddha) who are white-clad householders enjoying pleasures of the senses [i.e., who are not celibate]."

Nigaṇṭhassa Nāṭaputtassa sāvakā gihī odātavasanā.
"Male disciples of Nigaṇṭha Nāṭaputta who are white-clad householders.

Gihī odātavasanā acelakasāvakā.
"White-clad householders who are disciples of naked ascetics."


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri May 14, 2021 9:54 AM
Title: Re: Metta Translation
Content:
Would you care to say more? Though there are certainly quite a few flawed translations of the Mettasutta as a whole, all the Sutta Central renderings of this particular verse seem fine to me. Even the one by the hacks at Amaravati seems passable.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue May 11, 2021 10:24 PM
Title: Re: The Problem With Hell
Content:
They don't create the universe or even a single world-system. The nimmānarati devas have the power to create things for their own amusement. The paranimittavasavatti devas have the power to order other devas to do so.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 10, 2021 7:32 PM
Title: Re: micchādhimokkho/viparitādhimokkho (Abhidhamma question)
Content:
For negative applications of the term in the suttas it would be better to look at the use of its source verb, adhimuccati, and its past participle adhimutta.

As for the noun, see its use in the chapter on paticcasamuppāda in the Abhidhamma's Vibhanga and its commentary.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 10, 2021 7:15 PM
Title: Re: What Sutta? on the enlightenment of the monks and different achievements
Content:
I can't think of one exactly like that, but try these three ...

https://legacy.suttacentral.net/en/sn12.70
https://legacy.suttacentral.net/en/mn32
https://legacy.suttacentral.net/en/mn70


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 10, 2021 6:20 PM
Title: Re: The Problem With Hell
Content:
As Buddhism rejects the doctrine of a world creator, surely the Buddhist equivalent of God or Allah or Yahweh would be sky flowers or the sons of a barren woman or the horns of a hare.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 10, 2021 5:45 PM
Title: Re: Is dhammawiki.com article on 'Last thought moment' correct?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 10, 2021 6:38 AM
Title: Re: Is dhammawiki.com article on 'Last thought moment' correct?
Content:
No, there's no mention of any such thing. When the Jains were badmouthing Sīha after he transferred his allegiance from Mahāvīra to the Buddha the worst they could come up with was that he'd had an ox slaughtered to feed the Sangha. Even that charge was baseless.

http://aimwell.org/DPPN/siha.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 10, 2021 6:29 AM
Title: Re: Is dhammawiki.com article on 'Last thought moment' correct?
Content:
I think the very fact that the Buddha did make a point of visiting the dying, or sending an arahant disciple to visit them, or, at the very least, sending them some instruction via messenger, suggests that he did regard the time of death as an especially crucial time.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 10, 2021 12:53 AM
Title: Re: Money with jhana
Content:
Sorry, I misread the question. Welcome to Dhamma Wheel.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 9, 2021 10:51 AM
Title: Re: Money with jhana
Content:
In what way have you been hindered by lack of a large bank account?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 9, 2021 10:06 AM
Title: Re: Origin of the four (or three) dharma/dhamma seals?
Content:
I've already told you.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Dharma_Seals

https://encyclopediaofbuddhism.org/wiki/Four_seals


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 9, 2021 9:23 AM
Title: Re: Origin of the four (or three) dharma/dhamma seals?
Content:
The first three are botched versions of Dhammapada 277-279. The fourth is "Nirvana is peace."


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 9, 2021 9:17 AM
Title: Re: Origin of the four (or three) dharma/dhamma seals?
Content:
The General Theravada forum is okay as a place for members to query whether Mahayana teaching X has a Theravada equivalent. If the thread develops into a protracted discussion about the meaning of X then it will be moved to the Connections forum.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 9, 2021 9:13 AM
Title: Re: Origin of the four (or three) dharma/dhamma seals?
Content:
It depends what you mean. 

Are the four propositions that constitute the seals found in Pali sources? Yes, all four are in the suttas.

Are all four ever listed together under the name catulakkhaṇa? No.

Or under some other name? No.

Are the four propositions individually referred to as lakkhaṇas? No, only the first three are.

Are they ever presented as a criterion for whether or not a teaching can be accepted as Buddhist? No, not even in commentarial sources.

Is the word lakkhaṇa (= Skt. lakṣaṇa) ever glossed as a "seal". No, in Pali sources it's consistently understood to mean a "characteristic".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 9, 2021 9:02 AM
Title: Re: Black Wool in Nissaggiya Pācittiya (monastic rules entailing forfeiture and confession )
Content:
For rules contained in the two Pātimokkhas you need to look in the Bhikkhuvibhanga and Bhikkhunīvibhanga. 

The Khandhakas (comprising the Mahāvagga and Cullavagga) deal with rules that lie outside the Pātimokkhas.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 9, 2021 7:33 AM
Title: Re: Persons of the Path and the Paramis
Content:
I don't think the Pali texts ever make such a connection. I suppose it might be possible to do so inferentially on the basis of suttas like AN. 9.12, where a connection is made between the four stages and the degree of fulfillment of sīla, samādhi and paññā. The general conception, however, is that each of the stages is the outcome of development of all ten perfections.

https://suttacentral.net/an9.12/en/sujato


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 8, 2021 5:17 PM
Title: Re: The Problem With Hell
Content:
If so, this isn't an account of where beings are mostly headed in normal times. Rather, it has to do with a very special time when normal patterns don't apply. 

When they know that a world-system's destruction is imminent, anāgāmin and arahant devas from the Suddhāvāsas come down to earth in human guise precisely in order to promote the development of jhānic merit that will enable beings to obtain rebirth in the Abhassara realm or higher. Those beings who don't heed their teaching won't make it to Abhassara but will instead be compelled to transmigrate to a lower (i.e., sub-Abhassara) realm in a different world-system.

In our time, however, we don't yet have such Suddhāvāsa devas walking among us.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 8, 2021 12:48 PM
Title: Re: Where exactly is "Here" ?
Content:
When the phrase is used to translate diṭṭhadhammika (e.g., when jhāna is described as "a pleasant abiding in the here and now" or when certain of the Buddha's teachings are said to be "for the sake of welfare in the here and now"), the "here" is that portion of the okāsaloka which is accessible to your sense-bases and the "now" is the duration of your present life.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 8, 2021 12:36 PM
Title: Re: The Problem With Hell
Content:
When we're sekhas and therefore free of the risk of arising in lower realms. Until then prudence is always advisable.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu May 6, 2021 6:41 AM
Title: Re: Fake Speech
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 5, 2021 1:53 PM
Title: Re: Fake Speech
Content:
tl;dr
"True" and "false" don't apply to most phatic speech-acts, for the contexts in which they're uttered are tacitly understood by both parties as ones in which facts are neither sought nor expected nor conveyed.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed May 5, 2021 7:09 AM
Title: Re: Guptaka/Gauptika
Content:
Sanskritic -pt- always becomes -tt- in Pali

Guptaka can be Guttaka or Guttiya, e.g. Dhammaguttiya for Dharmaguptaka.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue May 4, 2021 12:53 PM
Title: Re: Dhammapada verse 267
Content:
It means that the acts of an arahant create neither kusala nor akusala kamma.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue May 4, 2021 12:48 PM
Title: Re: Pali Sutta beginning with 'Moli'
Content:
There are only two: the Moliyaphagguna, mentioned above, and the Moliyasīvaka...

https://legacy.suttacentral.net/en/sn36.21


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 3, 2021 4:52 PM
Title: Re: Difference between Maha Chulalongkorn Rajavidyalaya and Mahamakutarajavidyalaya editions of Tipitaka
Content:
The Mahachula and Mahāmakut Tipiṭakas are not two different editions of the Pali Tipiṭaka. Rather, they are two different Thai translations of a single edition of the Pali, namely, the Royal Siamese edition. The Mahamakut translation is twice as long as the Mahachula, for it also includes a translation of the Atthakathā.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon May 3, 2021 12:40 PM
Title: Re: Which of these Mahayana/Vajrayana traditions are most compatible with the Palicanon and Theravada traditions?
Content:
Rev. Roy Catchpole. 1944-2020
.


./download/file.php?id=6612&mode=view


 I think I may have gone a little off topic here.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 2, 2021 2:24 PM
Title: Re: What type of Jhana meditation Buddha practiced?
Content:
Why wouldn't this be technically possible?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun May 2, 2021 6:23 AM
Title: Re: Which of these Mahayana/Vajrayana traditions are most compatible with the Palicanon and Theravada traditions?
Content:
And when an antinomian Ch'an Buddhist darkens our doorstep, why Sir, let us lock up our cats!


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 1, 2021 7:43 PM
Title: Re: Which of these Mahayana/Vajrayana traditions are most compatible with the Palicanon and Theravada traditions?
Content:
As I see it, there's an unbridgeable abyss between the two traditions, for in the one tradition only a peaceable, morally-restrained, ahimsā-practising samaṇa can be accepted as an arahant, while in the other even a cat-murdering antinomian cutthroat can pass muster as an enlightened master.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 1, 2021 5:44 PM
Title: Re: Has Paramatthamañjusā a burmese or english translation ?
Content:
Which Paramatthamañjūsā are you asking about? Dhammapāla's Visuddhimagga Mahāṭīkā or Vepullabuddhi's Abhidhamma treatise?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 1, 2021 5:04 PM
Title: Re: 'drink and drugs that cause carelessness'
Content:
Yes, but I'm afraid I've forgotten precisely where it is. I recall that it's based on the equation of appamāda with the common sutta phrase "ātāpī sampajāno satimā" ("ardent, clearly comprehending and mindful"), with ātāpī identified with kusala viriya, sampajāno with paññā and satimā with sati.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 1, 2021 4:49 PM
Title: Re: 'drink and drugs that cause carelessness'
Content:
I think what is wrong here, or at least inadequate, is the overly narrow understanding of the term pamāda conveyed by the translation "carelessness".

Not that any of the other English translations (negligence, unawareness, laziness, unconscientiousness, etc.) are any better, for they all share the common defect of being like the blind men who touch only one part of the elephant.

What in Pali is called appamāda comprises three things: mindfulness, understanding and energy/effort (sati, paññā, viriya). When any of the three is weakened or destroyed, the result is pamāda. Whatever causes such a weakening or destruction is a pamādaṭṭhāna.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 1, 2021 4:15 PM
Title: Re: Where to find a monastery that does not bow to statues?
Content:
In Thailand I know of only two.

One is Wat Suan Mokkh of the late Ajahn Buddhadāsa, where they bow to a giant boulder instead. (Or at least they used to in the 1980's; I don't know what their current practice is).

The other is the controversial Santi Asoke group, founded by the now-defrocked monk Phra Phothirak. They don't bow to anything.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santi_Asoke

https://web.archive.org/web/20110708104241/http://www.bunniyom.com/insight2_the%20man%20behind%20santi%20asoke.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 1, 2021 4:04 PM
Title: Re: Buddha's wife (wives)?
Content:
But the texts never refer to her as "the Buddha's wife" or even "the Buddha's former wife". In Pali literature as a whole, by far the commonest designation for her is Rāhulamātā, "Rāhula's mother". Other names (or possibly epithets) are Bhaddakaccānā (in the suttas) and Yasodharā, Bimbā, Bimbādevī and Bimbāsundarī (in later texts).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 1, 2021 2:25 PM
Title: Re: Carana
Content:
I would conjecture that the commentator is limiting caraṇa to those things that are indispensable to attainment of the deathless.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 1, 2021 9:34 AM
Title: Re: Which of these Mahayana/Vajrayana traditions are most compatible with the Palicanon and Theravada traditions?
Content:
From Etienne Lamotte's summary of the Indic sources of the catuhpratisarana I get the impression that it was the common property of Sanskritic Buddhism in general.

https://archive.org/details/buddhisthermeneuticsdonaldlopezs.jr.mlbd_787_L/page/n9/mode/2up


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 1, 2021 3:00 AM
Title: Re: Can these Mahayana Four dependences be used in a Theravada context?
Content:
I think that from a classical Theravāda pov, the first is correct, the second is a false dichotomy, the third is overstated and the fourth is so trivially true that it's strange the Mahayanists thought it even needed saying.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat May 1, 2021 12:43 AM
Title: Re: Carana
Content:
The "seven good states" referred to are faith, a sense of shame, a regard for consequence, learning, energy, mindfulness and understanding (saddhā, hiri, ottappa, suta, viriya, sati and paññā).


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 30, 2021 1:49 PM
Title: Re: What type of Jhana meditation Buddha practiced?
Content:
In Hardy's novel, as in Gray's Elegy, the crowd is "madding" (i.e., frenzied), not "maddening".

"Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way."

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44299/elegy-written-in-a-country-churchyard


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 30, 2021 12:49 PM
Title: Re: Difference between Faith and Definite Conclusion?
Content:
I can't immediately think of any case where a sekha disciple is said to explain something wrongly - in a manner that's directly contrary to Dhamma. It wouldn't surprise me if they sometimes teach something that's right as far as it goes but which turns out to be suboptimal or inappropriate for the person addressed, for this can happen even with asekhas; like the time Sāriputta gave a brahmin a teaching that led him to rebirth in the Brahmā world, not realising that the brahmin actually had the potential for stream-entry.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 30, 2021 12:38 PM
Title: Re: Difference between Faith and Definite Conclusion?
Content:
In the case of puthujjanas other than oneself I don't think one can know for sure whether or not their expressions of certitude arise from idaṃsac­cā­bhi­ni­vesa. Nor is there any need to know this, nor any value in knowing it. Idaṃsac­cā­bhi­ni­vesa in oneself is the thing to watch out for.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 30, 2021 11:52 AM
Title: Re: Uposatha days and European lunar calendar
Content:
I was told by a Thai ajahn who claims (plausibly imo) to be in regular conversation with devas that the four Regent Kings are quite aware of the fact that Buddhists in different countries and monks in different nikāyas observe the Uposatha on different days. On account of this knowledge they nowadays make their weekly survey of the human realm a three-day affair to ensure that no Uposatha-observers get omitted from the report they deliver to Sakka. If this is true, then so long as one's Uposatha observance falls within a ballpark range of the correct date it won't pass unnoticed.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 29, 2021 9:17 PM
Title: Re: Difference between Faith and Definite Conclusion?
Content:
If he's a sotāpanna then his certitude about the Dhamma, along with any verbal expressions he makes of it, can't possibly be instances of idaṃsac­cā­bhi­ni­vesa, for this knot is already abandoned in him.

If he's a puthujjana Buddhist, then it may or may not be.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 29, 2021 7:11 PM
Title: Re: Stored food?
Content:
In terms of how they live, bhikkhus are expected to observe the 227 training rules of the Pātimokkha, along with the hundreds of supplementary rules in the Khandhakas; sāmaṇeras are only required to observe the ten precepts and the 75 sekhiya dhammas (rules that govern decorum in relation to walking, sitting, eating, etc.). A man has to be at least twenty to become a bhikkhu, but to become a sāmaṇera he only needs to be old enough to earn a living by scaring crows.

In Thailand and Burma the majority of sāmaṇeras are teenagers or boys and most of them will be ordained as bhikkhus as soon as they reach the age of twenty. In Sri Lanka, on the other hand, it's not uncommon for men to choose to remain sāmaṇeras all their lives, for one reason or another.

According to the Vinaya the Buddha introduced sāmaṇera-ship when his son Rāhula wanted to go forth into the homeless life. As the Buddha had already set twenty years as the minimum age for becoming a bhikkhu and Rāhula was still under twenty, the Buddha decided to introduce a new level of monastic life involving a less onerous training than that of bhikkhus and bhikkhunīs.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 29, 2021 5:13 PM
Title: Re: Stored food?
Content:
Yes, it can be anyone except a bhikkhu or bhikkhunī.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 29, 2021 3:42 PM
Title: Re: Stored food?
Content:
Not necessarily. If it's nuns or laypeople who store the food, and if they do so on their own initiative and not because bhikkhus have issued orders or dropped hints to this effect, and if the place of storage is somewhere other than the bhikkhus' rooms, and if it's the nuns or laypeople who reheat the food and offer it to the bhikkhus the next day, then the food would be allowable.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 29, 2021 1:20 PM
Title: Re: Breakoff from "Gurus in Vajrayana"
Content:
Yes, though the fortnightly Pātimokkha recital isn't a special instance, for the laity are excluded from the sīmā in all formal transactions of the Sangha, except those in which a layperson happens to be the subject of the transaction.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 29, 2021 9:28 AM
Title: Re: 8 precept and life span
Content:
It is abstention from killing that is said to have longevity as it's vipāka, though the effect of such abstention won't be experienced until the next life. The maximum possible span of our present life was unalterably fixed at the moment of conception and cannot be lengthened by any means at all. It can, however, be shortened - by akusala acts, especially that of killing, and by poor lifestyle choices.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 28, 2021 11:42 PM
Title: Re: Sal trees to be Stream-Winners ? (Sarakaani Sutta)
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 28, 2021 9:36 PM
Title: Re: Sal trees to be Stream-Winners ? (Sarakaani Sutta)
Content:
Why does anyone resort to hyperbole of any sort? 

Chiefly in order to intensify one's utterance in such a way that it makes a more striking, and therefore more memorable, impression upon the audience.

"If learning to tell subhāsita from dubbhāsita could lead even a brainless dumb tree to enlightenment, just think what it could do for me!"


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 28, 2021 7:48 PM
Title: Re: can i achieve nirvana when i don't believe in Reincarnation
Content:
I don't know what Ajahn Thanissaro meant by his words, but if those same words had been written by me they would mean this:

The "understanding" being described would be:

1. Paññā constituted by development (bhāvanāmayā) in the case of sotāpannas who had developed knowledge of former lives beforehand; 

2. Pañña constituted by hearing and thinking (sutamayā and cintāmayā) in the case of attained-to-view sotāpannas;

3. Paññā constituted by hearing alone alone in the case of faith-liberated sotāpannas.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 28, 2021 7:08 PM
Title: Re: Asmi mana
Content:
Self view, personality view, person-pack view, embodiment view, etc., are all different ways of translating sakkāyadiṭṭhi.

"I am conceit" is nowadays the usual way that asmi-māna gets translated. "Self view" wouldn't be a good translation because māna and diṭṭhi are two distinct mental factors.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 28, 2021 6:49 PM
Title: Re: Feeling not due to past kamma
Content:
The vipāka of past unwholesome kamma doesn't take the form of another person deciding to assault you. In other words, your past unwholesome kammas don't have the power to magically trigger other people to hate you and to wish to do you harm (as the Hare Krishnas and some adherents of the Mahayana believe). Within the Theravāda this point is quite uncontroversial.

The controversial issue is this...

Suppose somebody assaults you and the resulting injuries cause you much bodily pain. Would these painful feelings be:

1. always the vipāka of past kammas?
2. never the vipāka of past kammas (i.e., the pain is due to the assault alone)?
3. sometimes the vipāka and sometimes not (and perhaps with no way of knowing for sure)?

This point is a disputed and with all disputants maintaining that the Sivakasutta is supportive of (or at least compatible with) their own view. 

Theravādin ābhidhammikas (and probably ābhidhammikas of all Indian Buddhist schools) would answer that all painful bodily feelings are due to the vipāka of past kamma, though not all of them are due to past kamma alone.

The EBT folks, on the other hand, seem to be divided between those like Ñānavīra Thera who argue for #2, and those who tend to a slightly agnostic view of kamma, who usually opt for #3.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 28, 2021 4:30 PM
Title: Re: Sal trees to be Stream-Winners ? (Sarakaani Sutta)
Content:
I understand it to be exactly what it seems: very high praise for the ability to distinguish the well-said from the ill-said. And so by implication we may take it as a strong exhortation to develop such an ability in ourselves.

Since Sarakāni had died a stream-entrant, presumably he had this ability and presumably his possession of it was potent enough that it somehow overrode the fact that he was addicted to drink.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 28, 2021 4:01 PM
Title: Re: DN 2: I perform a miracle, B. Sujato claims Buddha had an impoverished language and was forced to redefine 'body' as
Content:
seems to completely miss the mark. Translating kāyena as "personally" isn't redefining anything as anything. The proper way to challenge Sujāto's translation, if that's your aim, would be to make a case for why kāyena ought not to be treated as an idiomatic expression.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 28, 2021 6:57 AM
Title: Re: It depends what you mean by rebirth
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 28, 2021 1:17 AM
Title: Re: Ajahn Pannobhasa is disrobing
Content:
As a Don Quixote fan I was giving you a nice girl guide salute as a token of thanks for the amusement your windmill-tilting has afforded me.

.


./download/file.php?id=6586&mode=view


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 28, 2021 12:36 AM
Title: Re: Ajahn Pannobhasa is disrobing
Content:
Since I'm largely in agreement with Malalasekera, I can't imagine why you wish to draw a contrast between his views and mine. The only place where we differ is that I think he somewhat overstates the extent to which the bhikkhusangha is democratically constituted. 

For example, in the Vinaya procedures for the settlement of disputes the verdict of the majority is virtually the last resort, to be used only when the other (undemocratic) procedures have failed. Moreover, there are certain kinds of dispute that cannot be settled by democratic means at all. Disputes about whether something is dhamma or adhamma, vinaya or avinaya, for instance, are deemed far too momentous to be decided by a mere show of hands.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 27, 2021 11:53 PM
Title: Re: Ajahn Pannobhasa is disrobing
Content:
Then it's a jolly good thing that we've got you here to warn us about him! I mean if there's one thing Dhamma Wheel's famous for it's our gigantic vanguard of Julius Evola fans. The forum these days seems to be positively teeming with them. I might have been in danger of becoming one myself if I hadn't learned from you that he was a fascist of all things. Phew, what a relief.

 
.


./download/file.php?id=6585&mode=view


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 27, 2021 9:42 PM
Title: Re: Brahma Sahampati - non returner
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 27, 2021 8:19 PM
Title: Re: Jhana
Content:
I understand EBT folks are divided over whether MN 111 counts as early or not, but I don't know which side Ven. Brahmali takes.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 27, 2021 8:04 PM
Title: Re: Jhana
Content:
Here and throughout the episode, Ven. Brahmali and Horner both agree in rendering adhigacchati as "attain".

I would like to dissent from this agreement. The verb adhigacchati has a strong sense, "to attain", and a weaker sense, "to discover", "to come to know about", "to learn of". I think that since it is only sekha-ship that they have arrived at (this is quite explicit in Moggallāna's case), it would be better to go with the weaker sense: "come to know of the deathless".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 27, 2021 7:52 PM
Title: Re: Jhana
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 27, 2021 6:47 PM
Title: Re: why greeds occurs
Content:
It occurs in relation to things of the kāma sphere owing to improper attention (ayoniso manasikāra) regarding the sign of the beautiful (subha-nimitta).

It occurs in relation to things of the rūpa and arūpa spheres owing to the failure to see: "This too is bondage."


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 27, 2021 6:20 PM
Title: Re: Gurus in Vajrayana
Content:
Well, they certainly say this, but is there any compelling evidence that they actually mean it? Have you personally known any Vajrayanists who did what they're supposed to do in this regard? Any would-be disciples who spent years evaluating a lama or lamas who spent years evaluating a would-be disciple, before either of them accepted each other? Does this ever actually happen?

Or is it (as I suspect) that all this talk about mutual evaluation is little more than a mealy-mouthed platitude that gets trotted out for the sake of damage control every time there's yet another lama-related sex abuse scandal? - 

"Oh, it's a terrible tragedy how Rinpoche treated her. But you know it does sort of serve herself right, doesn't it? I mean if only she'd done what the books say and spent *at least* ten years checking the teacher out, then she wouldn't be in this mess, would she?"


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 26, 2021 3:16 PM
Title: Re: unsolved question
Content:
Because the human digestive system, unlike that of a cow, is such that we derive considerable benefit from the nutrients in animals, limited benefit from the nutrients in cabbages, and scarcely any benefit at all from the nutrients in grass. Now if you're asking why our digestive system happens to be like this, rather than like that of a cow, then this is really a question for a biology forum. It's not a dhammic concern at all.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 26, 2021 2:39 PM
Title: Re: Difference between Faith and Definite Conclusion?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 26, 2021 10:19 AM
Title: Re: Where is the term "rupa jhana" found in the suttas?
Content:
Last week I gave you a link for the English translation of the Visuddhimagga. The nature of the nimitta for each of the forty meditation subjects is described in it. This is way off topic in the Early Buddhism forum.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 26, 2021 8:33 AM
Title: Re: Jhana
Content:
https://suttacentral.net/pli-tv-kd1/en/brahmali

So when the passage is correctly translated it doesn't contradict the traditional understanding that at this point the two monks are still sekhas.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 26, 2021 5:23 AM
Title: Re: Where is the term "rupa jhana" found in the suttas?
Content:
All samatha-bhāvanā entails the use of a preparatory sign. But when the meditator starts to make progress the details concerning nimittas will vary from one meditation subject to another; e.g., some subjects will give rise to a counterpart sign, but others to only a learning sign.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 26, 2021 5:09 AM
Title: Re: Can we accept secular Buddhism as Buddhism?
Content:
In the case of the monastic ordination lineages of the Theravada, the Dharmaguptaka and the Mulasarvastivada, we're talking history. 

In the case of Zen's supposed lineages of Indian and Chinese patriarchs, we're talking pious fiction. It seems that the said lineages were concocted in China to make Buddhism more palatable in a culture heavily steeped in ancestor worship. The historical Mahākassapa would no doubt have been very surprised to learn that he was actually the first Indian Patriarch of Ch'an Buddhism. Similarly Aśvaghoṣa is unlikely to have known that he was an Indian patriarch of the Kegon-shū. And heaven knows how Nāgārjuna managed the tricky task of being patriarch of half a dozen East Asian schools.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 25, 2021 8:30 PM
Title: Re: Where is the term "rupa jhana" found in the suttas?
Content:
I understand saññā here to be the perception that was present in the fourth rūpajjhāna, which was of the nimitta.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 25, 2021 7:26 PM
Title: Re: unsolved question
Content:
If a human eats an animal then he benefits by acquiring nutrients from it. But that doesn't mean that animals are born for that purpose. I mean it's not like in some theistic religions where it's taught that animals are given by God for the use of humans. In Buddhism the existence of animals isn't regarded as a feature in any divine plan, for the Buddha's teaching isn't theistic.

As for the saccavacana matter, see the wiki link that I posted earlier and get back to me if anything is still unclear.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 25, 2021 6:06 PM
Title: Re: Where is the term "rupa jhana" found in the suttas?
Content:
By whom?

In the Theravāda all three baskets of the Tipiṭaka are classed as "root text" (mūlapālī), or as we loosely translate it, "canon".

Some academic scholars may refer to the books of the Abhidhamma Piṭaka as "commentaries", but in doing so they don't mean to imply that they belong with the Atthakathā texts. Rather, they are using the word "commentary" to describe the literary genre of the Abhidhamma's contents, just as they might describe, say, the Saccavibhangasutta as a "commentary" on the Dhammacakkappavattanasutta. But when "commentary" is being used in this way, the Theravāda's in-house terms would be niddesa or veyyakarana or vibhanga.

In the case of Bhante Gunaratana, even in his academic writings he sticks to the Theravāda's nomenclature, not that of academia.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 25, 2021 5:44 PM
Title: Re: Can we accept secular Buddhism as Buddhism?
Content:
By this criterion the whole of Japanese Buddhism would be "not a form of Buddhism", with the possible exception of the tiny Ritsu (Vinaya) sect. Is this your view?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 25, 2021 5:21 PM
Title: Re: Behaviour of monks during sickness
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 25, 2021 3:52 PM
Title: Re: Where is the term "rupa jhana" found in the suttas?
Content:
Bhante Gunaratana is mistaken. The term first appears in the Abhidhamma Pitaka.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 25, 2021 3:49 PM
Title: Re: Where is the term "rupa jhana" found in the suttas?
Content:
Arūpajjhānas are the Dhammasanganī's term for what in the Suttas are called the four āruppas or the fifth to eighth of the vimokkhas.

Rūpajjhānas are the commentaries' term for what in the Suttas are simply called jhānas.

I don't think either term is found in the Suttas.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 25, 2021 3:49 AM
Title: Re: Are there mendicants among the Nagas?
Content:
No, it seems clear enough to me. But let me try expressing it in a different way:

This isn't at odds with the Vinaya account referred to earlier, for the Buddha's refusal to ordain nāgas was on account of the impossibility of animals living the brahmacariyā. This doesn't, however, exclude the possibility of animals developing dhammic virtues of a lower order.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 25, 2021 1:02 AM
Title: Re: Are there mendicants among the Nagas?
Content:
This isn't at odds with the Vinaya account referred to earlier, for the grounds of the Buddha's refusal to ordain nāgas was the absence of the brahmacariyā in the animal realm, which doesn't mean the absence of dhammic virtues that fall short of a complete brahmacariyā.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Apr 24, 2021 11:59 PM
Title: Re: unsolved question
Content:
Yes, they accumulate demerit by their predation, which is one of the reasons the animal realm is so hard to get out of. On the other hand, the demerit is typically less weighty than when killing is done by humans, owing to the absence of hateful deliberation beforehand.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Apr 24, 2021 10:06 PM
Title: Re: Ajahn Pannobhasa is disrobing
Content:
Well, I'm not actually standing up for Paññobhāso (for whom I have little interest or enthusiasm) but rather for Dhamma Wheel's terms of service, which prohibit unsubstantiated attacks. The allegation that Paññobhāso has beaten up a plurality of Burmese monks is hardly substantiated by a video in which he admits to pushing one Burmese monk off a chair.

As I'd prefer not to watch them, could I just ask, do either of your two latest videos serve to substantiate your allegation?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Apr 24, 2021 9:49 PM
Title: Re: unsolved question
Content:
I think the Wiki entry below, along with the links in it, should answer the questions.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacca-kiriya


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Apr 24, 2021 9:33 PM
Title: Re: Ajahn Pannobhasa is disrobing
Content:
I watched the above video. In it Paññbhāso relates an episode where he loses his temper with a poorly behaved Burmese monk and pushes him off a chair. He doesn't admit to inflicting any further violence upon him. He states also that this is the only occasion during his thirty years in the robes when he has been violent towards a fellow monk.

So when you say, "he recounts tales of beating up monks in Burma" and (in a later post), "he has been openly violent against Sangha elders to boot -- and he's proud of it. He makes videos about it to tell the world, do you mean to imply that there are other videos than the one you posted - videos in which Paññobhāso contradicts himself by admitting to multiple attacks on multiple monks, involving rather more serious violence than pushing them off chairs?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Apr 24, 2021 4:51 PM
Title: Re: Scientific experiments prove God exists
Content:
When linking to videos please include a precis of their contents. And would you also please state what connection this thread has with the Theravada. (If there isn't one then it doesn't belong on Dhamma Wheel. Try the Dharma Paths forum instead). Thank you.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Apr 24, 2021 11:30 AM
Title: Re: Ajahn Pannobhasa is disrobing
Content:
Part 2 now posted.

https://politicallyincorrectdharma.blogspot.com/2021/04/on-relinquishing-my-mahathera-status_23.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 23, 2021 1:23 PM
Title: Re: B. Sujato third jhāna, "The body as metaphor", more like out of context, out of his body, out of his mind
Content:
It's the result of orthographic hypercorrection. In Pali phonology there are ten aspirated stops, while in modern Sinhala there are none at all. Consequently....

Sinhalese who know English but have no indological learning will typically spell Pali words exactly as they pronounce them: budda, damma, sangga, metta, upekka, dukka, samudaya, niroda, magga, Sujato, Kapilavattu.

Indologically well-educated Sinhalese will spell them correctly: buddha, dhamma, saṅgha, mettā, upekkhā, dukkha, samudaya, nirodha, magga, Sujāto, Kapilavatthu.

Indologically semi-educated Sinhalese will tend to hypercorrect. With their smattering of indological learning they know that some Pali stops need to be written with an 'h' in English, but they often forget which ones they are and find themselves inserting an 'h' in places where it's not needed. And so in trying too hard to get things right, they end up getting things wrong: buddha, dhamma, saṅgha, metthā, upekkhā, dukkha, samudhaya, nirodha, maggha, Sujātho, Kapilavatthu.

Edit:

I should add that a number of these hypercorrections are of long standing and widely accepted (e.g., mettha for mettā and numerous Pali proper nouns). Consequently one will sometimes find them being used even by Sinhalese who know better.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 23, 2021 8:04 AM
Title: Re: nirujjhanti and nirodhā
Content:
The form nirodhā is the noun nirodha in either the nominative plural (cessations) or the ablative singular (from cessation, because of cessation).

Phassanirodhā vedanānirodho.

"Because of cessation of contact [there is] cessation of feeling."


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 23, 2021 7:24 AM
Title: Re: Did Buddha say "All worldlings are mad'?
Content:
If you mean that a knowledge of this is innate in all people just by virtue of their being human (as some theists believe), I don't think this is in line with Dhamma. In the latter, a combination of samsāric inheritance and present-life upbringing will generate a moral sense in some but not in others.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 22, 2021 11:10 PM
Title: Re: Ignorance is to be shun, rejected not dissolved or getting rid of
Content:
And do you think that your sutta quote is at odds with this? If so, how?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 22, 2021 9:39 PM
Title: Re: Anupubbikathā
Content:
No, the anupubbīkathā as a whole is only ever given in uddesa or outline form. For a niddesa or detailed exposition one needs to refer to the teachings on each topic in other suttas.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 22, 2021 7:00 PM
Title: Re: Did Buddha say "All worldlings are mad'?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 22, 2021 6:26 PM
Title: Re: Ignorance is to be shun, rejected not dissolved or getting rid of
Content:
One wouldn't be moving away from it merely by quoting a couple of suttas. It's how one interprets them that determines whether one's understanding is aligned with that of the classical Theravada or a departure from it.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 22, 2021 3:51 PM
Title: Re: Buddhagosa Arahanthood
Content:
The actions of arahants generate no new merit, but that doesn't mean that they can't make use of their accumulated store of merit to make efficacious saccakiriyās. As, for example, in the case of Angulimāla and the woman in labour.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 22, 2021 3:25 PM
Title: Re: Can we accept secular Buddhism as Buddhism?
Content:
Then it will most likely be Safari's in-built spelling checker that's causing the trouble. If you dislike its intrusion, it can be disabled in the Edit menu.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 20, 2021 8:03 PM
Title: Re: sati n samma sati
Content:
No. There's no right concentration without right mindfulness.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 20, 2021 7:59 PM
Title: Re: sati n samma sati
Content:
The fact that an occurrence of sati doesn't bring about the ending of defilements doesn't make it micchā-sati.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 20, 2021 5:05 PM
Title: Re: sati n samma sati
Content:
I don't think either term is applicable. The Pāsarāsisutta says that the Bodhisatta's teachers had the faculty of mindfulness (satindriya) and the rest of the five faculties. The said faculties were sufficiently well developed to make possible the attainment of the highest and second highest of the formless attainments, but not sufficiently for attainment of the ariyan path.

Since their satindriya didn่t bring them to the ariyan path it doesn't count as the sammāsati of the ariyan path. But since it did bring them to the formless attainments it cannot have been something unwholesome and so couldn't have been micchāsati.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 20, 2021 2:00 AM
Title: Re: Asura realm
Content:
No. But some humans were figuratively compared to asuras by the Buddha. For actual asuras let me repost the link to Malalasekera's dictionary:

http://aimwell.org/DPPN/asura.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 19, 2021 8:59 PM
Title: Re: sati n samma sati
Content:
No. Ekaggatā is a universal cetasika and therefore in itself morally neutral. It comes to be reckoned as wholesome or unwholesome or undeclared according to the moral tone of the citta in which it arises.

That's not the case with sati, which is intrinsically beautiful and as such cannot co-exist with the unwholesome cetasikas present in, say, a greed-rooted consciousness.

The Suttas do speak of micchā-sati, but in the Abhidharma this is not identified with sati cetasika


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 19, 2021 4:45 PM
Title: Re: sati n samma sati
Content:
Not always. For example, the Buddha said that Alara and Uddaka had sati, but clearly it wasn't sammā.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 19, 2021 3:36 PM
Title: Re: Abhidhamma makes things really easy regarding interpretations of Dhamma
Content:
As this isn't the Pali Forum, would you please in future supply an English translation for any Pali passages that you post. Thank you.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 19, 2021 3:22 AM
Title: Re: Asura realm
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 19, 2021 12:43 AM
Title: Re: Asura realm
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 18, 2021 9:26 PM
Title: Re: Asura realm
Content:
https://legacy.suttacentral.net/en/sn56.41


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 18, 2021 5:57 PM
Title: Re: Right way to practice Brahmavihara
Content:
From the commentarial point of view sammāsamādhi is presupposed in the sutta's seventh and eighth stanzas, for unlimited pervasion of any given brahmavihāra requires jhāna.

Also, in one of the "gradual training" suttas of the Majjhima Nikāya the development of mettā as an illimitable is actually preceded by the development of jhāna.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 18, 2021 2:08 PM
Title: Re: Commentary Review - How did the inconsistencies in the commentaries come about?
Content:
Also here, along with many other translated Pali commentaries and chronicles:

https://archive.org/details/PaliCommentariesCollection/00%20Samantapasadika%20Bahiranidana%2C%20Inception%20of%20Discipline%20and%20Vinaya%20Nidana%20-%20N.A.%20Jayawickrama%20%28Sacred%20Books%20of%20the%20Buddhists%20Vol.21%29%20London-1962%20%28272p%29


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Apr 17, 2021 9:44 PM
Title: Re: What tradition do you follow?
Content:
The Diamond Sutra's Sanskrit name. Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, Diamond-cutter Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Apr 17, 2021 9:40 PM
Title: Re: Sallatha Sutta SN 36.6 - The Arrow (or dart, thorn)
Content:
If the temperature is the same as your body's there'll be no feeling, not neutral feeling. If it goes up or down slightly the feeling is likely to be pleasant. If it goes up and down considerably the feeling will be painful. At no point is it adukkhamasukha.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Apr 17, 2021 6:51 PM
Title: Re: What tradition do you follow?
Content:
Probably pīti. The Vajracchedikā is noted for its tendency to generate this in a first-time reader.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Apr 17, 2021 5:13 PM
Title: Re: Did Buddha say "let forget the words, let the meaning have remained"?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Apr 17, 2021 4:38 PM
Title: Re: Sallatha Sutta SN 36.6 - The Arrow (or dart, thorn)
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Apr 17, 2021 3:55 AM
Title: Re: Nanda
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 16, 2021 8:29 AM
Title: Re: Early schools
Content:
If you want the full monty, then there's Étienne Lamotte's 870-page History of Indian Buddhism.

If that's too long for you, then there are two fairly reliable but much shorter works, both largely derivative upon Lamotte's research:

Nalinaksha Dutt, Buddhist Sects in India

Hirakawa Akira, History of Indian Buddhism: from Sakyamuni to Early Mahayana


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 15, 2021 11:00 PM
Title: Re: අටුවා විමර්ශනය – අටුවාවන්හි නොගැලපෙන තැන් ඇති වූයේ කෙසේ ද?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 15, 2021 6:35 PM
Title: Re: How to reconcile time spans in the canon with history
Content:
I don't myself believe that it would do any harm to take it as "only allegorical". One should note, however, that among the scholastic writers on cosmology in all Indian Buddhist schools nobody did in fact take it that way. Rather, their outlook was informed by an assumption that we might call "geographical eternal recurrence". The basic ideas can be summed up thus:

Each world-system undergoes a periodic destruction and then re-evolves.

The periodic destructions are of three kinds: by water, fire or wind, with wind being the most destructive (i.e. it destroys the greatest number of realms, leaving only the very highest heavens intact).

The human and animal realms, along with hell, the ghost world and the six sensual heavens all get completely destroyed every time.

When re-evolution takes place, everything gets reconstituted exactly as it was before, not just in broad outline but right down to the smallest details. For example, not only will each world-system invariably consist of thirty-one planes, but there will also invariably be a Vejayanta Palace, a Cittalatā grove and a Pāricchattaka tree in the Heaven of the Thirty-three; the Cittalatā grove will invariably have an asāvatī creeper growing in it that blossoms once every thousand years (so that devas can tell the time!); the Mahāniraya part of the hell realm will invariably have a Vetaraṇī caustic river running through it, into which tyrants and abortionists will be reborn; etc., etc.

Likewise with the human realm: it will invariably comprise four great continents with a Mt. Sineru in the middle; the Jambūdīpa continent will invariably be the place where Buddhas will arise; geographically Jambūdīpa will invariably have a Himalayan mountain range with 84,000 peaks, among which there'll always be a Mount Vultures' Peak; the cities will always number 20,000, 40,000, 60,000 or 84,000, among which there'll always be a Benares, a Kapilavatthu, a Sāvatthī, a Rājagaha, etc., etc.

And so from the perspective of geographical eternal recurrence, statements to the effect that the Bodhisatta was once born in Benares 60,000 kotis of kalpas ago pose no problem at all - it would simply mean Benares in one of its former "incarnations".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 15, 2021 2:41 PM
Title: Re: Nanda
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 15, 2021 3:03 AM
Title: Re: Do we have to learn Abhidhamma to gain Wisdom?
Content:
I haven't heard of Buddhaghosa's recommendation being carried out in Myanmar or Thailand. In the former I doubt any abbot would wish (or even dare) to prohibit the teaching of Abhidhamma, while in the latter abbots aren't in the habit of prohibiting the teaching of anything.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 14, 2021 8:05 PM
Title: Re: Sallatha Sutta SN 36.6 - The Arrow (or dart, thorn)
Content:
The scope of what's comprehended under the first arrow cannot be limited to kāyasamphassajā vedanā alone, for feelings of this type are only sukha or dukkha, yet the sutta's account of the first arrow speaks also of adukkhamasukhā vedanā. This suggests that the said feelings may also be cakkhusamphassajā, sotasamphassajā, ghānasamphassajā or jivhāsamphassajā (which are always neutral), and manosamphassajā, which may be somanassa, domanassa or neutral.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 14, 2021 4:05 AM
Title: Re: Where to Ordain --philosophy matching
Content:
It's a monastery in the tradition of the late Acharn Naeb Mahaniranonda, a laywoman who taught Abhidhamma and a form of kāyānupassanā based on contemplation of dukkha in the four postures. I don't know if she's alive, but the resident meditation teacher for many years is/was Acharn Naeb's disciple, Acharn Prani Samreungrat, also a laywoman. The monastery is in two sections, with the monks in one section practising Acharn Naeb-style meditation under Prani's guidance, and those in the other section studying Pali and Abhidhamma.

There are a few translations of articles and talks by Acharns Naeb and Prani here:

https://www.sites.google.com/site/roundfree/texts

The Vinaya observance in the monastery is probably the strictest in the whole of Thailand; slightly stricter than in the Ajahn Chah tradition and very much stricter than any Dhammayutt forest wat that I've seen.

To train there it will probably be necessary to know Thai, for none of the resident teachers speak English and no translators are available.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 14, 2021 2:51 AM
Title: Re: 'drink and drugs that cause carelessness'
Content:
Majjapāna - intoxicating drink - is an example of majja being used as an adjective.

Majjavikkaya - trading in intoxicants - is an example of majja being used as a noun.

Majjapa is also an example of majja being used as a noun. Since the suffix -pa means "a drinker" (of any kind of beverage) and since majjapa means a drunkard, it's safe to assume that *in this compound* majja refers only to alcoholic drinks of some kind. The word doesn't, however, suffice to show that the meaning of majja *in general* is limited to alcoholic drinks.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Apr 14, 2021 12:44 AM
Title: Re: Is NIrodha Samapatthi (the cessation of perception and feelings) an aspect of consciousness hence within the five ag
Content:
See the Path of Purification, chapter XXIII sections 16-52

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nanamoli/PathofPurification2011.pdf


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 13, 2021 2:04 PM
Title: Re: Is Abhidhamma the Buddha's teaching?
Content:
The translators who translate sankhārakkhandha as "aggregate of volitional formations" do so because, (1) the suttas define this aggregate as cha cetanakāyā, "the six classes of volition" (i.e., the volitions that arise in connection with visible forms, sounds, odours, etc.) and never define it in any other way, and (2) because they dissent from the Abhidhamma's expansion of just cetanā to the fifty cetasikas.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 13, 2021 1:38 PM
Title: Re: Is NIrodha Samapatthi (the cessation of perception and feelings) an aspect of consciousness hence within the five ag
Content:
No. It's the human equivalent of being an impercipient deva: no cittas, no cetasikas and only one aggregate, the rūpadhammas in the rūpa-santati.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 13, 2021 12:23 PM
Title: Re: 'drink and drugs that cause carelessness'
Content:
Yes if we take majja to be a noun ("an intoxicating thing"). But no if we take it to be an adjective qualifying the two previous nouns ("[surā and meraya] that are intoxicating"). The commentaries acknowledge both readings as possible, without favouring one or the other.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 13, 2021 11:04 AM
Title: Re: i dont like the term 'unbound'
Content:
The consciousness mysticism certainly is, for viññānam anidassanam is not nibbāna.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 13, 2021 10:57 AM
Title: Re: Kalama Sutta
Content:
Your questions presuppose an interpretation of the Kālāmasutta in which the entire discourse is regarded as a teaching for everyone.

However I don't take the sutta that way. Rather, I take the negative injunctions in the first half of the sutta as a counsel to undecided outsiders only. I don't think they have anything to say to one who has gone for refuge out of faith. 

Quite the contrary in fact. Without anussava, paramparā, itikirāya and piṭaka­sam­padā­na there would be no transmission or learning of the teaching, and thus no possibility for sutamayā paññā. Without takka and naya there would be no development of cintāmaya paññā. Without ākāra­pari­vitak­ka or diṭṭhi­nij­jhā­nak­khan­ti or bhabbarūpatā or samaṇo no garūti (or some combination of these) there would be no preference on the part of a worldling for focusing upon the Buddha's teaching rather than something else.

I do, however, take the positive injunctions in the second half of the Kālāmasutta as a teaching for all.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 13, 2021 10:20 AM
Title: Re: i dont like the term 'unbound'
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 12, 2021 8:37 PM
Title: Re: Interesting Q&A in Vimuttimagga
Content:
The Visuddhimagga refers to the practitioner as a "yogāvacara" ("one who's at home in exertion") nearly as often as it refers to him as a "bhikkhu". The word first appears in the Patisambhidāmagga and by the mediaeval period it's virtually the default term for a meditator, especially in meditation manuals that stress jhāna. I suspect this was also the term used in the original Pali of the Vimuttimagga.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 12, 2021 2:22 PM
Title: Re: 'drink and drugs that cause carelessness'
Content:
Actually I don't dispute that this is what mettā is like. The disagreement is about whether the Mettasutta actually says this. I agree with Ajahn Thanissaro (a very rare occurrence!) that this is an incorrect reading of the mother and child simile.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 12, 2021 12:18 PM
Title: Re: 'drink and drugs that cause carelessness'
Content:
https://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?p=37595#p37595


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 11, 2021 7:43 PM
Title: Re: Puredhamma.net Warning !!!
Content:
I don't use the term with derision. I use it merely to distinguish your and your teacher's interpretation of Theravada Buddhism from other schools of interpretation. If you'd care to suggest some other name I shall be happy to comply with your wishes. Only don't expect me to call it Buddha Dhamma, for I'm not an adherent of it.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 11, 2021 6:10 PM
Title: Re: Puredhamma.net Warning !!!
Content:
In the three-life interpretation, the consciousness that ceases is the rebirth-linking consciousness that would have heralded a future birth but which now, owing to the cessation of ignorance, will not do so. With no rebirth-linking consciousness there will be no new birth. With no new birth there will be no further phassa or vedanā.

So that's one way to reconcile the fact that consciousness is said to cease with the fact that the Buddha and arahants appear to go on cognizing and contacting and feeling.

It's not, however, the only way. The Buddhadāsa people and the Ñānavīra people, for example, each have their own very different take on what cessation of consciousness means. (Perhaps DooDoot and SDC might kindly give a brief account of what cessation of consciousness means according to these two interpreters).

So my point then is this: the Waharakaist conception of the cessation of consciousness is not the only way of explaining how it is that the Buddha cognizes and feels even though consciousness has ceased. There are actually a plurality of cogent ways of accounting for this. That being so, your objection to the Sutta Central translation of viññāna as simply "consciousness" falls flat, for it depends on the premise that there is no way but the Waharakaist way to account for the above and therefore the only correct translation is an explanatory one that presupposes the correctness of the Waharakaist interpretation and adds extra words in support of this presupposition.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 11, 2021 7:23 AM
Title: Re: Puredhamma.net Warning !!!
Content:
On the contrary, it has EVERYTHING to do with it. 

When a translator opts for an explanatory translation, as you do, he will add extra words with the aim of making the meaning clearer than it would be if he were opting for a form-equivalent (or "word-for-word") translation. His choice of extra words will be determined by what he understands the meaning to be. His understanding of the meaning will depend on which interpretation of dependent arising he is committed to.

For example, A.P. de Zoysa, the Sinhalese translator at Sutta Central, has opted for an explanatory translation just like you. But de Zoysa's understanding is the opposite of yours: he thinks that it's විඥාන විපාක (vipāka viññāna) that ceases and so translates accordingly. The Burmese translator opts for ပဋိသန္ဓေဝိညာဏ် (rebirth-linking consciousness).

By contrast, the Thais and the European language translators have all opted for the form-equivalent rendering that you so vehemently object to: simply "consciousness".

Thai: วิญญาณ
Both English translators: consciousness
Both Dutch translators bewustzijn
German: Bewußtsein
Norwegian: bevisstheten
Italian: coscienza
Spanish: conciencia
Portuguese: consciência
Both Russian translators: сознание

In short, Sutta Central offers two translations that are informed by the Mahāvihāra commentarial interpretation, a dozen or so that are compatible with just about any interpretation, but none at all that comport with or are supportive of the Waharakaist eccentricity. In your anti-Sutta Central crusade it seems you've really got your work cut out for you.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 11, 2021 5:10 AM
Title: Re: Will the people who call the arahants just by name, attain Nibbana?
Content:
It's a directive concerning how bhikkhus are to address each other after the Buddha's passing. As with the previous examples discussed, I think the consequences of non-compliance would depend on the speaker's knowledge and intention. For example, I doubt there would be any ill effects if a newly ordained bhikkhu addressed a senior bhikkhu by his name or as āvuso if he hadn't yet been instructed in this protocol and intended no disrespect.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 11, 2021 3:24 AM
Title: Re: On the Origin of the Buddhist Arthakathás
Content:
At the beginning of the Dīgha Commentary there is first the Ganthārambhakathā, the author's opening verses, then the Nidānakathā, a prose preface, and then begins the Brahmajālasuttavaṇṇanā, the commentary to the Brahmajālasutta. The account of the first three councils is given in the Nidānakathā.

In some editions of the commentary, however, the title Brahmajālasuttavaṇṇanā comes immediately after the Ganthārambhakathā, while the title Nidānakathā is missing, giving the impression that the account of the councils is part of the Brahmajālasutta commentary. Presumably Childers was working with an edition of this sort.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 11, 2021 2:44 AM
Title: Re: Puredhamma.net Warning !!!
Content:
In the phrase saṅ­khā­ra ­nirodhā viññāṇa nirodho neither the word "kamma" nor the word "vipāka" appears.

So what your complaint seems to boil down to is that neither Ven. Ānandajoti nor Ven. Sujāto have provided expansive (or explanatory) translations that would be in line with your understanding of dependent arising. This could mean either that they don't wish to provide an explanatory translation of any sort but only a form-equivalent one (one that translates only the words that are actually there), or, that their understanding of dependent arising happens to be different from yours, or both. As such, their renderings will be at fault only if the Waharakaist interpretation of dependent arising is the correct one and all its competitors are in error. I strongly doubt that either of the two monks would accept this.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 11, 2021 2:07 AM
Title: Re: Who/What actually is "the created buddha" mentioned in relation to six suttas connected to Mahāsamaya Sutta?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sun Apr 11, 2021 12:37 AM
Title: Re: Puredhamma.net Warning !!!
Content:
Actually Lal does engage with those who post to his thread. It's just that most members who do so quickly conclude that the game isn't worth the candle.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Apr 10, 2021 11:56 PM
Title: Re: giving beggars question
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 9, 2021 11:20 PM
Title: Re: āloko
Content:
Just cakkhuṁ. 

Dhammesu is rendered "regarding teachings" in the translation you posted.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 9, 2021 9:58 AM
Title: Re: Share Sinhala, Burmese and Thai Resources
Content:
At the funerals of wealthy Bangkok Thais it's customary for the relatives of the deceased to sponsor the publication of a Dhamma book, copies of which will be distributed to guests attending the cremation. It's also the custom for one copy of the book to be donated to the Thammasat University library and another to the library of Wat Boworniwet, the head monastery of the Dhammayuttika Nikāya. 

In recent years the monk librarians at Wat Boworniwet have been scanning their collection of funeral books and uploading them to archive.org. So far scans of 3,873 books have been uploaded.

https://archive.org/details/thaicremationcopy


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 9, 2021 7:16 AM
Title: Re: Ants 🐜 (Consciousness & Self-awareness)
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 8, 2021 9:46 PM
Title: Re: Will the people who call the arahants just by name, attain Nibbana?
Content:
Had Ven. AK persisted in using "friend" after being corrected, then presumably it would have been an act of deliberate disrespect and therefore an impediment. But suppose he had continued to use "friend" because the Buddha had not corrected him, then it wouldn't have been an impediment. In the Dhātuvibhangasutta and its commentary, Ven. Pukkusāti uses "friend" right up until the attainment of non-returning. Only then does he realise that he's been conversing with the Buddha.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 8, 2021 7:16 PM
Title: Re: Ants 🐜 (Consciousness & Self-awareness)
Content:
What I stated regarding the majority view among entomologists is what I was told by a zoologist friend who until his retirement was in charge of the public education department at London Zoo.

But it's not difficult to find representatives of entomological opinion in all its glorious variety...

To find entomologists who hold that insects feel no pain, try googling: insects "cannot feel pain" entomologist

For those who hold the opposite, try: insects "do feel pain" entomologist.

For those who are agnostic on the question, try: insects "feel pain" "jury is still out" entomologist

For those who hold that it's more a question for philosophy than biology, try: insects "feel pain" philosophical entomology

To reduce the quantity of tabloid clickbait and woo, limit your searches to academia.edu


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 8, 2021 5:06 PM
Title: Re: Will the people who call the arahants just by name, attain Nibbana?
Content:
I think the same considerations would apply in all cases where one person addresses another in a manner that doesn't conform to the conventional norms of respectful greeting: if it's deliberately unfriendly or disrespectful then it's unskilful. If it's not due to any "inner fault" (dosantara) but to something else then it's blameless, as in the case of Pilindavaccha's addressing his fellow monks as vasalas.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 8, 2021 4:19 PM
Title: Re: How influential is vows in Buddhism?
Content:
No. There are two relevant Pali terms: sikkhāpada, which means a rule or clause of training, and sīla, which means something habitually practised. Neither means "vow".

The accompanying verb is samādiyati, to undertake or take upon oneself. Hence, 

Pāṇātipātā veramaṇī sikkhāpadaṁ samādiyāmi.
I undertake the rule of training [consisting in] abstinence from killing.

If the above were to be paraphrased as, "I undertake the vow to abstain from killing", it would no longer be a form-equivalent translation of the Pali, but nor would the meaning have been significantly altered as far as I can see.

In practice, translators of Pali texts tend to opt for form-equivalence here, while translators of Chinese and Tibetan Mahayana texts tend to use constructions that use the word vow, either as a noun or a verb. But whether the latter is intended as (1) a paraphrase, (2) a dynamic-equivalent rendering, or (3) a form-equivalent rendering of how the precept has been translated into Chinese or Tibetan, I've no idea. I did raise the question on Discourse Sutta Central a few weeks ago, but none of the resident Mahayanists seemed to know.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_and_formal_equivalence


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 8, 2021 2:18 PM
Title: Re: Ants 🐜 (Consciousness & Self-awareness)
Content:
That was certainly the case with myrmecologists in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but I understand from a trusted zoologist friend that modern ones tend to be less doctrinaire about it. Since the answer hinges on the question of whether the semantic range of "pain" is broad enough to include non-mammalian forms of nociception (which ants do have), the dominant myrmecological tendency nowadays is to delegate the question to philosophers.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 8, 2021 2:00 PM
Title: Re: Will the people who call the arahants just by name, attain Nibbana?
Content:
No problem.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 8, 2021 1:29 PM
Title: Re: Will the people who call the arahants just by name, attain Nibbana?
Content:
I didn't say that addressing the Buddha as 'friend' was the cause for stream-entry, only that it needn't be an impediment to attaining it, even though it's not a respectful way to address a Buddha.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 8, 2021 1:14 PM
Title: Re: Will the people who call the arahants just by name, attain Nibbana?
Content:
And the fact that Ven. Aññākondañña attains stream-entry at the end of the discourse seems to answer the OP's question as to whether a failure to show sufficient reverence might impede one's attainment of the fruit. The answer, as Ven. Pesala noted, is not if it's an unwitting and unintentional faux pas.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 6, 2021 7:51 PM
Title: Re: Why monks don't say "I don't know"?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 6, 2021 7:34 PM
Title: Re: Sallekha
Content:
No. As I understand it, the semantic range of sallekha is about the same as that of tapas. Like tapas it can be used in a negative sense to refer to the extreme austerities of ascetics outside the Buddha's teaching, and in a positive sense to refer to the kind of ascesis the Buddha approves of.

I can't imagine why Ven. Suddhaso thought that "humility" would be an apt rendering, nor why Ven. Sujāto opted for "self-effacement". But if you raise the question at Discourse Sutta Central I'm sure the latter will be happy to explain his reasoning.

Horner's "expunging" and Bhikkhu Bodhi's "effacement" both seem fine to me, as does the Thai explanatory rendering "ธรรมเป็นเครื่องขัดเกลากิเลส", "dharmas that serve as the means for the attrition of defilements".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 6, 2021 6:50 PM
Title: Re: Restlessness fetter
Content:
Worry is classed as an unwholesome mental factor but not as a fetter. Its abandoning by the non-returner is an Abhidhamma teaching. Worry can't arise in a non-returner because it arises only in a hate-rooted consciousness and non-returners no longer experience these. Also, it arises only in the aftermath of committing a sense-sphere moral transgression, but this too is not possible for a non-returner, since he has no hate and his remaining attachment is only for rūpa and arūpa existence.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 6, 2021 4:34 PM
Title: Re: Restlessness fetter
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 6, 2021 11:47 AM
Title: Re: My name is
Content:
It's the stock phrase when visiting a sick person. I don't think we have any record of how healthy people would make phatic enquiries after each other's health. The precise words they used have been effectively concealed by the preference for a descriptive summary,: "upasaṅkamitvā bhagavatā saddhiṁ sammodi, sammodanīyaṁ kathaṁ sāraṇīyaṁ vītisāretvā.." rather than direct speech.

"... having approached, he exchanged greetings with the Blessed One; having exchanged greetings of friendliness and courtesy..."
(MN 18)


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 6, 2021 8:37 AM
Title: Re: My name is
Content:
For anyone interested in learning spoken Pali, Rev. Buddhadatta's Aids to Pali Conversation and Translation is available online.

https://dhamma.ru/paali/aids_to_pali_conversation.pdf

And if you want to converse about things like the English Restoration (Aṅgalikarājapaṭisaṅkharaṇa), the Labour Party (Āyāsapakkha), cinematography (calacittavijjā), the enfranchisement of women (itthībhujissakaraṇa), the Episcopal Church (dhammādhikārāyatta-devāyatana), helicopters (vyomayānavisesā) and nuclear submarines (paramāṇuvisayantodakanāvā), then you'll also need Buddhadatta's English-Pali Dictionary.

https://archive.org/details/MahatheraEnglishPaliDictionary2


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 6, 2021 4:44 AM
Title: Re: My name is
Content:
It's the creation of a handful of 20th century Sri Lankan and Burmese monks, notably Rev. A.P. Buddhadatta. It's used by Asian scholar monks of different nationalities if they have no other language in common. I've also heard that Richard Gombrich required his students to speak exclusively in Pali after they'd completed the first semester of his course.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Apr 6, 2021 4:22 AM
Title: Re: My name is
Content:
In modern spoken Pali:

Kinnāmo'si?
Ahaṃ Devadatto nāma.
Kathaṃ tava sarīrapavatti?
Thuti atthu; aham'accantanirogī viharāmi.

What is your name?
My name is Devadatta.
How are you?
Thank you; I am quite well.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Apr 5, 2021 11:38 AM
Title: Re: What resources exist dealing with the claim that Nibbana is the True Self?
Content:
In the Thai language the most influential work is a 450-page critique called Koranii thammakai (The Dhammakaya Case) by Phra Prayudh Payutto (Bangkok 1999).

https://archive.org/details/The_dhammakaya_case?q=%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%93%E0%B8%B5%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%B1%E0%B8%94%E0%B8%98%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%A1%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%A2

As far as I know there's no English translation yet, but it's been frequently quoted in English-language books, articles and doctoral theses dealing with Wat Dhammakaya.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Apr 3, 2021 12:10 AM
Title: Re: Can We Hear Sound in Jhāna?
Content:
I replied to your post in good faith.

If your intended meaning was something other than what I took it to be, then I can assure you I did not know this at all, let alone "perfectly well".


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 2, 2021 11:43 PM
Title: Re: if the age of the earth and other planets is less than 10,000 years old would is be compatible with buddhism?
Content:
It might if it were, but since it isn't it doesn't.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 2, 2021 10:38 PM
Title: Re: What are the actual differences between "Hard" and "Soft" jhanas?
Content:
It''s both my mother tongue and one of the languages in which I was an accredited translator for the Icelandic Foreign Ministry. I was also in charge of testing other would-be translators. Had any candidate ever proposed that "contact at the five senses means you are not in jhana" might be faithfully paraphrased as "contact does not a jhana make," I'd have failed him.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 2, 2021 3:17 AM
Title: Re: Can We Hear Sound in Jhāna?
Content:
I don't see how it's "nitpicking" to point out that you are applying to the word "thera" a meaning that it simply doesn't have, for your argument depends on the erroneous premise that it does have this meaning.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Apr 2, 2021 3:07 AM
Title: Re: What are the actual differences between "Hard" and "Soft" jhanas?
Content:
I'm afraid I find your post unintelligible.

Your observation about contact at the five sense doors not making a jhāna doesn't seem a propos of anything that I (or anyone else) has said. In the debate about the nature of jhāna neither side claims that such contact makes a jhāna. Rather, the disagreement is about whether such contact is compatible with jhāna - whether it can occur simultaneously with jhāna. "No," say the classical Theravādins. "Yes," say some (though not all) of the protestant Buddhist revisionists.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 1, 2021 5:24 PM
Title: Re: You can hear sounds in the four jhanas, AN 10.72, and is 'Theravada' an oxymoron?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 1, 2021 4:04 PM
Title: Re: Can We Hear Sound in Jhāna?
Content:
While "elder" in English can be applied as well to things (like texts) as to persons, "thera" in Pali cannot. Only certain persons (i.e., bhikkhus of more than ten rains and arahants) can be called theras. 

The theras in "Theravāda" are the "ancient teachers" (purāṇācariyā) or simply the ancients (purāṇā). These comprise the 500 arahants at the First Council, the 700 at the Second, the 1,000 at the Third and the commentary-teachers (atthakathācariyas) who preserved the works that were later to be translated by Buddhaghosa, Dhammapāla, et al.

And so the criterion for assessing whether any given exposition of the Dhamma is "more Theravāda" or "less Theravāda" is conformity to or deviation from the doctrine (vāda) preserved and propounded by the aforementioned persons. The relative antiquity of the texts preserved by these persons is quite irrelevant to carrying out such an assessment.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Apr 1, 2021 3:32 AM
Title: Re: What are the actual differences between "Hard" and "Soft" jhanas?
Content:
The point, as I see it, is that this teaching serves as a valuable diagnostic tool for distinguishing authentic jhānic cittas from certain kinds of sense-sphere cittas that readily lend themselves to being mistaken for jhāna cittas. In particular:

• Greed-rooted cittas, whose accompanying pīti and sukha are of uncommonly great strength.

• Great wholesome cittas dissociated from knowledge, whose accompanying pīti and sukha are of uncommonly great strength.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 31, 2021 7:46 PM
Title: Re: What are the actual differences between "Hard" and "Soft" jhanas?
Content:
I don't think any texts represent it as happening in that way.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 31, 2021 4:57 PM
Title: Re: What are the actual differences between "Hard" and "Soft" jhanas?
Content:
Nobody claims that this is the purpose of jhāna-samādhi. What is claimed in the classical Theravada is that:

1. This is what authentic jhāna is like. (Though "losing all sense of mind" would need changing to "establishing an intensively focussed and non-ratiocinative state of mind).

2. The state of mind that supervenes upon emergence from it (i.e., what the Suttas describe as "concentrated, pure and bright, unblemished, free from defects, malleable, wieldy, steady, and attained to imperturbability") is the optimal one for insight development.

3. The purpose of jhāna is to arrive at the post-jhānic state described above and while in it develop insight by attention to the features of the now-vanished jhāna factors.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 31, 2021 7:27 AM
Title: Re: Buddha statue with gold-rimmed spectacles
Content:
With the white skin he looks more Armand Henrion-esque.

https://arthistoryproject.com/artists/armand-henrion/

.


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Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 31, 2021 5:24 AM
Title: Re: Are the Mahāyāna "sutras" such as Shurangama Sutra real Buddha's teaching?
Content:
Yes, at the Third Council the Theravādins went quite strongly for "karmic minimalism". That is, in the dozen or so debates on whether such-&amp;-such was caused by the ripening of past kamma, Moggalliputtatissa's answer was always no.

Is the earth caused by kamma? (Moggalli vs the Andhakas)
https://legacy.suttacentral.net/en/kv7.7

Is sound caused by kamma? (Moggalli vs the Mahāsanghikas)
https://legacy.suttacentral.net/en/kv12.3

Is everything caused by kamma? (Moggalli vs the Rājagirikas and Siddhatthikas)
https://legacy.suttacentral.net/en/kv17.3

Can kamma make one fall away from arahantship? (Moggalli vs the Pubbaseliyas and Sammitīyas)
https://legacy.suttacentral.net/en/kv8.11

Etc., etc.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 31, 2021 4:42 AM
Title: Re: Are the Mahāyāna "sutras" such as Shurangama Sutra real Buddha's teaching?
Content:
https://legacy.suttacentral.net/en/ja77


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 31, 2021 3:41 AM
Title: Re: Do you need jhana to attain nibbana ?
Content:
No. What leads you to suppose that I might think that?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Mon Mar 29, 2021 3:13 PM
Title: Re: Trustworthiness of Early Commentaries
Content:
1. There are several questions on which a philologist qua philologist wouldn't take any position at all. That is, whatever his private convictions may be, so long as he's wearing his philologist's hat you're unlikely to find him opining on such things as supernormal powers, patisambhidās, paths and fruits.

2. Since it's an indisputable fact that the commentators had named texts available to them that are no longer extant, the "Having more ancient materials in hand..." clause ought to be "high"for all three.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 27, 2021 6:56 PM
Title: Re: Ordination (pabbaja) for gays
Content:
No, it's uncommon.

Most monasteries go along with what is stated about pandakas in Buddhaghosa's Vinaya Commentary. According to this, although [what we nowadays call] "homosexuals" are a class of pandakas, they don't belong to that sub-class of pandakas who are prohibited to ordain.

Thai monasteries that prohibit the ordination of homosexuals tend to be ones where either the abbot is a traditionally raised ethnic Chinese (e.g., the late Ajahn Buddhadāsa) or where a large number of lay supporters are from the urban Chinese commercial or professional classes. Wat Dhammakaya would be an example of the latter.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 27, 2021 3:59 PM
Title: Re: Do you need jhana to attain nibbana ?
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 27, 2021 3:15 PM
Title: Re: Can we accept secular Buddhism as Buddhism?
Content:
In which academic discipline(s) is it the consensus that Buddhism needs to be categorised as something other than a religion? And what does the consensus hold that it should be categorised as?


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 27, 2021 1:00 PM
Title: Re: Jhana
Content:
Anyone wishing to discuss jhāna in relation to Hindu methods are invited to start a new thread in Connections to other Paths.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 26, 2021 6:33 PM
Title: Re: Do you need jhana to attain nibbana ?
Content:
I'm mystified as to why you think this sutta passage lends any support at all to your view. It seems to me to be completely neutral on the disputed question.

You may take the word 'abiding' in the passage that you've highlighted in bold as referring to the first jhāna. I take it to be the abiding in the deathless element.

You may take the words that I've highlighted in blue as referring to an action undertaken while still in the first absorption. I take it to be an action undertaken after emergence from it.

And so the passage, though amenable to both readings, isn't really probative of either of them.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 26, 2021 9:22 AM
Title: Re: Book Study: Early Buddhist Meditation Studies (Analayo)
Content:
No. There might, however, be the illusion of being simultaneously mindul and hindrance-afflicted. 

Suppose the mental continuum underwent a prolonged oscillation between hate-rooted unwholesome javana processes and wholesome javana processes in which the preceding hate-rooted cittas were the object. If the wholesome processes involved mahākusala cittas *dissociated* from knowledge, then the absence of paññā in such cittas might later lead one to misconstrue what had happened and fall into the Sarvāstivāda error of non-retrospective mindfulness of defiled states.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 26, 2021 6:28 AM
Title: Re: Saḷāyatana - etymology?
Content:
The retroflexes ḍ and ḷ are phonetically similar and when occurring as the final consonant in a syllable are virtually interchangeable. Rather like the phonetically similar labials b and v when occurring as initial consonants: byāpāda vs vyāpāda.

And so it's common to find a Pali word that is spelled with one consonant in one edition of a text, but with the other in another edition. Likewise it's common to meet with words that are spelled with ḍ in Sanskrit but ḷ in Pali, or with ḷ in Sanskrit but ḍ in Pali.

When cha ('six') occurs as the initial morpheme in a compound and is followed by a morpheme beginning with a vowel, it will usually change to chaḷ-, as in chaḷabhiññā, 'six higher knowledges'. The change of cha to saḷ- is much less common. In fact I can't immediately think of any example other than saḷāyatana.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Fri Mar 26, 2021 5:15 AM
Title: Re: Book Study: Early Buddhist Meditation Studies (Analayo)
Content:
I think sati is a beautiful cetasika.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 25, 2021 8:28 PM
Title: Re: Venerable Gyо̄nen on Japanese Śrāvakayāna
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 25, 2021 10:24 AM
Title: Food Fights and Table Manners
Content:
https://www.academia.edu/40264143/Food_Fights_and_Table_Manners_food_bodies_and_ideology_in_the_d%C4%81na_encounter_of_Pali_Buddhism?email_work_card=view-paper


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Thu Mar 25, 2021 7:06 AM
Title: Re: Venerable Gyо̄nen on Japanese Śrāvakayāna
Content:
That the Dharmaguptaka school was founded by a monk of that name is corroborated in Tibetan sources. There's a translation of them in Rockhill's Life of the the Buddha and the Early History of his Order, derived from Tibetan works in the Bkah-hgyur and the Bstan-hgyur.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 24, 2021 8:16 PM
Title: Re: Jhana in other traditions
Content:
3. The Cousins article that Gethin alludes to:

Lance S. Cousins, The Stages of Christian Mysticism and Buddhist Purification: The Interior Castle of St. Teresa of Avila and The Path of Purification of Buddhaghosa

https://www.academia.edu/4364149/The_stages_of_Christian_mysticism_and_Buddhist_purification


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Wed Mar 24, 2021 11:25 AM
Title: Re: Book Study: Early Buddhist Meditation Studies (Analayo)
Content:
I suggest you first read the Mahāvagga of the Samyutta Nikāya in Bhikkhu Bodhi's translation (Connected Discourses vol II), and then Soma's translation of the Satipatthāna Sutta and its commentary:

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/soma/wayof.html


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 23, 2021 5:55 AM
Title: Re: sarcasm
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Tue Mar 23, 2021 3:37 AM
Title: Re: sarcasm
Content:



Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 20, 2021 10:02 PM
Title: Re: why attainments are not impermanent?
Content:
The anāgāmin has cut off the fetter of ill will. The fetter is now permanently absent in him.

This doesn't contradict the teaching that all sankhāras are impermanent, for an absence of something isn't a sankhāra.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 20, 2021 9:24 PM
Title: Re: Which pali word is negativity ?
Content:
As for arati's meaning, though in some places its a- prefix is merely privative (i.e. mere absence of rati) this isn't common. Meanings like discontent, boredom, resentment and, in later texts, envy are more usual.


Author: Dhammanando
Date: Sat Mar 20, 2021 8:27 PM
Title: Re: Which pali word is negativity ?
Content:
"Negativity" is a psychobabble term for discontent. 

Who is the translator?


