Dear Khael, Dimitry, Piya and friends,
I would prefer to use 'boundless and unlimited' to describe Brahma
Vihara, a sublime mental state transcending any form of attachment.
I would like to share about what Piya wrote about explaining sutta
with sutta. This is a long-held practice in chinese buddhism: Yi3
Jing1 Jie3 Jing1 (ÈãSðãS). The Taiwanese scholar-monk, Ven. Yin
Shun, had even written a long passage about this practice, now
included in his Miao Yun (Wonderful Clouds) Series (_W).
Of particular interest to me is what the protestant christians had
done. After the Reformation, the protestants could no longer rely on
the Catholic books, which they claimed to be erroneous. So, they are
left with just the bible, the only authority they consider divine.
And today what we see is a great deal of works on cross-referencing
within the 66 books of the bible.
Personally, I think this is a good point we can learn from the
christians. However, we are not facing the problem the protestants
faced with the catholic literature, so we have the advantage and
benefit of referencing the pioneering works by earlier commentators
and save ourselves from reinventing the wheel!
metta,
Yong Peng
--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, Piya Tan wrote:
> What I love about the Pali Suttas (the canon I mean) is their
innate simplicity, where different sections of the canon help explain
difficulties elsewhere (even without Commentaries, which are of
course useful).