--- Hi Robert

>
> Hope you are well and happy.

====
Dear Jou,
yes thanks, currently in rude good health and spirits. I hope you
are the same.


===========In Pali@yahoogroups.com, "Norman Joseph Smith"
<josmith.1@...> wrote>

> I appreciate you supplying that quote. I have come across quotes
> like this before, e.g. D ii 196-7 = DN 17:
>
>
> Now Aananda, you might think that King Mahaasudassana at that time
> was somebody else. But you whould not regard it so, for I was King
> Mahaasudassana then..."
>
> The problem I have with them is they would contradict the Buddha's
> teaching given so many times as the pracitce of Insight and Right
> View as not thinking "I am [any of the five clinging aggregates]"
> or "I am not [any of the five clinging aggregates]".
>
> As well as that it is not surprising to me, thinking the
> physiological interpretaion of the three insight knowledges
> [tevijjaa] is a later teaching, that these ideas are usually found
> in Nikaayan texts that most scholars take as later texts, i.e.
> Anguttara and Diigha as opposed to Majjhima and Samyutta.
> ==================

there are two issues here: the most important being whether
rebirth/past/future lives can be accomodated by the core teaching of
anatta.
The other is whether only the Vinaya and Majjhima and samyutta
nikayas are valid (the rest of the Tipitika being corrupt).
In this post I would like to look at the latter issue.
Jou,
if your theory is that any references to rebirth and past/future
lives could not be made by the Buddha, and that any suttas that
suggest this must be of late origin, then by definition you will
only find suttas that support your theory. It seems a flawed way to
evaluate the Tipitika?
Anyway I have copies of the Majjhima and Samyutta and will see if
there are any references to past/future lives.
RobertK