--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, "Bhante Sujato" <sujato@...> wrote:

>
> Junet, yes i did give a talk on the structure of the Buddha's
> teachings, and published a book on the topic called The GIST. Alas,
> it's already out-of-date and revisions are underway. I think that
> certain ideas pursued by Ven Yin Shun and others are leading to one
> of the great breakthroughs that Gombrich talked about in his book.
> To sum up briefly: the large scale structure of the Dhamma (textual
> teachings) in its earliest redaction was modelled after the
> structure of the Dhamma (truth of reality) itself, the 4 noble
> truths. This is approximately what we today call the Samyutta
> Nikaya/Agama. I started pursuing such matters almost by accident,
> and the significance of it is only just starting to become clear to
> me.
>

I hope that one day we would have English translation of Ven. Yin
Shun's works, particularly, _The Formation of Early Buddhist Texts_.
At least a clear and critical introductory English article of the
book should come to exist. So, the wider Buddhist communities in the
world could know why and how the Samyutta-nikaya/Samyukta-agama is
historically an earliest collection of the Nikayas/Agamas, which Ven.
Yin Shun suggests.

Thomas Law