Hi Piya Tan, Dr Oo, Thomas

There is a Yin Shun Foundation in Taiwan that is undertaking a
complete translation into English of Yin Shun's entire corpus - a
considerable work. According to Rod Bucknell, though, they are
mainly focussing on his more popular, humanistic Buddhism work
first, rather than the serious scholarly researches. It would be
worth enquiring with them as to their progress. Maybe we can lobby
them to translate the 'Formation' quickly! Try asking Rod, or Choong
Mun-keat about this.

For Dr Oo, it's not that the GIST is out of print, but that some of
the research and information is out of date already. You should be
able to get copies from the Buddhist Fellowship in Singapore. Still,
most of it is still sound, and i think the overall ideas have been
substantially buttressed by several new bits of information.

Probably the most important is the complete contents of the Skt DA
(Sarvastivada), which i have just got details of. I dug around and
found the scholar who's working on the new manuscript finds, Jen-Uwe
Hartmann, and popped him off an email. He was kind enough to respond
with an article giving the latest research findings. Very exciting!
If anyone wants a copy, let me know offline and i'll forward the pdf
file. Give me a few days and i'll be able to post the essential
contents here.

Re the sattapanni cave, it's strange that you mention it, but i had
the same feeling. I'm not sure what the evidence is for identifying
it, but it seems far too small, even allowing for the obvious rock-
falls.

And as a notice regarding monks funerals, i should mention that the
funeral of Luang Po Pannavaddho has just taken place. He was the
senior westerner monk in Thailand, the vice-abbot at Ajahn Maha
Bua's monastery, and a highly respected practitioner. He died of
cancer, passing away peacefully. Ajahn Maha Bua has kindly offered
the relics to the western Sangha, and they will be distributed among
the various branches over the world. Apparently some have
crystallized already...

in Dhamma

Bhante Sujato

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, Piya Tan <libris@...> wrote:
> Dear Thomas,
>
> Do you (or anyone) know the pinyin version of Ven Yinshun's
book "The Formation of
> Early Buddhist Texts". I plan to buy this book and look for some
people who might be
> able to translate this book into English.
>
> I am looking for someone well versed in Buddhist Chinese. I will
do the English/Pali
> editing.
>
> Sukhi
>
> Piya
>
> ---------
>
> thomaslaw03 wrote:
>
> > --- 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
> >
> >
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> >