Dear kind and venerable friends,
Probably Jim is correct, in both senses: incorrect transmissions,
straight-out misunderstandings; and we might add misunderstandings based on
incorrect transmissions as a third category!
But, on the other hand, quite seriously, isn't the most essential point of
the verbal teachings - without any room for doubt - to get beyond the verbal
teachings, to the experience that transcends all verbalising and thinking?
You yourselves are very familiar with so many examples of this principle
throughout the Nikāyā. Just one random, for example, from D i.45 (
Brahmajālasuttaṃ):
"yato kho, bhikkhave, bhikkhu channaṃ phassāyatanānaṃ samudayañca
atthaṅgamañca
assādañca ādīnavañca nissaraṇañca yathābhūtaṃ pajānāti, ayaṃ imehi
sabbeheva uttaritaraṃ pajānāti."
"It is, brethren, when a brother understands, as they really are, the origin
and the end, the attraction, the danger, and the way of escape from the six
realms of contact, that he gets to know what is above, beyond, them all."
(Rhys Davids)
That includes the work of mano, and of course, attachment to the work of
mano, which is something which we have to be very careful of - both novices,
like myself, and more experienced scholars, like yourselves - since our
study of the Pali texts is very much a work of mano. And then, it's
interesting to remember that vitakka vicāra are supposed to drop out
completely already after the first jhāna! So, the very first step is to get
from meditation with what might be called 'gross thinking' to meditation
'without gross thinking'. The texts can only be a springboard for that
step.
The value of the words and thinking that constitute the Buddhadhamma is to
keep reminding us that we have to drop words and thinking and get beyond
them. Would you agree with that?
So I honestly believe (with all respect to Jim) that the Buddhavacana is not
lost at all: to the contrary, the message is profoundly simple and direct
amd ever-present. But it's the hardest thing in life to practise and
attain. And we have to be careful that our reverence for and love for the
'medium' (which, like all else, is impermanent and susceptible of corruption
and decay) doesn't prevent us from penetrating and acting upon the
'message'.
Much metta,
Khristos
On 18 July 2010 08:19, Bryan Levman <bryan.levman@...> wrote:
>
>
> Hi Jim,
> < < I suspect that more than half of the original meaning of the
> Buddhavacana
> has already been lost and can never be fully recovered until the next
> appearance of a Sammāsambuddha. Perhaps, with a lot of hard work we might
> be
> able to recover a tiny little bit...> >
>
> Do you mean from incorrect-transmission of the original oral teachings (i.
> e.
> mistaken alterations) or misunderstandings of the teachings, or both?
>
>
> Bryan
>
> ________________________________
> From: Jim Anderson <jimanderson_on@... <jimanderson_on%40yahoo.ca>>
> To: palistudy@yahoogroups.com <palistudy%40yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Sat, July 17, 2010 2:34:39 PM
>
> Subject: Re: [palistudy] Mmd-p.t passage regarding Kc 1 (2 of 3)
>
> Dear Khristos,
>
> Thanks for weighing in on the discussion with your ideas. You have given us
>
> much to think about. I will only touch on a small part for now and will
> probably comment on some others later on when I have more time.
>
> You wrote:
> (2.2) The second idea might seem even farther removed from you text and its
> meaning, but there may also be an interesting parallelism. The root ‘pad’
> in ‘ni.s-pad’ is supposed to have the primary meaning, ‘to fall’, and that
> is probably where the sense of ‘pad’, ‘foot’, and hence ‘pada’ and ‘pāda’,
> ‘step, pace, stride; footstep, footprint, footfall’ (audible and visible);
> and so also, ‘word, verse, measure’, and so on. (There seems to be deep
> connection between the movement of walking in steps and the movement of
> speaking in words, which may be both analogical and ‘biological’.)
>
> Going back to the sense of ‘to fall’, cf. ‘padyate’ and ‘ni.spadyate’:
> under
> ‘pajjati’, PED notes that the Vedic ‘padyate’ had only the sense ‘to come
> to
> fall’, the later Skt. also ‘to go to’. >>
>
> Jim:
> The Dhātumālā (the 2nd volume of the Saddanīti) gives "gati" (motion) as
> the
> meaning of the root "pad" (1127, 1493 pada gatiyaṃ). The root for "to fall"
>
> that I normally associate this with is "pat" (391, 1454 pata gatiyaṃ)
> although "pad" and "pat" share the same root meaning. For "nippajjati" (or
> nipphajjati) we might consider what the prefix (upasagga) "ni" could
> possibly mean. One can find a list of its meanings in the Suttamālā (Sadd
> III 885) which gives first a verse with 14 meanings followed by a paragraph
>
> with an example or two for each of its meanings. Unfortunately there are
> none given for ni+pad among the very few examples. Sometimes if one checks
> the commentaries one can find the meaning of a prefix given in a derivation
>
> (nibbacana). It would help if one could find such for a word derived from
> ni+pad. If not, we're left with the Sadd list of 14 or the more extensive
> one at Abh 1165-7.
>
> One could go through the two lists and come up with a short list of the
> meanings for "ni" that seem to fit "pad". I think the meaning "avasāne"
> (end, finish, comclusion) with its example "niṭṭhitaṃ" (finished,
> completed)
> could apply to ni + pad (to go to a conclusion, end) in the sense of "to
> complete, finish, accomplish, perfect". Nipphanna has a close connection to
>
> siddha (cf. Abh 748), and probably also nipphatti to siddhi. Rūpasiddhi,
> siddha, sijjhati are frequently used in describing how a word is formed. I
> see another possibility with "vibhajane niddeso" suggestive of analysis. So
>
> it does seem to me that the original meaning depends on how we interpret
> the
> prefix "ni". I would like to mention that the meaning of the root "phal" is
>
> "nipphatti" according to Sadd (772 phala nipphattiyaṃ). When I think of
> phala, I think of fruit, fruition, result.
>
> I suspect that more than half of the original meaning of the Buddhavacana
> has already been lost and can never be fully recovered until the next
> appearance of a Sammāsambuddha. Perhaps, with a lot of hard work we might
> be
> able to recover a tiny little bit...
>
> Best wishes, Jim
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]