most distilled dhamma?

[Justsit]

Sabba papassa akaranam,
kusalassa upasampada
sacittapariyodapanam:
etam Buddhanusasanam


To avoid evil,
To do good,
To purify the mind,
This is the advice of all the Buddhas.

source

[alan...]

anguttara? i would have guessed samyutta. i suppose both are jam packed with small, easily digested wisdom. what makes you pick anguttara over samyutta out of curiosity?

Anguttara Nikaya rules! You mean you haven't read my book?? (see link below in my signature)

The Anguttara Nikaya has the most suttas directed toward lay people than any other Nikaya. It lists the Dhamma teachings by numbers and presents it in a nice summary format. It also has teachings not found in other Nikayas, i.e., there is not so much of the repetition found in other Nikayas.

Here are some quick reference highlights:

http://thedhamma.com/anguttaranikaya.htm

sweet thank you! i have read a ton of the samyutta and a fair share of the anguttara,i guess i need to read more anguttara! i almost bought one of your books long ago that lists the buddhas lists or something before i knew who you were! now that i matched up two and two the book is like 400 dollars or something since it's not available or whatever. i wish i had bought it back then when it was cheap!

[alan...]

lots of good answers guys but my OP was asking

as small as you can get it but have it still be a complete path that someone could follow without anything else.

i'm looking for something that is condensed AND complete. just a phrase or a single very short sutta is not enough for someone to use alone with no other help or knowledge. like perhaps a single book on buddhism or something. a good example is some stuff by or compilations of mahasi sayadaw's stuff. if you took all of his writings and others who wrote under him and put it in one big book it would be a complete path but very condensed compared to the tipitaka. that's just an example, and may not even be a good or accurate one but it's the general idea. or some may say a certain long sutta may be the complete training, such as "the expanding decades" or another like that, and again, that sutta is just an example and probably a bad one, just a general idea. something that is VERY inclusive and could theoretically lead one from step one to the end.

also david's suggestion of the anguttara nikaya is a perfect example of what i'm talking about.

to those of you who posted single suttas or small amounts of text, if you really think these could be complete stand alone trainings that would need nothing else to guide someone could you elaborate how?

[SDC]

The amount that one needs to hear/read in order to develop to a high level depends on their ability to understand the dhamma. For some it may take one sentence for others it may take a million. Actually I recall a sutta where it a 9 year old boy attained arahantship as soon a razor blade hit his head for shaving when he ordained.

People do not know your ability, therefore it is difficult for them to give you the amount that you would need in order to develop.

Read the suttas. Listen to lectures. See what resonates. Follow what makes the most sense. See how it begins to have an influence on your experience. If you put your time in, your practice will naturally become very, very organized and you'll finally feel like everything is moving in one direction rather than a million.

That will condense the chaos. Just my 2 pennies.

[alan...]

The amount that one needs to hear/read in order to develop to a high level depends on their ability to understand the dhamma. For some it may take one sentence for others it may take a million. Actually I recall a sutta where it a 9 year old boy attained arahantship as soon a razor blade hit his head for shaving when he ordained.

People do not know your ability, therefore it is difficult for them to give you the amount that you would need in order to develop.

Read the suttas. Listen to lectures. See what resonates. Follow what makes the most sense. See how it begins to have an influence on your experience. If you put your time in, your practice will naturally become very, very organized and you'll finally feel like everything is moving in one direction rather than a million.

That will condense the chaos. Just my 2 pennies.

i see no reason why one could not condense things. if nothing else seems plausible to you then what about simply taking all the duplicate suttas out of the tipitaka? this is a condensation, albeit fairly small, but nonetheless would be what i'm talking about and it would still be a complete exposition of the dhamma. that's a broad example. they are out there. i'm quite certain there are things that are designed to be enough for just about anybody and are smaller than the entire tipitaka.

[fig tree]

I don't know what counts as the most distilled, but if you search http://www.accesstoinsight.org for "brief instruction" or "dhamma in brief" you can find a lot of suttas in which a monk or nun gets a nice epitome of the dhamma, presumably tailored to their own needs. For example:

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an08/an08.053.than.html

Fig Tree

[polarbuddha101]

I don't know what counts as the most distilled, but if you search http://www.accesstoinsight.org for "brief instruction" or "dhamma in brief" you can find a lot of suttas in which a monk or nun gets a nice epitome of the dhamma, presumably tailored to their own needs. For example:

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an08/an08.053.than.html

Fig Tree

This is actually a great idea.



http://www.accesstoinsight.org/search_r ... a+in+brief

[SDC]

i see no reason why one could not condense things.

I never said you shouldn't. However...

You've said in other threads that the body of literature is sort of overwhelming, correct? I do not want you to feel that way about it, because I know it can be a discouraging feeling. What I want you to see, is that is you dive in, immerse yourself in it, let it become your life, then it organizes itself.

[alan...]

i see no reason why one could not condense things.

I never said you shouldn't. However...

You've said in other threads that the body of literature is sort of overwhelming, correct? I do not want you to feel that way about it, because I know it can be a discouraging feeling. What I want you to see, is that is you dive in, immerse yourself in it, let it become your life, then it organizes itself.

gotcha, thanks!