The Satipatthana Sutta a forgery?

Textual analysis and comparative discussion on early Buddhist sects and scriptures.
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retrofuturist
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Re: The Satipatthana Sutta a forgery?

Post by retrofuturist »

Greetings,

For anyone concerned about the Satipatthana Sutta, there is always SN 47: Satipatthanasamyutta... which (in Bhikkhu Bodhi's translation, ignoring notes) provides 41 pages of satipatthana goodness.

Metta,
Retro. :)
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Re: The Satipatthana Sutta a forgery?

Post by mikenz66 »

Sure, lots of good stuff there, with many of the good similes.

I like the account of Brahma Sahampati popping in to confirm to the newly-awakened Buddha that Satipatthana is, indeed, the one-way path (SN 47:18):
“The seer of the destruction of birth,
Compassionate, knows the one-way path
By which in the past they crossed the flood,
By which they will cross and cross over now.”
:anjali:
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Ben
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Re: The Satipatthana Sutta a forgery?

Post by Ben »

Hi Retro,
retrofuturist wrote:Greetings,

For anyone concerned about the Satipatthana Sutta, there is always SN 47: Satipatthanasamyutta... which (in Bhikkhu Bodhi's translation, ignoring notes) provides 41 pages of satipatthana goodness.

Metta,
Retro. :)
Why would one ignore the notes?
kind regards,

Ben
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Re: The Satipatthana Sutta a forgery?

Post by retrofuturist »

Greetings Ben,
Ben wrote:Why would one ignore the notes?
In order to count how many pages of Satipatthanasamyutta there are in Bhikkhu Bodhi's translation of course.

Metta,
Retro. :)
"Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."
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Re: The Satipatthana Sutta a forgery?

Post by Ben »

oh ok!
“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725

Compassionate Hands Foundation (Buddhist aid in Myanmar) • Buddhist Global ReliefUNHCR

e: [email protected]..
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Assaji
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Re: The Satipatthana Sutta a forgery?

Post by Assaji »

Hi,

Here's some translations from the Chinese Agamas by N J Smith, including the Chinese counterpart of Satipatthana sutta:

http://dhamma.ru/paali/trs.from_Agamas.7z" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Best wishes, Dmytro
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Re: The Satipatthana Sutta a forgery?

Post by tiltbillings »

Dmytro wrote:Hi,

Here's some translations from the Chinese Agamas by N J Smith, including the Chinese counterpart of Satipatthana sutta:

http://dhamma.ru/paali/trs.from_Agamas.7z" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Best wishes, Dmytro
Thanks. That should be interesting. Now all I have to do is get a ".7z" thingie to unzip it.
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

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Re: The Satipatthana Sutta a forgery?

Post by Virgo »

tiltbillings wrote:
Dmytro wrote:Hi,

Here's some translations from the Chinese Agamas by N J Smith, including the Chinese counterpart of Satipatthana sutta:

http://dhamma.ru/paali/trs.from_Agamas.7z" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Best wishes, Dmytro
Thanks. That should be interesting. Now all I have to do is get a ".7z" thingie to unzip it.
Hi,

Usually one can open .zip files without a program. Simply download and save the file. Find it in your files, right click and then click open. By manually opening it you bypass the need for extracting with through a program, but the way these ones are archived, it doesn't seem to work.

Edit: Nevermind. These are .7z or something.

Kevin
Last edited by Virgo on Sun Mar 04, 2012 4:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Satipatthana Sutta a forgery?

Post by Assaji »

Thanks. That should be interesting. Now all I have to do is get a ".7z" thingie to unzip it.
You are welcome.

http://www.7-zip.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Re: The Satipatthana Sutta a forgery?

Post by mikenz66 »

Thanks, Dmytro, nice to be able to read the translation, not just comments about it.

:anjali:
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Re: The Satipatthana Sutta a forgery?

Post by Kare »

I have to admit that I am thoroughly puzzled by this thread.

I have translated the Digha Nikaya into Norwegian and now I am working my way through the Majjhima Nikaya. In addition I have translated parts of the other Nikayas. The more I translate, the more I recognize modules in the texts. Part of my work then is to recognize modules, search for them in what I have already translated, and then mark, copy and paste. After copying and pasting, a final check to see if there may be minor variations, for example in names etc.

The texts that I already have translated thus functions as a database for those standard text modules, and the modules can be combined in different ways.

This shows something of what was going on in the minds and memories of the early monks who preserved the texts orally. I am deeply impressed to see how their brains worked like a computer with a good text processing program. They memorized texts, recognized basic text modules and often recombined those modules into new text units. Most (or all) of the texts in DN and MN consist of those modules, edited and recombined in new settings.

Thus it can be argued that only the shorter texts in the Anguttara and the Samyutta are original texts, since they often consist of only one such module. Or we may take the opposite view, and say that the shorter one-module texts are extracted from longer texts containing several modules. From such a view one might argue that the MN is more original. We simply do not know for certain.

So what? Are the Suttas all forgeries, then? Or are all the short Suttas forgeries? Or are all the long Suttas forgeries?

Those who bring the word "forgery" into this debate, obviously do not understand the nature of this process of memorizing and transmitting modules. And to criticize ONE of the long Suttas for consisting of modules, when this is a demonstrable aspect of ALL the longer Suttas, seems rather strange to me. This Bhikkhu Sujato who seems to be the one who brought up this theme, must be very ignorant of the Suttas. Or, if he knows the Suttas, has he got some hidden agenda by singling out ONE of the long Suttas for criticism?

I do not know. But it is difficult to take such a criticism, based on deep ignorance, seriously. :shrug:
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Re: The Satipatthana Sutta a forgery?

Post by piotr »

Hi Kare,

Don't you think that it would be more appropriate to draw any conclusions about venerable Sujāto's work after you know it directly by yourself to some extent? It seems to me that you're relying on second hand informations only.
Last edited by piotr on Mon Mar 05, 2012 1:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Satipatthana Sutta a forgery?

Post by daverupa »

Cross-reference, including a(nother) link to Bhante Sujato's work on the subject.
  • "And how is it, bhikkhus, that by protecting oneself one protects others? By the pursuit, development, and cultivation of the four establishments of mindfulness. It is in such a way that by protecting oneself one protects others.

    "And how is it, bhikkhus, that by protecting others one protects oneself? By patience, harmlessness, goodwill, and sympathy. It is in such a way that by protecting others one protects oneself.

- Sedaka Sutta [SN 47.19]
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Re: The Satipatthana Sutta a forgery?

Post by Kare »

piotr wrote:Hi Kare,

Don't you think that it would be more appropriate to draw any conclusions about venerable Sujāto's work after you know it directly by yourself to some extent? It seems to me that you're relying on second hand informations only.
I am not drawing any conclusions. I am just puzzled by what has been written in this thread, since much of it seems to be based on ignorance of a basic aspect of the Suttas. I leave it to others to conclude.
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Re: The Satipatthana Sutta a forgery?

Post by ancientbuddhism »

In Pāli Philology and the Study of Buddhism Norman presents a rather dismal, although amusing account of how MIA texts have come to us; deficiencies in Pali Text Society Pāḷi texts and how translations have been built upon them and others, notwithstanding unresolved controversies.
  • "...We know very little about the translation techniques which were adopted by those early translators and we have no idea what steps were taken to ensure that the manuscript or manuscripts from which they were making their translations contained a correct version of the text. We know from the records of the Chinese pilgrims that they sometimes obtained a single manuscript of a text to take back to China, from which in due course they or their successors made their translation. Without more information we cannot be certain that the Sanskrit (or very occasionally Pāli) version from which they made their translation was free from errors. Even if it was, then we must remember that the Sanskrit version was in turn, a translation from some variety of Middle Indo-Aryan dialect, and even if we can establish the form of the Sanskrit version correctly, all it tells us is what the person or persons responsible for making that translation thought his Middle Indo-Aryan exemplar meant. It does not prove that he was correct in his interpretation. It cannot be emphasized too much that all the versions of canonical Hīnayāna Buddhists texts which we possess are translations, and even the earliest we possess are translations of some still earlier version, now lost." (ibid. p.33-34)
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