Nyana wrote:What criteria is one to use to differentiate Buddhavacana from texts which arose out of historical processes?
I consider any Buddhavacana texts to be historical texts, while not all historical texts are Buddhavacana. I consider the Nikayas to be a broad, complex, chronological development with respect to the Dhamma, rather than a single product of The First Council which looks the same now as it did then (to say nothing of thinking of the Abhidhamma as First Council-era material - the Nikayas and the Pali Canon are not the same set of texts).
This is all a preliminary point of view for approaching the Nikayas 'from the West', 'in my case'.
daverupa wrote:You asked me to consider your other replies on this thread, so that we might have "something relevant to discuss." Now you retard further substantive discussion...
Sigh.
doesn't this characterization of dhamma narratives as "pre-modern mythical scholastic creation[s]" already presuppose postmodern assumptions?
Pre-modern is descriptive. Mythical is descriptive. Scholastic refers to the historical embedded-ness of the Nikayas within Theravada orthodoxy. Creation is probably the only presumption here: I see the Nikayas as carriers of the material created by the Buddha and built up over time, and not as precisely coextensive with that primary created material.
why not dismiss the entire Vinayapiṭaka
Because that's the baby and the bathwater. (But I see no reason to keep the garudhammas around, for example.)
why not conclude that the arahant fruition is itself an invented myth
There's no apparent reason to conclude that. It's the raison d'être of the texts to begin with.
I'm sorry for thinking of this sort of question as disingenuous and confrontational, discarding it as uninteresting without addressing it.
Is a secular framework the only way to enter the noble path in this day and age?
Loaded question, this time. As to whether it's
ever useful, well, I think so, and you seem to disagree.
So how do you appreciate them?
I've
already said how I treat them, how I consider them, and so forth, at some length, and I don't think I missed a question from your recent battery (though please mention any).
How do
you appreciate them - realms, gods, big fish, favoritism towards India with respect to where Buddhas seem to arise? Please respond in kind.