Dhamma Wheel

Hello

I would agree some translators interfere with a text by dramatically changing the meaning due to their opinion of what it should say rather than what it says. I hope I'm not condemning commentary as a whole for anyone. I'm only calling for a more critical look at them. And definitely test the suttas...

Why do we need a meditation manual? The visuddhimagga is the prime example I had in mind of commentary contradicting suttas. The respectable robertk on this forum has called this text ancient but it's still after the five-hundred year period of uncorrupted dhamma. https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tip...

USA ^_^

I tried a camping mat and I liked it, but it was narrow, so I wouldn't be able to spread out like I like to. I've got serious back issues, so a little more thought goes into this than I'd like.

pilgrim wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 17, 2018 1:06 am

Why not?

Because some of them are wrong, and some of them are claimed to be buddha word or arahant disciple word and may not be. I would just like to understand this tendency to hold up the commentaries as authoritative, seemingly without scrutiny.

why believe either a commentary or a late text?

Where would I go about getting a bed for ideally less than a hundred dollars, that is fairly low to the ground and somewhat firm but supple enough for back issues.

What ever 'thing' we encounter in Dhamma we shouldn't let ourselves re-fit the Dhamma to our mind's inclining, but instead we should re-fit our minds. If gay people are another gender because of their sexual inclination, or some other interpretation we can muster, it doesn't change the sutta. And th...

"Even so, Prince, whatever speech the Tathāgata knows to be not fact, not true, not connected with the goal, and that is not liked by others, disagreeable to them, that speech the Tathāgata does not utter. And whatever speech a Tathāgata knows to be fact, true, but not connected with the goal, and ...

"'Everything exists': That is one extreme. 'Everything doesn't exist': That is a second extreme. Avoiding these two extremes, the Tathagata teaches the Dhamma via the middle: From ignorance as a requisite condition come fabrications... ...Such is the origination of this entire mass of stress & suff...

So I found an interesting passage in the vinaya. It says: On one occasion a monk went to a place of execution and said to the executioner, “Don’t torture him. Kill him with a single blow.” “All right, Venerable,” he said, and he killed him with a single blow. The monk became remorseful... “You have...

Remember, there is no self "Ananda, if I — being asked by Vacchagotta the wanderer if there is a self — were to answer that there is a self, that would be conforming with those brahmans & contemplatives who are exponents of eternalism [the view that there is an eternal, unchanging soul]. If I — bei...

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.21.2x.than.html http://obo.genaud.net/dhamma-vinaya/ati/mn/mn.049.than.ati.htm There are a great many suttas involving communication with heavenly beings, devas. And a sutta in particular that instructs us to dedicate offerings to devas. https://www.acc...

13. "Rāhula, develop meditation that is like the earth; for when you develop meditation that is like the earth, arisen agreeable and disagreeable contacts will not invade your mind and remain.[645] Just as people throw clean things and dirty things, excrement, urine, spittle, pus, and blood on the ...