kirk5a wrote:tiltbillings wrote:Than what point are you making?
That Jack's baseless speculation that Ajahn Maha Bua "has placed these quite doctrinally radical (i.e. not found in the Sutta Pitaka) ideas in the mouth of" Ajahn Mun is plainly contradicted by the writing of Ajahn Mun himself, where the very things which one might suppose to be "doctrinally radical" appear.
I don't agree they are "doctrinally radical" in the first place, but that's another question.
Not agreeing with it and being able to support your assertion are two different things also.
Anyone being honest with themselves who has read both the biography and most of the Nikayas would come to a similar view point: There are many elements within the biography which contradict the word of the Buddha of the Sutta Pitaka. I will happily if you desire, over the coming months make a re-reading of the biography, and then make lists of sutta quotes to contradict each point of contention I find, by memory there were many.
As for the theory of Ajahn Maha Boowa using Ajahn Mun as a literary device to implant his ideas, I don't think that's a baseless speculation at all, and I'm sorry you found it offensive, but people
are allowed to express ideas here, not all of which you will agree with.
As for your posting of the 'Ballad of Liberation' as supposed proof of otherwise. I will address two points, the first is found within the introduction and requires little further discussion:
Translating the poem has presented a number of difficulties, not the least of which has been getting a definitive reading of the original manuscript. Ajaan Mun wrote during the days before Thai spelling became standardized, some of the passages were smudged with age, and a few seem to have been "corrected" by a later hand.
The second point is this:
The only thing I see that really relates to the problems I find between Ajahn Maha Boowa's doctrine and the Buddha of the Sutta Pitaka in the poem is this idea of the primal mind. However in the poem this idea is not much elaborated upon as it is by Ajahn Maha Boowa, mere mention of the primal mind is not enough to convince me (or should it anyone else with a critical thinking faculty) that Ajahn Mun was the espouser of the doctrine found in the biography. After all, I could hunt out a sutta that speaks of the mind be essentially illuminant, but that it is clouded by the defilements, that sounds quite similar in my mind to Ajahn Mun's use of primal mind - But that doesn't mean that consciousness or any other aspect of the being continues after paranibbana in such a way that it can ascend into 'nibbana realm' and descend at will, and can communicate with other beings and congratulate new arahants, and such a radical -
Yes radical - idea finds no support in either the Sutta Pitaka nor in the Poem by Ajahn Mun, but it
is espoused by Ven. Maha Boowa in the biography.
In the poem, Ven. Mun states: "Inconstancy is a feature of the heart itself" so then at least to him the heart was anicca, and thus a dhamma - a thing. Ven. Maha Boowa on the other hand seems to have settled on the idea that the citta is not a dhamma, that it does not exist and so is permanent - That is something we do not find in Ajahn Mun's writings.
I think if anything the poem just shows further that there is enough evidence in my opinion to warrant the theory that the Ajahn Mun of actuality and the Ajahn Mun presented in Ven. Maha Boowa's biography are two different kettle of fish, and if that is so - Then the Ajahn Mun of the biography had to come from somewhere, and if not history, then someone's or some group's imagination.
With metta
Jack