Buddhist Scholar Steven Collins Dies at 66

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tiltbillings
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Buddhist Scholar Steven Collins Dies at 66

Post by tiltbillings »

This may be of interest to some here:

https://www.worldreligionnews.com/relig ... ns-dies-66
>> 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

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
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bodom
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Re: Buddhist Scholar Steven Collins Dies at 66

Post by bodom »

:candle: :candle: :candle:

:namaste:
Liberation is the inevitable fruit of the path and is bound to blossom forth when there is steady and persistent practice. The only requirements for reaching the final goal are two: to start and to continue. If these requirements are met there is no doubt the goal will be attained. This is the Dhamma, the undeviating law.

- BB
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Dhammanando
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Re: Buddhist Scholar Steven Collins Dies at 66

Post by Dhammanando »

:candle: :candle: :candle:


I'm sorry to hear of this. Collins and I nearly met a number of times when he was attending academic conferences in Asia, but somehow always contrived to miss each other.

From his last (and imo best) book:
[Vacchagotta] “The question is not appropriate (na upeti), Gotama, sir. The fire burnt because of its fuel of grass and sticks; since that (fuel) is exhausted and no other has been supplied, the fire is without fuel and so is designated ‘quenched’.”

The Buddha then applies the same reasoning to the enlightened person: it is for this reason that he or she is freed from being designated by the aggregates and to ask where he or she is is inappropriate.

This pattern of imagery led some early scholars to infer a specific doctrinal position, via an analogy with what they take to be early Indian scientific ideas about fire. I will look into this briefly, not for the post-Orientalist pleasure of making our ancestors and predecessors look foolish, but to make an interpretive point. Otto Schrader was perhaps the first to express the idea, in 1905. For him ‘the common Indian view is, since the oldest time [sic], that an expiring flame does not really go out, but returns into the primitive, pure, invisible state of fire it had before its appearance as visible fire.’ Erich Frauwallner’s espousal of the view (in 1953, English translation 1973) has been influential. He wrote that ‘the flaming up and extinction of fire means for the Indian of the ancient times not the origination and destruction of fire but that the already existing fire is therethrough visible and becomes again invisible’.

Insofar as it is an attempt to construe the aporias of nirvana, as do Buddhists, as not implying that after an enlightened person nirvanizes there is nothing, such an analysis might be commended. But it must be rejected, for two main reasons. First, the texts Schrader and Frauwallner cite are, with one exception, Brahmanical, and all are later than the earliest Buddhist texts: to argue that they represent the ‘ancient Indian’ view in its entirety simply begs the question of whether Buddhism shared that view (in the logical sense of petitio principii: assuming the truth of what the argument is supposed to establish). It seems to me more likely that the Brahmanical texts were trying to rationalize, according to their own understanding, the dramatic and quite un-Brahmanical fire-image that the success of Buddhism had made popular. This is, perhaps, debatable; but the second reason is decisive. In the majority of uses of fire-imagery in Buddhist texts, the fires that go out or go down like the sun, are – like the three fires of Greed, Hatred, and Delusion – precisely what must be wholly eliminated for release to be possible. If these fires simply returned to their ‘primitive, pure, invisible’ state, then, according to Buddhist logic and psychology, their invisible existence and potential reappearance would make release impossible.

To concretize the fire-image into a conceptually specific doctrine as do Schrader and Frauwallner is an example of what I have described as filling Buddhist silences, interpreting and then vocalizing their meaning. Scholars who do this often have their own account of what Buddhism must really mean, one that is divergent from the discourse of Buddhism itself.

(Nirvana: Concept, Imagery, Narrative, pp. 83-4. Not to be confused with his earlier book, Nirvana and Other Buddhist Felicities)
Rūpehi bhikkhave arūpā santatarā.
Arūpehi nirodho santataro ti.


“Bhikkhus, the formless is more peaceful than the form realms.
Cessation is more peaceful than the formless realms.”
(Santatarasutta, Iti 73)
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Lucas Oliveira
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Re: Buddhist Scholar Steven Collins Dies at 66

Post by Lucas Oliveira »

:candle:

:anjali:
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retrofuturist
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Re: Buddhist Scholar Steven Collins Dies at 66

Post by retrofuturist »

Greetings,
Dhammanando wrote: Sat Mar 31, 2018 4:01 am ... is an example of what I have described as filling Buddhist silences, interpreting and then vocalizing their meaning. Scholars who do this often have their own account of what Buddhism must really mean, one that is divergent from the discourse of Buddhism itself.
Sounds like a wise scholar to have the wherewithal to discern (and presumably avoid) such tendencies...

:candle:

Metta,
Paul. :)
"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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cappuccino
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Re: Buddhist Scholar Steven Collins Dies at 66

Post by cappuccino »

Insofar as it is an attempt to construe the aporias of nirvana, as do Buddhists, as not implying that after an enlightened person nirvanizes there is nothing, such an analysis might be commended. But it must be rejected

"Don't say that, friend Yamaka. Don't misrepresent the Blessed One. It's not good to misrepresent the Blessed One, for the Blessed One would not say, 'A monk with no more effluents, on the break-up of the body, is annihilated, perishes, & does not exist after death.'"
Yamaka Sutta
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