Dhammarakkhito wrote: ↑Mon May 28, 2018 7:15 pm
the visuddhimagga is very late and contradicts the suttas in several places
This represents a party-line modern, largely Western revisionist viewpoint.
The tendency to characterize differing historical perspectives as "contradictions" being a hallmark of this trend, empowering the conceit that such a modern viewpoint is so superior to 50 generations or so of dedicated monastic practitioners and scholars, including most of the living lineages in Asian Theravada Buddhism. And manifests often with a rapid evangelical self-certainty, not unlike many biblical literalist "born-again" type Christian proponents.
These modern viewpoints are, after all, some 1500 years later than the
Visuddhimagga, i.e. very, very much later, distant from the Buddha's time.
A broader historical view is likely to prove more worthwhile in the long run -- i.e. to observe the dlialectical developmental process of periods of interpretation with a more open mind, as unfashionable and subject to peer-group pressures as it may seem.