Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Bonjour Lal,
In your last post (#31738) speaking of Bodhiketu and ”Stream Entry”, you said : ”Apparently, he is discouraged by not being able to get there. But I am not sure he even knows what ”Stream Entry” means.” Could you gave me what ”you” mean by ”Stream Entry” who is not an ”ignorant comment”.
Merci, GrenierBonjour Lal,
I want to go back to your post #31724 and the article by Bodhiketu, ”Stages of the Path: Stream Entry and Beyond” (in Bodhiketu/Stream Entry & Beyond (WBR) 1 ) Bodhiketu mentions, on page 1 : ”The Western Buddhist Order has been going long enough now for there to be many of us who have practised sincerely and effectively for 20,30 and even 40 years. So are there Stream Entrants in the Order? If there are none, one could be forgeven for harbouring doubts. Has Sangharakshita overestimated our capacity? Have we failed to live up to our potential? Are the teachings and practices that we have adequate? ” I want to know why after you read his article, you said :” I don’t think he has a good understanding of Buddha Dhamma” What would be a good understanding? And in which way, Bodhiketu try to interpret Buddha Dhamma in his own way? Merci pour vos éclaircissements, GrenierBonjour Lal,
In your post -31726 , you said:”One has to go through a lot of ”stuff” out there…how would one figure that out without looking at ALL that is out there? ” It is a big job! As an example, I was reading Sujin Boriharnwanaket,”A Survey of Paramattha Dhammas” …The factors leading to enlightenment, and part 5, The Development of Insight…specificaly about sotapatti magga citta and it is very different of the position of Bodhiketu about a stream entrant…But what is ” the teachings of the Buddha in its original form?” So for us Westerners, ”to understand the intricacies of Buddha Dhamma is not easy”. Your suggestion to follow Bhikkhu Bodhi’s lecture set is the best advice I receive yet and I thank you for that reference, Merci, GrenierBonjour Lal,
In your recent comments about ”a good understanding of Buddha Dhamma” and ”that Bodhiketu interprets Buddha Dhamma in his own way” I want to refer to Buddha himself explaining : ”This Dhamma is profound, hard to see and hard to understand…” Are you saying that , for we ”westerners”it is harder to understand as you say in your letter of Aug 3 2020, ”I do realize that it is hard for Westerners to understand some aspects of Buddha Dhamma” ? MerciBonjour Lal,
Bodhiketu said in his article ”Stages of the path:Stream Entry and Beyond” (Bodhiketu/Stream Entry & Beyond (WBR)8 : ”Within the Western Buddhist, the levels of ethical purity within the fourfold scheme have been elevated to such an extent that practitioners can become discouraged and less confident in themselves and their practices” Is it ”the” major task that many of practitioners are involved in?
Merci, GrenierBonjour Lal,
I am not familiar with the forum’s rules and the way to continue the discussion on a subject ; I will try to stay on ”Buddha and humor” . About your answers in posts # 31652 and #31656 , you are right about sutta, it is a serious matter; I brought Thanissaro Bhikkhu comments ( like the one he did on Kevatta Sutta DN 11…:”The tale that concludes the discourse is one of the finest examples of the early Buddhist sense of humor”) and questioning myself, is this an example of humor and irreverence in Buddhist scriptures? …like ”The ten funniest scenes from the Pali Canon” on Sujato’Blog…And in Theravada/Early Buddhism, the ”jokes” that Gombrich found are considered to be the oldest and most authentic in the Pali texts because jokes can’t be ”created by committee”…some versions of the Vinaya included a rule against joking about the triple gem…this rule is found in the orgin story to Sekhiya 51, and it imposes a so-called dukkata offence for making a joke about the Buddha, Dhamma or Sangha. Is it Buddha who did lay it down?…if not, then it is not really binding on the Sangha; but the Dhamma is clearly a serious matter. It would be irresponsible to poke fun at the Dhamma in such a way that people lose their respect for it. There is a fine line between reasonable merrymaking and degradation of the Dhamma and I am not sure it is possible to make any hard and fast judgement as to what is acceptable and what is not…this world of ours is so full of grey areas! Thanks for your lights, GrenierBonjour Al,
#31580 – You wrote ”MN 18 is a good example (of different interpretations)…but this might be against the view of a Dvanda compound (two or more nouns that are added together with no added meaning due to the compounding…(papanca/sanna/sankha) and support my considering of a Tappurisa compound (the first member depends on the second; the relationship between the two or three words can be expressed by the prepositional cases.” Applaying the Tappurisa compound, you give in ”sanna” (senses) the leading view as you may do for ”iccha” (desires) in anicca. Am I correct in that interpretation?
Merci, GrenierBonjour Monsieur Lal,
About the term ”papanca”, I read in ”Concept and Reality ”…an essay on Papanca and Papanca-sanna-sanka, by Nanananda Bhikkhu, who suggests that the term refers to man’s ”tendency towards proliferation in the realm of concepts”and proposes a rendering by ”conceptual proliferation” , which appears convincing in psychological context, e.g. in two of the texts quoted above, A.IV,173 and M.18. I read the same explanation in the ”Manuel of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines”, by Maha Thera Nyanatiloka; and the same interpretation in the book of Sue Hamilton, ”Early Buddhism: A new Approach, the I of the beholder”at pages..30, 76-8, 83, 92, 95, 110, 124, 132-3, 144, 147, 173, 184, 187. THIS WORLD SEEMS TO BE CHALLENGING FOR TRANSLATORS (E.G. MN18, DN21, Sn.11, AN4.173). Mark Siderits and Shoryu Katsura translate it as ”Hypostatization” close to the root as the Greek ”hypostatos” (substantially existing). Bhikkhu Bodhi calls papanca ”the propensity of the worlding’s imagination to erupt in an effusion of mental commentary that obscures the bare data of cognition” (from note 229 in Majjkima Nikāya (MN)…et pour finir j’ajoute la référence à Thanissaro Bhikkhu, in ”The Arrows of Thinking, Papanca & the path to end conflict” in his book : ”Beyond all Directions”…”this arrow has many names in the Pali Canon and one of them is ”papanca”. Papanca is a type of thinking that causes conflict within those who think it and leads them into conflict with people outside.” Is it so hard to translate and a source of conflict?
Grenier,an old man of Montreal, Québec. Merci
