Pali Canon

Explores definitions, distinctions, and contexts key to understanding the concept of moral injury, and provides abstracts of the other essays in the book. I've decided to upload the full version as it is already available via Google Books' preview.

This thesis is a textual study exploring the concept “fetter” (Pāli: saṃyojana), which denotes defilement (kilesa) in the Pāli Canon. The synonymous relationship of fetter with the Vedic terms pāśa (fetter) and bandhana (bondage) found in the Sutta-s is also discussed. The concept of fetter has three main functions: householder binding, intra-psychic binding, and existential binding which bind us in saṃsāra. The thesis deliberates that the Theravāda tradition links the existential binding with the ten fetters which define the four stages of liberation. The study demonstrates this theory is a doctrinal development in the Pāli Canon.

The Noble Eight-fold path (EFP) is the foremost teaching of the Buddha which depicts a middle pathway excluding two major wrong conducts. Both Suttanta-piṭaka and Abhidhammapiṭaka explain this as a practice of eight components which are constituted by three collections, that leads to the cessation of all dukkhas of life. This paper provides a philosophical interpretation on the EFP elucidating that how is it to be conducted as the mundane path and discuses philosophically the reason for involving six constituents at once in the mundane path. Further this paper examines how does EFP apply as a constituent of supramundane path discussing the involvement of all eight components within the supramundane consciousness. This involves an examination of the validity of traditional argument for Eight-fold path against Five-fold path depicted in Vibhaṅgappakaraṇa (Vbh) and provides interpretation thereon.

Bhante Dr. Chandima interviews Professor Peter Harvey about the working of karma and the power of volition (cetanā). He was the first Professor specifically of "Buddhist Studies" in the UK. Peter Harvey, who gained his doctorate in Buddhist Studies at Lancaster University, under Ninian Smart, is Emeritus Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Sunderland, UK.

Prof. Harvey's research focuses on early Buddhist thought and practices, and Buddhist ethics. Until recently, he edited Buddhist Studies Review, Journal of the UK Association for Buddhist Studies, having founded the Association in 1995 with Ian Harris, and from 2002 to 2011 ran an online MA Buddhist Studies program. He is the author of An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History, and Practices (University of Cambridge Press, 1990, 2nd edn. 2013), The Selfless Mind: Personality, Consciousness, and Nirvana in Early Buddhism (Curzon Press, 1995), and An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics: Foundations, Values, and Practices (University of Cambridge Press, 2000). He has edited an anthology of Theravāda, Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna texts, Common Buddhist Text: Guidance and Insight from the Buddha, published for free distribution by Mahachulalongkorn-rajavidyalaya University in Thailand. He is a member of the Samatha Trust and teaches a free online course on Samatha meditation. Retired, he now lives near York, UK. You can learn more about his scholarly writings at https://sunderland.academia.edu/PeterHarvey

YouTube link: https://youtu.be/WFeO7sKFht8

Original Post: https://patisota.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-working-of-karma-power-of-volition-chandima-gangodawila-prof-peter-harvey.html

මෙම කෘතියේදී රතන සූත්‍ර අටුවාව (පරමත්ථජෝතිකාව නම් ඛුද්දක නිකාය අටුවාව) මුල් කර ගනිමින් රතන සූත්‍ර පෙළ, පදගතාර්ථ, සම්පූර්ණ පරිවර්තනය සහිතව රතන සූත්‍රයට විවරණ සපයා ඇත. මෙහි ඇති සුවිශේෂීතාවය නම් සූත්‍රාගත ධර්ම පර්යාය වන (සෝවාන් විමට මග) පැහැදිලිව විස්තර කර තිබීමයි.


Ratana Sutta: Text, Word-to-word Meaning, Translation, and Explanations

Ven. Dr. Gangodawila Chandima

This book is compiled due to the inadequate resources of having an authentic Sinhala translation and a full explanation of Ratana Sutta. The Sinhala translation includes a word-to-word complete translation and some important explanatory notes from the Paramatthajotikā (Ratana Sutta commentary for Khuddaka Nikaya).

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Designed to include some key parts of "the Noble Eightfold Path" into this poster. This information is based on Mahācattārīsaka Sutta (MN 117) and Cūla Vedalla Sutta (MN 44).

Original Post : https://patisota.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-noble-eightfold-path-poster.html

Papañca is one of the most helpful Theravāda Buddhist teachings used to understand how our thoughts become impure and the most compelling account of this subject is the Madhupiṇḍika Sutta. Since many writers don't utilize papañca when alluding to defilements, many readers discover the setting of mental purification hard to understand. If we seriously want to learn how to keep our mental purification unadulterated from defilements, we should figure out how the mental purification can be tainted through papañca.

In addition, I have examined the association of papañca to kilesa (defilements), upakkilesa (mental impurities), saññā (perceptions) and abhiññā (comprehensions) to find out whether or not the essential components of mental purification begin from managing papañca, or the other dhamma concepts, that can be bold for anyone who struggles to subsume defilements in modern-day life.

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The Pali words uppāda and vaya are usually misinterpreted to mean “rising/falling” or “increasing/decreasing in presence”. This article shows how these words, together with their various synonyms (samudaya, udaya, nirodha, atthaṅgama) should be understood to mean “appearance/disappearance”. The formula “no c’assa no ca me siyā; na bhavissati na ca me bhavissati” is shown to be a description of how uppāda and vaya are to be correctly discerned.

Those who study Yoga and Buddhist literature  can find a similarity between the Vedic and Buddhist perspectives of Yoga.
We can see a strong yogic
influence on Buddhism. This similarity between Vedic and Buddhist
thoughts is quite natural, as Buddha was born in Jambudvipa (India was called Jambudvipa in ancient literature), in the land of Vedic tradition. It was after Buddha had passed away Buddhism became a religion. We can find the accounts of a Shiva-Buddha teaching that existed in Indonesia in medieval times. All Hindus even today accept Buddha as a great teacher, even if they do not follow Buddhism as a religion. Some say, Yoga is neither Vedic nor Buddhist. It began as an independent, very ancient Indian thought and
tradition which gained universal acceptability.

The aims, methods and rationales of the present Māgadhabhāsā (Pāḷi) grammar are as follows: (a) Lubricating access to the information contained in numerous modern Pāḷi grammars written in English by collating the dispersed material contained within them. People who wish to learn about grammatical rules and principles – either on a broader spectrum or at all – are compelled to track them down in the thicket of the widely scattered grammar inventories as separately given by the various available grammars. These works, mostly fine and outstanding works of scholarship in their own right, each individually often contain valuable data and perspectives not found in the other ones, and these are attempted to be distilled and presented with this Pāḷi grammar. (b) Facilitating identification of and providing explicit reference to most of the grammatical rules contained in the Kaccāyanabyākaraṇaṃ  (Kaccāyana), the oldest extant Pāḷi grammar, as well as to selected ones from other traditional grammars.

Most copiously consulted grammars in English medium were:
Ānandamaitreya, B. (2012). Pali made easy.
Buddhadatta, A. P. (1997). The new Pali course (Vols. I–II).
Collins, S. (2006). A Pali grammar for students.
Dhammajoti (2018). Reading Buddhist Pāḷi texts.
Duroiselle, C. (1997). Practical grammar of the Pali language.
Frankfurter, O. (1883). Handbook of Pali.
Gair, J. W., & Karunatillake, W. (1998). A new course in reading Pāli.
Kaccāyana Pāli Vyākaraṇaṃ (Vol. 2; 2016) (Thitzana, Trans.)
Ñāṇadhaja (2011). Light on the pronunciation of Pāḷi.
Oberlies, T. (2019). Pāli grammar. The language of the canonical texts of Theravāda Buddhism – Phonology and morphology (Vol. I).
Perniola, V. (1997). Pali grammar.
Warder, A. K. (1967). Pali metre.
Warder, A. K. (2001). Introduction to Pali.
Yindee, P.  P. (2018). A contrastive study of Pali and English.

Traditional grammars which were utilized (except for Kaccāyana, mainly, but not exclusively, used for the chapter on Pāḷi pronunciation):
Kaccāyanabyākaraṇaṃ (1999). Vipassana Research Institute.
Moggallānavyākaraṇaṃ (1999). Vipassana Research Institute.
Padarūpasiddhi (1999). Vipassana Research Institute.
Saddanītippakaraṇaṃ I (1999). Vipassana Research Institute.
Saddanītippakaraṇaṃ II (1999). Vipassana Research Institute.
Vidyabhusana, S & Punnananda (Eds.) (1935). Bālāvatāra – An elementary Pali grammar abridged for the undergraduate course.

The Theravada tradition claims that the Buddha taught in Pali. This
conflicts with most current scholarship. Yet insights from linguistics and
close reading of sources suggest that the Theravada account has not been disproved, that it could be correct, and that it even represents a stronger hypothesis than the current consensus. Instead of authorising translation of his teaching into dialects, the Buddha promoted a fixed transmission and the use of standard language. That the Buddha spoke Māgadhī is a late tradition; Tipiṭaka commentaries instead defined Māgadhabhāsā, ‘Magadha language’, as Ariyaka, ‘Aryan’, the canonical term for the Indo-Aryan language. Pali has the expected features of a natural standard language and can be seen as a precursor of Epigraphic Prakrit. This working hypothesis suggests a bolder stance for Pali studies of claiming that Pali is in all probability the formal language of the Buddha.

This is the fourth volume of proceedings of the Āgama seminars convened by the
Āgama Research Group at the Dharma Drum Institute of Liberal Arts (formerly
Dharma Drum Buddhist College). It comprises nineteen studies, contributed by
eighteen different scholars, on various themes related to the Connected Collections of
discourses (suttas, sūtras) — Saṃyutta-nikāya in Pali, Saṃyukta-āgama in Sanskrit —
transmitted by different early Buddhist lineages of reciters, preserved in their Indic
originals in Gandhari, Pali and Sanskrit as well as in Chinese and Tibetan translations.
This research draws attention to fundamental methodological points posed by the
study of these scriptural collections as windows into the formation of early Buddhist
texts and the organisation of their transmission.

This is the third volume of proceedings of the Āgama seminars convened by the
Āgama Research Group at the Dharma Drum Institute of Liberal Arts (formerly
Dharma Drum Buddhist College). It collects academic contributions on various
aspects related to the Middle-length Collections of discourses (sūtras, suttas)
transmitted by different early Buddhist lineages of reciters, preserved in their
Indic originals in Gandhari, Pali and Sanskrit as well as in Chinese and Tibetan
translations.

This is my doctoral dissertation, written in 2012/2013, and published online on the server of the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Bonn in 2016 (URN: urn:nbn:de:hbz:5-44254).
Unfortunately, the work suffers from its mendable "hybrid" English. It was originally written in England and Germany by a native speaker of German (thinking in the Pali language) following the conventions of British academic writing. Later it was revised in the United States by an American-English native-speaker who was burdened with the task of editing the work for publication. The dissertation is an attempt to apply narratological concepts to pre-modern non-European texts, the suttas of the Pali Canon, with the aim of better understanding the inner workings of some of these texts. The general approach is a 'synchronic' rather than 'diachronic' one. In particular, I analyze the narrative techniques applied by these texts to represent persons, and their perceived effects (on the ideal reader). With regard to the narratology of characters, I specifically draw on the work done by Uri Margolin, James Phelan, and Herbert Grabes. Within in the vast sea of narratology itself, Gérard Genette continually served as my beacon. A special focus of the dissertation is the analysis of the narrative technique called 'internal focalization' by Genette, which is much more a determining features of these ancient texts than one would expect.

The article "Significance of Jātaka for the Life of People" is discussed about benefit or significance of jataka stories for the human life. I have explained here jatakas through, The Achievement of the Buddhahood (Supra-Mundane Happiness), and To Bring out a Harmonious Society (Mundane Happiness). Following these two sub-topics, I explained Ten Paramitas (Ten perfections) and other social virtues.

In this essay the principal concepts of a Buddhist educational
theory and pactice, the ‘good friendship’ (kalyāṇamittatā) and ‘good friend’ (kalyāṇamitra/kalyāṇamitta) are discussed in relation to their occurrence in some texts of the Pāli canon and two Mahāyāna sūtras: the Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra in Eight Thousand Lines (Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra) and the Supreme Array Scripture (Gaṇḍavyūha-sūtra). On the basis of excerpts from reference books and source texts, the meaning and content of these terms are analysed and compared and some conclusions are outlined.

I want to emphasize the value of Stuart’s work. He approaches with utmost seriousness the formidable tasks of editing, translating, and commenting upon an unusual and difficult text. His book is a reliable basis for further work on Saddharmasmrtyupasthānasūtra and a provocative contribution to the literature on meditation. Daniel Stuart is a very talented scholar, and his book is a major accomplishment in the field of Buddhist Studies.

Nihilism poses grave problems for those who seek directives to lead their lives. In this article, the three most important ways to deal with nihilism are inquired, with an emphasis on their credibility. Both nihilism from a metaphysical perspective and the emphasis on pleasure from nihilistic considerations are given attention. The acceptance of nihilism can have far-reaching consequences, which are evaluated at various points. Nietzsche’s approach must also be considered. He accepts what he calls a sort of nihilism, but as a means to ‘new’ values. This alternative to nihilism is examined no less critically than the other two stances.

Sex-change is a widespread phenomenon in Buddhist literature, most probably inspired by Indian narrative
literature where it appears already earlier. The ultimate cause of sex-change in Buddhism is karman (Pāli
kamma), and its first mention in the Theravāda tradition is in the monastic law code (Vinaya), followed by
the Milindapañha, and the Pāli commentaries (aṭṭhakathā, ca. from the 4th c. CE onwards). The present contribution
examines the references for sex-change in the Theravāda legal literature. As a kind of preview,
select references to sex-change in the Mūlasarvāstivāda tradition are collected and compared. The bulk of the
information on sex-change comes from a long passage in the Vinaya commentary, the Samantapāsādikā.
This passage is given in the original Pāli and an English translation as an appendix to this contribution.

In this paper, I will analyse the concept of manomaya, a term which could be translated as 'mind-made' or 'made of mind'. This concept appears within Buddhist texts in many contexts, such as in the Sāmaññaphalasutta, where the meditator creates a mind-made body (manomayakāya) before becoming able to perform psychic powers (iddhi) and higher knowledges (abhiññā), or in the Brahmajālasutta where there are beings who inhabit the Realm of Radiance (Ābhassara), whose bodies are mind-made. This analysis will be a comparison between the references concerning the concept found in the Upaniṣads with those found mainly in the Sīlakkhandhavagga, the first part of the Dīghanikāya. The analysis will be conducted through a detailed study of some characteristics of the notion of manomaya, which seem to be shared by both Upaniṣadic and Sīlakkhandhavagga texts. The first characteristic of manomaya is its centrality, meaning that the term appears as an element centrally located in some lists and an intermediate attainment on the meditation path. It will be possible to also observe the feature of centrality of the manomaya concept in the Buddhist cosmological and psychological system. The second characteristic is the connection of the concept of manomaya with the notion of 'self/body/trunk' (ātman) expressed in the Upaniṣads and earlier Vedic texts and its Buddhist counterpart: anattan, namely the denial of the existence of an attan (= ātman). The characteristic of brightness or luminosity will be considered as well. This idea appears in the Upaniṣads often when manomaya is connected with the ātman, whereas in the Buddhist context, the characteristic of brightness appears in connection with the embodiment of certain beings in the Realm of Radiance. Last but not least, it will be observed whether manomaya may be connected with the atmosphere (antalikkha). All these references highlight that within the Sīlakkhandhavagga the concept of manomaya is close to the same concept that appears in the Upaniṣads.