Sleeping Too Late?

[theravada_guy]

Greetings all,

I found this passage in the Sigalovada Sutta, translation by Venerable Narada, Thera (I think anyway):

"Sleeping till sunrise, adultery, irascibility, malevolence, evil companions, avarice — these six causes ruin a man."

What does the part I have bolded mean? I know back in the Buddha's time, people in India woke up before sunrise and bathed and stuff like that, but does it mean that every lay person should get up before sunrise?

[jcsuperstar]

try another translation see if it helps you.

also this may have meant in general, being lazy.

[theravada_guy]

jc,

I did find another translation on Access to Insight. The second translation, by John Kelly, Sue Sawyer and Victoria Yareham does say just 'sleeping late'. The first one was, indeed, Venerable Narada Thera. The only question is, which one is more accurate and reliable?

[cooran]

Hello theravada_guy,

Sue Sawyer passed away a month or two back. John Kelly goes to the same Forest Monastery that I do. He is highly respected - so much so, that he is helping Bhikkhu Bodhi with his final editing of the Anguttara Nikaya. A question to consider is "Was Narada Thera a native speaker of English?" Apart from that, any translation could be phrased in a number of ways.

with metta
Chris

[mikenz66]

Perhaps it is also relevant that in the tropics night and day are roughly the same length year round, so if one sleeps past dawn one is wasting the day... Whereas one would struggle to get up before dawn in Scandinavia in the summer...

Mike

[retrofuturist]

That's right Mike... roughly equatorial regions are going to have a much more consistent length of day throughout the year than those further from the equator.

Metta,
Retro.