This is why I used the pig/trough metaphor. Having access to a sutra doesn't mean we're informed enough or wise enough to be able to ascertain the depth and breadth of its meaning - this is why having a relationship with a well-trained teacher or established sangha has always been considered important. I don't know what the criteria is in Theravada in order to teach, but in Tibetan Buddhism highly qualified teachers have completed a rigorous 16 year training that results in the equivalent of a Ph.D. degree. Likely teachers that emerge from this learning/practice environment know the broad context and skillful parameters of teachings.nowheat wrote:Ah. Sorry. I didn't get that from your “pig at the trough” metaphor at all.pink_trike wrote: My post was simply meant to point at how a phrase or segment of a teaching can be nuanced differently at different stages on the path and that the context of the time/place/audience needs to figure in our attempts to understand what any particular phrase or teachings originally meant to convey. Context is often not considered, which imo is relevant to the discussion taking place in this thread.
So to clarify, you're saying part of the context we should be looking for is to do with who the Buddha was offering his teaching to at the time? I agree with that, though in this case we just have the information that he is addressing monks (in general, none specifically) and that it was late enough in his teaching career that Anathapindika's Park had been established in the area of Savatthi.
Perhaps this helps explain my pig/trough metaphor a bit better...without training, what tools do we have to correctly analyze and interpret complex teachings from another time/place thousands of years ago that has multiple translations and interprations from a different language and that involved a people who viewed reality very differently than we do? Even the very way that we approach learning and information is very different than in this other time and place. In view of these things, and having had some years of being taught traditionally, I stick to practice and tend to let teachers have the first go at what a teaching means, or at least not to get ahead of my training in my attempts to understand sutras.
And I very rarely am so bold as to offer my understanding of a sutra beyond the very basics, especially in an environment chocka'block full of newbies to the path for whom most sutras are still beyond their ability to understand, and that they likely would never have been exposed to so early on the path in a traditional teaching setting.
To quote a Talking Heads tune..."this ain't no disco, this ain't no party, this ain't no fool'in around". It isn't Western consumer buffet-style independent education either.