Commentary Review - How did the inconsistencies in the commentaries come about?

Exploring the Dhamma, as understood from the perspective of the ancient Pali commentaries.
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Eko Care
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Re: Commentary Review - How did the inconsistencies in the commentaries come about?

Post by Eko Care »

Trustworthiness of Early Commentaries
TRobinson465 wrote: Sun Apr 04, 2021 10:17 pm
Eko Care wrote: Sun Apr 04, 2021 9:18 pm
TRobinson465 wrote: Wed Mar 31, 2021 5:05 am Not that I dont agree with this assessment. But in the Kalama Sutta doesnt the Buddha say not to believe in something just cuz its probable?
  • Believing is done after studying and investigating the deep and ultimate Dhammas of a particular doctrine.
  • Before studying and investigating, we need to choose doctrines that are highly probable to be true.
  • We don't have time to study each an every doctrine/teaching available.
  • We can only study a few of them in this lifetime.
  • So we should start studying from the most probable one.
  • If someone can't be satisfied after learning and testing it for a considerable period of time, then he will move to the next most probable one.
  • And the theories of the most probable doctrine can hardly be defeated by other doctrines (without very strong evidence), if subconscious knows the probabilities.
  • This is where the probability comes in.
(* These probabilities are about authenticity. There may be some innate wise people who can distinguish the truth and fallacy just by intuition or mere investigation even without the aid of probabilities.)
Very good point. :thumbsup:
Russell Bowden: Writing down of the Pali Tripitaka at Aloka Vihara in Sri Lanka


Facts vs Theories
As so often in Buddhist Studies, and as the quotations above prove, facts are not always easy to come by. In their place theories thrive and speculations grow. These theories relates, in the main, to critical comments made in the last two centuries of European-based Buddhist Studies by a host of scholars ranging from Rhys Davids, Horner, Geiger through to Malalasekara and Law and more contemporary scholars such as Adikaram, Rahula and Gunawardana.
1. ...
2. ...
..11. ...
Almost all these theories require to be tested and can not be allowed to pass without comment.

... are not based on known facts. ...
... may be related to what they believed ....
Historical sources do not bear this interpretation out. ...
... seems to be far too radical a theory to accept.
Coëmgenu wrote: Mon Nov 07, 2016 2:41 am I hope I am not unwarranted in posting this, but the commentaries, or rather, the commentarial tradition of Buddhavacana interpretation, definitely reaches back further than Buddhaghoṣa. This is attested to in the fact that there is an Chinese text believed to be associated with and contemporaneous with the early Nikāya-āgama literary layer of Buddhavacana that is also represented by the Pāli Canon. This text is called Jiětuōdàolùn, 解脫道論, which contains many of the same, though also some different, interpretations and teachings as the Buddhaghoṣa-Visuddhimagga, despite being believed to predate it considerably by the likes of, for instance, Bhikkhu Anālayo. Whether or not Jiětuōdàolùn is authentically representative of the Dhamma or not, I would not be so bold to say, but the two texts clearly stem from a commentarial tradition of interpretation that predates Buddhaghoṣa for certain, and I do not say that with the intent to lessen the monumental contributions of Buddhaghoṣa to Buddhist discourse.
mikenz66 wrote: Sat Nov 05, 2016 3:30 am I've never seen anyone with any detailed knowledge of the history and texts claim that Buddhaghosa wrote the commentaries. All sources I am aware of say that he translated them. The Visuddhimagga is his creation, but it appears to be largely a collection of the commentarial and canonical material.
mikenz66 wrote: Sat Nov 05, 2016 5:05 am Since the Wikipedia article also states "The major commentaries were based on earlier ones, now lost, in Pakrit, which were written down at the same time as the Canon, in the last century BCE", ..
cjmacie wrote: Sun Nov 06, 2016 1:05 pm
mikenz66 wrote: ...overinterpreting some of these brief statements.
The modern mind, confronting ancient literary traditions, displays several idiosyncrasies that complicate the task.

One is the idea of "authorship", embodied in which is an assertion of identity, of self, so to speak. (Think of, for example, the whole issue of "intellectual property".) To illustrate this at another extreme, in ancient Chinese literature (philosophy, religion, medicine, etc), if a writer wanted something to be heard and respected, it would have to be phrased as "The Yellow Emperor said…", or, "According to the ancient masters…". One never touted "I have this great new idea!" That would be an affront to tradition, to the ancestors. As I have noted now and again around here, there's much in common between the ancient Indian-Buddhist mind and the contemporaneous Chinese practices – not least of which the enthusiasm which the Chinese embraced Buddhism itself.
mikenz66 wrote: ... The Visuddhimagga doesn't seem to be claiming to be presenting something new, it seems to me to be a summary of ancient commentary and experience.
Another modern aspect is the Western philosophical attraction to literal interpretation, seeing black or white – tracing perhaps back to Aristotelian logic of "non-contradiction": either A or not-A is true. This is compounded when the interpretation works through translations, using modern terms where it's an easy trap, using modern associations of those terms, to find something to quibble about when looking for "THE truth" of what is said/written long ago in the context of a different worldview.

Counter example being that extensive passage quoted above cataloging the various ways in which that key phrase in the Satipatthana-Sutta -- "ekayano ayam magga" may be viewed, and especially without any emphasis on having to eliminate all but the "correct" meaning. (C.f. Ven. Analayo's two Satipatthana books for multiple examples of both where he does honor multiple meanings, but also some where he s/t goes a bit overboard trying to assert a single "true" meaning.)

Related is the notion of "polysemous" dimensions of interpretation: "poly" = many, "semous" = meaning, as in "semantics". Illustration, again, in ancient Chinese core texts – which were, btw, largely intended, very much as ancient Buddhists texts, as mnemonic aids to an essentially oral tradition, rather than as irrefutable text-book definitions. Chinese characters ("words") being "pictographic" images, originally depicting concrete objects, were, over time extended to represent, in addition, more abstract ideas, and diverse in different areas of application. So one witnesses modern interpreters, including modern Chinese eager to out-science the Westerners, trying to prove the one true meaning of some rather obtuse ancient text. But then there are, thankfully, also interpreters – both Western and Eastern -- more attuned to the original contexts and willing to admit that the original intention might well have been polysemous expression of simultaneous multiple perspectives.

Indo-european scripts (from Sanskrit/Pali all the way down to English) are more "literal" (composed of abstract "letters") than "graphic" (as Chinese or Egyptian hieroglyphics). Non-the-less, the "meanings" in ancient Indic languages (i.e. Sanskrit, Pali,…) are often heavily imbued with symbolic or metaphorical dimensions, which readily admit of polysemous interpretation. Modern scholarship has been digging out how the Buddha appears to have used terms and images well-know in his time from their usage in Vedic, Brahmanic, and other traditions, and then overlaid, twisted their traditional meanings to communicate his radical insights into the same problem areas they were earlier used to illuminate.

The significance of such scholarly findings shows us that seeing the meaning of terms from simultaneous multiple dimensions can be critical to understanding how they were being used. E.g. to appreciate the play on words the Buddha often used get his listeners attention and guide them to new realizations.

Recognizing that dimension at work in the Buddha's texts, and seeing how it's been re-enforced over time in the core abhidhamma and commentarial practice of constantly turning words over, around, and inside-out to see their multiple semantic dimensions -- reading, e.g., the Vissudhimagga, one can't help but notice the extensive amount of the text devoted to dissecting quotations (most often from sutta-s) into the meanings of each word – we may well notice with greater insight how we, today, in fact are overlaying (commenting, if you will) the ancient texts with linguistic associations that originate in our modern mental lifestyle. If we're not acutely aware of this dimension, we're then in danger of becoming trapped by our more modern biases, and miss what treasures may be dug-up in ancient texts that, in fact, can help liberate us from our conditioned limitations.
...
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Dhammanando
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Re: Commentary Review - How did the inconsistencies in the commentaries come about?

Post by Dhammanando »

Assaji wrote: Sat Apr 17, 2021 6:48 pm
SarathW wrote: Sat Apr 17, 2021 8:41 amBy the way, I had a look at DN1 and I can't make out what is commentary.
Could you copy a small paragraph of the Sutta and highlight what is commentary.
Sorry, the link above provides only the Sutta. You can find the Commentary at:
Also here, along with many other translated Pali commentaries and chronicles:

https://archive.org/details/PaliComment ... %28272p%29
Yena yena hi maññanti,
tato taṃ hoti aññathā.


In whatever way they conceive it,
It turns out otherwise.
(Sn. 588)
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Re: Commentary Review - How did the inconsistencies in the commentaries come about?

Post by DooDoot »

Assaji wrote: Sat Apr 17, 2021 8:22 am :namaste:
Thank you Sir :thanks:
There is always an official executioner. If you try to take his place, It is like trying to be a master carpenter and cutting wood. If you try to cut wood like a master carpenter, you will only hurt your hand.

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Re: Commentary Review - How did the inconsistencies in the commentaries come about?

Post by Eko Care »

Next passage of the article:
Another point made by Buddhadatta Thera is that the Blessed One is mentioned in two commentaries on the feeling of cold and heat in two ways. It should be noted that Buddhadatta Thera did not have the skill to make a Dhamma-Vinaya judgment regarding the matters that can be solved only by Supreme Buddha himself.

What Digha Nikaya commentary describes is an incident that occurred at a particular situation. The Digha Nikaya commentary says "Thatagata's body doesn't suffer from cold or heat" in order to indicate that there was no reason to fan the Thatagata and yet Venerable Ananada was fanning the Thatagata as a vatta(duty). This incident is also described in the Anguttara commentary (Vassakara sutta) in the same way. Therefore it is a delusion to think that Venerable Buddhaghosa had made a mistake.

The Samyutta commentary (Indriya Samyutta-Jaradhamma sutta) says "the Thatagata's body also suffers from colds" while the Thatagata was sunbathing in the Pubbarama. This too was a comment on the relevant context and cannot be reconciled with the Dhiga Nikaya commentary. The Vinayapitaka also states that the Supreme Buddha spent the night outdoors during the cold season and that the Supreme Buddha felt cold.

Therefore, the statement of Ven. Buddhadatta "Atthakatha-Acariya had mistaken", is baseless.
continued....
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Re: Commentary Review - How did the inconsistencies in the commentaries come about?

Post by BrokenBones »

I think the original OP is almost inviting criticism... which would be out of place on this forum. Is this thread in the appropriate forum?
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Eko Care
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Re: Commentary Review - How did the inconsistencies in the commentaries come about?

Post by Eko Care »

Next part of the article:
There are other such submissions and we will not comment on them as the article is lengthy. Therefore, it is worthwhile for the wise to investigate the "rejecting of the Atthakathas by many including Ven. Buddhadatta saying that it is not the words of the Buddha by pointing out some of the inconsistencies occurred at later times".

Without being short-sighted enough to deny that the commentary is not Buddha's words due to such errors, and having seen the Dhamma in the way the Great Arahants interpreted and maintained unbroken, let everyone realize Nibbana in Sukha patipada (comfortable way).
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