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[ Come Beggar! ]
I have just completed and posted a new translation of Digha Nikaya II: #15: MahaNidanaSutta together with the Pali and Bhikkhu Thanissaro's translation.
The Great Downbinding Spell, mo translation
DN II: #15: MahaNidana Sutta, Pali
The Great Causes Discourse, Bhikkhu Thanissaro Trans
My translation is entirely without abbreviation and is linked at each section with the Pali.
This translation uses the vocabulary suggested on BuddhaDust, a vocabulary intended to break away from the "causes" and "dependance" ideas of other translations.
In the sections which digress (my opinion) from the original sutta, there I have introduced the term "recognition" for vi¾¾¤¼a. This is also intended to break the sleepy acceptance of the idea of "consciousness" which is blinding us in our attempts to get at the root of this system. The idea is to make it clear that the meaning of this term is "individualized consciousness," personal consciousness, self-awareness, consciousness by way of the senses...something I believe needs to be clearly understood when it comes to trying to figure out what the goal of this system really is.
Asside from the fact that I felt it was important to make a stab at this very highly considered sutta, this was "like pulling teeth" for me. I have no confidence that this was a genuine sutta as delivered and resented every minute I had to spend on it. That is not to say that the various sections in it are not Dhamma. I think they are Dhamma. I just think that the sutta is an anthology, and without that fact being stated, and with the fact that it looks to me to have been carelessly put together, the magic is missing for me.
I have added references to this translation, the Pali, and the Bhikkhu Thanissaro translation to the DhammaTalk: Paticca Samuppada X4 discussion.
BA: Finished my read of the Mahanidana. I could see what you meant when you say that we are seeing a synthesis of a few suttas.
I think that the whole of the Digha is a collection of synthetic suttas. They were done very well and do not contradict the suttas as far as I can see, but there are only two ways for the magic to come through: either with the original as given, even if mangled through time if the effort to preserve it intact is made the magic will come through or be "findable", or with the various parts of Dhamma being spun as a new sutta, issued spontaneously by someone who knows at least enough to correctly use the parts to answer a question. The Digha (or much of it) was done using neither of those two methods, so lacks the "thrilling" aspect of Dhamma found in the other 3 Nikayas.
BA: In footnote 9 you brought to light the curiousness of only sense experience being talked about as opposed to the usual 5 shitpiles. The line preceeding the sense experience comment is "And what is it, Ananda, that is percieved and regarded in mind as self?" Possibly the Buddha is referring to the point in the chain of conditioned existence- of one who has already been born -- where "I" chooses to rebound... that is, the point between sense experience and wanting. I understand this point to be the weak link, the loophole, the way outta'it'all in the chain of causality.
Sense experience only: a clue as to the fact that this was a compilation at a later time...that the compiler may have been lost in the argument as it is developed in the sections that follow and it never occured to him that he needed to loop back and use the same arguments for the other kkhandhas. Just a guess. It is not a "requirement" that all five be used every time, and this sutta does revolve around the sense experiences.
What I hear you saying is that this is a sutta that was delivered to a more or less ordinary person and that sense experience is the most noticable point of take off for wanting which leads to "going after getting" (upadana) where the chain can be broken (by not going after getting, and by letting the wanting fade out...if you can stop the wanting before it arises off of sense experience, more power to you, but the general rule will be that a person stops acting on the wanting first, then as a result of not feeding the wanting with new experiences, insight into the true outcome becomes possible, with insight, comes a natural defense against wanting upon the experiences at the senses). This seems reasonable, especially considering the digression into what is clearly worldly concerns.
BA: Could you explain to me why the chain loops back at recognition with nama/rupa?
First you need to understand that what I am calling "recognition" should be heard in the sense of re-cognition, knowing again.
The problem is how to explain "consciousness."
The Buddhist method, (I say) is reflected in the Pali word: vi-nana (re-know-know), in other words, consciousness is mind aware of mind. (Impossible, really, but somehow it has us faked out, like a person looking at his own reflection in two facing mirrors and mistaking one, say ten reflections deep, as "himself" looking at the others, when, in fact, there is nothing there but reflections (no real person standing there being reflected...just ripples on the surface of an oil slick...or sometimes I use the image of a man with a hand-puppet pretending to talk back and forth with the puppet as though it understood what was being said and was giving thoughtful answers; sometimes the puppeteer mistakes himself for the puppet...who is the potter, pray, and who the pot?)...anyway...So the point here is to describe the nature of the process of going from an "impersonal" non-individualized consciousness to the personalized consciousness of the individual. First the world in general gets created (usually stated as: "Downbound blindness rebounds bound up in Confounding (sankara)"; then Downbound Sankhara rebounds bound up in consciousness (this being that consciousness of a personal world "in general" (in one German school of psychology called "the gestalt" the all). Then that world needs to be being perceived through the senses, and the existance of the senses needs to be explained, and that is done with nama/rupa. Then, given the senses, the consequence of sensing must be able to be perceived, so you get this second round of consciousness. Now the first part of this, from Blindness to the first consciousness, could also be called Nama/Rupa (materiality/mentality: the "identification" process connected to the material outcomes of previous acts), which is what this sutta has done (this may actually represent an older way of presenting the paticca samuppada). So Nama/Rupa rebounds Consciousness, Consciousness rebounds Nama/Rupa, (you could give it another round and say Nama/Rupa rebounds sense-consciousness, but that would not be as clear as speaking about the senses, so that is the next one: Nama/Rupa rebounds the senses, etc.)
BA: In terms of the 5 shitpiles, what definition do you give to formations?
"Formations" is the way Bhk Bodhi and Ms. Horner translate "sankhara" (see Glossology: Paticca Samuppada )
"Sankhara" gives all the translators trouble because they always look only at one end or the other. "Sankhara" is like "kamma", it has two ends: it is the identification with an Intent (cap I a la Castaneda), or act, and it is the identification with the results of that act. It means formations, confounding, fabrication, confecting, etc: san = con = with or co, but also own and self; kara = make. The other translators want to ignore the "self" part of the word and stick with the make, so they are always getting stuck when the word is used for the result and consequently have difficulty figuring out how we come to identify with "this."
The reader interested in the MahaNidana might also find these references interesting:
Samyutta Nikaya, II: #65: Nagaram, pp 104
PTS: The Book of the Kindred Sayings, II #65: The City, Mrs. Rhys Davids, trans, pp72
WP: The Connected Discourses of the Buddha, I, II The Book of Causation #65: The City, Bhikkhu Bodhi, trans, pp600
ATI: Samyutta Nikaya XII.65 Nagara Sutta The City Translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.
BD: The Lost Citadel, mo translation of SN II.#65: Nagara
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