Buddhist Texts

michaelene

Am fairly new to the study of Buddhism. Would like to begin reading some of the texts, but do not know where to begin. Am aware of the Pali Canon. Is this the same thing as the Tripitaka??? Is the Pali Canon the Buddhist version of a "bible???" Understand that it is incredibly large. How do the Diamond, Heart, & Lotus Sutras fit into this? Where is the best place to start?

Much thanks for any advice that can be given!

federica

....'From the little Acorn, the Mighty Oak doth grow...."

I would start modestly, and work your way up to the more complex and intricate teachings of the Buddha....
have a look at the primary teachings, namely the Four Noble Truths, followed by The Eightfold path and then perhaps the Kalama Sutra which exhorts anyone to examine closely whatever teachings come their way. The Buddha did not exempt his own teachings from this advice....

There are also many wonderful books, by many wonderful authors, available to carry your journey further....

Welcome!

Jason

michaelene,

Tipitaka

The Pali Canon

The Tipitaka (Pali ti, "three," + pitaka, "baskets"), or Pali Canon, is the collection of primary Pali language texts which form the doctrinal foundation of Theravada Buddhism. The Tipitaka and the paracanonical Pali texts (commentaries, chronicles, etc.) together constitute the complete body of classical Theravada texts.

The Pali Canon is a vast body of literature: in English translation the texts add up to thousands of printed pages. Most (but not all) of the Canon has already been published in English over the years. Although only a small fraction of these texts are available on this website, this collection can be a good place to start.

The three divisions of the Tipitaka are:

Vinaya Pitaka

The collection of texts concerning the rules of conduct governing the daily affairs within the Sangha — the community of bhikkhus (ordained monks) and bhikkhunis (ordained nuns). Far more than merely a list of rules, the Vinaya Pitaka also includes the stories behind the origin of each rule, providing a detailed account of the Buddha's solution to the question of how to maintain communal harmony within a large and diverse spiritual community.

Sutta Pitaka

The collection of suttas, or discourses, attributed to the Buddha and a few of his closest disciples, containing all the central teachings of Theravada Buddhism. (More than nine hundred sutta translations are available on this website.) The suttas are divided among five nikayas (collections):
Digha Nikaya — the "long collection"
Majjhima Nikaya — the "middle-length collection"
Samyutta Nikaya — the "grouped collection"
Anguttara Nikaya — the "further-factored collection"
Khuddaka Nikaya — the "collection of little texts":
Khuddakapatha
Dhammapada
Udana
Itivuttaka
Sutta Nipata
Vimanavatthu
Petavatthu
Theragatha
Therigatha
Jataka
Niddesa
Patisambhidamagga
Apadana
Buddhavamsa
Cariyapitaka
Nettippakarana (included only in the Burmese edition of the Tipitaka)
Petakopadesa ( " " )
Milindapañha ( " " )

Abhidhamma Pitaka

The collection of texts in which the underlying doctrinal principles presented in the Sutta Pitaka are reworked and reorganized into a systematic framework that can be applied to an investigation into the nature of mind and matter.

Jason

P.S. All underlined words are links.

Bobby_Lanier

michaelene wrote:

Am fairly new to the study of Buddhism. Would like to begin reading some of the texts, but do not know where to begin. Am aware of the Pali Canon. Is this the same thing as the Tripitaka??? Is the Pali Canon the Buddhist version of a "bible???" Understand that it is incredibly large. How do the Diamond, Heart, & Lotus Sutras fit into this? Where is the best place to start?

Much thanks for any advice that can be given!

I recommend students to tackle the Dhammapada. I believe there are a goodly number of them on our wondrous internet.

With respect to the "tripitaka" there is a caution. Although we see a lot of our yellow-robed brothers teaching the tripitaka/tipitaka as a historical fact of early Buddhism, it most likely isn't. While most scholars would agree that the third alleged pitaka, the abhidharma, is very clear, not even the most naive scholar would claim it to be the words of the Buddha. One scholar, A.K. Warder, for example, says there were only two pitakas not three as sometimes is believed. Well, enough school. I just wanted to throw that in to show you what you are getting into.



Love ya all,

Bobby

federica

Hello Bobby, Nice to meet you.

sharpiegirl

Michaelene, welcome. I have found this site to be very helpful. It's called the Treasury of Truth- The Illustrated Dhammapada:

www.buddhanet.net/dhammapada

Enjoy!
Marybeth

not1not2

Bobby_Lanier wrote:

I recommend students to tackle the Dhammapada. I believe there are a goodly number of them on our wondrous internet.

With respect to the "tripitaka" there is a caution. Although we see a lot of our yellow-robed brothers teaching the tripitaka/tipitaka as a historical fact of early Buddhism, it most likely isn't. While most scholars would agree that the third alleged pitaka, the abhidharma, is very clear, not even the most naive scholar would claim it to be the words of the Buddha. One scholar, A.K. Warder, for example, says there were only two pitakas not three as sometimes is believed. Well, enough school. I just wanted to throw that in to show you what you are getting into.



Love ya all,

Bobby

Just to elaborate, the abhidamma pitaka (3rd basket) was not decided upon until a later date and was composed to illustrate the more advanced and difficult ideas that the buddha taught. There were groups which did not accept the abhidamma, but to say that it did not exist and imply that it is a fabrication is misleading. While we cannot say for sure that it is verbatim words of the buddha, it seems the previous statement might be (implicitly) aimed at discrediting the abhidhamma pitaka.

From:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/abhiman.html

The Abhidhamma

At the heart of the Abhidhamma philosophy is the Abhidhamma Pitaka, one of the divisions of the Pali Canon recognized by Theravada Buddhism as the authoritative recension of the Buddha's teachings. This canon was compiled at the three great Buddhist councils held in India in the early centuries following the Buddha's demise: the first, at Rajagaha, convened three months after the Buddha's Parinibbana by five hundred senior monks under the leadership of the Elder Mahakassapa; the second, at Vesali, a hundred years later; and the third, at Pataliputta, two hundred years later. The canon that emerged from these councils, preserved in the Middle Indian language now called Pali, is known as the Tipitaka, the three "baskets" or collections of the teachings. The first collection, the Vinaya Pitaka, is the book of discipline, containing the rules of conduct for the bhikkhus and bhikkhunis — the monks and nuns — and the regulations governing the Sangha, the monastic order. The Sutta Pitaka, the second collection, brings together the Buddha's discourses spoken by him on various occasions during his active ministry of forty-five years. And the third collection is the Abhidhamma Pitaka, the "basket" of the Buddha's "higher" or "special" doctrine.

This third great division of the Pali Canon bears a distinctly different character from the other two divisions. Whereas the Suttas and Vinaya serve an obvious practical purpose, namely, to proclaim a clear-cut message of deliverance and to lay down a method of personal training, the Abhidhamma Pitaka presents the appearance of an abstract and highly technical systemization of the doctrine. The collection consists of seven books: the Dhammasangani, the Vibhanga, the Dhatukatha, the Puggalapaññatti, the Kathavatthu, the Yamaka, and the Patthana. Unlike the Suttas, these are not records of discourses and discussions occurring in real-life settings; they are, rather, full-blown treatises in which the principles of the doctrine have been methodically organized, minutely defined, and meticulously tabulated and classified. Though they were no doubt originally composed and transmitted orally and only written down later, with the rest of the canon in the first century B.C., they exhibit the qualities of structured thought and rigorous consistency more typical of written documents.

In the Theravada tradition the Abhidhamma Pitaka is held in the highest esteem, revered as the crown jewel of the Buddhist scriptures. As examples of this high regard, in Sri Lanka King Kassapa V (tenth century A.C.) had the whole Abhidhamma Pitaka inscribed on gold plates and the first book set in gems, while another king, Vijayabahu (eleventh century) used to study the Dhammasangani each morning before taking up his royal duties and composed a translation of it into Sinhala. On a cursory reading, however, this veneration given to the Abhidhamma seems difficult to understand. The texts appear to be merely a scholastic exercise in manipulating sets of doctrinal terms, ponderous and tediously repetitive.

Also, to somehow suggest that the Dhammapada is more accurate and dependable than the tipitaka is also questionable. From Access to Insight:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/canon/sutta/khuddaka/dhp/tb0/index.html

There are many versions of the Dhammapada now extant: several recensions of the Pali Dhammapada from Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Sri Lanka, and Thailand; two incomplete manuscripts of a Gandhari Dharmapada found in central Asia; and a manuscript of a Buddhist Hybrid-Sanskrit Dharmapada found in a library in Tibet, called the Patna Dharmapada because photographs of this manuscript are now kept in Patna, India. There is also a Chinese translation of the Dharmapada made in the third century C.E. from a Prakrit original, now no longer extant, similar to — but not identical with — the Pali Dhammapada. Parts of a Dharmapada text are included in the Mahavastu, a text belonging to the Lokottaravadin Mahasanghika school. In addition, there are Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese versions of a text called the Udanavarga, which is known in at least four recensions, all of them containing many verses in common with the Dhammapada/Dharmapada (Dhp) texts. To further complicate matters, there are Jain anthologies that contain verses clearly related to some of those found in these Buddhist anthologies as well.

Despite the many similarities among these texts, they contain enough discrepancies to have fueled a small scholarly industry. The different recensions of the Pali Dhp contain so many variant readings that there isn't yet — even after more than a century of Western scholarship on the topic — a single edition covering them all. The discrepancies among the Pali and non-Pali versions are even greater. They arrange verses in different orders, each contains verses not found in the others, and among the verses in different versions that are related, the similarity in terms of imagery or message is sometimes fairly tenuous.

Fortunately for anyone looking to the Dhp for spiritual guidance, the differences among the various recensions — though many in number — range in importance from fairly minor to minor in the extreme. Allowing for a few obvious scribal errors, none of them fall outside the pale of what has long been accepted as standard early Buddhist doctrine as derived from the Pali discourses. For example, does the milk in verse 71 come out, or does it curdle? Is the bond in verse 346 subtle, slack, or elastic? Is the brahman in verse 393 happy, or is he pure? For all practical purposes, these questions hardly matter. They become important only when one is forced to take sides in choosing which version to translate, and even then the nature of the choice is like that of a conductor deciding which of the many versions of a Handel oratorio to perform.

Unfortunately for the translator, though, the scholarly discussions that have grown around these issues have tended to blow them all out of proportion, to the point where they call into question the authenticity of the Dhp as a whole. Because the scholars who have devoted themselves to this topic have come up with such contradictory advice for the potential translator — including the suggestion that it's a waste of time to translate some of the verses at all — we need to sort through the discussions to see what, if any, reliable guidance they give.

This is not to say the Dhammapada is not reliable and wonderful, but that there are many problems with it and many conflicts of interpretation and such. Also, while it is considered an early buddhist masterpiece, it is also a later work than the tipitaka.

As a side note, I'm a little wary of individuals who go on in such a manner about the Tipitaka, having encountered the likes of AE Hollingsworth (aka Zenmar) and AncientBuddhism of www.attan.com, it seems some people have an agenda of discrediting the Tipitaka in order to advance some very questionable interpretations of the Buddhadharma.

I'm not implying that this is the case with Bobby Lanier, I've just got red flags popping up based on past experience.

take care & be well

_/\_
metta

zenmonk_genryu

michaelene wrote:

Am fairly new to the study of Buddhism. Would like to begin reading some of the texts, but do not know where to begin. Am aware of the Pali Canon. Is this the same thing as the Tripitaka??? Is the Pali Canon the Buddhist version of a "bible???" Understand that it is incredibly large. How do the Diamond, Heart, & Lotus Sutras fit into this? Where is the best place to start?

Much thanks for any advice that can be given!

Apart from the Kalaama Sutra and perhaps the DhammaPadda already mentioned, the only books/texts I'd recommend to start with are 'What the Buddha Taught' by Walpola Rahula, 'Buddhism Plain and Simple' by Steve Hagen, 'Hardcore Zen' by Brad Warner, 'To Shine One Corner of the World', edited by David Chadwick and 'The Three Pillars of Zen', by Roshi Philip Kapleau. I wouldn't start on the Suttas until practice was well under way. It would be like reading a cook book written in a foreign language without ever having been in a kitchen. Apart from which, there is no equivalent of the Bible because Buddhism is clear that truth is not contained in any text and all beliefs are delusion. At best, texts and books can but point to reality and all too often are just a finger pointing at a finger pointing at the moon.

Xrayman

ZM once again youv'e hit the nail on the head!

try www.Buddhanet.net e-books and find "What Buddhists Believe" that's a pearl. Or is it the Triple gem?? teehee.

regards,
xray

datapoly

just post a link in the forum -> http://www.newbuddhist.com/forum/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=1355