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Sorry guys but this back and forth about the transation of the First noble truth is a bit odd. Some of you have been practicing for years and have first hand experience of the four noble truths. You know the difference between dukkha and non-dukkha. For a practicing Buddhist this is like your own bones, why not just speak truth from your bones instead of trying to find an authorative text. You are the authority.
Sorry guys but this back and forth about the transation of the First noble truth is a bit odd. Some of you have been practicing for years and have first hand experience of the four noble truths. You know the difference between dukkha and non-dukkha. For a practicing Buddhist this is like your own bones, why not just speak truth from your bones instead of trying to find an authorative text. You are the authority.
I feel like Dad just caught me doing something I shouldn't be . . . . Sorry Dad!:D
Sorry guys but this back and forth about the transation of the First noble truth is a bit odd. Some of you have been practicing for years and have first hand experience of the four noble truths. You know the difference between dukkha and non-dukkha. For a practicing Buddhist this is like your own bones, why not just speak truth from your bones instead of trying to find an authorative text. You are the authority.
TO explain first hand experience is sometime a hard thing to do.
yeah.. first hand exprience is challenging to convey. Its just I think there is more authenticity around these parts than is sometimes realized. Its understandable that people dont want to come across as having attainments they do not have, but there is generally a committed and sincere understanding of the basics among the members here..
Your experience should enable you to reconcile the texts because surely your experience is not different from most of the texts.
Please do not think you are a Buddha but the texts are not.
look... the ABC's of Buddhism are not rocket science. Saying one can speak from experience about Dukkha is not usurping the Buddha. For Petes sake I posted a link to Ajahn Sumedho on this thread. Lets not go to the other extreme and get all Talmudic.
... why not just speak truth from your bones instead of trying to find an authorative text.
If you look at the first post, the issue _is_ authoritative texts. The OP is making a claim about what has been written and presented as a Buddhist teaching. My experience doesn't alter what he claims to have read.
If you look at the first post, the issue _is_ authoritative texts. The OP is making a claim about what has been written and presented as a Buddhist teaching. My experience doesn't alter what he claims to have read.
OK. I see what you mean.
Of course..... your experience, (at the risk of raising Dhamma Dhatu's ire) ultimately trumps the authority of text, even if you think it was written in the Tathagata's blood. Tis so.
I am no expert on Buddhist texts and terms but I have read enough from the C19th and early C20th to know that words which formerly had a range of nuances are often read in only one particular way today. Suffer is one of these words, it can mean something which causes some form of pain but it also means something which is endured, neither good nor bad but something transient which must be carried along (lat. sub- "from below" + ferre "to bear or carry"). Many translations use words which are technically correct but which non-linguists might interpret without the secondary or less well known meanings. It is hard enough to translate from Old English into modern English and keep all the meanings intact let alone from Asian languages into English. To argue about the meaning of words rather than the meaning of the ideas they imperfectly represent is somewhat futile.
Comments
I feel like Dad just caught me doing something I shouldn't be . . . . Sorry Dad!:D
TO explain first hand experience is sometime a hard thing to do.
yeah.. first hand exprience is challenging to convey. Its just I think there is more authenticity around these parts than is sometimes realized. Its understandable that people dont want to come across as having attainments they do not have, but there is generally a committed and sincere understanding of the basics among the members here..
Please do not think you are a Buddha but the texts are not.
Of course..... your experience, (at the risk of raising Dhamma Dhatu's ire) ultimately trumps the authority of text, even if you think it was written in the Tathagata's blood. Tis so.