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In this sewing thread, favourite sutures for the dharmically afflicted ...
One of the earliest is the Rhino suitor, about ... something or other ...
https://accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.1.03.than.html
What gems have you found sewn up?
Comments
One of my favourite and eminently practical sutures is MN 61.
I love this one, but I must advise personal caution: There is a small element of Ego attached, as I get a mention....
Alagaddupama Sutta: The Water-Snake Simile
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.022.than.html
ETA:
Aunt Fede...I'm slow on the uptake.... I'm looking and looking....
and then... I see you! ..... I love it! You know I'm impressed!! :glasses:
@federica
I would find it very hard to bring myself to follow the way of life prescribed in that poem. It speaks of a great loneliness, each quatrain telling you something to be left behind in ‘wandering alone, like a rhinoceros’, so that one does not lose the focus of the path.
In a way the ties of family and companionship are a source of gladness, a form of celebrating this life which we have been given, and I find it somewhat unnatural at a deep level to consider letting these things go before their time.
Not so long ago my grandmother passed away, and I’ve been speaking to my mother about her from time to time. It was beautiful and it was her time to go, she had such trouble with her memory, and the process of letting her go has taken a good year and will probably continue for my mother for a while yet.
I’ve recently come across MN.13, the Great Mass of Stress, about the drawbacks of sensuality, form and feeling. It made quite an impact on me.
Advice to a householder:
Sigalovada Sutta: The Buddha's Advice to Sigalaka
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.31.0.ksw0.html
For my fellow Zennies, I can't leave out the Flower Sermon....AKA- Transmission
http://www.katinkahesselink.net/tibet/flower-sermon.htm
Today’s reading led me to the Abhisanda Sutta, AN.08, about rewards. I found it particularly beautiful because it makes clear that by holding to the precepts, we give gifts to the world and it’s inhabitants, gifts of freedom from danger, animosity and oppression. That’s more powerful to me than just an appeal to self restraint.
The ending of the Chinese recension I am familiar with is particularly beautiful:
From 拈花微笑, or "The flower plucked and the faint smile"
世尊在靈山會上拈華示眾
The Lord dwelt at the Vulture Peak with the assembly and plucked a flower as a teaching.
眾皆默然唯迦葉破顏微笑世尊云吾有正法眼藏涅槃妙心
The myriad totality were silent, save for Kāśyapa whose face cracked in a faint smile. The Lord spoke: "I have the treasure of the true dharma eye, I have nirvāṇa as wondrous citta,
實相無相微妙法門不立文字教外別傳付囑摩訶迦葉。
I know signless dharmatā, the subtle dharma-gate, which is not standing on written word, which is external to scriptures, which is a special dispensation, which is entrusted to Mahākāśyapa."
I have always been a fan of the Buddha's miracle stories, while I certainly am skeptical that many of them occurred.
The Ādīptasūtra (燃燒經 T99.50b14) has one of these.
The theurgical manifestation (神足變化), very mysterious, isn't it?
I often wonder what it could have meant to the people of the time. This miracle, in Pāli literature, is called the "Twin Miracle", and it has to do with the simultaneous production of water and fire.
Consider that it comes before the Fire Sermon. How is fire treated in Buddhist literature? Often as symbolic of saṃsāra. I sometimes wonder if the water is representing cessation, alongside the fire, in a unity. But that may well be my Madhyamaka sympathies speaking.
@Vimalajāti, Nobody here, as far as I know, can read Chinese....
It's an interesting idea. The Buddha often used the imagery of fire in his discourses. Thanissaro Bhikkhu has an insightful book called Mind Like Fire Unbound, which looks at the way the imagery of fire is used throughout the Pali Canon.
That was actually the text I had in mind!
The Nan Tien Institute (NTI) hosts the Taishō Tripiṭaka (the canon of Mahāyāna scriptures commonly accepted in East Asia) online, but alas only some of it is translated into English.
They happen to have hosted a wonderful introductory translation and commentary on the Diamond Sūtra (T235), a nearly universally celebrated Mahāyānasūtra, and I would recommend anyone who has not yet read this sermon to check it out.
It can be found here: http://ntireader.org/taisho/t0235.html
The English translation is by Venerable Yīfǎ. The commentary is by a Ph.D. student (a certain Dr. Alex Amies) from the NTI institute. It was written in 2014 and is largely non-sectarian in nature: it investigates the numerous parallels that this early Mahāyāna text has with the "Early Buddhist Texts" (EBTs) found in the Pāli Canon and the āgama-layer of the Taishō Canon, as well as provides a trilingual gloss (Chinese-English-Sanskrit) comparing the two different major recensions that this work comes down to us in: namely, a Sanskrit version and a Chinese version.
A preview, from within the document:
I wanted to add this to the post above, but I am not yet used to the time limit here in editing posts. Apologies.
In case others are not familiar with her work, Venerable Yīfǎ is a nun ordained in the 佛光山僧伽 (Fó Guāng Shān Saṃgha, or "The Assembly of Buddha's Illuminated Mountain"). It is a non-sectarian association of (para-secular) humanist monks and nuns.
The Āryākāśagarbhanāmamahāyānasūtra is a text directed at those who are beginning their bodhisattva practice. It can be found here:
http://read.84000.co/translation/UT22084-066-018.html#title
Venerable Śāntideva wrote his bodhisattvayāna catechism text, Śikṣāsamuccaya, some time in the 8th century in India. Within, he gives an account of eighteen root downfalls that may be committed by a retrogradable bodhisattva. His primary source for these bodhisattva prohibitions is the Āryākāśagarbhanāmamahāyānasūtra, a sūtra written for beginner practitioners in an easy and direct style, with a focus on moral cultivation.
They are:
This list is abbreviated to remove some material specifically addressing Buddhist monarchs.
Source: Venerable Khenchen Kunzang Pelden, jam dbyangs bla ma'i zhal lung bdud rtsi'i thig pa ("The Nectar of Mañjuśrī's Speech"), pages 141-2, commentary on Āryaśāntidevasyabodhisattvacharyāvatāra
It is clear how such a list of rules may be beneficial to beginners in a certain setting. But I think most people here won’t gain much from it. In my experience the more beneficial parts of the lore are those which encourage you to turn within, to look at your negative impulses and see what is at the root of them, so that you may bring insight and mindfulness to that part of you where lives greed, desire and ill-will.
Ultimately good behaviour will come from creating a spacious mind, where things live in clarity and honesty, good properties reinforcing other good properties, where one can spend time searching out compassion, empathy and generosity.
Thanks everyone
This is the phenomenal phena sutta
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.095.than.html
Which explains nothing ...
The Chinese recension of the Maggaṅgasutta, the Asaṁskṛtadharmasūtra, T99.224b7, has a lovely poem at the end of it. The Pāli parallel can be found at SN 43.11 (https://suttacentral.net/sn43.11/en/sujato).
It is after the sūtra proper, a little tag on the end. It might be an ancient Venerable's reflection on the sūtra, or perhaps something that a scribe accidentally incorporated into the text from some other text.
Either way, there is a wonderful and very beautiful tag at the end of the Chinese Maggaṅgasutta. It doesn't offer much in the way of 'direct' advice, per se, but it may be a manner of suture for the dharmically afflicted.
如無為,如是難見、
不動、不屈、不死、
無漏、覆蔭、洲渚、濟渡、依止、擁護、不流轉、
離熾焰、離燒然、
流通、清涼、微妙、安隱、
無病、無所有、涅槃,亦如是說。
Like this is the uncreated, like this is that which is difficult to realize,
no moving, no bending, no dying,
lacking secretions, smothered in yìn, an island shore, there is ferrying, there is crossing, there is dependency ceasing, there are no circulating transmigrations,
the exhaustion of the flame, the ending of the burning,
flowing openly, pure and cool, with secret subtlety, and calm occultation,
lacking ailment, lacking owning, nirvāṇa, also like this spoken of.
This is yin-yang thought, something foreign to the Buddhadharma before it entered into East Asia.
Note, however, how the yin-yang is turned upside down and subverted for Buddhist use.
"Smothered in yin". Conventional yin-yang cosmology would have the two in balance.
(The Lotus Sūtra, T262.43b10, Chapter 16, Discourse on the Lifespan of the Buddha)
(Āryamaitreyanāthasyottarekayānaratnagotraśāstra, T1611.827a16)
(Vijñaptimātratāsiddhiśāstra, T1585.13a19)
(from the Jākata Tales, Ja 425)
This one's a little bit cryptic. Likely, people here already know, but, since this is NewBuddhist.com, can anyone guess what the "āh" here might mean?
I'll spoil it for you at the end.
(Ākakaśaramprajñāpāramitāsarvatathāgatamanāmamahāyānasūtra, apocryphal)
As I have heard it explained to me, the above is a delightful philosophical shorthand. The āh is how one presents the letter "a" alone in Sanskrit.
The letter a, in Sanskrit as well as in English, is used to form a negatory prefix, a-, which we can see in temporal --> atemporal.
This negation is standing in for the teaching of universal emptiness, which is being presented as the foundational teaching of the Buddha.
Not to answer your question.
I really love the Rhino sutta.
It helped me continu this path through many difficult periodes.
It gave me the confidence to practise without getting sucked up in the buddhist stream.
Each time, up to this day, when I feel spiritualy lost I picture this elephant just chillin' doing his thing and most is good.
Awesome.
Well, which is it, Rhino, or elephant - ?!
Lol hahaha ive had the image of an elephant in my head yesterday, hilarious
The wikipedia page reports a different sort of confusion!
Fare singly as a rhinoceros's horn. That doesn't quite have the same ring to me.
(Cittavargasyakūrmagāthādharmapade, The Thought-Chapter's Tortoise Hymn in the Dharmapada, T211.584b11)
(Nihon Daizōkyō Hensankai, Shugendō shōso 1, bussetsu sanjin juryōmuhen kyō, Sutra on the Unlimited Life of the Threefold Body)