Befriending Buddhist Sutras

John T. Bullitt, "Tips on Reading the Pali Discourses" (accesstoinsight.org); Wisdom Quarterly

(Linc060/flickr.com)

 

(Linc060/flickr.com)

"Thus should one train: 'We will listen when discourses -- words of the Wayfarer, deep, profound, transcendent, impersonal -- are being recited. We will lend ear, will set our hearts on knowing them, will regard these teachings as worth grasping and mastering.' That is how one should train." (SN 20.7)

 

The ancient Pali canon contains thousands of sutras (Pali, suttas) or discourses, of which more than 1,000 are now available in English Access to Insight. When faced with such a vast store of riches, three questions naturally spring to mind:

1. Why should I read the sutras?
2. Which ones should I read?
3. How should I read them?

There are no simple cookie-cutter answers to these questions; the best answers will be the ones discovered on one's own. Nevertheless, here are a few ideas, suggestions, and helpful tips from years of experience.

Why read sutras?
Interested in exploring the original teachings of the historical Buddha? Then the Pali canon is the place to turn for authoritative advice and support through discourses. These sutras are the primary source of Buddhist teachings. We need not worry whether the exact words in standardized/chanted/memorized discourses were uttered by the historical Buddha. Who can prove such a thing? Keep in mind that the teachings in discourse form have been practiced -- with success -- by countless followers for 2,600 years. If we want to know whether the teachings really work, we study and put the teachings into practice and thereby find out firsthand.
 

They present a complete body of teachings. The teachings, taken in their entirety, present a complete roadmap guiding the follower from one's current state of spiritual maturity onwards toward the final goal. No matter what our current state may be (skeptic, outsider, dabbler, devout lay practitioner, or celibate monastic), there is something in the sutras to help us progress another step further along the path towards the goal. As one reads more and more widely in the canon, we may find less of a need to borrow teachings from other spiritual traditions, as the Buddha's discourses contain most of what we need to know.  

The Buddha addresses the Five Ascetics as well as countless devas.

 

They present a self-consistent body of teachings. 

  

The consistency of the canon is characterized by a single taste [Ud 5.5] -- that of freedom. As we wend our way through them, however, from time to time we encounter things to question. Contradiction, apparent or real, presents a need for a nuanced understanding of the Dharma translated into words and symbols. The truth simply is; the Dharma is a systematic attempt by the Sangha to present the message of the Buddha.

 

As we reflect deeply on any stumbling blocks, conflicts often dissolve as a new horizon of understanding opens up. It was our understanding that was deficient, not the Dharma's. For example, we might conclude from reading one sutra [Sn 4.1] that Buddhist practice should be to avoid all desires. But upon reading another [SN 51.15], we learn that wholesome-desire itself is a necessary factor of the path. 

 

Only upon reflection does it become clear that what the Buddha taught is that there are different kinds of desire. Sensual craving  is not the same as an aspiration for the goal of ending all suffering. 

 

Some things are actually worth desiring -- most notably, the extinction of all harmful craving.

 

This is not the Dharma changing. It is our understanding that needs expanding into unfamiliar territory to encompass both sutras; the apparent "contradiction" evaporates. Over time we learn to recognize apparent conflicts not as inconsistencies in the discourses themselves but as an indication that we have been carried to the frontier of our understanding. It is up to us to cross beyond the boundaries of ignorance.

  

Sutras offer lots of practical advice. We find a wealth of practical information on a host of relevant real-world topics such as: 

• how families can live happily together [DN 31],
• how to safeguard material possessions [AN 4.255],
• what sorts of things are worth talking about [AN 10.69],
• how to cope with grief [AN 5.49],
• how to train the mind even on our deathbeds [SN 22.1],
• much, much more. 

In short, the Buddha's teachings offer very practical and realistic counsel on how to find happiness, no matter what our life-situation may be, no matter whether or not we call ourselves "Buddhist." There is even instruction on how to meditate [e.g., MN 118, DN 22] although writings cannot take the place of a competent teacher/guide. (This may be very hard to accept in the West, but it has been understood to be a necessity throughout India's spiritual history).

 

Sutras bolster confidence in the Buddha's wisdom. As we explore we come across things we already know to be true from our own direct experience. The Buddha said them 26 centuries before we had a chance to experience them. We may already be well acquainted with the hazards of alcoholism [DN 31]. Perhaps we've already tasted the kind of wholesome pleasure that naturally arises in a concentrated mind/heart [AN 5.28]. 

 

Reading is not believing; experience is (Keira Sutra baby/Hansong/flickr.com)

  

Seeing our own experience validated in the sutras makes it easier to accept the possibility that the more refined or advanced experiences the Buddha describes may be true. And some counter-intuitive and difficult teachings may, in fact, reflect realities we were not yet familiar with. This validation can inspire renewed confidence and energy to help our meditation, daily practice, and understanding move into new territory.

  

Energy and confidence support and further energize our meditation (bhavana, self-cultivation) practice. When we read about other people's meditation experiences, we may begin to get a feel for what we have already tasted or accomplished in our own practice and what remains to be done.

 

Reading them is just plain good for us. Instructions contained in them are entirely of a wholesome nature. For they are all about the cultivation of skillful qualities such as generosity, virtue, patience, joy, concentration, mindfulness, and so on. 

 

Therefore, when we read we are filling our heart/mind with wholesome things. Consider by contrast all the harmful impressions modern media bombards us with. A little regular sutra becomes an island of sanity and safety in a dangerous sea. Take good care. Whereas reading a sutra is a great first step, it is taking good advice to heart that bears the fruits of wisdom and compassion. More

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Daydreaming: Where do we go? (audio)

Terrence McNally, Dec. 2, 2012 (aWorldThatJustMightWork.com); Wisdom Quarterly

The power of story -- even in Japanese (English below) -- transports us. Where do we go when we go off in our heads full of wonder, or bored, in search of the next story to learn from?

Story taught to monkey, Java (Mararie/flickr)

This week’s show is about story and narrative with Jonathan Gottschall, author of The Storytelling Animal. Although this is not about Obama or politics, Barry  reveals the overwhelming importance of story in our lives:

In a July 2012 interview with Charlie Rose, Obama said that “the mistake” of the early years of his presidency was his failure to be a better storyteller:

 

The Buddha, master storyteller of Jataka Tales

“The mistake of my first couple of years was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right. And that’s important. But the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times.” If given a second term he says he will “spend more time with the American people, listening to them, but also being in a conversation with them about where do we go as a country?”

The late evolutionary biologist Steven Jay Gould called humans “the primate who tells stories…” And it’s not just Gould. Anthropologists have found societies that have existed for millennia without the wheel, but they’ve never found one that doesn’t tell stories.

 

Siddhartha daydreaming about what it would be like to be free (Nitin_Paul/flickr.com)

 

A World That Just Might Work, the website, leads with: “On the radio, I tell stories of a world that just might work. As a consultant, I help you tell yours.” Building on time as a teacher, two decades in the entertainment industry, and 15 years of radio interviews, I help non-profits, foundations, public agencies, and businesses tell better stories and build better narratives.

 

What does Gottschall have to say about the latest science on the subject? Why is narrative so powerful? What is its evolutionary value? And can what we’re learning help us get even better at tapping its power?

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Part III: It's Been a Long Time (sutra)

Maurice O'C. Walshe, "Great Discourse on the Lineage" (DN 14); Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

Spiritual evolution occurs in cycles (bisquich.com)

• Part I: It's Been a Long Time (sutra)
• Part II: It's Been a Long Time (sutra)

The Buddha: "Then the Bodhisattva Vipassi thought, 'I have found the insight-way to enlightenment, namely:

1. "By the cessation of mind-and-body, consciousness ceases;
2. by the cessation of consciousness, mind-and-body ceases;
3. by the cessation of mind-and-body, the six sense bases cease;
4. by the cessation of the six sense bases, contact ceases;
5. by the cessation of contact, feeling ceases;
6. by the cessation of feeling, craving ceases;
7. by the cessation of craving, clinging ceases;
8. by the cessation of clinging, becoming ceases;
9. by the cessation of becoming, birth ceases;
10. by the cessation of birth aging and death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and distress cease. Thus this whole mass of suffering ceases." 

"And at the thought, ‘Cessation, cessation,’ there arose in the Bodhisattva Vipassi insight into things never before realized accompanied by knowledge, vision, awareness, and light.

  

Buddha Peace Pagoda inset (Valdnad)

"Then, disciples, at another time the Bodhisattva Vipassi dwelled contemplating the rise and fall of the Five Aggregates of Clinging: 'Such is the (1) body, such its arising, such its passing away; such is (2) sensation... such is (3) perception... such are the (4) formations [usually represented by volition]... such is (5) consciousness, such its arising, such its passing away.'

  

"And as he remained contemplating the rise and fall of the Five Aggregates of Clinging, before long his mind was freed from the corruptions, freed without remainder. [That is, he became completely enlightened and liberated from all future rebirth.]
  
"Then, disciples, the Blessed One, the Arhat, the fully-enlightened Buddha Vipassi thought, 'Suppose I were now to teach Dharma?' Then he thought, 'I have attained to this Dharma, which is profound, hard to see, hard to grasp, peaceful, excellent, beyond reasoning, subtle, to be apprehended by the wise.

   

"'But this generation delights in clinging, rejoices and revels in it. But for those who so delight, rejoice, and revel in clinging this is hard to see, namely, the conditioned [dependently originated] nature of things. 

   

"Equally hard to see would be the calming of all the mental formations, the abandonment of all substrates of rebirth, the waning away of craving, dispassion, cessation, [so as to see] nirvana. And if I were to teach Dharma to others and they did not understand, that would be wearisome and troublesome."
  
"And to the Buddha Vipassi there occurred spontaneously this verse never heard before:
  

"This that I’ve attained why should I proclaim?"

Those full of lust and hate can never grasp it.

Upstream this Dharma subtle, deep does aim.

So hard to discern, the passion-blinded cannot see it."

   

Maha Brahma (Thai Erawan Shrine)

"As the Buddha Vipassi pondered in this way, his mind was inclined to inaction rather than to teaching the Dharma. And, disciples, the Buddha Vipassi’s reasoning became known to a certain Great Brahma [telepathically], who thought:
  
"'Alas the world is perishing. It will be destroyed because the mind of Vipassi, the Blessed One, the Arhat, the Fully Enlightened Buddha, is inclined to inaction rather than to teaching the Dharma!'
   
"So this Great Brahma, as swiftly as a strong man might stretch his flexed arm or flex it again, disappeared from the Brahma plane and reappeared before the Buddha Vipassi. Arranging his upper robber over one shoulder and kneeling on his right knee, he saluted the Buddha Vipassi with joined hands and said:
   
"'Venerable sir, may the Blessed One teach Dharma, may the Well-Farer teach Dharma! There are beings with little dust in their eyes who are perishing from not hearing Dharma: they will become knowers of Dharma!" More

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