Q: The Samkitta Sutta is a good guide to what is, and what is not, the teaching of the Buddha.

A: It's bootstrappy to say the Sutta supports the authenticity of the Sutta.
What's nice about academic research is that it does indicate a historical Buddha, and it indicates a strong plausibility of
relating this individual to large swaths of the EBTs. This in combination with that Sutta, is very encouraging indeed.
-False dichotomy (horizontal/vertical).
-So many times, it seems, people seem to say that steps on the gradual training, since they are not the final step, are useless
steps. So foolish; scholastic endeavor, parsing the EBTs, coming to grips with what is most plausibly Buddhavacana - these
are significant and useful ways to begin, a good foundation is laid, practice can remain skillfully constrained in this way...
...and yet still we see the denigration of the intellect. It's true, an in-depth individual plummet into the phenomenological
depths is called for, but this is called for with specific guides and instructions with specific goals and structures, and these are
parsed out of the historical horizon in part by way of scholastic endeavor.
-The fact that the Pali Canon largely post-dates the historical Buddha to just the extent that Mahayana does seems to be lost
on you. Pointing this fact out, and thereby highlighting the EBTs as that textual body which most plausibly adheres to the
early Sangha of the historical Buddha, is not a laissez-faire attitude; to give primacy to e.g. the Visuddhimagga is to embody
the same sort of attitude which can give primacy to e.g. the Lotus Sutra.
-(In short, I'll see your bodhisattva aspirations and raise you momentariness & certain merit ideations. But let us not get
sidetracked in these minutiae.)
-The point is, once the EBTs are pointed out as such, a lot becomes optional at best, perhaps only chronologically/culturally
relevant in some cases, else actually off-target.
-Historical abstraction is a danger, but it sits alongside the danger of traditional apotheoses as simply one more way to make
up an at-best inaccurate narrative. But the Dhamma isn't molested by the historical location of the EBTs, while it can be
molested by traditional & modern exegeses.
-So this is important to note: there are the EBTs, best we've got: and, then, there are later exegetical efforts on this material,
traditional in various ways & modern in various ways. Some is interesting, some is given to a specific audience, and some is
just wild & crazy. We have a bit of this on record, and some was destroyed, and it proliferates today quite a bit, and we do
what we can.
-But, underneath all that is the EBT layer: related to the historical Buddha in ways the other materials simply are not.
-With kamma, I tend to emphasize the consequences that are discernible. This leads into a discussion of wholesome &
unwholesome acts of body, speech, and mind, and from this foundation I can offer the Wager when issues of post-mortem
continuities are broached.
-With a foundation in wholesome & unwholesome, both Sila and Samadhi are begun, and with these as foundation, a
burgeoning present confidence can overwrite worry over future states.
Passive study has its place, but guarded sense gates and mindful eating (from the Gradual Training) can start to become daily
habits right away.
-But I find that knowing "anger is a secondary emotion" is very useful. As soon as I know there is anger, I know that
something else happened first - sadness, fear, etc. - and that I wasn't mindful there (because mindfulness that catches the
sadness or the fear or what-have-you prevents it from becoming anger in the first place). So that's like wallpaper for the
mind, and in that sort of mind, the anger can be moved aside and space made for patience and harmlessness and so on while
mindfulness is reestablished and the root of anger pursued.
-In other words, no matter what sort of righteousness I feel, I know that anger is simply downstream of the actual
problem(s), and is already one unwholesome step, knowledge of which strongly motivates calmly dealing with the event.
(SN 01.71)
-Since neither access concentration nor flow states are mentioned in the Nikayas, the trick is to find out if these terms have
Dhamma-relevant phenomenological referents.
-Now, depending on what people mean by the term it may or may not approach a correlation, but since access concentration
is taken to be a transition point between seated satipatthana and jhana, I think it's possible to call any anapanasati effort an
instantiation of access concentration, to one degree or another.
-But by and large, sammasamadhi is aligned with the cessation of sankhara, which is to say, ending involved agency, which
makes it easy to remark that establishing & burgeoning a sense of personal control/agency is basically going the opposite
direction from what the anapanasati directions task us with.
-The relatively passive nature of seated bhavana, and the calm repetition of walking bhavana, seem to be contraindicated for
getting into flow states (which are anyway more often associated with sports activities or other performative behaviors);
indeed, sustaining bhavana seems to move the individual away from certain key flow descriptors.
-There are probably ways that breathing can be done in order to enter a flow state with it, but bringing it in detail to its
culmination, e.g. SN 54.6, calls for a rather different approach.
-"Pretty sure" does not equate to certainty, though we both must agree that post-mortem certainties are not to be had, in any
case. So, asserting rebirth is as flawed as asserting contra-rebirth. I mentioned this earlier.

-And, the Buddha's program is easily the gradual training; one way of summing it up being that of the ennobling eightfold
Path.
-Noting that "right view with effluents" is a later textual addition with few exemplars, we can easily note the earlier
proliferation of right view formulations which do not involve post-mortem particulars in any way. That this rebirth-talk came
to be added speaks to the separability of these issues.
-The lateness of the 12-piece DO chain is also apparent, and in many similar ways - contrary to your assertion of the
inextricable nature of rebirth & the Dhamma - parsing the development of early Buddhism demands that rebirth assertions be
seen as simply one way to get things wrong, among others.
-(What's essential is kiriyavada; the claim that actions have consequences that are ethically determined such that 'right' and
'wrong' effort are valid categories. This can be discerned here and now; in my earlier post on this page, it is encompassed by
point 2.)
-Taking the Nikayas as inviolate Buddhavacana in toto is simply untenable, yet it's the only way that rebirth can be seen as
an essential assertion.
-Critical reflection dismantles this sort of edifice everywhere; the "superstitious" content (to be almost criminally brief while
using only roughly accurate terms, this includes cosmology, inner mental phenomenology & psychic powers, and the
correlative associations between the two), when corrected for as an expression of myth-making, en-valuation, and so forth, is
simply an unproblematic consequence of the contextual carriage of the texts.
Q: Since we're faced with competing claims about the possibility of an afterlife, with the various proponents threatening
horrific torments as a punishment for accepting the wrong claim, the only sane choice is to reject all the claims and assert
non-continuance as the likelihood based on available evidence.
A: This begs the question. The "only sane choice" is to refrain from committing to a speculation - to refrain from certitude in
the face of uncertainties, not double-down on one among them.
Q: This is a basic problem with all wager-type arguments. Since there is a variety of possible wagers to be made -- a
veritable roulette wheel of high-stakes possibilities -- wagering on the claims of a particular religion is actually no safer than
wagering against all of the claims.
A: You seem to have a problem understanding an agnostic position on this matter, a position that refrains from assertions
about post-mortem continuities. Saying "yes" is the pile of wagers you refer to, but saying "no" somehow doesn't count as
just another wager, to your mind... but it is just another wager. So, the point is that any post-mortem assertion requires false
certitude, and this is not to be done. The point of the Wager is to assess courses of action irrespective of the particular postmortem truths which may or may not obtain, based on what can be seen here and now.
Q: My objection is that various aspects of the path -- don't make sense without rebirth as the premise.
A: Yes, they do, because they revolve around training citta. This isn't "training future rebirths", this is training the here&now
mind. Also, be aware of the possibility of an Argument from Personal Incredulity, here.
Q: The trouble I see here is that while we may be reasonably sure these strata exist, assertions about the specifics are
necessarily somewhat speculative and shaky, with a risk of creating an argumentative loop in which we define "the Buddha's
actual teaching" as "those parts of the Canon that I agree with."
A: I can see the shape of this objection, but it's a straw man worry since it would only obtain in the absence of text-critical
assessments and other contributory variables. Some conclusions are relatively stable ones, and some declarations of
early/late are the best claims based on the evidence (I thought you'd be a fan of such an approach...).
Q: Where is your proof that rebirth is a later addition? Some people think the Sutta Nipata represents the oldest stratum, but
we see rebirth referred to here, for instance.
A: The Sutta Nipata is all early in a certain respect, but not all of it is early Buddhism.
-Remember, for example, the slew of early samanas, preceding and coexisting with Buddhist renunciates. They seem most
likely to be responsible for the growth in the texts of of androcentrism and mysogyny, and for Sutta Nipata chapters 1-3
(when people report that scholars think of the Snp as early, they need to remember only chapters 4-5 look specifically
Buddhist; the rest, as well as a lot of the poetry in the Nikayas and especially the SN, could very easily have come from the
common samanic stock of textual material).
-It's complicated, as you note, but what becomes apparent is that the early material doesn't talk about rebirth in precisely
Dhammic contexts but only common samanic/bahmanic ones, and later on textual development starts to incorporate these
assertions until we get "right view with effluents", the 12-step DO, and so forth.
Q: Yes, I agree. I'm opposing the "wager" justification for religion.
The wager argument, in short, goes like this: none of us can know with certainty what happens after death; the consequences
of being wrong are more serious if there's an afterlife, and therefore the safer bet is to follow this or that religion.
A: That's not the Wager the Buddha offered, at all. Please notice that the Wager is a teaching on wholesome & unwholesome
conditionality, and not one on proper religious adherence. Let's not discuss mischaracterizations.
Q: But I think we have enough evidence at hand to determine that non-continuance is far more likely than continuance. And
so it would be unwise to make decisions based on the possibility of continuance.
A: It's unwise to pretend certain knowledge. You back away from this when you say
Q: If the latter... If the former...
A: but, again, your misunderstanding of the Wager bars your egress from this dilemma, such that you double-down on one of
them. The Wager suggests that the Path of dukkhanirodha can be traveled in any case, with benefits in any case.
But you don't agree:
Q: Seems like overkill to me... a practice that fosters an unwholesome attitude towards the body and the senses, a lifedenying negativity, and misogyny backed up with threats of hell fire

A: I suggest, again, that this sort of thing is well-explained by the wanderer milieu of the times, the larger cultural context of
honoring ascetics, ritual impurity, and so on ad nauseum. None of this is aligned with the themes of the Middle Way, the
Buddha's creation of a female Order, and so on.
---The Nikayas & Vinaya we have are products of about a century and a half of oral perpetuation in a culture with significant
metaphysical assumptions in play. Just because this is complex does not warrant ignoring the fact of it and it does not
warrant uncritical acceptance of the thing - the texts themselves warn against that very approach.
-Put another way: the most foundational texts we have were well-transmitted but added-to and edited up to and shortly after
the time of Asoka. The taste of the Dhamma is in this soup, but there are other bits as well, and part of modern practice
necessarily involves assessing these nuances - it's been this way in Buddhism for a very long time. (The texts themselves
discuss the problem, for example, so we know this has been a concern over time.)
-Anyway, it's one thing to criticize bloated religious iterations of Buddhism, but it would be completely off-base to think
think that this constitutes a criticism of the Dhamma.
Q: Well, I'm looking here at the Apannaka Sutta, which ...Sounds to me like exactly the kind of wager argument I was
referring to earlier. What am I missing?
A: MN 117 and MN 60, which you have now cited, are both handily discussed here. I don't agree with all the points nor all
the directions of thought, but the point that jumps out for me here is that MN 60 has the passage "because there actually is"
while MN 117 says that this very sort of view is on the side of effluents.
-With the Nikayas, but here the MN in particular, we have snapshots of development that are editorialized collections of
early, original material compiled together with early & later exegetical efforts and other updates, such as the Pali language
itself, pericopes, the Nikaya/Agama structures, and so on.
-So what you're missing is that MN 117, MN 60, and AN 3.65 approach the problem in different ways due to this, and show
a development of different ideas about how to craft the Wager. MN 60 doesn't even have a Chinese parallel, while the AN
has a parallel that differs in a significant way; so, these suttas are interesting to wrangle.
-But AN 3.65 is the only Wager here: MN 60 declares post-mortem facts which voids the Wager approach, and MN 117 says
that this post-mortem facticity is on the side of effluents.
-"Right view without effluents" (a baroque locution; this is just 'sammaditthi') does not make reference to other worlds or
rebirth at all - this shows that the early texts discussing right view do not require rebirth or next-world ideas or anything like
that to be in place. The only requirement for the Wager is kiriyavada, as explained in detail to the Kalamas.
-Conditionality proceeds, having an unconjecturable beginning. Any individual process can be spoken of in terms of greater
or lesser encompassing brackets; depending on the point of view of the discussion of individuals we can bracket mindmoments, dhammas arising & ceasing, this body seen standing for eighty years or so, and even longer processes of
aggregates being taken up as fuel.
-These last are considered to be 'rebirth' proper, but they are exactly those aspects of idapaccayata that are beyond
observation for just about everyone, as well as those aspects that are most narrowly useful when discussing Dhamma with
various modern folk. So, it's taking an especially difficult case of conditionality to observe, applying it to a highly specific &
controversial topic (post-mortem states), and insisting upon it.
-In contrast, we are in fact simply advised to see the sense spheres as old kamma, and to tread the Path for the cessation of
kamma. In other words, we are tasked with picking up this story right where we find it, and getting to work. To insist on one
or another imaginative formulation of how rebirth occurs (culminating in e.g. Bardo sorts of talk) is to miss the point
entirely, which is simply that a moral order underlies conditionality and is the bedrock for the very possibility of the Path.
-The Jatakas, for example, are narrative structures used as exemplars of this moral order, not descriptions about how Iron
Age India obtains throughout the many ages of the many world systems of the cosmos. They are teaching aids, at best, not
guidebooks (and, I will be frank here, using rebirth extrapolations for guidebooks is precisely where Mahayana first jumps
the rails - skillful means first meant the skill of not accidentally attaining noble paths or fruits).
-There was once a prevailing cultural narrative that made discussing heaven and renunciation viable openers for dialogue.
These days, I think, more often it's better to start with idapaccayata, setting aside any insistence about post-mortem
particulars.
-The Buddha went the Wager route when faced with this dilemma, advising the Kalamas to carefully investigate for
themselves while pointing out the idapaccayata that could be pointed out.
Schematically, things can be depicted thus:
1. idapaccayata implies punabbhava
2. kamma/vipaka ethicizes idapaccayata
2a. specifics are unconjecturable
2b. the Path is nevertheless possible
3. direct seeing of idapaccayata is eventually necessary over the course of the Path
3a. direct seeing of punabbhava is not
-In my opinion, discussions about rebirth are almost entirely comprised of those taking the point of view in (1) versus those
taking that of (3), with (pseudo-)eternalisms and (p-)annihilationisms showing up fairly often, much running afoul of (2a),
and a smattering of New Age junk.
A focus on 2b + 3 is about all that's required, here. To emphasize 1 is a misstep just as much as arguing against it.
Q: ...I am confident the statement: "Mahcattrsaka-sutta is the only canonical instance in the four Nikyas that presents a
supramundane version of the path-factors" is inaccurate.

A: It is accurate insofar as it's the only time the Path is described as supramundane. Prior to the addition of the mundane path
and e.g. MN 60, there was only the Path and it was not described using terms from this later dichotomy.
Q: My view is what is written above is a misunderstanding, in respect to the noble path.
The Nikayas unambiguously state only the realisation of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness & not-self, resulting in the
elimination of craving, attachment and self-views, leads to the eradication of dukkha. The four path factors quoted above in
themselves are incapable of leading to the eradication of dukkha.
A: This is a misreading of the quote. They are part of the standard definition of the eightfold Path, not in and of themselves
sufficient as the Path.
A minor misreading happens again when calling the 'mundane' factors Path factors is criticized. While Analayo isn't
challenging the 'mundane' aspect the way we are, he is challenging those descriptors, which are indeed Abhidhammic terms.
--It's true that 'supramundane' Path factors are the only Path factors the Buddha taught, but it's false to say he taught them as
'supramundane'. He taught them as Path factors; this later attempt to shoehorn in merits and heavens is no reason to consider
'supramundane' a correct additional term for the ennobling eightfold Path. It's out of time, and out of place.
The point of the Sutta doesn't even originally seem to have been an explication of Path factors, but only an explanation of
how other Path factors interrelate to support sammasamadhi. That this became engorged with later textual blocs and shoved
into the Majjhima while remaining open to edits even after Asoka sent his missions out does not support the use of its
Abhidhamma, nor the use of it's blindly added pericopes about mundane matters.
Q: There is much in the Suttas that the Buddha describes as lokuttara, ALL of which falls under his descriptions of the Noble
Path Factors in MN117.
A: Please spare a moment or two and educate me. I am trying to find lokuttara throughout the Suttas, but "there is much"
doesn't seem accurate. So if that's the case for your memory, please indicate a few places. I can only notice MN 117 and
otherwise the frequent pericope "the discourses of the tathagata - deep, deep in their meaning, lokuttara...". The Buddha
describes the half-measures to which you refer in many ways, but MN 117 is the only use of this dichotomy to do so. I don't
think "sammahitthi sasava" [sic] exists; sammaditthi sasava exists only in MN 117.
Q: He distinguished his own teachings as superior to others in many ways throughout the Suttas, for example, when he
called his own teachings "the Dhamma that is good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good in the end", or when he
said such things as "Monks, the ending of the effluents is for one who knows and sees, not for one who does not know and
does not see. Seeing what? ...." -- and of course, in every case...
A: ...well, let's have a case I've asked for above, the use of lokuttara that isn't MN 117 and that isn't in that pericope. I
implore you to indicate relevant texts.
Q: The only reference the Buddha makes to path are contained in his desriptions of his own, ariyo lokuttara, teachings.
A: Which texts have ariyo lokuttara? I know about ariyo aha giko maggo & nava lokuttara, but not this other phrase.
So yeah, I'm missing a place where lokuttara shows up in the contexts you've indicated. "Mundane" junk and "witheffluents" junk is just not related to the Dhamma at all, not one whit, we agree here, stuka. But this use of lokuttara in MN
117 is also late. It seems to me only to show up later, in the early abhidhamma period that presages the scholastic
Abhidhammas.
It may very well be so warranted, but it wouldn't make it any earlier; lokuttara may be an authentic general descriptor, but
MN 117 employs it to unique effect.
A: In general terms, we can say that the Buddha ended his teaching career ~450 BCE, and that the Agama/Nikaya strata of
texts were in the process of taking final shape for about a century and a half or so.
This would have largely been accomplished just prior to the pre-sectarian abhidhammic period (~300 BCE - ~200 BCE),
which leads naturally into the middle & late abhidhammic period (~200 BCE - ~200 CE).
So, going backwards from either the Theravada or the Sarvastivada or the Dharmaguptaka, which are all later Schools ca.
200 - 300 CE, one will trace back along scholastic Commentaries into late- and middle-period Abhidhamma compositions to
get to early Abhidhamma, itself based on a common earlier exegetical source.
This means that from ~450 BCE to ~175 BCE the Buddhist texts developed from the Buddha's precise words to patterns
(suttas, matikas & other pericopes) for accurate oral transmission, and from there to the early & late SN & AN, the DN/MN
collections, the final KN collection, and with that becoming settled the way was open for the later pre-sectarian period.
(Keeping in mind, of course, that to a certain extent the Nikaya/Agama collections were still open to editorial
rearrangements, certain additions, and so forth prior to the pre-sectarian abhidhamma, and even afterwards. Examples of this
include certain terms and pericopes such as the formless attainments, etc.)
--Considering the historical development of texts and schools is a characteristic of modern approaches to the Dhamma. Text
criticism, various historical & other contextual analyses, and so forth all aggrandize an understanding of these processes,
with significant effects to certain favored traditional and cultural expressions.
The Nikayas, Scholatic Abhidhammas, and Commentaries are therefore able to be seen as snapshots of moving targets, and
an awareness of this complexity is relatively new for Buddhists to grapple with. A religious response to these sorts of things
tends to take certain shapes, while secular responses tend to take other avenues.
The lack of strict historical support for Mahayana's connection to the historical Buddha and the concomitant strength of the
evidence that it's a later & widespread development is one example of an issue that modern Buddhists must deal with, a
consequence that has huge ramifications.

The fact that Theravadan Commentaries cannot be considered strictly authoritative is another, similar to the discovery of
Greek Orthodoxy after thinking only Catholic strictures were on offer.
Certain cultural preferences can be shown up as being without Dhammic foundation, while others can come under new
scrutiny.
We certainly live in interesting times; we have unprecedented access to the earliest strata of texts which opens the door for
all manner of modern abhidhammas.
How do such historical perspectives affect others? Are they instead unimportant?
A: The historicity of the Buddha is clear enough, though his name and other features of his life came to reflect his later
apotheosis by tradition and are somewhat unreliable. There are nevertheless reliable shapes to the narratives we have in
certain respects, such as with his first two teachers, his first disciples, etc. The narratives were favorite sites of
embellishment too, of course, but nevertheless these layers are not indicative of falsity so much as they are indicative of
editorial development and accumulation, for a time.
The last two DN suttas reflect an Abhidhammic approach, for example, showing a facet of the transition from the Nikayas as
open texts to their being considered closed, coinciding with the rise of the early Abhidhamma period. It also shows that, to
the early reciters, things that felt obvious were acceptable to put into the mouth of the Buddha; the lack of total overlap
between the Nikayas and the Agamas reflects this as well, which engenders caution in me as I approach the material.
Due to this, I tend to favor the four main Nikayas as my source material especially when I'm able to put it in conversation
with parallel texts, but those texts are altogether therefore not totally Buddhavacana (edits, additions, etc.). As has been
suggested, sometimes a lot of effort at this level can be a matter of picking favorite teachings, or using single passages out of
context in order to build grand illusions. But I think it's also possible to approach this material in a consistent way, examining
strata of development ahead of preferences for outcome.
MN 117 was recently an example of this sort of thing, where I see it as a layered text while others take the text as having
been spoken by the Buddha as found in situ.
It simply looks to me as though the DN and MN were composed together, and that the SN was composed first, and that the
AN and the KN were composed last but incorporated miscellaneous early materials, and that while they were all first
composed at different times, they remained open together for a time while the whole thing slowly closed/froze, at somewhat
different rates throughout:
This is where I prefer to explore & enact; the later stuff is all of a piece, whether Buddhaghosa or a modern author - they all
work with what they have available. In my case, I prefer to bracket the material that actually relates to what the historical
Buddha said, and the Nikayas are currently the best English source for that effort, so long as they aren't uncritically taken up
in toto.
Q: Could you elaborate a little on the textual-critical methods used to arrive at the conclusions above (for example, about the
probable sequencing of SN, DN, MN, AN and KN)? I find this stuff fascinating but am only superficially familiar with the
methodology.
A: It's spread around within Early Buddhism resources generally. In this case, the idea comes from a sequential analysis of
the Nikayas in Studies in the Origins of Buddhism by Pande, if I recall correctly, though maybe it was elsewhere.
As I understand it, this is something that's done when examining the way language is employed, which ideas are assumed,
and so forth.
Keep in mind this is not playing with certainties, but trends and inferential likelihoods and disagreements about those.
Consensus can be reached, but certainly not in all cases.
Some sangha members will have made skillful additions & exegetical notes, and I expect some others, not so much. So this
affects the whole of one's effort to read/hear & understand & practice the Dhamma when using the Nikayas, as everyone
must (to ignore the Nikayas is, seemingly, to ignore what the historical Buddha actually taught; even as editorially compiled
as they are, they {Nikaya-Agama-et al} are all we have).
Historical awareness is simply the proper beginning for exploring the Nikayas if one wants to avoid later, potentially or
largely inapplicable, accretions of later cultures and times - i.e. the early abhidhamma, from before Asoka's missions but
after the Buddha's teaching career, the later Scholastic efforts, and so forth.
-It's important to recognize that the Pali texts were transmitted by one reciter tradition among many; there are Chinese
equivalents to each Nikaya, but those Agamas are each from different schools, whereas the Pali materials are exclusively
Theravada.
-The differences between these texts can help control for scholastic interpolations, historical accretions, and other extraneous
artifacts concomitant with a long tradition of textual transmission.
-Some are satisfied with choosing to adhere to a scholastic approach, but my interest is in the material which most likely
existed in the pre-scholastic period, such as it can be ascertained, and comparative analyses are very revealing in this respect.
-I chose to ascertain the smallest zone of material around the historical Buddha. So, this body of texts is the Nikaya/Agama
strata, and these reflect the state of Buddhism about 150-200 years after the historical Buddha's teaching career ended. Only
within this material, despite some overlay of extraneous materials and cultural/doctrinal momenta, are we very likely to find
what the historical Buddha taught.
-Turns out a viable practice was actually preserved, and this on the back of a Wager argument that eliminates the necessity of
any metaphysical view, rebirth inclusive.
-The metaphysical aspects are a feature of all later Buddhisms, Theravada and Mahayana alike, so having it be a description
of 'Buddhism' may be accurate for all that, while inaccurate in terms of the Dhamma.

-Emptiness is a way of discussing anatta: SN 35.85. Talking about the whys and wherefors of the origin of the universe is
altogether off-target.
Q: Can jhana be addictive?
A: This warning about holding to such states via conceit is present in the Nikayas; Anuruddha had to be reminded of this sort
of thing @ AN 3.128, for example, so the warning is valid, but not that jhana is in and of itself going to be clung to, rather
that conceit yet enshrouds such effort & should be watched for, wisely noticed, calmly ended.
Another way of phrasing the danger here could be via the idiom "resting on one's laurels"; whether jhana has been enabled or
whether some other state is being taken for jhana, in either case the goal isn't yet attained & the state, however functional is
not functioning correctly if it is not leading to the end of conceit, the end of clinging.
(If it doesn't muddy the waters for you overmuch, I would add that jhana - as I understand things, of course - is a mode of
attention rather than some sort of specific attainment, a mode that takes refinement to get working well enough to
accomplish the Goal. So this mode can obtain across a somewhat broad array of techniques, to varying degrees, but is the
mode of attention to which anapanasati is designed to provide full access.)
-In my own thinking, I say similar things, though I frame them according to the difference between the Dhamma as that
which leads to dukkhanirodha, and the broader cultural package that Greater Magadha imprints on the texts which have
brought the Dhamma to us (to say nothing of further cultural lensing before it variously ends up in English, etc.). I think a lot
was brought along on purpose by an early Sangha eager to see itself thrive, such as speaking favorably about ancient
paccekkabuddhas while emphasizing their impossibility in the presence of a dispensation from the Buddha. The ancient &
respected muni of the culture come to be honored as previous Buddhas or paccekkabuddies, and then quickly the
development of Bodhisatta ideations come to the fore, the idea of building up merit over many lifetimes and eons, the idea of
merit transfer and the idea of kamma-as-fate... so much happens.
-I have always noticed that the triple knowledge quickly became a favored pericope, yet nevertheless we know that the first
two are not at all a necessary aspect of Awakening. So, I really think the early Sangha was thoroughly housed in their local
culture until Asoka at the earliest, and this cultural contribution is tightly interwoven throughout the earliest texts we have.
-Jayarava says: ...I argue that any afterlife belief is actually eternalistic, and problematically dualistic. Rejecting all of forms
of afterlifeas talking in the wrong way and/or about the wrong thingis the only way to keep to the middle. Hence rebirth
is no longer salient, no longer relevant when considering how to live.
-I think I agree; I would say that afterlife commitment, either for or against continuity, is always inappropriate and off-target.
The conditionality of note is to be observed here and now, the practice is based here and now (e.g. meditation is not a
mystical journey through the cosmos but a careful removal from the mind of the conditions for dukkha), and so it goes.
-The Buddha, in the Nikayas, can be seen to clearly distinguish ideations about heaven & hell with 'kamma that doesn't have
a result' - it's as though the Buddha is saying that the others' ideas are correct, but that there's a better way to go. It's brilliant
since it avoids disagreement while indicating a more helpful goal, and I think it's possible to parse the cultural stuff out, in
large measure. (It's also where all the mysogyny comes from, and so on...)
---Anyway, good stuff, nice arenas of thought. No one who enjoys Mahayana or Vajrayana will think so, however, I expect but, they tend not to be interested in the historical Buddha anyway, for the most part. Theravada must also reject either this
narrative or whole swaths of tradition, such as e.g. jatakas, merit transfer, previous Buddhas, so much... but none of that is
Dhamma anyway...
-Agreed; most people seem to have a need to address this aspect of Buddhism, but an interest in mental development can &
ought to exist without post-death ideations of any kind. If one's effort is integrated with an orientation to action that seeks to
increase wholesome states while reducing unwholesome ones, there's no reason why rebirth-worry need ever even develop.
-The important point for my practice is that the Buddha called any sort of rebirth blameworthy, and described the Path to the
end of all that, and so it's really altogether beside the point, a bit of myth and story to accompany one's efforts by giving
them a supporting narrative, a context of sorts that helps in various ways for some folk.
-But, not others, not these days.
===
-IF there's a post-death continuity of some sort, EITHER ethics determines the continuity to some extent, or does not.
-IF ethics doesn't matter, then the only benefit to it would show up in each individual life-span-circumstance OR ethics does
not exist as ethics, only meaningless behavior.
SO:
-The only case where rebirth matters is in a case of (1A) post-death continuity (2A) guided by ethics.
-But the benefits of Dhamma practice can be felt here and now. This is interesting, because then the Path is usefully trod in
cases of
-(1A) post-death continuity, (1B) no post-death continuity, (2A) guided by ethics, (2B) not guided by ethics - this last
because the benefits of ethics can be seen to obtain here and now, rendering moot the question over whether it matters with
respect to any post-death state at all & broaching the argument against meaningless behavior, e.g. behavior without an ethical
structure.
-I think it is very, very important that the modern audience have a shot at hearing an appropriate presentation of the Dhamma
and this means recognizing the utter inadequacy of a rebirth-assumption & its utter irrelevancy to many modern minds.
-The point, of course, is that while the Path can be demonstrated as superior and worthwhile to someone who otherwise
believes in an ethical rebirth view, it can also be demonstrated as superior and worthwhile to someone believes in a lack of
post-death continuity, and thus a lack of post-death ethical ramifications. But someone who thinks ethical rebirth is essential
to the Dhamma will fumble a demonstration of the Dhamma to a well-meaning hoping-to-learn skeptic.

-This is very important to note, because it means that a presentation of the Dhamma that has a necessary presentation of
rebirth is in fact not a presentation simpliciter, and thus one that has certain in-built biases as a result of responding to a
given historical audience. Those... aren't necessary.
-They can, and historically have.
-But, they need not, these days they more and more often do not, they put one in conflict with other religious ideations on the
matter, and overall I think we must say that parsing the kammavipaka of rebirth is a cultural habit, not an explanation of
Dhamma (which otherwise contains an injunction against pursuing the specifics of kammavipaka).
-For the purposes of those IF statements, I'm defining it very broadly to mean that action can be designated as 'good' or 'bad'
or 'neutral', as opposed to 'just-action' which hasn't got a moral measure.
-Buddhism, in its formulation of effort, must argue against 'just-action' as a rule, instead arguing the case that action is
bad/neutral/good (un/non/wholesome) - or liberative.
-Bowing and anjali are cultural exhibitions of universal truths with respect to patience, goodwill, sociability, etc.
-Any position that isn't post-mortem agnosticism requires flawed inferences, in my experience; pro-post-mortem activity,
anti-post-mortem activity, both views overstep available evidence, and clinging to either view puts one into conflict with
those in the other camp.
-Better, it seems to me, to assert agnosticism and, from that foundation, assert a Wager that revolves around clarifying
un/wholesome actions irrespective of such post-mortem speculations (answers to which are not a requisite component of
peace of mind, as it happens).
Suppose we did two things, before we started to think about paticcasamuppada:
1) set aside the 12-step formulation in favor of a broad overview of the various ways that conditional chains are put together
throughout the Suttas;
2) set aside the dichotomy of "three-lives" v "momentary" and used a more natural understanding of time, one that wasn't
prima facie a philosophical position but, instead, just colloquial past & present & future.
--As just one example of (1), have a look at SN 12.62. When one remains prior to temporal slicing, one can note whether this
conditionality is "happening now" or "happened before now" without even mentioning either mind-moments or next lives.
So: with these two points in mind, is it the case that a 12-step Program is really the primary pedagogical tool we should use
when trying to come to know & see conditionality for ourselves, in our own individual cases?
Hmm... when this 1&2 approach happens, rather than forcing a stilted explication of mental events onto the 12-step Program,
we can actually simply observe a given citta arise, persist (again: who cares about mind-moments? who cares about what-if
post-death inferential guesswork? no one should; it's not appropriate attention), and cease, and one can watch for
conditionality right there. And, this will be a case of the third aspect of satipatthana. Or, per the Sutta above, the second
aspect (i.e. a feelings focus).
Look for conditionality within satipatthana tetrads; don't look for the 12-step Program.
-This one is a real treasure for another reason: since we know that intention is kamma, and that there are some effects
simpliciter that aren't based on previous kamma, it destroys certain pernicious ideas, e.g. that what happens to people 'was
coming to them' and was simply their lot to bear, that there's an inevitability about suffering which inhibits motivation to
engage in social improvement efforts, etc.
-We can also infer that, since these non-kamma effects occur, that the training is only - can only be - concerned with the
intention vector, which means that conditionality is only concerned with describing this facet of experience, not e.g.
conditionality as found in chemistry, or physics, or astronomy, etc. There are fruitful similes to be constructed, but they are
similes for mental phenomena, and not an effort at hard science per se.
-So, with respect e.g. to internal/external, this is oneself/other people, not at any point a 'real world' or something. The
emphasis is always on the experiential nexus, the phenomenology of beings, and not a strictly objective epistemological
stance. It is a heavily-embodied effort which underpins jhana, which is why addressing physical pain is actually of some
importance.
-The Buddha taught with reference to the prevailing views of wanderers and brahmins simply in order to be understood. For
example, Alexander Wynne wrote an article a while back on the Alagaddupama Sutta, MN 22. He investigates the origin of
the five aggregates teaching, and shows its relationship to Upanisadic ideas while at the same time being turned to the
purposes of the Dhamma.
-The teachings make reference to e.g. Upanisadic ideas and turns those bits to the purposes of liberation, so to that extent
they are blended with brahmanical views because those were in the cultural/social surround at the time. The Buddha would
have built off of Xian examples if Xianity had been the prevailing view in the area, but the happenstance of brahmins and
wanderers obtained instead.
-The Nikayas/Agamas, though, are surely blended texts, mixing and so forth for about 150 years or so. Solid oral tradition
alongside growth of miracles, growth of formless states, growth of past Buddhas, growth of claims about omniscience,
growth of editorialized compilations, growth of all sorts of doctrinal stuff happens in that time.
-I use biological models in my understanding of certain issues as well. Sexual desire is the obvious one, but in considering
the care and attention given to food in the Dhamma, what took shape for me was the idea that an aspect of Sila is sustaining
a sustenance approach to living, as opposed to a 'thriving' one of securing excess resources, and so forth. Stark ascetic

approaches to the body, however, are equally off-target because this cellular aggregate is itself an ideal occasion for Dhamma
practice, so its sustenance to sufficiency can have a positive value aligned with the Dhamma.
-There's no reason to head into a materialist view, however. Consciousness is still not clearly a simple epiphenomenon of
biochemistry, so while it's useful to consider the body in terms of 'getting by' at the cellular level while avoiding an approach
that considers it 'my' body, for 'my' entertainment, it's not useful to consider oneself & others as 'just' such cellular things.
-So, the balance would be to ensure that while the body can be seen accurately in this way and treated with a calm
detachment, there is an ethical layer as a result of feeling that must always be kept in mind.
-But, the goal is indeed the elimination of desire. It isn't that physical impulse to sustenance is to be ignored, but that sort of
talk just confuses the issue about what sort of desire is being discussed, etc. I agree that it's important to emphasize the idea
of gentle sustained living being wholesome, but this isn't to be described as 'desire' anywhere.
-I would prefer to approach the idea of desire as an emergent component of the experiential process, not a cellular activity.