This post is to catch up on the Saṃyukta Āgama releases and updates from February and March of 2024. I was rather ill at the end of February and beginning of March and missed the planned update, but I continued working once I had recovered.
Since the last update, work continued on the Aggregates and Sense Fields Saṃyuktas of SĀ (parallel to SN 22 and 35). I also began converting my existing translations at Dharma Pearls to a bilingual format the places the Chinese and English side by side. This is being done in stages over time. Hopefully the entire Github archive will be converted to this format in the next few months. It’s hoped that this will make the site more useful as a learning resource for those interesting in understanding Buddhist Chinese.
I’ve also made public a Chinese Pronunciation Guide in the Resources section of Dharma Pearls. This table collates the reconstructed pronunciations of Chinese characters from different periods of history using the International Phonetic Alphabet. This reference is useful for deciphering Chinese transliterations of Indic words. The actual pronunciations in 400 CE were often quite different than modern Mandarin, which is a different spoken language than Middle Chinese.
Another eighteen Taisho sūtras have been released, which translates about six pages of Chinese. Below is a summary of these new translations:
SĀ 1.48 (265) Bubbles and Foam (SN 22.95)
This sūtra presents a series of famous metaphors used to describe the ontological emptiness of the five aggregates. Each aggregate is treated with a separate metaphor. Forms are like foam floating on a river. Feelings are like bubbles in a puddle during a rainstorm, forming and bursting in quick succession. Conceptions are like mirages that appear in the distance. Volition is like the plantain tree that lacks a hardwood center. Awareness is like an illusory army conjuring by a magician. These five metaphors are then followed by verse, which makes it clear that these five aggregates are considered components of a person and make up the mortal existence. The metaphors found in this sūtra would become quite famous and anticipate the later Buddhist philosophy of emptiness.
SĀ 1.50 (267) Lack of Knowledge (2) (SN 22.100)
This is a variant of SĀ 1.49, which was released earlier in January. This pair of sūtras have a pair of parallels, SN 22.99-100, which are very similar. The Buddha uses metaphors to describe the way in which sentient beings are trapped in saṃsāra as a result of their ignorance.
In this sūtra, the metaphor of the dog tied to a post is used to describe how sentient beings are tied to the five aggregates. The Buddha then teaches the leading nature of the mind, saying that the forms that sentient beings take are determined by the kind of minds that they have. He uses the example of a colorful bird, perhaps a kind of parrot or peacock, to make this point. The teaches is concluding by again stating that it’s by fully understanding the nature of the five aggregates that one is freed from suffering.
SĀ 1.51 (268) The River Torrent (SN 22.93)
The theme of the five aggregates being a trap for sentient beings continues with this sūtra. Here, the Buddha uses the metaphor of a person who is swept away by a flood. As the current carries them, they grab at branches and reeds along the sides of the river, but those things break off in their hands. In the same way, sentient beings cling to the aggregates, but they turn out to be impermanent in the end. Again, the sutra concludes with the statement that liberation is achieved by gaining a deeper insight into the nature of the aggregates.
SĀ 1.52 (269) Jeta’s Grove (SN 22.33-34)
The Buddha teaches that the five aggregates don’t belong to a person in the same way that kindling wood in the forest doesn’t belong to them. If someone were to come and collect it, it wouldn’t be alarming. In the same way, the aggregates are not really possessions of a person because they are impermanent and eventually disappear.
SĀ 1.54 (271) Scolding Tiṣya (SN 22.84)
In this sūtra, the Buddha addresses a monk named Tiṣya who is having difficulty with being motivated in his practice and understanding the Dharma. He gives Tiṣya a teaching about the need to stop desiring and clinging to the aggregates in order to stop suffering. He then uses an allegory of a man giving another man directions on how to reach a city by road. The man who knows the road tells him which turns to take using landmarks along the way. These turns, the Buddha explains, represent key points in one’s practice, such as achieving right intent and the eightfold path.
SĀ 1.55 (272) Concepts (SN 22.80)
This sūtra begins with the Buddha deciding to take some time away from the monks after scolding them for engaging in some petty dispute. The impression is given that this was sometimes early in his teaching career, and he considered abandoning it altogether. Brahmā becomes aware of this and quickly goes to the Buddha and encourages him to give the monks another chance, which the Buddha decides to do out of sympathy for them. When he returns, the Buddha reminds about the purpose of the religious life. He then teaches them about wrong thinking (or perception) and the conceptual proliferation that it engenders. This last part of the teaching is not shared with the Pali parallel, but it seems related to the meditative attainment of the signless samādhi that follows.
SĀ 1.56 (59) Arising and Ceasing (SN 22.5)
The Buddha here tells us what produces the five aggregates. They are divided into three categories in this way. The first is form, which arises and ceases with the arising and ceasing of craving and delight. The second is feeling, conception, and volition, which arise and cease because of contact. The third is awareness, which arises and ceases because of name and form. This would seem to connect these three categories in a roughly causal way: Craving brings about existence (form), which brings about contact with the world (feeling, conception, and volition), which in turn brings about awareness of the world (awareness). In the Pali parallel, the reference to dependent origination is more explicit.
SĀ 1.57 (60) Delight
This discourse continues the theme of the origin and endpoint of the aggregates, but here the Buddha depicts liberation and nirvāṇa as the transcendence of these things. An argument that is found elsewhere in SA is made, in which nirvāṇa is the state of being completely detached from the world, and seeking nothing from the world attains it. This certainly would have sounded very Daoist to Chinese readers at the time.
SĀ 1.58 (61) Discernment
This is one of the first sūtras in SĀ that attempt to define each of the five aggregates, which is probably why it was titled “Discernment” (~ vibhaṅga). The definitions given are the same as we find in other sources. Form refers to the four basic elements of matter or things made of them. Feeling refers to feelings that arise from the six kinds of sensory contact. Conception refers to concepts that arise from sensory contact. Volition refers to intentions that arise from sensory contact. Awareness refers to awareness of the six senses. These definitions would become important in Abhidharma texts, and one wonders if this sūtra itself was influenced by such texts.
SĀ 2.9 (193) Free of Desire (2)
This sūtra is the same as SĀ 1.9 except that the six senses are substituted for the five aggregates. This brings out the functional equivalence that these two rubrics had for Buddhists: They both represent the phenomenal world of existence in which we find ourselves spiritually trapped. We must cease desiring them to be liberated.
SĀ 2.10 (194) Delight in Suffering (SN 35.19)
Again, this sūtra repeats the template found in SĀ 1.10, but it’s here applied to the senses rather than the aggregates. To find one’s happiness in the senses is to find it in suffering, which naturally makes it impossible to be liberated from that suffering. This leaves unsaid the basic argument that was already made in the previous sūtras that the impermanence of the senses and the aggregates makes desiring them a source of suffering.
SĀ 2.11-14 (195) Impermanent, Painful, Empty, and Not Self (SN 35.1-12)
The six senses are equated here with everything, as they are in SN 35.23-32. This is combined with the same characterization of conditioned things that we find in SĀ 1.1-4 and 2.1-4 as being impermanent, painful, empty, and not self. Fully understanding their nature leads to liberation.
SĀ 2.15-39 (196) Everything (SN 35.33-52)
The theme of the previous sūtra continues with a series of 25 more sūtras, each assigning a negative quality to everything, aka the six senses and the mental process the leads to sensory awareness. This is very similar to the series of variants found at SN 35.33-52 with many direct parallels.
SĀ 2.40 (197) Burning (SN 35.28)
This is the famous Fire Sermon, in which the Buddha says everything is on fire, being burned by the fires of the three poisons (craving, hate, and delusion) as well as mortality (old age, illness, death, and suffering). Thus, the fire symbolizes both the painful and impermanent nature of phenomenal existence. This version of the sutra includes some of the backstory found in the Vinaya histories about the Buddha’s conversion of the three Kāśyapa brothers, whereas the Theravāda versions isolate the discourse from that narrative entirely.
SĀ 2.41-48 (198) Rāhula (1-8) (SN 18.21-22)
This set of sūtras all depict Rāhula asking the Buddha how to regard both his mind and the external world such that he doesn’t have attachments to any of it being self or leading to pride. The Buddha tells him in each case to contemplate the subject as not being self.
SĀ 2.49-56 (199) Rāhula (9-16) (SN 18.22)
These sūtras repeat the same teaching as the previous set, the difference being only that the Buddha broaches the topic with Rāhula rather than Rāhula asking the questions.
SĀ 2.57 (200) Rāhula (17) (SN 35.121)
The story of how Rāhula became an arhat has been appended to the previous set of sixteen sūtras featuring Rāhula, presumably to serve as a climax to the teachings that he received from the Buddha. The story presented here is somewhat different than the one found in the Theravāda canon, where we find the same sutta at SN 35.121 and MN 147.
In this telling, the Buddha tasks Rāhula with teaching different subjects to other disciples, each time examining his mind to see if he is ready receive the higher teaching. When he is, the Buddha teaches him that everything is impermanent, which refers to the same things that it did in the previous sūtras.
SĀ 2.58-74 (201) How to End the Contaminants, et al (SN 35.53-59)
This set of sūtras present seventeen different questions asked by anonymous monks about how to end the contaminants and various other undesirable things that are roughly synonymous with them. The Buddha’s advice in each case is to contemplate the impermanence of the six inner and outer senses and the process of the sensory experience.
That covers the additions and updates from February and March. Going forward, I have a series of releases planned of the longest six to eight sūtras in the Saṃyukta Āgama, the first of which was released yesterday. Depending on how long it takes to finish this series, I may continue into May a week or two before switching to work on Madhyama Āgama sūtras. We shall see!
That said, the Summer project will translating the Madhyama Āgama from May to September before switching to the Ekottarika Āgama for the remainder of the year.
Assuming nothing interrupts me again, I will post another update in a couple weeks!
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