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🔗📝collection of notes on right speech, sammā vācā

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Re: Free introductory essay to Keren Arbel's excellent book: Early Buddhist Meditation: The Four Jhānas as the Actualiza

Post by frank k » 

nirodh27 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 08, 2022 7:16 am...
It is a good idea to refrain from doing that topic [vism. redefining jhāna], I don't think that is a "right speech compliant" topic :bow: :toast: .

Btw reflect of the fact that without the Visuddhimagga and the effort of those who wrote it and those that debated endlessy maybe the Dhamma would not have survived. We can't possibly know how history could have unfold. All that was probably necessary for the survival of the Dhamma. And "we" could still be wrong in our interpretation. ...
Right speech also includes pointing out wrong views and akusala Dharmas [done with kusala intent, suitable conditions, etc.].
To withhold that important information, is wrong and the Buddha said so in at least one sutta passage, and implied in many.
It's a common mistake that pious religious followers make, confusing politeness and withholding painful [but true and important] information as 'right speech'.
Those are two separate issues, don't make the mistake of conflating them.


Vism. has to maintain the fiction of being completely compatible with EBT to claim legitimacy as genuine word of the Buddha, meaning LBT texts are coherent, consistent and non-contradictory with EBT.
That's why, if you want to give them credit for preserving EBT, that's the reason they had a role in preserving the EBT, to support their own claim to legitimacy.
If you want to give them credit, you could argue they didn't deliberately rewrite the EBT to actually be compatible with LBT redefinitions of jhāna, with the one notable exception of SN 48.xx? that I can think of off the top of my head.
So they preserved the EBT suttas mostly intact, and future generations can examine the EBT texts carefully and see that LBT contradicts it in several important doctrinal points.

And "we" could still be wrong in our interpretation. ...
Plenty of people should keep an open mind and maintain some uncertainty in their convictions, but there are some who have done thorough research and drawn legitimate conclusions that are incontrovertible.


Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted;

 the indifference of those who should have known better;

 the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most;

 that has made it possible for evil to triumph.

- Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia (1930-1974)


There is a similar famous quote:

 “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

 This is often attributed to Edmund Burke, though he never said it.

 He did say something related:

 “When bad men combine, the good must associate;

 else they will fall, one by one…” 


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