Tagged: Stream-entry
Pages with this tag
Anālayo - Right View and the Scheme of the Four Truths in Early Buddhism - The Saṃyukta-āgama Parallel to the Sammāditthi-sutta and the Simile of the Four Skills of a Physician (2011)
1This article explores the attainment of right view at stream-entry by analyzing the *Saṃyukta-āgama* parallel to the *Sammāditthi-sutta*. This discourse demonstrates that right view involves understanding various phenomena, such as the links of dependent arising, through the structural pattern of the four truths - identifying an item, its cause, its cessation, and the path to its cessation. The author then introduces another *Saṃyukta-āgama* discourse that explicitly compares the four truths to a four-part medical diagnosis - disease (dukkha), pathogen (craving), health (cessation), and cure (the path). The author argues that this parallel, likely adopted from a known medical practice, was used to frame the Buddha's teachings as pragmatic, therapeutic, and psychological, distinguishing them from abstract philosophical speculation. The slight difference in the sequence of the third and fourth items between the medical and Buddhist schemes suggests that medicine was the source of the analogy.
Anālayo - The Chinese Parallels to the Dhammacakkappavattana-sutta (2) (2012)
2This academic paper analyzes Chinese parallels to the Dhammacakkappavattana-sutta, the Buddha's first sermon, to understand the text's development. By comparing versions from the Ekottarika-āgama, Mahīśāsaka Vinaya, and Dharmaguptaka Vinaya, the author argues that variations point to a history of oral transmission and gradual elaboration. The existence of both a short version focusing on the two extremes and a longer one including the Four Noble Truths within the same collection suggests the former is an extract, not evidence that the truths were a later addition. The analysis notes that features like the qualifier "noble" for the truths, elaborate miracles like earthquakes, and the full exposition of the "three turnings and twelve modes" may be later developments, while core elements like the celestial acclamations are consistently present. The text also explores the sermon's internal logic, framing the Four Noble Truths as a pragmatic medical diagnosis (disease, cause, cure, treatment), clarifying *duhkha* as "unsatisfactory" rather than just "suffering," and emphasizing that the "turning of the wheel" is complete only when an audience member achieves realization.
Anālayo- Definitions Of Right Concentration In Comparative Perspective (2019)
3Through a comparative analysis of early Buddhist discourses in Pāli and their Chinese and Sanskrit parallels, this article argues that the definition of right concentration as the attainment of the four absorptions (jhānas) represents a later stage of textual evolution. The author demonstrates that parallel versions of key Pāli texts which define right concentration this way either lack a definition entirely or describe it differently, often as a mind unified and endowed with the other seven factors of the Noble Eightfold Path. This historical-critical perspective suggests that the earliest understanding of right concentration was more integrated with the other path factors and did not necessitate deep absorptive states. Consequently, the author concludes that the ability to attain the four absorptions is not a necessary condition for reaching stream-entry, the first stage of awakening.