The Mysterious Buddhist Tale of "Venerable Empty Scripture"
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- Опубликовано: 10 июл 2024
- Who was "Tuccho Poṭhila" or "Venerable Empty Scripture"? We'll start with a story by the Thai Buddhist meditation master Ajahn Chah, and take a dive into the story's background and potential origins. It contains lessons for how we should approach both our own practice and that of others.
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✅ Suttas mentioned:
suttacentral.net/dhp273-289/e...
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✅ Secondary literature (recommended essays by Piya Tan):
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00:00 Intro
01:44 Ajahn Chah’s story
03:49 My thoughts about the story
04:42 One clue to the story of Poṭhila
08:42 The role of the commentaries
09:39 Verses of the Dhammapada
13:31 Another text on sutta study vs. meditation
16:55 A proposed historical reconstruction
21:44 Ajahn Chah’s role in the story
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22:45 The term "Venerable empty scripture" is from Thai พระใบลานเปล่า, lit. "Monk who is like an empty palm leaf." It is not specfically Achan Chah who called Poṭhila that way, it is the name by which the story is known in the Thai tradition in general. Some teachers in my own Thai tradition refer to the story the point out that to focus too much on scripture whilst compromising practice can make your study meaningless, hence "empty palm leaf". Pariyatti and paṭipatti need to be in balance to attain paṭivedha. Poṭhila was on the right track toward enlightenment in term of his theoretical knowledge, but he needed some humbleness to come to internal transformation and reach enlightenment through practice. That is what the story is about.
Interesting, thank you for the information! I had thought it might be an issue with translation. 🙏
❤helpful😅
Scriptures without meditation are empty, indeed. But meditation without ethical framework (like that in the scriptures) is without direction/orientation.
That's my humble opinion. Thank you for yours, Doug! 🐱🙏
Agreed! 👍 🙏
Hi everyone.
My opinion as a lay mediator.
Both are important but meditating is (to me ) indispensable.
If reading helped me to steer toward the Right View and surely adds perspective continuing to reading , only the practice really changed me,unrooted deep defilements.
May you all have a smooth walk on the Path!
For sure! 🙏
Growing in wisdom requires both meditation practice and sutta study; students who take on both will make progress, students who only meditate or only study suttas will eventually give up. Yoga means union. Theory must be integrated with practice, theory alone is not enough.
🙏
There is no Yoga in the original teachings of the Buddha. 🙏
@@fingerprint5511 the Buddha is teaching Yoga to you now
Doug
Jack Kornfield (who I affectionaly refer to as “the mister Rogers of Buddhism “ he’s a Master Storyteller
studied under Ajun Cha
and many of his RUclips uploads are replete with references and anecdotes
“The Dharma cannot be expressed in words , it must be experienced”
Empty Scripture - yes
only by “various skillful
illustrations and examples “ can the Dharma be described .
I’ve often thought of Alan Watts as an “empty scripture guy “
who sought by being “cerebral and intellectual “ to transmit his understanding
of a fundamentally NON cerebral / intellectual awakening
Mister Watts was , a product of his Times - and did the best he could at the moment like Ram Dass ❤
Yes, different approaches to practice!
I also was curious about the source when I first heard this Ajahn Chah story so I googled around and did not get anywhere. So thanks to you I finally have some closure on this. Also, I wondered if this is how most of the commentaries in the Canon had its origins. An inspirational story from the Dhamma by a senior monk years or perhaps centuries after the Buddha's passing which was then added to the canon as if they were the Buddha's words. Personally, it doesn't matter to me! If these stories or any stories from the Pali canon (or indeed from any other religion) leads to wisdom, to dispassion and disenchantment then it might as well have come from the Buddha himself!
Yes, from the perspective of faith or practice it doesn't matter where the story comes from.
Great video!!
Thanks!
Its about translation. Many 'original' teachings by the Monastics are stories from the Pali Canon made more relatable to the modern human coming from their culture. You hear Ajahn Brahm all the time recounting stories that sound modern but are actually the original teachings.
Ajahn Chah said throw away the books, just Meditate and observe the way it is. Ajahn Sumedho explains this well in his teachings as he is the oldest direct disciple of Ajahn Chah about how Ajahn Chah taught.
Ajahn Chah said Westerners are so sensitive because they expect their Ego identity to be catered to whereas they way he spoke is on his own Thai culture where admonishment is not taken personally but as valuable guidance - Ajahn Chah was not known to cater to the false Dhamma which includes Egos. Its well known Ajahn Chah had to adjust to the Western conditioning as Monastics would complain and he realised how devoted they were to their own Ego creation so of course the teachings may sound strange- but the point is not to grasp the teachings! The 3rd Fetter of Rites and Rituals.
Its like this. Its the way it is.
The Buddha taught two things - dukkha and the end of Dukkha.
Bhavana - cultivation. Practising the path.
Thanks Doug 🙏
🙏😊
'Wisdom studies' and 'Meditation practise' are two wings 🪽 🪽 of the same bird 🐦
True, two of the three aspects of practice.
thx for this matey! #goodkarma :)
🙏😊
Hey Doug I was curious on your take on obsessions and compulsions and how we deal with them. Do we observe from a distance and try to name them like most other negative thought patterns? Could you make a video on the subject? Thanks
There is OCD which is a legit psychological illness and needs to be dealt with by a professional. Ordinary obsessions and compulsions of the mind though are the whole focus of practice, in a sense. If you want to see something a little more focused, see this video that discusses "papañca" or "mental proliferation": ruclips.net/video/ZaexbQ_QChs/видео.html . I'll keep the topic in mind though for future videos.
Interesting. On one hand, the primary indicator of wisdom is expression in words. We seem to have a story that implies that words are MERE indicators, and so fallible - words don't always indicate wisdom. Yet this very admonishment is, of course, expressed in words. The message of the story is a verbal/conceptual message. As always with the major darshanas, the gap between appearance (here, linguistic appearance) and reality is prominent.
I find the story of Tuccho Pothila to be a parallel to a teaching attributed to Bodhidharma in Chan Buddhism:
A special transmission outside the scriptures
Not founded upon words and letters;
By pointing directly to [one's] mind
It lets one see into [one's own true] nature and [thus] attain Buddhahood.
So, this could be either a coincidence or perhaps the Chan Buddhists got the idea from the Pali Canon
Well this story isn't from the Pāli Canon, it's from the Theravādin commentaries, which came much later.
@@DougsDharma Either way, my point is that perhaps this commentary might have influenced Chan Buddhism. Also, I did read somewhere that Theravada Buddhism came to China before Mahayana but the latter was more popular and widely accepted than the former.
I wonder if yoga can accurately be encapsulated as "study". It has, since very early, also implied some kind of mastery or even siddhi type of study. Dharma certainly means more than scripture. Rather than saying it means studying the scripture, perhaps it means more like trying to find meaning in dharma -- in lieu of meditation, rather than through it.
"Yoga" has a broader meaning than "study", but could include it depending on the context.
I've heard that the division between the early Mahayana and the early Theravada was between people who emphasized meditation and those who emphasized scholarship.
Not sure about that one.
More about disagreement between vinaya and the perfectness of arhat if im not wrong. Occur at the 2nd council.
No amount of theoretical knowledge can compare to real life experience.
The theory is purely for planning and doing or testing out to reaffirm what works and what doesn’t.
I'm an Indian Buddhist ( Ambedkarite) and think tuccho doesn't mean empty the correct translation for tuccho is lower or inferior.
The Pali Text Society dictionary has "empty, vain, deserted" for "tuccha".
Are the Vulcans in star trek are Buddhist
Perhaps the name-calling approach was taken because the issue was pride/arrogance. The indirect action would probably strike the right nerve and lead to the realization on his own. Simply telling him to tone it down and go meditate may not deliver the "shock" needed. Just a thought Lol
Possibly that was the intention.
Zen Buddhism explicitly rejects the prominence of text and doctrinal study. Nagarjuna's notion of emptiness properly understood makes conceptual and linguistic understanding secondary to direct apprehension of Buddhist truth. Finally, your usage of "dharma study" implies that dharma is a strictly propositional in nature, which is fundamentally an incomplete understanding.
Indeed, Zen's approach to practice is paradigmatically non-conceptual, though there is a huge corpus of Zen texts, and an important effort of reading and studying them in Zen practice. By "dharma study" I mean the study of texts, discourses, and so on. There are of course other ways one could use the phrase, but I would consider those less "dharma study" and more "dharma practice".
Abhdhamma is not a later development. Abhidhamma was a single Sutta/discourse. Thank you.
Check out Bhikkhu Sujato's essay on How Early Buddhism Differs from Theravada. I did a video on it (link to the essay in the notes): ruclips.net/video/rQ832y7n1bc/видео.html .
@@DougsDharma, Abhidhamma doen't contain assumptions. Abhidhamma is the explanation of dependent origination, and it makes Buddhism scientific. It is a unque knowledge, and only a Buddha could make a knowledge like that. Abhidhamma helps to explain the process of rebirth and living beings scientifically. Ultimate truth is science. We can't easily doubt the virtue of the monks who preserved Abhidhamma. We can't practice Vipassana (special-seeing) Meditation and Jhana easily if we don't know Abhidhamma.
thanks Doug, too much advertising, will unsubscribe