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@ Dharmalion76: Actually, both Buddhist and Hindu traditions were more concerned about suffering (dukkha) associated with redeaths and the journey towards another death. Rebirth, in both traditions (and Jainism), has sometimes been presented as an exceptional opportunity for a human being to live spiritually, thus pursue moksha or nirvana. Life is beautiful, make the most of it, they say. @ Joshua Jonathan has used the right words, when he used rebirths and redeaths. Please see Paul Williams's Buddhist Thought Chapter 1, Hermann Oldenberg's The doctrine of the Upanishads, etc. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 19:01, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
@ Dharmalion76:Just to say, I totally agree. The repeated use of Hindu sources and Hindu ideas, without alerting the reader to the fact that they are Hindu ideas is one of the main issues in the current treatment. It would be fine to compare and contrast Buddhist ideas with Hindu ideas. But to merge them together into a single treatment as if there was no distinction between the two approaches is not fine, in my view. It's been a recurring theme in this discussion that the Buddhist concept of Nirvana and the Hindu concept of Moksha are for all practical purposes identical, just taught differently. I don't think they are. I think the distinction is a valuable one giving practitioners the opportunity to follow different paths, Hindu or Buddhist, depending on their inclinations and understanding and connections. Robert Walker ( talk) 22:06, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
"The words moksha, nirvana and kaivalya are sometimes used synonymously, because they all refer to the state that liberates a person from all causes of sorrow and suffering. However, in modern era literature, these concepts have different premises in different religions. Nirvana, a concept common in Buddhism, is the realization that there is no self nor consciousness; while moksha, a concept common in many schools of Hinduism, is acceptance of Self, realization of liberating knowledge, the consciousness of Oneness with all existence and understanding the whole universe as the Self. Nirvana starts with the premise that there is no Self, moksha on the other hand, starts with the premise that everything is the Self; there is no consciousness in the state of nirvana, but everything is One unified consciousness in the state of moksha"
@ Dharmalion76: Also, to agree with you again - until I read the latest lede here, I had never heard the word "redeath", in any Buddhist context, until I saw this article. Indeed I wasn't sure even what it meant, and am still not very clear on why they use the word "redeath" here rather than just "death". Nor had I come across the word Moksha either until I encountered Hinduism. I hadn't come across it in any Buddhist writings. Now that I know to search for it, yes, it's used, especially in discussions that draw parallels between Buddhism and Hindusim, but it seems to be rare indeed in the Buddhist literature. While the word Nirvana is used frequently. So I agree with you, these don't seem to be common terms in Buddhist teaching. Robert Walker ( talk) 22:58, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
@Dharmalion76: You can certainly try RfC, but the likely outcome is no consensus, which will lead us nowhere different than where we are ( WP:MOVEON). If you look at the sources on this talk page posted in the last few days, or those already in the article, then look at what Rahula, GOldstein, Kornfield etc are stating, there is nothing significant in Rahula et al state that is not already summarized in the article. If @JJ missed something significant, please identify it. If @JJ did not miss something significant, let us with mettā thank @JJ and editors who have worked on this article since 2014. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 02:38, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
@ Dharmalion76:. Just to say, I support your suggestion of a WP:RFC to see if we find a majority of Buddhist editors on here agree that "redeath" is a common term, and should be used for the article on the four noble truths.
I think the main reason @ Dorje108: and my RfCs before failed was because they were too general leading to endlessly complex discussions like the ones on this page. It seems the best chance of success with an RfC is to keep it focused. And perhaps even an RfC on the current lede of the article is too general as there are so many points that can be discussed, as we see from this conversation. But maybe if we start with an RfC on a single word in the lede, and in the rest of the article, it has some chance of reaching a conclusion?
I am of course totally in agreement with you. In such an RfC, I would vote that the article should not use the word redeath at all unless in the context of discussion of Hinduism, if that was relevant, and that if so it should be clearly labelled as a section about Hindu ideas. Robert Walker ( talk) 04:10, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
@ Joshua Jonathan: If we did an RfC you could put this argument in your section of the RfC. We know that you think that redeath is a common term in Buddhist teaching. But others don't think it is. I never saw this term at all in 35 years as a Buddhist, in books, or teachings by teachers on Zen Buddhism, Therevadhan Buddhism, and the Tibetan traditions. So I would say it is a very uncommon term. I can understand that perhaps if you read particular sources you may think it is a common term.
The idea of the RfC is simply to ask the larger community of wikipedians here if they think it is a common term in Buddhist teachings and suitable for use in this article, and see what they say. I think it could be an interesting discussion. Robert Walker ( talk) 10:17, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
After all, this summary of the four truths (the summary, not the introductory sentence preceding it) was the best version: clear and comprehensible. "Temporary states and things" refers to conditioned phenomena, which are ultimately dissatisfying. Clinging to these conditioned phenomena produces karma and leads to rebirth, and renewed dissatisfaction, ad infinitum. But, says the Buddha, here's the way out! So, here we've got it both: dukkha and the end of dukkha, and rebirt and the end of rebirth. And, mind you, this also makes very clear why rebirth is part of the deal: those conditioned phenomena, those temporary states and things, are a priori unsatisfying. To pretend that they can be turned in something satisfying by following the Buddhist path is a betrayal of the Buddhist dharma. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 07:37, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
@ Ms Sarah Welch: Okay, sorry that my last post was too long. The essential point is this sentence:
"Assuming he chose his words carefully, then we should present it the same way - present the path as a path to cessation of suffering, and say that as a result of the realization then Buddha said that it is his last rebirth."
And then to go on to present what various WP:RS sources give as interpretations and consequences of that.
This structure of presenting the truths as Buddha taught them first as a path to cessation of suffering / unsatisfactoriness is how it is normally done in all the sources I've seen and all the sources shared even the ones that JJ presents to back up his case.
Robert Walker ( talk) 13:02, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
This is supplementary material for my "unable to vote" response to the RfC above
Following @ Robert McClenon:'s suggestion that if we do RfCs, they work best if they are very focused, and @ Dharmalion76:'s suggestion already of an RfC on the term redeath, here are some draft ideas for future RfCs. Each numbered line here is an idea for a separate RfC focusing on just one particular issue. The idea is to break up this complex discussion into individual points we can hope to resolve, and to do them one at a time, not all at once.
1. is the word redeath commonly used in Buddhist texts and teachings, and is it an appropriate word to use in this article and in the lede? (suggestion by @ Dharmalion76:).
2. Should the historical development section mention the views of scholars at the opposite end of the spectrum of the scholarly debate from Anderson, such as Wynne, Gombrich, Payutto, Harvey etc.(Expressed by Harvey for instance as "While parts of the Pali Canon clearly originated after the time of the Buddha, much must derive from his teaching.")? Or should it only mention the views of Anderson and like minded scholars according to whom most of the Pali Canon is a later development including the four noble truths (as in the current version of the page)? (this would be a multiple choice RfC)
3. Should the lede say that the third noble truth is a path to cessation of dukkha (unsatisfactoriness / suffering) as originally stated by the Buddha, Or should the lede say that the third noble truth is a path to end rebirth and "redeath" as it does at present? (this would be a multiple choice RfC)
We could follow that up with RfCs on the other noble truths, e.g.
4. Is this a good summary of the noble eightfold path: "behaving decently, cultivating discipline, and practicing mindfulness and meditation" (current lede), or is it better just to say "Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration."? (multiple choice again)
I.e. RfCs that are focused on tiny minutae of the article that are nevertheless significant issues.
These are just ideas and am interested to hear if other editors think they would help to focus the debate. And they are examples, maybe others have other ideas of RfCs that would be similarly focused that could help resolve the situation here? I think in such a complex situation as this, we may have to go slowly, one small point at a time. Robert Walker ( talk) 16:48, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
Sorry I didn't explain this properly. This was meant as supplementary material for my response to the RfC. I don't think it is possible to resolve all the issues raised here using an RfC on WP:RS and suggest that we should instead divide it into manageable sub-units, and this suggestion for future RfCs is one way to do it. I've now labelled it as such.
The reason for the large number of edits is because I get many typos when I write. I also tend to repeat myself and have to edit my comments to remove the repetitions. If you look at this page, then I am sure that Joshua Jonathan has made at least as many separate comments as I have done. There has been no archiving since this discussion started so you can just count my comments and count the comments of other editors. Or indeed do a word count, Joshua Jonathan has done some long posts here as well so if you add them all up, though I may have written more words, I don't think the difference is a large one. Robert Walker ( talk) 18:25, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
This is not actually an RfC. It is just me presenting a suggestion for an RfC which might help to clarify the main question at hand.
Something like this:
What do you think of these two options?
From the discussion above, others here don't seem to see think there is anything to discuss.
Does anyone else reading this think that this is a question of substance that can be discussed? Robert Walker ( talk) 11:45, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
@Richard Walker: The old version of the lead that you like, never mentioned rebirth, samsara and redeath in the lead. In fact, it did not even discuss it in the main article, just mentioned rebirth and samsara in two places in the passing. Rebirth and samsara have been central, basic to Buddhism, according to all RS scholarship. The old 2014 version was not Buddhism's Four Noble Truths, it was something new and exciting, a reconstruction and reinterpretation. It was not a summary of 4NT from the scholarly literature. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 12:04, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
"Buddhism arose in the context of the Sramana traditions, and shares many common ideas with other Indian religions of the time, such as Samsara, and the possibility of liberation from the cycle of existence. The core teachings in Buddhism are based on the four noble truths. These truths identify suffering, the source of suffering, present a possibility of cessation of suffering and a path to cessation....."
Precisely this Noble Eightfold Path: right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. This is the middle way realized by the Tathagata that — producing vision, producing knowledge — leads to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to Unbinding. ("Unbinding" is Thanissaro's chosen translation of "nibbāna")
And what is the middle way realized by the Tathagata that — producing vision, producing knowledge — leads to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to Unbinding? Precisely this Noble Eightfold Path: right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. This is the middle way realized by the Tathagata that — producing vision, producing knowledge — leads to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to Unbinding. ( translation by Thannissaro and as noted earlier, "unbinding" is Thanissaro's uniquely chosen translation of "nibbāna")
Thanks Dharmalion. Robert writes: "The core teachings in Buddhism are based on the four noble truths." They're not. The four truths were formulated later. Scholars like Gombrich and Bronkhorst hesitate to formulate or reconstruct "core teachings," with good reasons. Vetter argues that the "core teaching" of early Buddhism was the practice of dhyana, leading to calm of mind. No four truths; as the Wiki-article clearly states, and this is also from multiple reliable sources, those four truths are a later formulation. Even the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta is a largely expanded text which developed later. As mentioned in the previous section, "ending rebirth" is mentioned in a separate section in the Wiki-article, with multiple references. It's the essence (if we are to speak of an essence; I'm contradicting myself here, of course) of Buddhism. If practitioners, or Wiki-editors, can't relate to that, too bad for them; let them find another religion they can relate to. But don't expect to drop the essence of Buddhism when we describe Buddhism, because someone is upset when realizing what Buddhism is about. This is an encyclopedia, based on WP:RS, not a faith manual based on one person's (mis)understanding of Buddhism. The best way to "progress" here is to stop this discussion, and to WP:MOVEON. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 20:42, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
@ Joshua Jonathan: That is just one view amongst Buddhist scholars, that the four noble truths were not in the original teachings of the Buddha. Other scholars agree on the existence of multiple text layers in the sutras, both before and after the texts on the four noble truths, but think that the textually earlier teachings in the sutras before the four noble truths predated the Buddha. And Anderson herself in her book makes it clear that she does not intend it to be used in a revisionist way to change the teachings of Buddhism and in her "Basic Buddhism" book she reinforces that by simply presenting the four noble truths in Therevadhan Buddhism in the usual way, so I'm sure she would not support the idea that her "Pain and its Ending" should be used to revise the Buddhist teachings on the centrality of the four noble truths.
For the range of views on this matter, see Pāli_Canon#Attribution_according_to_scholars and for some more sources with yet more views on the matter see Talk:Pāli_Canon#Other_views_on_the_origins_of_the_Pali_Canon. It's one of the issues with your rewrites of articles on Buddhism that you frequently mention Anderson's book, which is not a particularly major work, with only three cites in Google scholar, and never mention any of these other views on the matter. Compare for instance, [The Oral Transmission of the Early Buddhist Literature]. which has 24 cites and Peter Harvey's book Introduction to Buddhism with 596 cites - he says "While parts of the Pali Canon clearly originated after the time of the Buddha, much must derive from his teaching." which is a good summary of the view of scholars at the opposite end of this spectrum of debate from Anderson.
And for a prominent Buddhist scholar right at the opposite end of the spectrum from Anderson: Richard Gombrich said in an interview
"There are certain scholars who do go down that road and say that we can't really know what the Buddha meant. That is quite fashionable in some circles. I am just the opposite of that. I am saying that there was a person called the Buddha, that the preachings probably go back to him individually - very few scholars actually say that - that we can learn more about what he meant, and that he was saying some very precise things. I regard deconstructionists as my enemies.".
Her view certainly deserves mention but the way you repeatedly push this view without any balancing views is way out of proportion and I'm sure Anderson herself would not recommend that her book is used in this way as the main source on the matter in an encyclopedia covering Buddhism, without mention of the views at the other end of the scholarly spectrum from her. A good scholar wants a debate, not a monologue. Robert Walker ( talk) 23:20, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
@ Robert McClenon: - I think the outcome of the debate is probably that this RfC is not focused enough. So I don't expect it to be used in its current form, perhaps I can just declare it closed as an RfC draft? Other editors may perhaps find other ways to state it that are more focused.
@ Dharmalion76: has suggested an RfC on whether the word redeath is commonly used in Buddhist texts and teachings and is an appropriate word to use in this article and in the lede. I think that's a good suggestion myself as that's about as focused as an RfC can possibly be and could be an interesting discussion.
Another possible RfC could be on whether the historical development section should mention the views of scholars at the opposite end of the spectrum of the scholarly debate such as Wynne, Gombrich, Payutto, Harvey etc. Again that seems quite focused.
On the lede, a better way of phrasing it might be
I.e. to focus the RfC right down to the third noble truth, which seems to be the essential point. If we did an RfC on one of the truths at a time, perhaps that might be sufficiently focused for an RfC? The lede when it says "there is a path to end this cycle" is clearly referring to the third truth, so this would apply to the statements of both the third truth itself in the lede and also to the last sentence of the introductory paragraph.
From my previous experience of RfCs here I totally agree, we have to be very very focused. It's the only thing that can work, and if discussion of the RfC draft leads us in numerous directions, that's a clear sign it is not yet focused enough. Thanks for the warning about walls of text, which is clearly still an issue, from comments on this page. I'm doing what I can, but type fast and sometimes get carried away, sorry! Robert Walker ( talk) 13:53, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
Redeath seems to be a redirect to Saṃsāra#Punarmrityu: redeath. I certainly can't see any reason for not using technical terminology of this sort if the terminology is more clearly defined elsewhere on site, and can be linked to, as is the case here. Provided that the technical term is used in the right context, of course. Regarding how to structure the article, the Lindsay Jones/Mircea Eliade Encyclopedia of Religion is a recent, highly regarded reference work which I believe has an article on this topic. The old Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics might well have an article as well. Both are likely available at WP:RX. Looking at however they structure their articles, and, maybe, more or less following the structure of them both, or at looking those two sources over, seeing what subsections they include, which subsections already have separate stand-alone articles here and which don't, etc., etc., and maybe making a separate thread here, indicating the sections in those araticles and the relative length of those sections, would be a productive way to go forward. John Carter ( talk) 18:17, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
@John Carter: The old Hastings is too old, ~100 years. Mircea Eliade died ~30 years ago. Yes, to the 2005 Macmillan Reference version edited by Lindsay Jones (which was a major rewrite of the 1987 Eliade edition). FWIW, the references @Joshua Jonathan has introduced in this article are high quality WP:RS. Websites, SPS and introductory sources, such as buddhanet, offer 4NT introduction that makes no mention of the words "samsara, (repeated) birth and death, (cycle)", etc. Scholarly references do. Damien Keown's reference source on Buddhism, published in 2003 by Oxford University Press, which is on my deak, has an article on 4NT, and many 4NT related articles. It repeatedly mentions "repeated birth, repeated death" etc in 4NT and 4NT-related articles, such as on pages 71, 96, and many more. We don't have to write redeath in every sentence of this article, but the discussion of "rebirth or repeated birth" and "redeath or repeated death" is appropriate, because that is what is in scholarly references. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 20:33, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
@ Joshua Jonathan: - where in the wheel turning sutra does it use punarmrityu? If it is not in that sutra, why have you introduced it into your version of the four noble truths? Has any scholar used this in their statement of the four noble truths? I have never heard "redeath" used by any Buddhist teacher or in any book or sutra translation that I've read. And @ Dharmalion76: hadn't either. I think if we do an RfC nearly all respondents will say they have never seen it in any Buddhist context, unless they have read those specialist cites you give.
Of course the Buddhist canon is vast, and I've only read a few sutras, but surely it is a very rare term if it does occur in the sutras. Encyclopedia Britannica talks about it as a Hindu term from the Upanishads. This approach of introducing novel terms to your exposition of the four noble truths is surely at the very least WP:SYNTHESIS AND WP:UNDUE unless you can find a cite. And if you do find a scholar that did this, you also have to explain why you chose to use this when all the normal expositions don't use it. And explain to the reader, surely, that you are using an unusual presentation of the four noble truths, and explain why you did this. Do you not think? Shouldn't the reader be alerted to something so unusual? And - why do you do it, what's the basic motivation, that's what I don't get at all, why you wish to rewrite the four noble truths in the novel ways you do in the lede? Robert Walker ( talk) 01:29, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
I don't get what you are saying, sorry. It has the word "redeath" and Joshua Jonathan just said that's a translation of punarmrtyu. If there is a link that's interesting but surely it belongs later in the page? In a discussion of links between the four noble truths and Hindu ideas? Surely the statement of the four truths should state them as Buddha taught them in the wheel turning sutra. Do any of these cites you mention actually restate the four truths themselves using the word punar-mrtyu? If so what justification do they give for doing this? Whatever justification should at least be given to the reader, I'm sure a scholar who did that would explain why they did it, probably at great length, which could be summarized here. And if the sources do not rewrite the four truths in this way, then why should this article? And it is certainly not usual in statements of the four noble truths. I don't buy this argument that it is because all the statements of four noble truths that most of us have come across are "popular Buddhism" after all many of them are written by pre-eminent Buddhist scholars. And even Anderson's book "Basic Buddhism" by Joshua Jonathan's favourite scholar does not use this word to state the four noble truths. And I don't remember seeing it in Pain and its Ending. Robert Walker ( talk) 03:19, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
Also, this is a minor puzzle, but punarmrtyu is Sanskrit, is it not? So how could it be a word from the earliest Pali canon of Buddhism, which is in Pali? It could of course be from the Upanishads as they are in Sanskrit. Robert Walker ( talk) 03:49, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
Do you have any objection to an RfC on this topic? To see if other wikipedians agree with your views on use of redeath in the article? My suggestion is to break down the complex discussion which seems to have no chance of resolution into individual small points, following @ Robert McClenon:'s suggestion that RfCs work best if very focused. You couldn't get much more focused than a discussion on use of a single word in the lede.
If this proves successful, leading to some kind of resolution, we can then do similarly focused RfCs on other points of contention, such as statement of the third truth in the lede, and tackle the truths one at a time. We can also tackle the issues about your presentation of only one perspective in a complex scholarly debate in the historical development section, again as a separate RfC. And generally if an RfC proves to be too wide in its scope, break it down into smaller components, e.g. could even have an RfC about whether to present the views of individual scholars such as the views of Gombrich, as an RfC, then an RfC about whether to mention the views of Harvey, then Wynne, one at a time, if it was absolutely necessary to get down to such small atomic units of the discussion.
I listed some proposals for very focused RfCs to get us started in the section on #Ideas_for_future_RfCs. The aim is to get more eyes on the article to help resolve these issues and find a way forward. Hope you understand. Robert Walker ( talk) 09:19, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
@ Joshua Jonathan: has just proposed that I be banned from posting to wikipedia talk pages on the topic of the Four Noble Truths on the basis of the discussion so far. Please read his reasons for the ban, and also my reasons opposing the ban in my Oppose vote here: See Topic Ban Requested
Robert Walker ( talk) 07:55, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
"The Four Noble Truths...express the basic orientation of Buddhism: this worldly existence is fundamentally unsatisfactory, but there is a path to liberation from repeated worldly existence."
"The Four Noble Truths...express the basic orientation of Buddhism: repeated rebirth and "redeath" in the realm of samsara is fundamentally unsatisfactory, but there is a path to end this cycle"
A reader of this article would surely expect a statement of the four noble truths, followed by explanation of the four truths.
Instead, the lede says
"this worldly existence is fundamentally unsatisfactory, but there is a path to liberation from repeated worldly existence."
What is the cite for this statement? It's hard to tell what it means but it sounds like either a "multilife suicide" or escape to some other heavenly realm.
In the four noble truths, Buddha taught liberation from dukkha (suffering, anxiety, unsatisfactoriness), not liberation from worldly existence, whatever that's supposed to mean. Indeed, as often explained in some of the Buddhist schools at least, when you see through ignorance, you see there is nothing that needs to cease to exist.
Four of the unanswered questions cover this topic "Does the Tathagata (Buddha) exist after death? ...or not? ...or both? ...or neither?" He refused to answer the question:
"The Buddha remained silent when asked these fourteen questions. He described them as a net and refused to be drawn into such a net of theories, speculations, and dogmas. He said that it was because he was free of bondage to all theories and dogmas that he had attained liberation. Such speculations, he said, are attended by fever, unease, bewilderment, and suffering, and it is by freeing oneself of them that one achieves liberation." The_unanswered_questions
Also as traditionally explained, Buddha taught for decades after he realized nirvana and cessation. He didn't cease to exist or disappear into some other realm when he reached nirvana. So how could nirvana be "liberation from repeated worldly existence"?
So surely neither paranirvana nor nirvana are to be understood as "liberation from worldly existence"?
The article I see goes on to list four "precepts" in the next section - but if these are meant to be the four noble truths - who else calls them precepts? Buddha taught there is no value in affirming the truths as a creed. You can follow precepts on the path, such as not lying, not stealing, not killing etc as part of the path, and the monastic vows are precepts, but with the four truths - what could it mean? Any citation for this?
Then it talks about "redeath". Again what's the cite for this, who else uses this word in the context of the four noble truths? What does it mean? And then the summary of the "noble eightfold path" in this "precepts" section has few points of resemblance with the eightfold path as usually stated.
This is just to touch on issues with the current lede, not a suggestion for an alternative lede :). Please don't use my words either.
The old version of the article states the four noble truths in the lede, explains what they are, and summarizes the aim of the Buddhist path. And everything in the old lede is cited. Robert Walker ( talk) 26 March 2016 (UTC)
The original lede was as follows:
... For the rest of the old lede, see https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Four_Noble_Truths&oldid=629066305
Robert Walker ( talk) 26 March 2016 (UTC)
References
What was wrong with that?
This used to be an excellent wikipedia article before the rewrite. The lede of a wikipedia article is not supposed to be a "teaser taster".
"The lead serves as an introduction to the article and a summary of its most important contents. It is not a news-style lead or lede paragraph."
Following that guideline, surely a lede summarizing the most important contents of an article on the four noble truths must list the four truths?
Also, I think you would need compelling reasons, well cited, to depart from the usual way of presenting this, the central teaching of the Buddha.
Thanks!
Robert Walker ( talk) 09:20, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
[edited for brevity and clarity Robert Walker ( talk) 14:30, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
References
References
@Joshua Jonathan: Indeed, it sure is. It is as basic to sramanic traditions as "Buddhism is spelled with a B, Jainism is spelled with a J". It should be included in this article. @Robert Walker: For source on samsara and its central role to the Four Noble Truths, please see Anderson's first chapter or just the opening pages, [1] and Gombrich's preface and first chapter. [2] I read the old 2014 version @RW linked above, and the current one reflecting recent edits of @JJ and others. The current version is a significant improvement. The article still states "the essence of the Buddhist teachings", but it now is far more encyclopedic, complete and NPOV. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 13:16, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
References
"But if I suggest that the four noble truths are not the legacy of a particular religious experience which may have actually occurred in history, is that to undercut their authority as a symbol of the Buddha's enlightenment? No, for the simple reason that the authority of the four noble truths, as an evocative symbol of a specific experience, does not rely upon the truth or falsehood of the four noble truths and other encyclopedic statements within history. The authority of the four noble truths does not rely upon the historical claim that they were in fact the first teaching of the Buddha. The authority of the four noble truths as a symbol relies, in the end, upon the memory of the Therevada Buddhist tradition as recorded in the Therevada canon".
@Robert Walker: your issue isn't that @Joshua Jonathan's and other's edits/improvements since 2014 are wrong or noncompliant with wikipedia's content policies, your issue is with the style and the method of the lead presentation, particularly when one compares it to BBC etc version; do I understand you right? Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 16:45, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
References
@Robert Walker: Understood. But this article is not on Buddha, it is on Four Noble Truths. We must indeed write this article in our own words to respect WP:Copyvio and WP:Plag. Any faithful good summary of WP:RS should also include the context (as you say, "not change the meaning", and meaning is the product of the context, not words). @Joshua Jonathan and others, frankly, have done a good job here, something we should appreciate and thank them for. I am a bit disappointed with the harshness with which @JJ has been inadvertently criticized above, when the sources clearly state "realm of rebirth" etc. The current lead and main article provides a summary of diverse sources, the necessary samsara-context to understand the summary, as well as scholarly sources for the more curious. That is along the lines of what an encyclopedic article and reference, to an important article, such as this, ought to do. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 18:48, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
"The Four Noble Truths ( Sanskrit: catvāri āryasatyāni; Pali: cattāri ariyasaccāni) are regarded as the central doctrine of the Buddhist tradition, and are said to provide a conceptual framework for all of Buddhist thought. These four truths explain the nature of dukkha (Pali; commonly translated as " suffering", "anxiety", "unsatisfactoriness" [a]), its causes, its cessation, and the path leading to its cessation.
References
@Robert Walker: The old 2014 version's lead lacks the samsara-context, which misleads, and therefore is weak. The old version may be "usually stated", but this article should not try to reinforce opinions, blogs, or "what the reader expects". This article should summarize the diversity of scholarly views from WP:RS. Please check scholarly secondary and tertiary sources. The Encyclopedia Britannica article on this topic starts with samsara, "realm of rebirth" etc, after it clarifies that "noble" does not refer to truths, but refers to "four truths for the nobles". Here are a few more secondary and tertiary WP:RS, [1] [2] [3] [4] all of which pretty much reflect what @Joshua Jonathan and recent editors have revised this article's lead to. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 20:23, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
References
@Ms Sarah Welch: Just to summarize the main point here, as I think it's become clearer as a result of our discussion - and thanks for discussing it with me. I think you agree that the way the four noble truths are presented in the lede differs from the way it is usually presented, e.g. in the BBC, buddhanet encyclopedia Britannica, in Anderson's book [http://www.amazon.com/BASIC-BUDDHISM-Beginners-Origins-Concepts-ebook/dp/B00EWT4ROU "Basic Buddhism"], in Walpola Rahula's What the Buddha Taught", in teachings on the four noble truths by the the Dalai Lama, in the teachings of Zen Buddhism, in the Dhammacakkappavattana_Sutta, etc etc, it is easy to find numerous sources for the standard presentation.
It is clearly the standard way of presenting the four noble truths in all the main Buddhist sutra based traditions, in tertiary sources, in most works by Buddhist scholars also, as well as the way it is presented in the sutras themselves. They all present it as a path to cessation of suffering.
So - then the main point is that I think you'd expect an article like this which presents them in a different way to alert the reader and explain the reason for this different treatment. You'd expect it to say something in the lede like
"Normally the four noble truths are presented as a path to cessation of suffering and unsatisfactoriness. But scholars x y z say that actually it should be presented as a path to end the cycle of repeated rebirth and "redeath" "
- with a list of citations to the scholars who favour this way of presenting it. Then you'd expect a bit more also, perhaps a sentence or two explaining the reason for the decision to use this different treatment in an encyclopedia article. And later in the page, you'd expect a long detailed explanation of why it is presented in such a different way here, with a discussion of both ways of presenting it, which if it was a balanced discussion, you'd expect to also give the reasons why most authors present it as a path to cessation of suffering.
If it was presented like that you'd say "oh interesting, I had no idea that there was this alternative presentation" and even if like me you think it is wrong, as surely most Buddhists would if familiar with the more usual way of presenting it - still, you'd read on and find out about this other treatment. You'd at the least be intrigued by it.
But it's not done like that. It is just presented "as is" and the reader is not even alerted to this change in treatment. And no citation is given, not to the suggestion that the 4NT should be presented like this. If I wanted to email a Buddhist friend and tell them about this and they asked who says this, I'd just have to say "Wikipedia says so".
If you see something like that in wikipedia, when every other source you've read presents it as a path to cessation of suffering. you won't think "Oh this is interesting". You'll just think "here is wikipedia getting things wrong again, as it so often does".
The old lede just presents the four noble truths in the standard way similarly to other treatments, and had none of these issues.
Robert Walker ( talk) 08:39, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
@Robert Walker: No, you misunderstood me and the WP:RS I mentioned. It is the blogs-like and other non-RS you keep mentioning, that ignore the mention of samsara. All WP:RS I listed above, plus the Encyclopedia Britannica article and Carol Anderson's book parallel the current article's lead format, thanks to @Joshua Jonathan and other editors. Your point about citing more WP:RS is noted. If there is a particular sentence in lead that seems unsourced or insufficiently sourced, and it is not supported by the main article, please identify. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 12:36, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
@Robert Walker: Please take a break. Give @JJ, others and me a few weeks. Along with adding WP:RS to the lead of this article, in parallel, we need to fix the Samsara article, which this article is related to. @JJ is already working. I have some family things to take care of in early May, so my progress may be slower. But in 3-4 weeks, we should be able to improve this, Samsara, and related articles. Your point on WP:RS in this article is getting repetitive, I suggest you give it a rest, end your WP:WALLS, it is getting unconstructive. We will get this article right, by June, sooner if possible, with everyone's and your help. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 14:04, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
@Joshua Jonathan - your cites don't support this.
"According to Donald Lopez, "The Buddha stated in his first sermon that when he gained absolute and intuitive knowledge of the four truths, he achieved complete enlightenment and freedom from future rebirth."[web 1] See also the Maha-parinibbana Sutta,[web 2] and Carol Anderson, Pain and its Ending, pp.162 with note 38, for context see pages 1-3 ;[1] and Patrick Olivelle, a professor of Sanskrit and Indian Religions, on "moksha" in the Encyclopedia Britannica"
All this says is that the Buddha achieved freedom from future rebirth. Everyone agrees on that. It doesn't say that the 4NT should be presented as a path to end rebirth. And the various Buddhist schools have differing views on whether an enlightened being has to enter paranirvana on death. In some Mahayana schools Buddhas can "emanate" whatever that means, and those emanations can pass through the ordinary processes of birth just like everyone else. And cessation is described as something that Buddha realized already when he became enlightened - if the end of the path was paranirvana, then that would mean cessation can only be reached when you die.
So it's not enough to add cites that say that Buddha achieved freedom from rebirth. You need cites to say that the 4NT should be presented as a path to freedom from rebirth rather than a path to cessation of dukkha. I know this seems a bit repetitive, I've said this before, but we seem to have a lack of communication here and I'm not sure what else to do except repeat myself. Robert Walker ( talk) 16:10, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
@Joshua Jonathan - if the four noble truths are a path to ending rebirth, why don't the sutras say so? It would have been very easy to restate the four truths in that format if that is what Buddha intended by them. And why can't you find any other sources that restate them in this form? If an editor of a wikipedia article produces a novel synthesis, I don't think it is up to other editors to prove them wrong and find flaws in their treatment. This isn't peer review. It's up to you to find a cite in a recognized source that presents the four noble truths exactly as you did. Robert Walker ( talk) 17:41, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
On your point about the meaning of cessation, I put this comment above but perhaps you missed it as I inserted it before another comment. Here it is again:
@Joshua Jonathan - just in case this helps - I totally agree that the modern psychological approach of achieving happiness in this life - the "hippy" approach to these things is obviously not what Buddha meant - he was already very happy in the worldly sense when he set off to find enlightenment, and he also achieved meditations that enabled him to enter states of unstained pure bliss, which he also said was not enlightenment either. So that idea is obviously way off the mark. But if you read the cites I gave and the ones from the old lede etc, even the Zen one, none of them present bliss and freedom from pain in this life as the meaning of cessation in the 4NT. Because, if that is what was meant, it would be dependent on conditions which will eventually change. Robert Walker ( talk) 17:44, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
@Joshua Jonathan - just another thought, in case it helps. Buddha set out to find the cause of suffering and a path to freedom from suffering, according to the story of his life in the sutras. And the 4NT invite us to do the same. And though he gives advice about how to do this, he also presents it as a journey of discovery where you have to see things for yourself. If he presented the truths as "you must stop rebirth" then that would present a solution and a dogma that Buddhists would have to adhere to to follow the path.
So, whatever the situation might be, whether you think paranirvana is an eventual inevitable consequence of enlightenment or not, it needs to be presented as it is, as an open ended search for the causes of suffering, where the practitioner eventually sees the truth for themselves. I think also that's one of the things that makes the 4NT difficult for some people as they want to be presented with an explanation of what they have to believe to be a Buddhist, but the core truth is one that you have to see through open ended discovery, and any cut and dried solution would detract from that. Robert Walker ( talk) 17:56, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
"The four True Realities for the Spiritually Ennobled form the structural framework for all higher teachings of early Buddhism. They are: (i) dukkha, ‘the painful’, encompassing the various forms of ‘pain’, gross or subtle, physical or mental, that we are all subject to, along with painful things that engender these; (ii) the origination (samudaya, i.e. cause) of dukkha, namely craving (tanhā, Skt trsnā); (iii) the cessation (nirodha) of dukkha by the cessation of craving (this cessation being equivalent to Nirvāna); and (iv) the path (magga, Skt mārga) that leads to this cessation. The first sermon says that the first of the four is ‘to be fully understood’; the second is ‘to be abandoned’; the third is ‘to be personally experienced’; the fourth is ‘to be developed/cultivated’. To ‘believe in’ the ariya-saccas may play a part, but not the most important one."
"The Emanation Body is three-fold: a) the Supreme Emanation Body like Shakyamuni Buddha, the historical Buddha, who manifested the twelve deeds of a Buddha such as being born in the place he chose and so forth; b) the Artistic Emanation Body which serves others by appearing as craftsmen, artists and so on; and c) the Incarnate Emanation Body, according to which Buddhas appear in various forms such as human beings, deities, rivers, bridges, medicinal plants, and trees to help sentient beings. Of these three types of Emanation Body, the reincarnations of spiritual masters recognized and known as ‘Tulkus’ in Tibet come under the third category. Among these Tulkus there may be many who are truly qualified Incarnate Emanation Bodies of the Buddhas, but this does not necessarily apply to all of them. Amongst the Tulkus of Tibet there may be those who are reincarnations of superior Bodhisattvas, Bodhisattvas on the paths of accumulation and preparation, as well as masters who are evidently yet to enter these Bodhisattva paths. Therefore, the title of Tulku is given to reincarnate Lamas either on the grounds of their resembling enlightened beings or through their connection to certain qualities of enlightened beings. "
I just don't know about that and this article doesn't explain, maybe others do, maybe there is a diversity of views also, would be no surprise if there was. But whatever it means to be a Tulku who is an emanation body of a Buddha, it's clear from the quote that they are born, grow old and die just like everyone else. So, surely it counts as birth? What else can you call it? The Tibetans call them reincarnations.
That shows that in at least one Mahayana traditions there's a distinction between Buddhas like Shakyamuni who enter paranirvana and other Buddhas that continue to manifest in new human forms after they reach enlightenment. As described here, they are people you could meet and talk to, they have mothers and fathers who look after them as babies, they would have interests and hobbies like anyone else, yet in some sense or other they are emanations of a Buddha, whatever that means. While in the Therevadhan traditions it's much simpler, anyone who reaches enlightenment enters paranirvana when they die (if I understand it right).
Either way - the four noble truths leave all this open. These are all additional ideas on top of the four noble truths, as to what the nature of cessation is and what the implications are. But the truths themselves just present it as a path to practice, and cessation as something you come to realize for yourself.
And since they are always presented in this open way, as a path to cessation of suffering, why then should wikipedia follow its own unique direction and present them as a path to end rebirth as the aim? Not unless you can find a cite that says they should be presented in that way, and then I think you'd also need jolly good reasons for adopting this novel approach to them as the first thing the reader sees in the article.
Does that make sense to you? Robert Walker ( talk) 21:41, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
One more try: read Thanissaro Bhikkhu, The Truth of Rebirth And Why it Matters for Buddhist Practice on the fundamental connection between the four truths and rebirth. Two quotes:
It's all connected: the four truths, rebirth, dependent co-origination, etc. One lement links to other elements; together, the form an interlocked whole. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 06:52, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
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@ Ms Sarah Welch: First, thanks for adding the tag to the article. I've added a link to the discussion of the latest version to the start of the first section for readers who want to jump ahead. I agree that Joshua Jonathan has now found an academic source that presents the idea that the aim of the Buddhist path is to end the cycle of rebirth. For the full account in context, see Page 42. That's interesting to know and I agree that his cite is clear on the matter. However, this cite does not say that the four noble truths should be restated. In my view, to make such a radical restatement of the truths themselves, he needs a cite that actually says clearly that they need to be rephrased to say that the aim is to end the cycle of rebirth. And in my view again, he would need to alert the reader, and explain that this is not how they are usually expressed, and give the reason for rewriting them. Repeating my links from above to the usual way of expressing them: e.g. in the BBC, buddhanet encyclopedia Britannica, in Anderson's book [http://www.amazon.com/BASIC-BUDDHISM-Beginners-Origins-Concepts-ebook/dp/B00EWT4ROU "Basic Buddhism"], in Walpola Rahula's What the Buddha Taught", in teachings on the four noble truths by the the Dalai Lama, in the teachings of Zen Buddhism, in the Dhammacakkappavattana_Sutta, etc etc, it is easy to find numerous sources for the standard presentation, many more cites in old lede - see the footnote a It is one thing, in a meta discussion, to say that this is the implicit aim in the four noble truths. That is something that would be interesting for later in the page now that he has a cite for this view. Along of course with any other views on the matter. As an academic book, it's common for different books to present different views on such matters. And it's another thing altogether though, to use this meta discussion to rewrite the four truths themselves, and present the aim as to end the cycle of rebirth. Because that's just not how they are stated in the sutras, or how they are understood by Buddhists generally, or how they are presented in other secondary and tertiary sources. Joshua Jonathan is yet to provide a cite for anyone who has rephrased the four noble truths in any form resembling his statement of the 4NT in the lede. This means that this statement of the 4NT in the lede has not been subject to any peer review. A discussion on the talk page of an article by wikipedia editors does not constitute peer review. Repeating one of my comments from above, which I think is the essential point here:
I think in the lede especially it needs to be presented in this open way. Robert Walker ( talk) 10:08, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
@ Robert Walker: Thanks. Let us keep our focus to improving this article. We now agree that not only numerous scholarly secondary texts mention rebirth while discussing 4NT, even tertiary sources such as Encyclopedia Britannica and BBC do too. Is there something significant that Encyclopedia Britannica, BBC or Anderson's book mention that this article does not include? Please check. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 11:11, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
@Robert Walker: Did Buddha teach rebirth? Better read Francis Story's Rebirth as Doctrine and Experience: Essays and Case Studies, pages 80-81. See the cites above by Gombrich, Williams, Harvey, Anderson or any other scholar on 4NT. Scholarly sources explain 4NT in the way @Joshua Jonathan has summarized in his own words. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 15:34, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
I'm referring here to the statement of the four noble truths themselves. These are central to Buddhism. Yes I do suffer from immense ignorance, thanks for pointing that out :). But that's not too unusual in Samsara. The path is about trying to find a way out of this current state of immense ignorance. The four noble truths are to do with recognizing that ignorance. So it's rather strange to start by saying you have to say that you already know that we take rebirth, and that the path requires you to find a way to end rebirth. That is just not how Buddha taught them. Robert Walker ( talk) 00:28, 2 May 2016 (UTC) |
Hello everyone. There sure is a lot going on around this article right now. I see Joshua Jonathan that you are continuing to edit the Four Noble Truths article in the midst of it all. As a new editor, it's not easy for me to keep up with all the material here on the talk page, the RfC, the ban proposal, and evaluating new changes to article itself. I know for me that it would be more useful to not have any changes to the main article right now until the current conversations have been resolved. I don't know what the culture here is around this kind of thing, nor how the rest of you feel, but I thought to post and ask. Best, AD64 ( talk) 04:40, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
"Edits to content under RfC discussion may be particularly controversial. Avoid making edits that others may view as unhelpful. Editing after others have raised objections may be viewed as disruptive editing or edit warring. Be patient; make your improvements in accord with consensus after the RFC is resolved."
@Robert Walker: please don't re-edit your old posts or insert text into your old post, after someone has responded. You did that with your latest RfC list above. Given your ~500 edits in ~10 days, with walls of post, on this talk page alone, such back-editing makes understanding others difficult, and does not help in cogently discussing this article. See WP:Talk guidelines. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 09:20, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
I'm going to leave the RfC on "redeath" open until it closes by itself. Maybe it will attract the attention of knowledgeable experts in early Pali sutras or others with a new perspective on the debate. This experience has shown me that even an attempt at a focused discussion on a single word doesn't seem to work. So, I think there's no chance of a discussion that is somewhat larger in scope than that. @ AD64:, thanks so much for your suggestions for the RfC and I think they were good ones, but can't see a way forward to implementing them. Unless someone new comes to this page who can help. The main larger question was, whether the third truth should be phrased as a path to cessation of suffering / unsatisfactoriness as Buddha himself expressed it according to the Pali canon, or expressed as a "way to end this cycle" - and I also touched on whether the historical section should mention the views of Gombrich, Harvey, Wynne, Payutto, etc etc according to which most of the Pali Canon expresses the teachings of a single teacher, the Buddha.
I think the answers to both those is obvious as is the answer to this one about redeath, that it's a WP:TECHNICAL word that most readers won't know, that it has too many associations with the Vedas which Buddhists don't accept as sacred texts, and that it should just be replaced by an ordinary English phrase such as "repeated birth, old age, sickness and death" or the like, so that there is no ambiguity and the ordinary non technical reader can understand what it means. I understand that the other editors here don't see it that way. And they seem to think that there is no future in debating such questions. I am glad to see one improvement since the start of the discussion. The fourth truth is now expressed much better than it was before. However generally, I think the way the four truths are expressed in the old lede is still far far better than this new version. I am still here, and if anyone else wants to take this up any further, I'll be happy to join in and help as best I can. When I asked @ Robert McClenon: what my options were, purely as a matter of wikipedia policy (not asking him to join in the debate) he said I could try very focused RfCs, or I could try mediation. I've tried very focused RfCs and they don't seem to work, or at least I'm not the one to do them.
I could try mediation but I don't have the time to set aside for this. It's my experience from the past that if you try to go through wikipedia due process, it can take weeks of work, and may well still fail because you haven't understood something significant about wikipedia policies and procedures. And that approach also tends to generate a fair bit of ill will from people opposed to you doing it. At least when I do it. So I don't want to do that again right now. I have too many other things to do, and I also don't want to generate ill will in others in that way. One parting thought, wikipedia editors' views are impermanent like everything else. Perhaps some day there will be a change of heart? Or perhaps I might change in a way that makes this all much easier? Robert Walker ( talk) 08:42, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
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Introduction - reason for making this list of topicsThis is a list of topics which can be used to focus the existing debate. Or we could just close the previous RfC and start a new one afresh. To "clear the decks" we could archive the whole of this page first. It's @ AD64:'s idea to do it as a list of topics presented in a neutral fashion, rather than for and against arguments, which I think is an excellent way to proceed. In detail (collapsed for readers who want to skip):
As it is rather a technical discussion, and long, I think it would be hard to find a good neutral party to summarize it. But I'm quite used to presenting things from a neutral point of view myself and I think I can make a good stab at it for discussion. List of topics for the redeath RfCSo here is the list of topics as suggested by @ AD64: - some of them may have reached conclusion already -if so I'll say so.
@ Ms Sarah Welch: has answered this (finally! after several days and many replies back and forth, to try to get the answer from her). The Pali phrase is agatigati which is translated as "coming-andgoing" in the cite she gave on page 171 of The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism, and as (re-birth and re-death?) in the commentary on the translation there. It is also translated as' re-birth and re-death in a Pali dictionary pages 94-95 of Rhys Davids & William Stede, and in another Pali dictionary [2] as "rebirth and death", where agati here means coming and gati here means going.
Robert Walker ( talk) 07:57, 8 May 2016 (UTC) Discussion of list of topics for redeath RfCSee #List of topics for the redeath RfC. Please help me to make the list neutrally expressed and correct. Thanks! Robert Walker ( talk) 08:01, 8 May 2016 (UTC) (shortened version of:)
Please note, this is not a list of separate RfC topics as suggested in #Misrepresentations by Robert Walker continue. It's a draft for a future list of topics to focus the discussion on a single RfC on whether or not the article should use the word "redeath", as suggested by @ AD64:. The idea is that as the proposer, I would close the existing RfC which has become too intricate for newbies to follow. Then re-open it, same statement as before, and with this list of topics as the only supporting material which hopefully would lead to a more focused discussion next time. See the Introduction for the motivation and more details. Robert Walker ( talk) 08:36, 8 May 2016 (UTC) Misrepresentations by Robert Walker continueI have been quoted in this yet another "list of RFC topics", but without the scholarly translations / sources I gave previously for Buddhist Nikaya. Instead @Robert Walker gives a website, misrepresents me, and then follows it with his forum-y 'but can get the discussion going'. Not constructive use of this talk page, and repeated violation of WP:TPNO. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 12:30, 7 May 2016 (UTC) Please provide an accurate summary of what you say. Your only explanation so far is
As I understand it, punabbhavā means "renewed becoming" and "jāti" means birth and "jarā" means aging. Please correct if that is wrong. If the word "redeath" occurs in a WP:RS translation of the early Pali sutras, please provide the original Pali sentence, the English translation of that sentence, and an explanation of how the one is connected to the other, particularly which word or phrase in the Pali corresponds to "redeath" in the translation. Thanks! This is what I replied originally yesterday, much the same thing but with more "please please".
@Robert Walker: This is not a forum. We can't do OR, and must rely on published scholarship. I already provided a scholarly translation+interpretation source for the Sutta. @Joshua Jonathan, others and I have provided 10+ RS so far. See above. Quit your misrepresentations and WP:Forum-y conduct. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 08:53, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
Your explanation only gave the pali word corresponding to "death" and you didn't provide the
WP:RS translation of the sentence.
WP:AGF doesn't answer the question of what Pali word or phrase "redeath" corresponds to, or enable me to see what is written in some library in Glasgow over a hundred miles and a ferry journey away, possibly further away. While you presumably have this book in front of you, as you just cited it. Indeed it is rather hard to assume good faith when you won't answer such simple questions. I'm trying to do so! Robert Walker ( talk) 16:23, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
I have now found out why @
Ms Sarah Welch: never provided a quote in this discussion, as I found a copy of the book available online as a pdf.
You said "Sutta 12.40 repeats the mention of re-death. As does the rest of the Sutta, and as do other early Buddhist texts. See any scholarly translation. For example, M Choong, The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, page 171" [3] On page 171 of The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism, it translates the passage you mention as
So, it just translates it as " ageing-and-death"' like all the translations I found online which you claimed were inaccurate in this respect and not WP:RS. It does use the word "redeath" but only in commentary as
So it doesn't establish what you said at all. It even has a ? after the word redeath in the commentary, which is also in brackets. Basically you
On re-reading @
Ms Sarah Welch:'s comment from the ANI topic ban discussion this morning
[5], she says
Now that answers my question. Great. Why didn't you say that days ago when I first asked which Pali word or phrase corresponds to "redeath"! And why didn't you give straightforward answers to my questions about whether it occurs in the English translation of the sutra in your cite? With that background, it would be fine, when the topic is Agatigati to use the phrase "re-birth and re-death". I think it is a bit academic and technical, as most Buddhists won't have come across it, but especially with a re- before the "death" it's clear enough what is meant and with it tied to the word Agatigati that also would help to avoid confusion with the concept in translations of the Vedas as explained by @ Joshua Jonathan: above, which translates a different word punabbhavā (if I understand right). That then leads to the question, does Buddha use this term Agatigati or cognates in his presentation of the four noble truths in the wheel turning sutra? If he does, it might well be appropriate to use it in the presentation here, as "re-birth and re-death" with the Pali word given in brackets. If not, then it still seems somewhat WP:UNDUE to introduce the word right in the lede if it comes from other sutras, especially as most WP:RS don't use it to state the truths. Indeed, correct me if wrong, I don't think we yet have a single WP:RS that uses "redeath" in its statement of the four truths - only in extensive commentary on them. If he does uses this word in his wheel turning sutra, then the lede just needs more clarification, perhaps with the original Pali given. However, if it is collating material from a different sutra into the wheel turning sutra, I think that would count as WP:SYNTHESIS myself unless you find an academic source that also rewrites the four truths in this way, and if you do, I think that would need to be cited. This is just a case of being precise in citations so readers can understand and can follow up to find out more, rather than have to say "because wikipedia says so". If you are collating sutras into a single statement that doesn't occur in any of them individually, the reader needs to be told that it is a synthesis and an explanation and cite is needed for such action, in my view. Robert Walker ( talk) 21:08, 13 May 2016 (UTC) |
I'm just repeating the list above in #List of topics discussed in the RfC on Redeath, now that we have a Pali word or phrase to ground it. One of the topics is no longer needed and I've added extra couple at the end. This is not a list of RfCs. This is a list of topics (as suggested by @ AD64:) to help focus the discussion of a single RfC, if we ever do this RfC. This section is meant to be edited in response to comments on it.
The Pali phrase is agatigati which is translated as "coming-andgoing" in the cite she gave on page 171 of The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism, and as (re-birth and re-death?) in the commentary on the translation there. It is also translated as' re-birth and re-death in a Pali dictionary pages 94-95 of Rhys Davids & William Stede, and in another Pali dictionary [6] as "rebirth and death", where agati here means coming and gati here means going.
We have that answered now. It's actually part of a Pali phrase variously translated as "re-birth and re-death", "rebirth and death" or "coming and going".
The answer is no, the phrase agatigati and the words agati and gati do not occur anywhere in this Pali text.
The aim of the RfC is to answer the last two questions, but along the way, the others probably need to be answered also. Some have been answered already and for those I've given the answers. Robert Walker ( talk) 08:32, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
This section is just for discussion of this suggested topics list for a future RfC. The idea was to keep the RfC very focused on just this one question, whether to use the word "redeath" and if so how and where. It doesn't look as if this RfC is going to happen at present. I'm doing this just to leave this talk page in a good state for anyone who wants to take this up in the future. The above topics list is neutrally expressed (as best I can do it), and intended to be corrected if there is any bias in it. Also please correct it if there are any mistakes in the answers I give for the questions that I think have already been resolved. I think some progress was made in the discussion, though it took a long time. At least we now have a Pali word or phrase to discuss. Robert Walker ( talk)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Proposal: The lead and main article should go beyond introductory texts / websites for general readers on Buddhism, and summarize history, influences and commentary on Four Noble Truths – such as about rebirth, redeath – from scholarly secondary and tertiary references? Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 15:02, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
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@ Dharmalion76: Actually, both Buddhist and Hindu traditions were more concerned about suffering (dukkha) associated with redeaths and the journey towards another death. Rebirth, in both traditions (and Jainism), has sometimes been presented as an exceptional opportunity for a human being to live spiritually, thus pursue moksha or nirvana. Life is beautiful, make the most of it, they say. @ Joshua Jonathan has used the right words, when he used rebirths and redeaths. Please see Paul Williams's Buddhist Thought Chapter 1, Hermann Oldenberg's The doctrine of the Upanishads, etc. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 19:01, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
@ Dharmalion76:Just to say, I totally agree. The repeated use of Hindu sources and Hindu ideas, without alerting the reader to the fact that they are Hindu ideas is one of the main issues in the current treatment. It would be fine to compare and contrast Buddhist ideas with Hindu ideas. But to merge them together into a single treatment as if there was no distinction between the two approaches is not fine, in my view. It's been a recurring theme in this discussion that the Buddhist concept of Nirvana and the Hindu concept of Moksha are for all practical purposes identical, just taught differently. I don't think they are. I think the distinction is a valuable one giving practitioners the opportunity to follow different paths, Hindu or Buddhist, depending on their inclinations and understanding and connections. Robert Walker ( talk) 22:06, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
"The words moksha, nirvana and kaivalya are sometimes used synonymously, because they all refer to the state that liberates a person from all causes of sorrow and suffering. However, in modern era literature, these concepts have different premises in different religions. Nirvana, a concept common in Buddhism, is the realization that there is no self nor consciousness; while moksha, a concept common in many schools of Hinduism, is acceptance of Self, realization of liberating knowledge, the consciousness of Oneness with all existence and understanding the whole universe as the Self. Nirvana starts with the premise that there is no Self, moksha on the other hand, starts with the premise that everything is the Self; there is no consciousness in the state of nirvana, but everything is One unified consciousness in the state of moksha"
@ Dharmalion76: Also, to agree with you again - until I read the latest lede here, I had never heard the word "redeath", in any Buddhist context, until I saw this article. Indeed I wasn't sure even what it meant, and am still not very clear on why they use the word "redeath" here rather than just "death". Nor had I come across the word Moksha either until I encountered Hinduism. I hadn't come across it in any Buddhist writings. Now that I know to search for it, yes, it's used, especially in discussions that draw parallels between Buddhism and Hindusim, but it seems to be rare indeed in the Buddhist literature. While the word Nirvana is used frequently. So I agree with you, these don't seem to be common terms in Buddhist teaching. Robert Walker ( talk) 22:58, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
@Dharmalion76: You can certainly try RfC, but the likely outcome is no consensus, which will lead us nowhere different than where we are ( WP:MOVEON). If you look at the sources on this talk page posted in the last few days, or those already in the article, then look at what Rahula, GOldstein, Kornfield etc are stating, there is nothing significant in Rahula et al state that is not already summarized in the article. If @JJ missed something significant, please identify it. If @JJ did not miss something significant, let us with mettā thank @JJ and editors who have worked on this article since 2014. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 02:38, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
@ Dharmalion76:. Just to say, I support your suggestion of a WP:RFC to see if we find a majority of Buddhist editors on here agree that "redeath" is a common term, and should be used for the article on the four noble truths.
I think the main reason @ Dorje108: and my RfCs before failed was because they were too general leading to endlessly complex discussions like the ones on this page. It seems the best chance of success with an RfC is to keep it focused. And perhaps even an RfC on the current lede of the article is too general as there are so many points that can be discussed, as we see from this conversation. But maybe if we start with an RfC on a single word in the lede, and in the rest of the article, it has some chance of reaching a conclusion?
I am of course totally in agreement with you. In such an RfC, I would vote that the article should not use the word redeath at all unless in the context of discussion of Hinduism, if that was relevant, and that if so it should be clearly labelled as a section about Hindu ideas. Robert Walker ( talk) 04:10, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
@ Joshua Jonathan: If we did an RfC you could put this argument in your section of the RfC. We know that you think that redeath is a common term in Buddhist teaching. But others don't think it is. I never saw this term at all in 35 years as a Buddhist, in books, or teachings by teachers on Zen Buddhism, Therevadhan Buddhism, and the Tibetan traditions. So I would say it is a very uncommon term. I can understand that perhaps if you read particular sources you may think it is a common term.
The idea of the RfC is simply to ask the larger community of wikipedians here if they think it is a common term in Buddhist teachings and suitable for use in this article, and see what they say. I think it could be an interesting discussion. Robert Walker ( talk) 10:17, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
After all, this summary of the four truths (the summary, not the introductory sentence preceding it) was the best version: clear and comprehensible. "Temporary states and things" refers to conditioned phenomena, which are ultimately dissatisfying. Clinging to these conditioned phenomena produces karma and leads to rebirth, and renewed dissatisfaction, ad infinitum. But, says the Buddha, here's the way out! So, here we've got it both: dukkha and the end of dukkha, and rebirt and the end of rebirth. And, mind you, this also makes very clear why rebirth is part of the deal: those conditioned phenomena, those temporary states and things, are a priori unsatisfying. To pretend that they can be turned in something satisfying by following the Buddhist path is a betrayal of the Buddhist dharma. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 07:37, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
@ Ms Sarah Welch: Okay, sorry that my last post was too long. The essential point is this sentence:
"Assuming he chose his words carefully, then we should present it the same way - present the path as a path to cessation of suffering, and say that as a result of the realization then Buddha said that it is his last rebirth."
And then to go on to present what various WP:RS sources give as interpretations and consequences of that.
This structure of presenting the truths as Buddha taught them first as a path to cessation of suffering / unsatisfactoriness is how it is normally done in all the sources I've seen and all the sources shared even the ones that JJ presents to back up his case.
Robert Walker ( talk) 13:02, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
This is supplementary material for my "unable to vote" response to the RfC above
Following @ Robert McClenon:'s suggestion that if we do RfCs, they work best if they are very focused, and @ Dharmalion76:'s suggestion already of an RfC on the term redeath, here are some draft ideas for future RfCs. Each numbered line here is an idea for a separate RfC focusing on just one particular issue. The idea is to break up this complex discussion into individual points we can hope to resolve, and to do them one at a time, not all at once.
1. is the word redeath commonly used in Buddhist texts and teachings, and is it an appropriate word to use in this article and in the lede? (suggestion by @ Dharmalion76:).
2. Should the historical development section mention the views of scholars at the opposite end of the spectrum of the scholarly debate from Anderson, such as Wynne, Gombrich, Payutto, Harvey etc.(Expressed by Harvey for instance as "While parts of the Pali Canon clearly originated after the time of the Buddha, much must derive from his teaching.")? Or should it only mention the views of Anderson and like minded scholars according to whom most of the Pali Canon is a later development including the four noble truths (as in the current version of the page)? (this would be a multiple choice RfC)
3. Should the lede say that the third noble truth is a path to cessation of dukkha (unsatisfactoriness / suffering) as originally stated by the Buddha, Or should the lede say that the third noble truth is a path to end rebirth and "redeath" as it does at present? (this would be a multiple choice RfC)
We could follow that up with RfCs on the other noble truths, e.g.
4. Is this a good summary of the noble eightfold path: "behaving decently, cultivating discipline, and practicing mindfulness and meditation" (current lede), or is it better just to say "Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration."? (multiple choice again)
I.e. RfCs that are focused on tiny minutae of the article that are nevertheless significant issues.
These are just ideas and am interested to hear if other editors think they would help to focus the debate. And they are examples, maybe others have other ideas of RfCs that would be similarly focused that could help resolve the situation here? I think in such a complex situation as this, we may have to go slowly, one small point at a time. Robert Walker ( talk) 16:48, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
Sorry I didn't explain this properly. This was meant as supplementary material for my response to the RfC. I don't think it is possible to resolve all the issues raised here using an RfC on WP:RS and suggest that we should instead divide it into manageable sub-units, and this suggestion for future RfCs is one way to do it. I've now labelled it as such.
The reason for the large number of edits is because I get many typos when I write. I also tend to repeat myself and have to edit my comments to remove the repetitions. If you look at this page, then I am sure that Joshua Jonathan has made at least as many separate comments as I have done. There has been no archiving since this discussion started so you can just count my comments and count the comments of other editors. Or indeed do a word count, Joshua Jonathan has done some long posts here as well so if you add them all up, though I may have written more words, I don't think the difference is a large one. Robert Walker ( talk) 18:25, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
This is not actually an RfC. It is just me presenting a suggestion for an RfC which might help to clarify the main question at hand.
Something like this:
What do you think of these two options?
From the discussion above, others here don't seem to see think there is anything to discuss.
Does anyone else reading this think that this is a question of substance that can be discussed? Robert Walker ( talk) 11:45, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
@Richard Walker: The old version of the lead that you like, never mentioned rebirth, samsara and redeath in the lead. In fact, it did not even discuss it in the main article, just mentioned rebirth and samsara in two places in the passing. Rebirth and samsara have been central, basic to Buddhism, according to all RS scholarship. The old 2014 version was not Buddhism's Four Noble Truths, it was something new and exciting, a reconstruction and reinterpretation. It was not a summary of 4NT from the scholarly literature. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 12:04, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
"Buddhism arose in the context of the Sramana traditions, and shares many common ideas with other Indian religions of the time, such as Samsara, and the possibility of liberation from the cycle of existence. The core teachings in Buddhism are based on the four noble truths. These truths identify suffering, the source of suffering, present a possibility of cessation of suffering and a path to cessation....."
Precisely this Noble Eightfold Path: right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. This is the middle way realized by the Tathagata that — producing vision, producing knowledge — leads to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to Unbinding. ("Unbinding" is Thanissaro's chosen translation of "nibbāna")
And what is the middle way realized by the Tathagata that — producing vision, producing knowledge — leads to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to Unbinding? Precisely this Noble Eightfold Path: right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. This is the middle way realized by the Tathagata that — producing vision, producing knowledge — leads to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to Unbinding. ( translation by Thannissaro and as noted earlier, "unbinding" is Thanissaro's uniquely chosen translation of "nibbāna")
Thanks Dharmalion. Robert writes: "The core teachings in Buddhism are based on the four noble truths." They're not. The four truths were formulated later. Scholars like Gombrich and Bronkhorst hesitate to formulate or reconstruct "core teachings," with good reasons. Vetter argues that the "core teaching" of early Buddhism was the practice of dhyana, leading to calm of mind. No four truths; as the Wiki-article clearly states, and this is also from multiple reliable sources, those four truths are a later formulation. Even the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta is a largely expanded text which developed later. As mentioned in the previous section, "ending rebirth" is mentioned in a separate section in the Wiki-article, with multiple references. It's the essence (if we are to speak of an essence; I'm contradicting myself here, of course) of Buddhism. If practitioners, or Wiki-editors, can't relate to that, too bad for them; let them find another religion they can relate to. But don't expect to drop the essence of Buddhism when we describe Buddhism, because someone is upset when realizing what Buddhism is about. This is an encyclopedia, based on WP:RS, not a faith manual based on one person's (mis)understanding of Buddhism. The best way to "progress" here is to stop this discussion, and to WP:MOVEON. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 20:42, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
@ Joshua Jonathan: That is just one view amongst Buddhist scholars, that the four noble truths were not in the original teachings of the Buddha. Other scholars agree on the existence of multiple text layers in the sutras, both before and after the texts on the four noble truths, but think that the textually earlier teachings in the sutras before the four noble truths predated the Buddha. And Anderson herself in her book makes it clear that she does not intend it to be used in a revisionist way to change the teachings of Buddhism and in her "Basic Buddhism" book she reinforces that by simply presenting the four noble truths in Therevadhan Buddhism in the usual way, so I'm sure she would not support the idea that her "Pain and its Ending" should be used to revise the Buddhist teachings on the centrality of the four noble truths.
For the range of views on this matter, see Pāli_Canon#Attribution_according_to_scholars and for some more sources with yet more views on the matter see Talk:Pāli_Canon#Other_views_on_the_origins_of_the_Pali_Canon. It's one of the issues with your rewrites of articles on Buddhism that you frequently mention Anderson's book, which is not a particularly major work, with only three cites in Google scholar, and never mention any of these other views on the matter. Compare for instance, [The Oral Transmission of the Early Buddhist Literature]. which has 24 cites and Peter Harvey's book Introduction to Buddhism with 596 cites - he says "While parts of the Pali Canon clearly originated after the time of the Buddha, much must derive from his teaching." which is a good summary of the view of scholars at the opposite end of this spectrum of debate from Anderson.
And for a prominent Buddhist scholar right at the opposite end of the spectrum from Anderson: Richard Gombrich said in an interview
"There are certain scholars who do go down that road and say that we can't really know what the Buddha meant. That is quite fashionable in some circles. I am just the opposite of that. I am saying that there was a person called the Buddha, that the preachings probably go back to him individually - very few scholars actually say that - that we can learn more about what he meant, and that he was saying some very precise things. I regard deconstructionists as my enemies.".
Her view certainly deserves mention but the way you repeatedly push this view without any balancing views is way out of proportion and I'm sure Anderson herself would not recommend that her book is used in this way as the main source on the matter in an encyclopedia covering Buddhism, without mention of the views at the other end of the scholarly spectrum from her. A good scholar wants a debate, not a monologue. Robert Walker ( talk) 23:20, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
@ Robert McClenon: - I think the outcome of the debate is probably that this RfC is not focused enough. So I don't expect it to be used in its current form, perhaps I can just declare it closed as an RfC draft? Other editors may perhaps find other ways to state it that are more focused.
@ Dharmalion76: has suggested an RfC on whether the word redeath is commonly used in Buddhist texts and teachings and is an appropriate word to use in this article and in the lede. I think that's a good suggestion myself as that's about as focused as an RfC can possibly be and could be an interesting discussion.
Another possible RfC could be on whether the historical development section should mention the views of scholars at the opposite end of the spectrum of the scholarly debate such as Wynne, Gombrich, Payutto, Harvey etc. Again that seems quite focused.
On the lede, a better way of phrasing it might be
I.e. to focus the RfC right down to the third noble truth, which seems to be the essential point. If we did an RfC on one of the truths at a time, perhaps that might be sufficiently focused for an RfC? The lede when it says "there is a path to end this cycle" is clearly referring to the third truth, so this would apply to the statements of both the third truth itself in the lede and also to the last sentence of the introductory paragraph.
From my previous experience of RfCs here I totally agree, we have to be very very focused. It's the only thing that can work, and if discussion of the RfC draft leads us in numerous directions, that's a clear sign it is not yet focused enough. Thanks for the warning about walls of text, which is clearly still an issue, from comments on this page. I'm doing what I can, but type fast and sometimes get carried away, sorry! Robert Walker ( talk) 13:53, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
Redeath seems to be a redirect to Saṃsāra#Punarmrityu: redeath. I certainly can't see any reason for not using technical terminology of this sort if the terminology is more clearly defined elsewhere on site, and can be linked to, as is the case here. Provided that the technical term is used in the right context, of course. Regarding how to structure the article, the Lindsay Jones/Mircea Eliade Encyclopedia of Religion is a recent, highly regarded reference work which I believe has an article on this topic. The old Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics might well have an article as well. Both are likely available at WP:RX. Looking at however they structure their articles, and, maybe, more or less following the structure of them both, or at looking those two sources over, seeing what subsections they include, which subsections already have separate stand-alone articles here and which don't, etc., etc., and maybe making a separate thread here, indicating the sections in those araticles and the relative length of those sections, would be a productive way to go forward. John Carter ( talk) 18:17, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
@John Carter: The old Hastings is too old, ~100 years. Mircea Eliade died ~30 years ago. Yes, to the 2005 Macmillan Reference version edited by Lindsay Jones (which was a major rewrite of the 1987 Eliade edition). FWIW, the references @Joshua Jonathan has introduced in this article are high quality WP:RS. Websites, SPS and introductory sources, such as buddhanet, offer 4NT introduction that makes no mention of the words "samsara, (repeated) birth and death, (cycle)", etc. Scholarly references do. Damien Keown's reference source on Buddhism, published in 2003 by Oxford University Press, which is on my deak, has an article on 4NT, and many 4NT related articles. It repeatedly mentions "repeated birth, repeated death" etc in 4NT and 4NT-related articles, such as on pages 71, 96, and many more. We don't have to write redeath in every sentence of this article, but the discussion of "rebirth or repeated birth" and "redeath or repeated death" is appropriate, because that is what is in scholarly references. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 20:33, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
@ Joshua Jonathan: - where in the wheel turning sutra does it use punarmrityu? If it is not in that sutra, why have you introduced it into your version of the four noble truths? Has any scholar used this in their statement of the four noble truths? I have never heard "redeath" used by any Buddhist teacher or in any book or sutra translation that I've read. And @ Dharmalion76: hadn't either. I think if we do an RfC nearly all respondents will say they have never seen it in any Buddhist context, unless they have read those specialist cites you give.
Of course the Buddhist canon is vast, and I've only read a few sutras, but surely it is a very rare term if it does occur in the sutras. Encyclopedia Britannica talks about it as a Hindu term from the Upanishads. This approach of introducing novel terms to your exposition of the four noble truths is surely at the very least WP:SYNTHESIS AND WP:UNDUE unless you can find a cite. And if you do find a scholar that did this, you also have to explain why you chose to use this when all the normal expositions don't use it. And explain to the reader, surely, that you are using an unusual presentation of the four noble truths, and explain why you did this. Do you not think? Shouldn't the reader be alerted to something so unusual? And - why do you do it, what's the basic motivation, that's what I don't get at all, why you wish to rewrite the four noble truths in the novel ways you do in the lede? Robert Walker ( talk) 01:29, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
I don't get what you are saying, sorry. It has the word "redeath" and Joshua Jonathan just said that's a translation of punarmrtyu. If there is a link that's interesting but surely it belongs later in the page? In a discussion of links between the four noble truths and Hindu ideas? Surely the statement of the four truths should state them as Buddha taught them in the wheel turning sutra. Do any of these cites you mention actually restate the four truths themselves using the word punar-mrtyu? If so what justification do they give for doing this? Whatever justification should at least be given to the reader, I'm sure a scholar who did that would explain why they did it, probably at great length, which could be summarized here. And if the sources do not rewrite the four truths in this way, then why should this article? And it is certainly not usual in statements of the four noble truths. I don't buy this argument that it is because all the statements of four noble truths that most of us have come across are "popular Buddhism" after all many of them are written by pre-eminent Buddhist scholars. And even Anderson's book "Basic Buddhism" by Joshua Jonathan's favourite scholar does not use this word to state the four noble truths. And I don't remember seeing it in Pain and its Ending. Robert Walker ( talk) 03:19, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
Also, this is a minor puzzle, but punarmrtyu is Sanskrit, is it not? So how could it be a word from the earliest Pali canon of Buddhism, which is in Pali? It could of course be from the Upanishads as they are in Sanskrit. Robert Walker ( talk) 03:49, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
Do you have any objection to an RfC on this topic? To see if other wikipedians agree with your views on use of redeath in the article? My suggestion is to break down the complex discussion which seems to have no chance of resolution into individual small points, following @ Robert McClenon:'s suggestion that RfCs work best if very focused. You couldn't get much more focused than a discussion on use of a single word in the lede.
If this proves successful, leading to some kind of resolution, we can then do similarly focused RfCs on other points of contention, such as statement of the third truth in the lede, and tackle the truths one at a time. We can also tackle the issues about your presentation of only one perspective in a complex scholarly debate in the historical development section, again as a separate RfC. And generally if an RfC proves to be too wide in its scope, break it down into smaller components, e.g. could even have an RfC about whether to present the views of individual scholars such as the views of Gombrich, as an RfC, then an RfC about whether to mention the views of Harvey, then Wynne, one at a time, if it was absolutely necessary to get down to such small atomic units of the discussion.
I listed some proposals for very focused RfCs to get us started in the section on #Ideas_for_future_RfCs. The aim is to get more eyes on the article to help resolve these issues and find a way forward. Hope you understand. Robert Walker ( talk) 09:19, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
@ Joshua Jonathan: has just proposed that I be banned from posting to wikipedia talk pages on the topic of the Four Noble Truths on the basis of the discussion so far. Please read his reasons for the ban, and also my reasons opposing the ban in my Oppose vote here: See Topic Ban Requested
Robert Walker ( talk) 07:55, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
"The Four Noble Truths...express the basic orientation of Buddhism: this worldly existence is fundamentally unsatisfactory, but there is a path to liberation from repeated worldly existence."
"The Four Noble Truths...express the basic orientation of Buddhism: repeated rebirth and "redeath" in the realm of samsara is fundamentally unsatisfactory, but there is a path to end this cycle"
A reader of this article would surely expect a statement of the four noble truths, followed by explanation of the four truths.
Instead, the lede says
"this worldly existence is fundamentally unsatisfactory, but there is a path to liberation from repeated worldly existence."
What is the cite for this statement? It's hard to tell what it means but it sounds like either a "multilife suicide" or escape to some other heavenly realm.
In the four noble truths, Buddha taught liberation from dukkha (suffering, anxiety, unsatisfactoriness), not liberation from worldly existence, whatever that's supposed to mean. Indeed, as often explained in some of the Buddhist schools at least, when you see through ignorance, you see there is nothing that needs to cease to exist.
Four of the unanswered questions cover this topic "Does the Tathagata (Buddha) exist after death? ...or not? ...or both? ...or neither?" He refused to answer the question:
"The Buddha remained silent when asked these fourteen questions. He described them as a net and refused to be drawn into such a net of theories, speculations, and dogmas. He said that it was because he was free of bondage to all theories and dogmas that he had attained liberation. Such speculations, he said, are attended by fever, unease, bewilderment, and suffering, and it is by freeing oneself of them that one achieves liberation." The_unanswered_questions
Also as traditionally explained, Buddha taught for decades after he realized nirvana and cessation. He didn't cease to exist or disappear into some other realm when he reached nirvana. So how could nirvana be "liberation from repeated worldly existence"?
So surely neither paranirvana nor nirvana are to be understood as "liberation from worldly existence"?
The article I see goes on to list four "precepts" in the next section - but if these are meant to be the four noble truths - who else calls them precepts? Buddha taught there is no value in affirming the truths as a creed. You can follow precepts on the path, such as not lying, not stealing, not killing etc as part of the path, and the monastic vows are precepts, but with the four truths - what could it mean? Any citation for this?
Then it talks about "redeath". Again what's the cite for this, who else uses this word in the context of the four noble truths? What does it mean? And then the summary of the "noble eightfold path" in this "precepts" section has few points of resemblance with the eightfold path as usually stated.
This is just to touch on issues with the current lede, not a suggestion for an alternative lede :). Please don't use my words either.
The old version of the article states the four noble truths in the lede, explains what they are, and summarizes the aim of the Buddhist path. And everything in the old lede is cited. Robert Walker ( talk) 26 March 2016 (UTC)
The original lede was as follows:
... For the rest of the old lede, see https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Four_Noble_Truths&oldid=629066305
Robert Walker ( talk) 26 March 2016 (UTC)
References
What was wrong with that?
This used to be an excellent wikipedia article before the rewrite. The lede of a wikipedia article is not supposed to be a "teaser taster".
"The lead serves as an introduction to the article and a summary of its most important contents. It is not a news-style lead or lede paragraph."
Following that guideline, surely a lede summarizing the most important contents of an article on the four noble truths must list the four truths?
Also, I think you would need compelling reasons, well cited, to depart from the usual way of presenting this, the central teaching of the Buddha.
Thanks!
Robert Walker ( talk) 09:20, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
[edited for brevity and clarity Robert Walker ( talk) 14:30, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
References
References
@Joshua Jonathan: Indeed, it sure is. It is as basic to sramanic traditions as "Buddhism is spelled with a B, Jainism is spelled with a J". It should be included in this article. @Robert Walker: For source on samsara and its central role to the Four Noble Truths, please see Anderson's first chapter or just the opening pages, [1] and Gombrich's preface and first chapter. [2] I read the old 2014 version @RW linked above, and the current one reflecting recent edits of @JJ and others. The current version is a significant improvement. The article still states "the essence of the Buddhist teachings", but it now is far more encyclopedic, complete and NPOV. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 13:16, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
References
"But if I suggest that the four noble truths are not the legacy of a particular religious experience which may have actually occurred in history, is that to undercut their authority as a symbol of the Buddha's enlightenment? No, for the simple reason that the authority of the four noble truths, as an evocative symbol of a specific experience, does not rely upon the truth or falsehood of the four noble truths and other encyclopedic statements within history. The authority of the four noble truths does not rely upon the historical claim that they were in fact the first teaching of the Buddha. The authority of the four noble truths as a symbol relies, in the end, upon the memory of the Therevada Buddhist tradition as recorded in the Therevada canon".
@Robert Walker: your issue isn't that @Joshua Jonathan's and other's edits/improvements since 2014 are wrong or noncompliant with wikipedia's content policies, your issue is with the style and the method of the lead presentation, particularly when one compares it to BBC etc version; do I understand you right? Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 16:45, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
References
@Robert Walker: Understood. But this article is not on Buddha, it is on Four Noble Truths. We must indeed write this article in our own words to respect WP:Copyvio and WP:Plag. Any faithful good summary of WP:RS should also include the context (as you say, "not change the meaning", and meaning is the product of the context, not words). @Joshua Jonathan and others, frankly, have done a good job here, something we should appreciate and thank them for. I am a bit disappointed with the harshness with which @JJ has been inadvertently criticized above, when the sources clearly state "realm of rebirth" etc. The current lead and main article provides a summary of diverse sources, the necessary samsara-context to understand the summary, as well as scholarly sources for the more curious. That is along the lines of what an encyclopedic article and reference, to an important article, such as this, ought to do. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 18:48, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
"The Four Noble Truths ( Sanskrit: catvāri āryasatyāni; Pali: cattāri ariyasaccāni) are regarded as the central doctrine of the Buddhist tradition, and are said to provide a conceptual framework for all of Buddhist thought. These four truths explain the nature of dukkha (Pali; commonly translated as " suffering", "anxiety", "unsatisfactoriness" [a]), its causes, its cessation, and the path leading to its cessation.
References
@Robert Walker: The old 2014 version's lead lacks the samsara-context, which misleads, and therefore is weak. The old version may be "usually stated", but this article should not try to reinforce opinions, blogs, or "what the reader expects". This article should summarize the diversity of scholarly views from WP:RS. Please check scholarly secondary and tertiary sources. The Encyclopedia Britannica article on this topic starts with samsara, "realm of rebirth" etc, after it clarifies that "noble" does not refer to truths, but refers to "four truths for the nobles". Here are a few more secondary and tertiary WP:RS, [1] [2] [3] [4] all of which pretty much reflect what @Joshua Jonathan and recent editors have revised this article's lead to. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 20:23, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
References
@Ms Sarah Welch: Just to summarize the main point here, as I think it's become clearer as a result of our discussion - and thanks for discussing it with me. I think you agree that the way the four noble truths are presented in the lede differs from the way it is usually presented, e.g. in the BBC, buddhanet encyclopedia Britannica, in Anderson's book [http://www.amazon.com/BASIC-BUDDHISM-Beginners-Origins-Concepts-ebook/dp/B00EWT4ROU "Basic Buddhism"], in Walpola Rahula's What the Buddha Taught", in teachings on the four noble truths by the the Dalai Lama, in the teachings of Zen Buddhism, in the Dhammacakkappavattana_Sutta, etc etc, it is easy to find numerous sources for the standard presentation.
It is clearly the standard way of presenting the four noble truths in all the main Buddhist sutra based traditions, in tertiary sources, in most works by Buddhist scholars also, as well as the way it is presented in the sutras themselves. They all present it as a path to cessation of suffering.
So - then the main point is that I think you'd expect an article like this which presents them in a different way to alert the reader and explain the reason for this different treatment. You'd expect it to say something in the lede like
"Normally the four noble truths are presented as a path to cessation of suffering and unsatisfactoriness. But scholars x y z say that actually it should be presented as a path to end the cycle of repeated rebirth and "redeath" "
- with a list of citations to the scholars who favour this way of presenting it. Then you'd expect a bit more also, perhaps a sentence or two explaining the reason for the decision to use this different treatment in an encyclopedia article. And later in the page, you'd expect a long detailed explanation of why it is presented in such a different way here, with a discussion of both ways of presenting it, which if it was a balanced discussion, you'd expect to also give the reasons why most authors present it as a path to cessation of suffering.
If it was presented like that you'd say "oh interesting, I had no idea that there was this alternative presentation" and even if like me you think it is wrong, as surely most Buddhists would if familiar with the more usual way of presenting it - still, you'd read on and find out about this other treatment. You'd at the least be intrigued by it.
But it's not done like that. It is just presented "as is" and the reader is not even alerted to this change in treatment. And no citation is given, not to the suggestion that the 4NT should be presented like this. If I wanted to email a Buddhist friend and tell them about this and they asked who says this, I'd just have to say "Wikipedia says so".
If you see something like that in wikipedia, when every other source you've read presents it as a path to cessation of suffering. you won't think "Oh this is interesting". You'll just think "here is wikipedia getting things wrong again, as it so often does".
The old lede just presents the four noble truths in the standard way similarly to other treatments, and had none of these issues.
Robert Walker ( talk) 08:39, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
@Robert Walker: No, you misunderstood me and the WP:RS I mentioned. It is the blogs-like and other non-RS you keep mentioning, that ignore the mention of samsara. All WP:RS I listed above, plus the Encyclopedia Britannica article and Carol Anderson's book parallel the current article's lead format, thanks to @Joshua Jonathan and other editors. Your point about citing more WP:RS is noted. If there is a particular sentence in lead that seems unsourced or insufficiently sourced, and it is not supported by the main article, please identify. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 12:36, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
@Robert Walker: Please take a break. Give @JJ, others and me a few weeks. Along with adding WP:RS to the lead of this article, in parallel, we need to fix the Samsara article, which this article is related to. @JJ is already working. I have some family things to take care of in early May, so my progress may be slower. But in 3-4 weeks, we should be able to improve this, Samsara, and related articles. Your point on WP:RS in this article is getting repetitive, I suggest you give it a rest, end your WP:WALLS, it is getting unconstructive. We will get this article right, by June, sooner if possible, with everyone's and your help. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 14:04, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
@Joshua Jonathan - your cites don't support this.
"According to Donald Lopez, "The Buddha stated in his first sermon that when he gained absolute and intuitive knowledge of the four truths, he achieved complete enlightenment and freedom from future rebirth."[web 1] See also the Maha-parinibbana Sutta,[web 2] and Carol Anderson, Pain and its Ending, pp.162 with note 38, for context see pages 1-3 ;[1] and Patrick Olivelle, a professor of Sanskrit and Indian Religions, on "moksha" in the Encyclopedia Britannica"
All this says is that the Buddha achieved freedom from future rebirth. Everyone agrees on that. It doesn't say that the 4NT should be presented as a path to end rebirth. And the various Buddhist schools have differing views on whether an enlightened being has to enter paranirvana on death. In some Mahayana schools Buddhas can "emanate" whatever that means, and those emanations can pass through the ordinary processes of birth just like everyone else. And cessation is described as something that Buddha realized already when he became enlightened - if the end of the path was paranirvana, then that would mean cessation can only be reached when you die.
So it's not enough to add cites that say that Buddha achieved freedom from rebirth. You need cites to say that the 4NT should be presented as a path to freedom from rebirth rather than a path to cessation of dukkha. I know this seems a bit repetitive, I've said this before, but we seem to have a lack of communication here and I'm not sure what else to do except repeat myself. Robert Walker ( talk) 16:10, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
@Joshua Jonathan - if the four noble truths are a path to ending rebirth, why don't the sutras say so? It would have been very easy to restate the four truths in that format if that is what Buddha intended by them. And why can't you find any other sources that restate them in this form? If an editor of a wikipedia article produces a novel synthesis, I don't think it is up to other editors to prove them wrong and find flaws in their treatment. This isn't peer review. It's up to you to find a cite in a recognized source that presents the four noble truths exactly as you did. Robert Walker ( talk) 17:41, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
On your point about the meaning of cessation, I put this comment above but perhaps you missed it as I inserted it before another comment. Here it is again:
@Joshua Jonathan - just in case this helps - I totally agree that the modern psychological approach of achieving happiness in this life - the "hippy" approach to these things is obviously not what Buddha meant - he was already very happy in the worldly sense when he set off to find enlightenment, and he also achieved meditations that enabled him to enter states of unstained pure bliss, which he also said was not enlightenment either. So that idea is obviously way off the mark. But if you read the cites I gave and the ones from the old lede etc, even the Zen one, none of them present bliss and freedom from pain in this life as the meaning of cessation in the 4NT. Because, if that is what was meant, it would be dependent on conditions which will eventually change. Robert Walker ( talk) 17:44, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
@Joshua Jonathan - just another thought, in case it helps. Buddha set out to find the cause of suffering and a path to freedom from suffering, according to the story of his life in the sutras. And the 4NT invite us to do the same. And though he gives advice about how to do this, he also presents it as a journey of discovery where you have to see things for yourself. If he presented the truths as "you must stop rebirth" then that would present a solution and a dogma that Buddhists would have to adhere to to follow the path.
So, whatever the situation might be, whether you think paranirvana is an eventual inevitable consequence of enlightenment or not, it needs to be presented as it is, as an open ended search for the causes of suffering, where the practitioner eventually sees the truth for themselves. I think also that's one of the things that makes the 4NT difficult for some people as they want to be presented with an explanation of what they have to believe to be a Buddhist, but the core truth is one that you have to see through open ended discovery, and any cut and dried solution would detract from that. Robert Walker ( talk) 17:56, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
"The four True Realities for the Spiritually Ennobled form the structural framework for all higher teachings of early Buddhism. They are: (i) dukkha, ‘the painful’, encompassing the various forms of ‘pain’, gross or subtle, physical or mental, that we are all subject to, along with painful things that engender these; (ii) the origination (samudaya, i.e. cause) of dukkha, namely craving (tanhā, Skt trsnā); (iii) the cessation (nirodha) of dukkha by the cessation of craving (this cessation being equivalent to Nirvāna); and (iv) the path (magga, Skt mārga) that leads to this cessation. The first sermon says that the first of the four is ‘to be fully understood’; the second is ‘to be abandoned’; the third is ‘to be personally experienced’; the fourth is ‘to be developed/cultivated’. To ‘believe in’ the ariya-saccas may play a part, but not the most important one."
"The Emanation Body is three-fold: a) the Supreme Emanation Body like Shakyamuni Buddha, the historical Buddha, who manifested the twelve deeds of a Buddha such as being born in the place he chose and so forth; b) the Artistic Emanation Body which serves others by appearing as craftsmen, artists and so on; and c) the Incarnate Emanation Body, according to which Buddhas appear in various forms such as human beings, deities, rivers, bridges, medicinal plants, and trees to help sentient beings. Of these three types of Emanation Body, the reincarnations of spiritual masters recognized and known as ‘Tulkus’ in Tibet come under the third category. Among these Tulkus there may be many who are truly qualified Incarnate Emanation Bodies of the Buddhas, but this does not necessarily apply to all of them. Amongst the Tulkus of Tibet there may be those who are reincarnations of superior Bodhisattvas, Bodhisattvas on the paths of accumulation and preparation, as well as masters who are evidently yet to enter these Bodhisattva paths. Therefore, the title of Tulku is given to reincarnate Lamas either on the grounds of their resembling enlightened beings or through their connection to certain qualities of enlightened beings. "
I just don't know about that and this article doesn't explain, maybe others do, maybe there is a diversity of views also, would be no surprise if there was. But whatever it means to be a Tulku who is an emanation body of a Buddha, it's clear from the quote that they are born, grow old and die just like everyone else. So, surely it counts as birth? What else can you call it? The Tibetans call them reincarnations.
That shows that in at least one Mahayana traditions there's a distinction between Buddhas like Shakyamuni who enter paranirvana and other Buddhas that continue to manifest in new human forms after they reach enlightenment. As described here, they are people you could meet and talk to, they have mothers and fathers who look after them as babies, they would have interests and hobbies like anyone else, yet in some sense or other they are emanations of a Buddha, whatever that means. While in the Therevadhan traditions it's much simpler, anyone who reaches enlightenment enters paranirvana when they die (if I understand it right).
Either way - the four noble truths leave all this open. These are all additional ideas on top of the four noble truths, as to what the nature of cessation is and what the implications are. But the truths themselves just present it as a path to practice, and cessation as something you come to realize for yourself.
And since they are always presented in this open way, as a path to cessation of suffering, why then should wikipedia follow its own unique direction and present them as a path to end rebirth as the aim? Not unless you can find a cite that says they should be presented in that way, and then I think you'd also need jolly good reasons for adopting this novel approach to them as the first thing the reader sees in the article.
Does that make sense to you? Robert Walker ( talk) 21:41, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
One more try: read Thanissaro Bhikkhu, The Truth of Rebirth And Why it Matters for Buddhist Practice on the fundamental connection between the four truths and rebirth. Two quotes:
It's all connected: the four truths, rebirth, dependent co-origination, etc. One lement links to other elements; together, the form an interlocked whole. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 06:52, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
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@ Ms Sarah Welch: First, thanks for adding the tag to the article. I've added a link to the discussion of the latest version to the start of the first section for readers who want to jump ahead. I agree that Joshua Jonathan has now found an academic source that presents the idea that the aim of the Buddhist path is to end the cycle of rebirth. For the full account in context, see Page 42. That's interesting to know and I agree that his cite is clear on the matter. However, this cite does not say that the four noble truths should be restated. In my view, to make such a radical restatement of the truths themselves, he needs a cite that actually says clearly that they need to be rephrased to say that the aim is to end the cycle of rebirth. And in my view again, he would need to alert the reader, and explain that this is not how they are usually expressed, and give the reason for rewriting them. Repeating my links from above to the usual way of expressing them: e.g. in the BBC, buddhanet encyclopedia Britannica, in Anderson's book [http://www.amazon.com/BASIC-BUDDHISM-Beginners-Origins-Concepts-ebook/dp/B00EWT4ROU "Basic Buddhism"], in Walpola Rahula's What the Buddha Taught", in teachings on the four noble truths by the the Dalai Lama, in the teachings of Zen Buddhism, in the Dhammacakkappavattana_Sutta, etc etc, it is easy to find numerous sources for the standard presentation, many more cites in old lede - see the footnote a It is one thing, in a meta discussion, to say that this is the implicit aim in the four noble truths. That is something that would be interesting for later in the page now that he has a cite for this view. Along of course with any other views on the matter. As an academic book, it's common for different books to present different views on such matters. And it's another thing altogether though, to use this meta discussion to rewrite the four truths themselves, and present the aim as to end the cycle of rebirth. Because that's just not how they are stated in the sutras, or how they are understood by Buddhists generally, or how they are presented in other secondary and tertiary sources. Joshua Jonathan is yet to provide a cite for anyone who has rephrased the four noble truths in any form resembling his statement of the 4NT in the lede. This means that this statement of the 4NT in the lede has not been subject to any peer review. A discussion on the talk page of an article by wikipedia editors does not constitute peer review. Repeating one of my comments from above, which I think is the essential point here:
I think in the lede especially it needs to be presented in this open way. Robert Walker ( talk) 10:08, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
@ Robert Walker: Thanks. Let us keep our focus to improving this article. We now agree that not only numerous scholarly secondary texts mention rebirth while discussing 4NT, even tertiary sources such as Encyclopedia Britannica and BBC do too. Is there something significant that Encyclopedia Britannica, BBC or Anderson's book mention that this article does not include? Please check. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 11:11, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
@Robert Walker: Did Buddha teach rebirth? Better read Francis Story's Rebirth as Doctrine and Experience: Essays and Case Studies, pages 80-81. See the cites above by Gombrich, Williams, Harvey, Anderson or any other scholar on 4NT. Scholarly sources explain 4NT in the way @Joshua Jonathan has summarized in his own words. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 15:34, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
I'm referring here to the statement of the four noble truths themselves. These are central to Buddhism. Yes I do suffer from immense ignorance, thanks for pointing that out :). But that's not too unusual in Samsara. The path is about trying to find a way out of this current state of immense ignorance. The four noble truths are to do with recognizing that ignorance. So it's rather strange to start by saying you have to say that you already know that we take rebirth, and that the path requires you to find a way to end rebirth. That is just not how Buddha taught them. Robert Walker ( talk) 00:28, 2 May 2016 (UTC) |
Hello everyone. There sure is a lot going on around this article right now. I see Joshua Jonathan that you are continuing to edit the Four Noble Truths article in the midst of it all. As a new editor, it's not easy for me to keep up with all the material here on the talk page, the RfC, the ban proposal, and evaluating new changes to article itself. I know for me that it would be more useful to not have any changes to the main article right now until the current conversations have been resolved. I don't know what the culture here is around this kind of thing, nor how the rest of you feel, but I thought to post and ask. Best, AD64 ( talk) 04:40, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
"Edits to content under RfC discussion may be particularly controversial. Avoid making edits that others may view as unhelpful. Editing after others have raised objections may be viewed as disruptive editing or edit warring. Be patient; make your improvements in accord with consensus after the RFC is resolved."
@Robert Walker: please don't re-edit your old posts or insert text into your old post, after someone has responded. You did that with your latest RfC list above. Given your ~500 edits in ~10 days, with walls of post, on this talk page alone, such back-editing makes understanding others difficult, and does not help in cogently discussing this article. See WP:Talk guidelines. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 09:20, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
I'm going to leave the RfC on "redeath" open until it closes by itself. Maybe it will attract the attention of knowledgeable experts in early Pali sutras or others with a new perspective on the debate. This experience has shown me that even an attempt at a focused discussion on a single word doesn't seem to work. So, I think there's no chance of a discussion that is somewhat larger in scope than that. @ AD64:, thanks so much for your suggestions for the RfC and I think they were good ones, but can't see a way forward to implementing them. Unless someone new comes to this page who can help. The main larger question was, whether the third truth should be phrased as a path to cessation of suffering / unsatisfactoriness as Buddha himself expressed it according to the Pali canon, or expressed as a "way to end this cycle" - and I also touched on whether the historical section should mention the views of Gombrich, Harvey, Wynne, Payutto, etc etc according to which most of the Pali Canon expresses the teachings of a single teacher, the Buddha.
I think the answers to both those is obvious as is the answer to this one about redeath, that it's a WP:TECHNICAL word that most readers won't know, that it has too many associations with the Vedas which Buddhists don't accept as sacred texts, and that it should just be replaced by an ordinary English phrase such as "repeated birth, old age, sickness and death" or the like, so that there is no ambiguity and the ordinary non technical reader can understand what it means. I understand that the other editors here don't see it that way. And they seem to think that there is no future in debating such questions. I am glad to see one improvement since the start of the discussion. The fourth truth is now expressed much better than it was before. However generally, I think the way the four truths are expressed in the old lede is still far far better than this new version. I am still here, and if anyone else wants to take this up any further, I'll be happy to join in and help as best I can. When I asked @ Robert McClenon: what my options were, purely as a matter of wikipedia policy (not asking him to join in the debate) he said I could try very focused RfCs, or I could try mediation. I've tried very focused RfCs and they don't seem to work, or at least I'm not the one to do them.
I could try mediation but I don't have the time to set aside for this. It's my experience from the past that if you try to go through wikipedia due process, it can take weeks of work, and may well still fail because you haven't understood something significant about wikipedia policies and procedures. And that approach also tends to generate a fair bit of ill will from people opposed to you doing it. At least when I do it. So I don't want to do that again right now. I have too many other things to do, and I also don't want to generate ill will in others in that way. One parting thought, wikipedia editors' views are impermanent like everything else. Perhaps some day there will be a change of heart? Or perhaps I might change in a way that makes this all much easier? Robert Walker ( talk) 08:42, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
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Introduction - reason for making this list of topicsThis is a list of topics which can be used to focus the existing debate. Or we could just close the previous RfC and start a new one afresh. To "clear the decks" we could archive the whole of this page first. It's @ AD64:'s idea to do it as a list of topics presented in a neutral fashion, rather than for and against arguments, which I think is an excellent way to proceed. In detail (collapsed for readers who want to skip):
As it is rather a technical discussion, and long, I think it would be hard to find a good neutral party to summarize it. But I'm quite used to presenting things from a neutral point of view myself and I think I can make a good stab at it for discussion. List of topics for the redeath RfCSo here is the list of topics as suggested by @ AD64: - some of them may have reached conclusion already -if so I'll say so.
@ Ms Sarah Welch: has answered this (finally! after several days and many replies back and forth, to try to get the answer from her). The Pali phrase is agatigati which is translated as "coming-andgoing" in the cite she gave on page 171 of The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism, and as (re-birth and re-death?) in the commentary on the translation there. It is also translated as' re-birth and re-death in a Pali dictionary pages 94-95 of Rhys Davids & William Stede, and in another Pali dictionary [2] as "rebirth and death", where agati here means coming and gati here means going.
Robert Walker ( talk) 07:57, 8 May 2016 (UTC) Discussion of list of topics for redeath RfCSee #List of topics for the redeath RfC. Please help me to make the list neutrally expressed and correct. Thanks! Robert Walker ( talk) 08:01, 8 May 2016 (UTC) (shortened version of:)
Please note, this is not a list of separate RfC topics as suggested in #Misrepresentations by Robert Walker continue. It's a draft for a future list of topics to focus the discussion on a single RfC on whether or not the article should use the word "redeath", as suggested by @ AD64:. The idea is that as the proposer, I would close the existing RfC which has become too intricate for newbies to follow. Then re-open it, same statement as before, and with this list of topics as the only supporting material which hopefully would lead to a more focused discussion next time. See the Introduction for the motivation and more details. Robert Walker ( talk) 08:36, 8 May 2016 (UTC) Misrepresentations by Robert Walker continueI have been quoted in this yet another "list of RFC topics", but without the scholarly translations / sources I gave previously for Buddhist Nikaya. Instead @Robert Walker gives a website, misrepresents me, and then follows it with his forum-y 'but can get the discussion going'. Not constructive use of this talk page, and repeated violation of WP:TPNO. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 12:30, 7 May 2016 (UTC) Please provide an accurate summary of what you say. Your only explanation so far is
As I understand it, punabbhavā means "renewed becoming" and "jāti" means birth and "jarā" means aging. Please correct if that is wrong. If the word "redeath" occurs in a WP:RS translation of the early Pali sutras, please provide the original Pali sentence, the English translation of that sentence, and an explanation of how the one is connected to the other, particularly which word or phrase in the Pali corresponds to "redeath" in the translation. Thanks! This is what I replied originally yesterday, much the same thing but with more "please please".
@Robert Walker: This is not a forum. We can't do OR, and must rely on published scholarship. I already provided a scholarly translation+interpretation source for the Sutta. @Joshua Jonathan, others and I have provided 10+ RS so far. See above. Quit your misrepresentations and WP:Forum-y conduct. Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 08:53, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
Your explanation only gave the pali word corresponding to "death" and you didn't provide the
WP:RS translation of the sentence.
WP:AGF doesn't answer the question of what Pali word or phrase "redeath" corresponds to, or enable me to see what is written in some library in Glasgow over a hundred miles and a ferry journey away, possibly further away. While you presumably have this book in front of you, as you just cited it. Indeed it is rather hard to assume good faith when you won't answer such simple questions. I'm trying to do so! Robert Walker ( talk) 16:23, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
I have now found out why @
Ms Sarah Welch: never provided a quote in this discussion, as I found a copy of the book available online as a pdf.
You said "Sutta 12.40 repeats the mention of re-death. As does the rest of the Sutta, and as do other early Buddhist texts. See any scholarly translation. For example, M Choong, The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, page 171" [3] On page 171 of The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism, it translates the passage you mention as
So, it just translates it as " ageing-and-death"' like all the translations I found online which you claimed were inaccurate in this respect and not WP:RS. It does use the word "redeath" but only in commentary as
So it doesn't establish what you said at all. It even has a ? after the word redeath in the commentary, which is also in brackets. Basically you
On re-reading @
Ms Sarah Welch:'s comment from the ANI topic ban discussion this morning
[5], she says
Now that answers my question. Great. Why didn't you say that days ago when I first asked which Pali word or phrase corresponds to "redeath"! And why didn't you give straightforward answers to my questions about whether it occurs in the English translation of the sutra in your cite? With that background, it would be fine, when the topic is Agatigati to use the phrase "re-birth and re-death". I think it is a bit academic and technical, as most Buddhists won't have come across it, but especially with a re- before the "death" it's clear enough what is meant and with it tied to the word Agatigati that also would help to avoid confusion with the concept in translations of the Vedas as explained by @ Joshua Jonathan: above, which translates a different word punabbhavā (if I understand right). That then leads to the question, does Buddha use this term Agatigati or cognates in his presentation of the four noble truths in the wheel turning sutra? If he does, it might well be appropriate to use it in the presentation here, as "re-birth and re-death" with the Pali word given in brackets. If not, then it still seems somewhat WP:UNDUE to introduce the word right in the lede if it comes from other sutras, especially as most WP:RS don't use it to state the truths. Indeed, correct me if wrong, I don't think we yet have a single WP:RS that uses "redeath" in its statement of the four truths - only in extensive commentary on them. If he does uses this word in his wheel turning sutra, then the lede just needs more clarification, perhaps with the original Pali given. However, if it is collating material from a different sutra into the wheel turning sutra, I think that would count as WP:SYNTHESIS myself unless you find an academic source that also rewrites the four truths in this way, and if you do, I think that would need to be cited. This is just a case of being precise in citations so readers can understand and can follow up to find out more, rather than have to say "because wikipedia says so". If you are collating sutras into a single statement that doesn't occur in any of them individually, the reader needs to be told that it is a synthesis and an explanation and cite is needed for such action, in my view. Robert Walker ( talk) 21:08, 13 May 2016 (UTC) |
I'm just repeating the list above in #List of topics discussed in the RfC on Redeath, now that we have a Pali word or phrase to ground it. One of the topics is no longer needed and I've added extra couple at the end. This is not a list of RfCs. This is a list of topics (as suggested by @ AD64:) to help focus the discussion of a single RfC, if we ever do this RfC. This section is meant to be edited in response to comments on it.
The Pali phrase is agatigati which is translated as "coming-andgoing" in the cite she gave on page 171 of The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism, and as (re-birth and re-death?) in the commentary on the translation there. It is also translated as' re-birth and re-death in a Pali dictionary pages 94-95 of Rhys Davids & William Stede, and in another Pali dictionary [6] as "rebirth and death", where agati here means coming and gati here means going.
We have that answered now. It's actually part of a Pali phrase variously translated as "re-birth and re-death", "rebirth and death" or "coming and going".
The answer is no, the phrase agatigati and the words agati and gati do not occur anywhere in this Pali text.
The aim of the RfC is to answer the last two questions, but along the way, the others probably need to be answered also. Some have been answered already and for those I've given the answers. Robert Walker ( talk) 08:32, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
This section is just for discussion of this suggested topics list for a future RfC. The idea was to keep the RfC very focused on just this one question, whether to use the word "redeath" and if so how and where. It doesn't look as if this RfC is going to happen at present. I'm doing this just to leave this talk page in a good state for anyone who wants to take this up in the future. The above topics list is neutrally expressed (as best I can do it), and intended to be corrected if there is any bias in it. Also please correct it if there are any mistakes in the answers I give for the questions that I think have already been resolved. I think some progress was made in the discussion, though it took a long time. At least we now have a Pali word or phrase to discuss. Robert Walker ( talk)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Proposal: The lead and main article should go beyond introductory texts / websites for general readers on Buddhism, and summarize history, influences and commentary on Four Noble Truths – such as about rebirth, redeath – from scholarly secondary and tertiary references? Ms Sarah Welch ( talk) 15:02, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
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