Hi Michael,
Welcome the DhO.
I think you already know, but this is a place of individual voices. Below, I speak for myself, if it needs to be said.
Chuck
Ven. Nanananda (Sri Lankan) gave a large number of talks collectively to be found as ‘The Mind Stilled’ where he discusses these topics with relation to the suttas using his own language. I believe he is still alive.
He was in hospital as of a few weeks ago.
Here are links to his audio and written talks.The historical figure, Siddhartha Gotama, who is sometimes called the one thus gone (tathatagatha) or the awakened one (buddha) by his followers, is not known to have left any written word.
The first written words attributed to his historical person are said to come a couple hundred years later. There is no one buddhist tradition that can say accurately, "Because a text is found with similar overlap by some translators in two other lanagues, this text is the authentic word of the man, Gotama," unless the person admits to blinding conceit or super-natural power.
I note these translators signed their lives on to a tradition that practices and advocates genital-bias, as if awakening happens in the crotch. So if they are battling their own tradition and the larger study, it is not surprising confusion and the need to create some external reliable realm on which to mount and "defend" is the perch of these translators who claim to defend their findings. So be it, defend away.
Dear Anthony Betts (Sujato),
You are well fed and housed and not bound by slavery, unlike many sentient beings on the planet who are hungry and/or enslaved.
What a waste of your fortune to study well and to study safely those texts that train one to locate for themselves reliable ease based on that which is
1. Svākkhāto (i.e., not speculative, based in see-for-yourself causation)
2. Sandiṭṭhiko (i.e., it's able to be examined, scrutinized, not a faith; it's literally "visible in this world")
3. Akāliko (i.e., not early Buddhist teachings, not late buddhist teachings, literally
timeless, immediate teachings)
4. Ehipassiko (i.e., testable by oneself, without a teacher, without leading)
5. Opanayiko (i.e., to be brought inside oneself--- Anthony Betts, please do so more)
6. Paccattaṃ veditabbo viññūhi (i.e., "To be personally known by the wise", no one make someone swim, only the person who practices swimming may swim.)
You signed onto a vinaya (sangha discipline rules) and your young life into a tradition that had many cultural human flaws, one of which is genital-basis. Now you are rebelling (the Wat genital crisis, for example) perhaps trying to assure yourself some kind of scholarly air and able to establish a new separate sangha;
I don't know. But if you train sincerely, redouble your effort sincerely in in seclusion, to understand and then teach cause and effect (i.e., dependent origination, cotingent identity, inter being), robe or not, you will not fuss (let alone "defend" as you say) in this useless way over what you speculate are "authentic" words of buddha.
Instead you will easily admit that you have found overlap between languages, that that is interesting and worthy of study.
What you have done is like putting a flag in the moon: ignorant, showy and unreliable, death-ful, certainly not "the deathless"~ epithet for the nibbana of your tribe.
A well trained mind could apply itself to actual, hard problems in the world (GMO-sly-corruption, environmental and societal poverty, water-selling... to name a few) NOT CREATING THEM with speculation, and simultaneously deepen your UNDERSTANDING OF (and teaching of) DEPENDENT ORIGINATION and mind.
Anthony Betts (Sujato), well fed and safe with the chance to practice sincerely, in seclusion
this whining:
sujato / Jan 16 2013 11:18 am
Perhaps the surliness, if you have read it right, comes from the plethora of ignorant voices that opine on the topic. It is somewhat annoying to spend years studying something very seriously, and then be subject to the bloggerati for whom their own opinion matters just as much as any expert.
Leaving that aside, there is a substantial amount of early evidence, but little of it is direct.
It would be useful for you to be quiet and focus on realizing at least some wink of the deathless via mediation and just clearly seeing in daily life.
May you have safe conditions for practice, the study of mind and where/how it alights, and conditions.
Sincerely, your peer in sentience, mattering indeed as much as you,
Katy
Post script: here is the turf of a dharma teacher unless you cherry pick it out:
AN 5.159
"It's not easy to teach the Dhamma to others, Ananda. The Dhamma should be taught to others only when five qualities are established within the person teaching. Which five?
"[1] The Dhamma should be taught with the thought, 'I will speak step-by-step.'
"[2] The Dhamma should be taught with the thought, 'I will speak explaining the sequence [of cause & effect].'
"[3] The Dhamma should be taught with the thought, 'I will speak out of compassion.'
"[4] The Dhamma should be taught with the thought, 'I will speak not for the purpose of material reward.'
"[5] The Dhamma should be taught with the thought, 'I will speak without hurting myself or others.'[1]
"It's not easy to teach the Dhamma to others, Ananda. The Dhamma should be taught to others only when these five qualities are established within the person teaching."