there’s no necessity to argue that what you are saying is a translation of the Buddha
I agree that it isn’t necessary to make that argument in order to say something useful about meditation. But in the name of epistemic hygiene I do think it is necessary to reveal your true motivations/concerns, which seems to be the case here.
I don’t think that I know the true concerns after reading the post. It’s for example unspecified whether romeostevensit has read any of the texts he wants to “translate” in their original language and what his relationships to those texts happens to be.
The post is predicated on reading 4 different translations of Pali Canon discourse, checked against my own experience, discussion with teachers, and works of historical Buddhist scholarship charting the development of differing interpretations.
edit: I also agree with ashen above, the frame of ‘what the buddha taught’ is a simplified one that dissolves under close examination (the historical record on how the discourses got compiled is if anything even more sketchy than the one we have for the bible)
I agree that it isn’t necessary to make that argument in order to say something useful about meditation. But in the name of epistemic hygiene I do think it is necessary to reveal your true motivations/concerns, which seems to be the case here.
I don’t think that I know the true concerns after reading the post. It’s for example unspecified whether romeostevensit has read any of the texts he wants to “translate” in their original language and what his relationships to those texts happens to be.
The post is predicated on reading 4 different translations of Pali Canon discourse, checked against my own experience, discussion with teachers, and works of historical Buddhist scholarship charting the development of differing interpretations.
edit: I also agree with ashen above, the frame of ‘what the buddha taught’ is a simplified one that dissolves under close examination (the historical record on how the discourses got compiled is if anything even more sketchy than the one we have for the bible)