How To Find A Sutta

I have long felt that at this stage in the development of Buddhism beyond its traditional homelands that it is very important to distinguish between the words of the Buddha himself and those of the ancient commentators, between concepts derived from the Buddha’s words and those derived from popular beliefs and traditions. This is not to say that one is of value and the other not (although I do think this is often the case), but the failure to understand which is which only leads to confusion. If a theologian wrote ‘According to Jesus…’ and then quoted Aquinas, someone who lived over a 1000 years after Jesus, his collogues would scandalized and accuse of him of trying to pull a swifty. If a study of Freud’s psychology used dozens of quotes of Jung while attributing them to Freud, the book would be condemned as inauthentic and dismissed as useless – and rightly so.

But this is exactly what many, many books on Buddhism do. I recall once listening to a talk by S. N. Goenka in which he said that his meditation would allow the meditator to actually experience individual atoms (mahakalapa) arise and pass away and that this is exactly what the Buddha had said. In reality, the theory of mahakalapas does not occur in the suttas or even in the Abhidhamma Pitaka, and only developed many centuries after the Buddha. This is not to say that this idea is therefore wrong. But if it is attributed to the Buddha and then is found to be wrong, or if a skeptic considers it a bit fanciful, the poor old Buddha gets the blame.

Come on people! Excellent translations of the suttas are now available. Let’s familiarize ourselves with them. Hundreds of generations of dedicated monks have cherished these writings and carefully passed them on so that we can have them today. Let’s study them. I often tell my Chinese students about how Huien Tsiang walked all the way from China to India, without money or maps, crossing some of the highest mountains in the world, fording swollen rivers and dogging bandits, just so he could get authentic copies of the suttas. Then I add, ‘If he was prepared to risk his life to get the suttas, should we not read them?’
It is for these reasons I often quote the Buddha’s words and as much as possible give their reference from the Tipitaka. Occasionally readers of my blog ask me what the references I give mean and I have answered these questions before. Alessandro asked this question in a comment on the post for 28th January so I will take this opportunity to answer him fully for his and future readers benefit.
I always use the Pali Text Society’s editions of the Pali Tipitaka as it the most easily available of all the editions of the Tipitaka, it is the only one in Roman script and it is (I think) as accurate as the other editions. These are the PTS abbreviations for the main Pali texts.
A = Anguttara Nikaya
D = Digha Nikaya
Dhp = Dhammapada
Dhp-a Dhammapada-atthakatha
Ja = Jataka
It = Itivuttaka
M = Mijjhima Nikaya
Mil = Milindapanha
S = Samyutta Nikaya
Sn = Sutta Nipata
Th = Theragatha
Thi = Therigatha
Ud = Udana
Vibh = Vibhanga
Vin = Vinaya
Vism = Visuddhimagga
Often after an initial will be a Roman numeral which refers to the volume number of the PTS edition of the book. Of course, Dhp, It, Sn, Th, Thi, Ud and Vism will not have a Roman numeral because they are in one volume. These initials will have a number after them which will represents the verse number in the case of Dhp, Sn, Th and Thi, and the page number in the case of It, Ud and Vism. If I use the Apadana (Ap), Buddhavamsa (Bv), Kathavatthu (Kv), Petavatthu (Pv), Vimanavatthu (Vv) or other more obscure works, I will try to remember to give the full reference, i.e. no initials.

Hears an interesting bit of sociological information for you. After finishing this post I put ‘sutra’ in my image search hoping to get a picture of a Buddhist sutra. All I got were sexual images related to the Kama Sutra, hundreds of them. So then I put in the Pali equivalent ‘sutta’ and all I got was pictures of an actress named Jessica Sutta. In the end I settled on this picture of Huien Tsiang carrying copied of the suttas back from India.