The Patisambhidamagga (;

Pali Pali () is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pāli Canon'' or ''Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of ''Theravāda'' Buddhism ...

for "path of discrimination"; sometimes called just Patisambhida for short; abbrevs.: ) is a Buddhist scripture, part of the

Pali Canon The Pāli Canon is the standard collection of scriptures in the Theravada Buddhist tradition, as preserved in the Pāli language. It is the most complete extant early Buddhist canon. It derives mainly from the Tamrashatiya school. During th ...

Theravada ''Theravāda'' () ( si, ථේරවාදය, my, ထေရဝါဒ, th, เถรวาท, km, ថេរវាទ, lo, ເຖຣະວາດ, pi, , ) is the most commonly accepted name of Buddhism's oldest existing school. The school' ...

Buddhism Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and gra ...

. It is included there as the twelfth book of the

Sutta Pitaka Sutta may refer to: *Sutta Nipata, is a Buddhist scripture *Sutta Piṭaka, The second of the three divisions of the Tripitaka or Pali Canon *Sutta Pazham, is a 2008 Indian Tamil language adult comedy thriller film *Sutta Kadhai, 2013 Indian Tamil ...

's Khuddaka Nikaya. Tradition ascribes it to the Buddha's

disciple A disciple is a follower and student of a mentor, teacher, or other figure. It can refer to: Religion * Disciple (Christianity), a student of Jesus Christ * Twelve Apostles of Jesus, sometimes called the Twelve Disciples * Seventy disciples in t ...

Sariputta. It comprises 30 chapters on different topics, of which the first, on knowledge, makes up about a third of the book.

History

Tradition ascribes the Patisambhidamagga to the

Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a śramaṇa, wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist tradition, he was ...

's great disciple, Sariputta. It bears some similarities to the Dasuttarasutta Sutta of the

Digha Nikaya Digha is a seaside resort town in the state of West Bengal, India. It lies in Purba Medinipur district and at the northern end of the Bay of Bengal. It has a low gradient with a shallow sand beach. It is a popular sea resort in West Bengal. Hi ...

, which is also attributed to Sariputta. According to German tradition of Indology this text was likely composed around the 2nd century CE.Hinüber (2000), p. 60. Indications of the relative lateness of the text include numerous quotations from the Sutta and

Vinaya Pitaka The Vinaya (Pali & Sanskrit: विनय) is the division of the Buddhist canon (''Tripitaka'') containing the rules and procedures that govern the Buddhist Sangha (Buddhism), Sangha (community of like-minded ''sramanas''). Three parallel Vinay ...

, as well as an assumed familiarity with a variety of Buddhist legends and stories- for example, the names of various arahants are given without any discussion of their identities. The term ''patisambhida'' does not occur in the older sutra and vinaya texts, but does appear in both the Abhidhamma and several other Khuddaka Nikaya texts regarded as relatively late. A variant form, ''pratisamvid'', occurs in

Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit (BHS) is a modern linguistic category applied to the language used in a class of Indian Buddhist texts, such as the Perfection of Wisdom sutras. BHS is classified as a Middle Indo-Aryan language. It is sometimes called "Bu ...

and suggests that the concept itself was shared with other, non-Theravada sects. The Patisambhidamagga is also included in the Dipavamsa in a list of texts rejected by the Mahasanghikas. On the basis of this reference and certain thematic elements, AK Warder suggested that some form of the text may date to the 3rd Century BCE, the traditional date ascribed to the schism with the Mahasanghikas.

L. S. Cousins Lance Selwyn Cousins (7 April 194214 March 2015) was a British scholar who specialised in the field of Buddhist studies, Buddhist Studies. Biography Born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, he studied history and oriental studies at Cambridge Universit ...

associated it with the doctrinal divisions of the Second Buddhist Council and dated it to the first century BCE. The Patisambhidamagga has been described as an "attempt to systematize the Abhidhamma" and thus as a possible precursor to the

Visuddhimagga The ''Visuddhimagga'' (Pali; English: ''The Path of Purification''), is the 'great treatise' on Buddhist practice and Theravāda Abhidhamma written by Buddhaghosa approximately in the 5th century in Sri Lanka. It is a manual condensing and syst ...

. The text's systematic approach and the presence of a matika summarizing the contents of the first section are both features suggestive of the Abhidhamma, but it also includes some features of the Sutta Pitaka, including repeated invocation of the standard sutta opening ''evaṃ me suttaṃ'' ('thus have I heard'). Its content and aspects of its composition overlap significantly with the Vibhanga, and

A.K. Warder Anthony Kennedy Warder (8 September 1924 – 8 January 2013) was a British Indologist. His best-known works are ''Introduction to Pali'' (1963), ''Indian Buddhism'' (1970), and the eight-volume ''Indian Kāvya Literature'' (1972–2011). Life Wa ...

suggested that at some stage in its development it may have been classified as an Abhidhamma text. Noa Ronkin suggests that the Patisambhidamagga likely dates from the era of the Abhidhamma's formation, and represents a parallel development of the interpretive traditions reflected by the Vibhanga and Dhammasangani.

Emptiness

The Patisambhidamagga is probably the first Pali Abhidhamma text which uses the term " sabhava" in the section titled the Suññakatha. It defines sabhava as the empty ( suññam) nature of the

five aggregates (Sanskrit) or (Pāḷi) means "heaps, aggregates, collections, groupings". In Buddhism, it refers to the five aggregates of clinging (), the five material and mental factors that take part in the rise of craving and clinging. They are also ...

"Born materiality is empty of sabhava (sabhavena suññam); disappeared materiality is both changed and empty. Born feeling is empty of sabhava; disappeared feeling is both changed and empty...Born conceptualization...Born volitions...Born consciousness...Born becoming is empty of sabhava; disappeared becoming is both changed and empty. This is ‘empty in terms of change’."

The text also defines the sense spheres as "void of self or of what belongs to self or of what is permanent or everlasting or eternal or not-subject-to-change."Nanamoli, The Path of Discrimination, 1982, page 359 According to Noa Ronkin: "this extract means that the totality of human experience is devoid of an enduring substance or of anything which belongs to such a substance, because this totality is dependent on many and various conditions, and is of the nature of being subject to a continuous process of origination and dissolution."

Overview

The Patisambhidamagga has three divisions (''vagga'') composed of ten "chapters" (''kathā'') each for a total of thirty chapters. The three divisions are: * ''Mahāvagga'' ("Great Division") - starts with an enumeration (''mātikā'') of 73 types of knowledge (''ñāa'') which are then elaborated upon in detail. * ''Yuganandhavagga'' ("Coupling Division") - poses a series of questions. * ''Paññāvagga'' ("Wisdom Division") - answers the prior division's questions.

Translations

The Patisambhidamagga was one of the last texts of the Pali Canon to be translated into English.Norman, K. R. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 2, 1983, pp. 314–315. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25211568. Its technical language and frequent use of repetition and elision presented a challenge to translators and interpreters.McDermott, James P. Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 105, no. 4, 1985, pp. 784–784. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/602776. A first translation by Bhikkhu Nanamoli was published posthumously, following extensive editing and reworking by AK Warder. Translation: ''The Path of Discrimination'', tr Nanamoli, 1982, Pali Text Society

Bristol In addition, ''Mindfulness of Breathing'', tr Nanamoli, 1998 (6th ed.),

Buddhist Publication Society The Buddhist Publication Society (BPS) is a publishing house with charitable status whose objective is to disseminate the teaching of Gautama Buddha. It was founded in Kandy, Sri Lanka in 1958 by two Sri Lankan lay Buddhists, A.S. Karunaratna and ...

, Kandy, Sri Lanka, includes a translation of the Anapanakatha in the Patisambhidamagga, along with the

Anapanasati Sutta Ānāpānasati (Pali; Sanskrit ''ānāpānasmṛti''), meaning " mindfulness of breathing" ("sati" means mindfulness; "ānāpāna" refers to inhalation and exhalation), paying attention to the breath. It is the quintessential form of Buddhist ...

and other material from Pali literature on the subject.

Notes

Sources