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**HondasMenFox** · 05-22-2011, 12:13 PM

Again, they are comparing surviving textual (written) documents against teachings that are known to have been passed down for a very long time by oral tradition, by folks who had vested interest in conveying them accurately and nothing else to do.

Yes, this is what I mean by a coherent systematization which have bring into live a written teaching. The effort is two fold: First to write coherently, for the first time, a set of teachings from here and there; then to make them work properly. This is what matters in terms of historical authenticity.

The given example of the DNA can make clear this: Two researchers, Rosalind Franklin and Erwin Chargaff had for many years a bunch of scattered data about the probability of Nucleic Acids arranged in a helix model but neither Rosalind nor Erwin could bring them into light as was done by Watson and Crick. The same thing... we can have here and there many scrolls but they have not been brought into live as has been the Pali. At any case, if the Gandhari Scrolls are to be brought into life one day, we will have textual teachings before and after the Pali so to have a clear understanding of its evolution.

Also the title of "Truest" can be misleading. It is not about True of False. The Shobogenzo is true in itself. It is Canonical for Soto schools. The same for the textual corpus of the Mahayana Religions; they have their own "True" Canonical religious oeuvres. What is important, again, is that the Pali Dhamma is the first one that come to be a systematic and coherent teaching which is uniform in language, time and issue: The anatta nature of things and mind.

05-22-2011, 12:13 PM	#12
HondasMenFox Join Date Nov 2005 Posts 334 Senior Member	Again, they are comparing surviving textual (written) documents against teachings that are known to have been passed down for a very long time by oral tradition, by folks who had vested interest in conveying them accurately and nothing else to do. Yes, this is what I mean by a coherent systematization which have bring into live a written teaching. The effort is two fold: First to write coherently, for the first time, a set of teachings from here and there; then to make them work properly. This is what matters in terms of historical authenticity. The given example of the DNA can make clear this: Two researchers, Rosalind Franklin and Erwin Chargaff had for many years a bunch of scattered data about the probability of Nucleic Acids arranged in a helix model but neither Rosalind nor Erwin could bring them into light as was done by Watson and Crick. The same thing... we can have here and there many scrolls but they have not been brought into live as has been the Pali. At any case, if the Gandhari Scrolls are to be brought into life one day, we will have textual teachings before and after the Pali so to have a clear understanding of its evolution. Also the title of "Truest" can be misleading. It is not about True of False. The Shobogenzo is true in itself. It is Canonical for Soto schools. The same for the textual corpus of the Mahayana Religions; they have their own "True" Canonical religious oeuvres. What is important, again, is that the Pali Dhamma is the first one that come to be a systematic and coherent teaching which is uniform in language, time and issue: The anatta nature of things and mind.
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