TERMS STARTING WITH
canon. A term used generically to designate Buddhist scriptural collections in a whole range of canonical Asian languages, including the Indic "three baskets" (TRIPItAKA), the East Asian "scriptures of the great repository" (DAZANGJING), and the Tibetan BKA' 'GYUR and BSTAN 'GYUR. Beyond these canons, Buddhists in these various traditions also typically used their own local collections of texts, collections that often were quite distinct from those of the officially sanctioned canons. See also KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG; TAISHo SHINSHu DAIZoKYo; SuTRA; sASTRA; BODHISATTVAPItAKA; APOCRYPHA.
canon bit ::: --> That part of a bit which is put in a horse&
canon bone ::: --> The shank bone, or great bone above the fetlock, in the fore and hind legs of the horse and allied animals, corresponding to the middle metacarpal or metatarsal bone of most mammals. See Horse.
canoness ::: n. --> A woman who holds a canonry in a conventual chapter.
canonic ::: a. --> Alt. of Cannonical
canonical: Describes a representation of an object (e.g. an expression, a transformation) in a way that is preferred, perhaps unique or considered natural due to certain properties that it exhibits, even though there may be other equivalent representations.
canonical (Historically, "according to religious law") 1. "mathematics" A standard way of writing a formula. Two formulas such as 9 + x and x + 9 are said to be equivalent because they mean the same thing, but the second one is in "canonical form" because it is written in the usual way, with the highest power of x first. Usually there are fixed rules you can use to decide whether something is in canonical form. Things in canonical form are easier to compare. 2. "jargon" The usual or standard state or manner of something. The term acquired this meaning in computer-science culture largely through its prominence in {Alonzo Church}'s work in computation theory and {mathematical logic} (see {Knights of the Lambda-Calculus}). Compare {vanilla}. This word has an interesting history. Non-technical academics do not use the adjective "canonical" in any of the senses defined above with any regularity; they do however use the nouns "canon" and "canonicity" (not "canonicalness"* or "canonicality"*). The "canon" of a given author is the complete body of authentic works by that author (this usage is familiar to Sherlock Holmes fans as well as to literary scholars). "The canon" is the body of works in a given field (e.g. works of literature, or of art, or of music) deemed worthwhile for students to study and for scholars to investigate. The word "canon" derives ultimately from the Greek "kanon" (akin to the English "cane") referring to a reed. Reeds were used for measurement, and in Latin and later Greek the word "canon" meant a rule or a standard. The establishment of a canon of scriptures within Christianity was meant to define a standard or a rule for the religion. The above non-technical academic usages stem from this instance of a defined and accepted body of work. Alongside this usage was the promulgation of "canons" ("rules") for the government of the Catholic Church. The usages relating to religious law derive from this use of the Latin "canon". It may also be related to arabic "qanun" (law). Hackers invest this term with a playfulness that makes an ironic contrast with its historical meaning. A true story: One Bob Sjoberg, new at the {MIT AI Lab}, expressed some annoyance at the incessant use of jargon. Over his loud objections, {GLS} and {RMS} made a point of using as much of it as possible in his presence, and eventually it began to sink in. Finally, in one conversation, he used the word "canonical" in jargon-like fashion without thinking. Steele: "Aha! We've finally got you talking jargon too!" Stallman: "What did he say?" Steele: "Bob just used "canonical" in the canonical way." Of course, canonicality depends on context, but it is implicitly defined as the way *hackers* normally expect things to be. Thus, a hacker may claim with a straight face that "according to religious law" is *not* the canonical meaning of "canonical". (2002-02-06)
canonical ::: (Historically, according to religious law)1. (mathematics) A standard way of writing a formula. Two formulas such as 9 + x and x + 9 are said to be equivalent because they mean the same thing, use to decide whether something is in canonical form. Things in canonical form are easier to compare.2. (jargon) The usual or standard state or manner of something. The term acquired this meaning in computer-science culture largely through its prominence in Alonzo Church's work in computation theory and mathematical logic (see Knights of the Lambda-Calculus).Compare vanilla.This word has an interesting history. Non-technical academics do not use the adjective canonical in any of the senses defined above with any regularity; field (e.g. works of literature, or of art, or of music) deemed worthwhile for students to study and for scholars to investigate.The word canon derives ultimately from the Greek kanon (akin to the English cane) referring to a reed. Reeds were used for measurement, and in Latin and The usages relating to religious law derive from this use of the Latin canon. It may also be related to arabic qanun (law).Hackers invest this term with a playfulness that makes an ironic contrast with its historical meaning. A true story: One Bob Sjoberg, new at the MIT AI Lab, We've finally got you talking jargon too! Stallman: What did he say? Steele: Bob just used canonical in the canonical way.Of course, canonicality depends on context, but it is implicitly defined as the way *hackers* normally expect things to be. Thus, a hacker may claim with a straight face that according to religious law is *not* the canonical meaning of canonical.(2002-02-06)
canonically ::: adv. --> In a canonical manner; according to the canons.
canonical name (CNAME) A host's official name as opposed to an alias. The official name is the first hostname listed for its {Internet address} in the hostname database, {/etc/hosts} or the {Network Information Service} (NIS) map hosts.byaddr ("hosts" for short). A host with multiple network interfaces may have more than one Internet address, each with its own canonical name (and zero or more aliases). You can find a host's canonical name using {nslookup} if you say set querytype=CNAME and then type a hostname. (1994-11-29)
canonical name ::: (CNAME) A host's official name as opposed to an alias. The official name is the first hostname listed for its Internet address in the hostname database, for short). A host with multiple network interfaces may have more than one Internet address, each with its own canonical name (and zero or more aliases).You can find a host's canonical name using nslookup if you say set querytype=CNAME (1994-11-29)
canonicalness ::: n. --> The quality of being canonical; canonicity.
canonicals ::: n. pl. --> The dress prescribed by canon to be worn by a clergyman when officiating. Sometimes, any distinctive professional dress.
canonical status. The practice preempted no one from begetting ex nihilo and ad infinitum his
canonicate ::: n. --> The office of a canon; a canonry.
canonicity ::: n. --> The state or quality of being canonical; agreement with the canon.
canonicity "theory, jargon" The extent to which something is {canonical}. (1995-03-03)
canonicity ::: (theory, jargon) The extent to which something is canonical. (1995-03-03)
canonistic ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a canonist.
canonist ::: n. --> A professor of canon law; one skilled in the knowledge and practice of ecclesiastical law.
canonization ::: n. --> The final process or decree (following beatifacation) by which the name of a deceased person is placed in the catalogue (canon) of saints and commended to perpetual veneration and invocation.
The state of being canonized or sainted.
canonized ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Canonize
canonize ::: v. t. --> To declare (a deceased person) a saint; to put in the catalogue of saints; as, Thomas a Becket was canonized.
To glorify; to exalt to the highest honor.
To rate as inspired; to include in the canon.
canonizing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Canonize
canon ::: n. --> A law or rule.
A law, or rule of doctrine or discipline, enacted by a council and confirmed by the pope or the sovereign; a decision, regulation, code, or constitution made by ecclesiastical authority.
The collection of books received as genuine Holy Scriptures, called the sacred canon, or general rule of moral and religious duty, given by inspiration; the Bible; also, any one of the canonical Scriptures. See Canonical books, under Canonical, a.
canon or kanon (Ger): a theme that is repeated and imitated and built upon by other instruments with a time delay, creating a layered effect; see Pachelbel's Canon.
canonry ::: n. pl. --> A benefice or prebend in a cathedral or collegiate church; a right to a place in chapter and to a portion of its revenues; the dignity or emoluments of a canon.
canonship ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Canopus in Egypt; as, the Canopic vases, used in embalming.
canon
canon: The concept of an accepted list of great literature which constitutes the essential tradition of English
Canon: (Gr. kanon, rule) A term reminiscent of the arts and crafts, sometimes applied, since Epicurus who replaced the ancient dialectics by a canonics (kanonike), to any norm or rule which the logical process obeys. Thus John Stuart Mill speaks of five experimental methods as being regulated by certain canons. Kant defined canon as the sum total of all principles a priori of the correct use of our powers of knowledge. See Baconian method, Mill's methods. -- K.F.L.
Canonical Correlation ::: A correlational technique used when there are two or more X and two or more Y. (Example: The correlation between (age and sex) and (income and life satisfaction)
Canonical Encoding Rules ::: (protocol, standard) (CER) A restricted variant of BER for producing unequivocal transfer syntax for data structures described by ASN.1.Whereas BER gives choices as to how data values may be encoded, CER and DER select just one encoding from those allowed by the basic encoding rules, eliminating all of the options. They are useful when the encodings must be preserved, e.g. in security exchanges.CER and DER differ in the set of restrictions that they place on the encoder. The basic difference between CER and DER is that DER uses definitive length form and CER uses indefinite length form.Documents: ITU-T X.690, ISO 8825-1.See also PER. (1998-05-19)
Canonical Encoding Rules "protocol, standard" (CER) A restricted variant of {BER} for producing unequivocal {transfer syntax} for data structures described by {ASN.1}. Whereas {BER} gives choices as to how data values may be encoded, CER and {DER} select just one encoding from those allowed by the basic encoding rules, eliminating all of the options. They are useful when the encodings must be preserved, e.g. in security exchanges. CER and {DER} differ in the set of restrictions that they place on the encoder. The basic difference between CER and {DER} is that {DER} uses definitive length form and CER uses indefinite length form. Documents: {ITU-T} X.690, {ISO} 8825-1. See also {PER}. (1998-05-19)
Canonical Prayerbook of the Mandaeans, The. (tr.) E. S.
Canonization ::: Process by which certain literary works of ancient Israel were determined to be divinely inspired and ultimately entered into the Hebrew Bible; the process began in the 7th century B.C.E and was concluded by the 2nd century C.E.
Canon ::: The collection of books of the Bible recognized as authoritative.
TERMS ANYWHERE
1. Discursive thought. Faculty of connecting ideas consciously, coherently and purposively. Thinking in logical form. Drawing of inferences. Process of passing from given data or premisses to legitimate conclusions. Forming or discovering rightly relations between ideas. Deriving properly statements from given assumptions or facts. Power, manifestation and result of valid argumentation. Ordering concepts according to the canons of logic. Legitimate course of a debate.
AbhayAkaragupta. (T. 'Jigs med 'byung gnas sbas pa) (d. c. 1125). Indian tantric Buddhist master who was born into a brAhmana family in either Orissa or northeast India near Bengal. Sources vary regarding his dates of birth and death, although most agree that he was a contemporary of the PAla king RAmapAla, who began his reign during the final quarter of the eleventh century. AbhayAkaragupta became a Buddhist monk in response to a prophetic vision and trained extensively in the esoteric practices of TANTRA, while nevertheless maintaining his monastic discipline (VINAYA). AbhayAkaragupta was active at the monastic university of VIKRAMAsĪLA in Bihar and became renowned as both a scholar and a teacher. He was a prolific author, composing treatises in numerous fields of Buddhist doctrine, including monastic discipline and philosophy as well as tantric ritual practice and iconography. Many Sanskrit manuscripts of his works have been preserved in India, Nepal, and Tibet, and his writings were influential both in India and among Newari Buddhists in Nepal. Translations of his works into Tibetan were begun under his supervision, and more than two dozen are preserved in the Tibetan canon. To date, AbhayAkaragupta's writings best known in the West are his treatises on tantric iconography, the VajrAvalī and NispannayogAvalī, and his syncretistic ABHIDHARMA treatise MunimatAlaMkAra.
Abhidhamma (Pali) Abhidhamma [from abhi towards, with intensified meaning + dhamma law, religion, duty from the verbal root dhr to hold fast, preserve, sustain] The supreme dhamma or law as expounded in the third and last portion of the Pali Tipitaka (Sanskrit Tripitaka) or “three baskets” of the canonical books of the Southern School of Buddhism. The Abhidhamma-pitaka, which deals with profound metaphysical themes, is believed to be the source from which the Mahayana and Hinayana got their fundamental doctrines.
AbhidhammAvatAra. In PAli, "Introduction to Abhidhamma"; a primer of PAli ABHIDHAMMA attributed to BUDDHADATTA (c. fifth century CE), who is said to have been contemporaneous with the premier PAli scholiast BUDDHAGHOSA; some legends go so far as to suggest that the two ABHIDHAMMIKAS might even have met. The book was written in south India and is the oldest of the noncanonical PAli works on abhidhamma. It offers a systematic scholastic outline of abhidhamma, divided into twenty-four chapters called niddesas (S. nirdesa; "expositions"), and displays many affinities with Buddhaghosa's VISUDDHIMAGGA. These chapters include coverage of the mind (CITTA) and mental concomitants (CETASIKA), the various types of concentration (SAMADHI), the types of knowledge (JNANA) associated with enlightenment, and the process of purification (visuddhi, S. VIsUDDHI). The work is written in a mixture of prose and verse.
abhidhammika. [alt. Abhidhammika]. In PAli, "specialist in the ABHIDHAMMA"; scholarly monks who specialized in study of the abhidhamma (S. ABHIDHARMA) section of the Buddhist canon. In the PAli tradition, particular importance has long been attached to the study of abhidharma. The AttHASALINĪ says that the first ABHIDHAMMIKA was the Buddha himself, and the abhidhammikas were presumed to be the most competent exponents of the teachings of the religion. Among the Buddha's immediate disciples, the premier abhidhammika was SAriputta (S. sARIPUTRA), who was renowned for his systematic grasp of the dharma. Monastic "families" of abhidhamma specialists were known as abhidhammikagana, and they passed down through the generations their own scholastic interpretations of Buddhist doctrine, interpretations that sometimes differed from those offered by specialists in the scriptures (P. sutta; S. SuTRA) or disciplinary rules (VINAYA) . In medieval Sri Lanka, the highest awards within the Buddhist order were granted to monks who specialized in this branch of study, rather than to experts in the scriptures or disciplinary rules. Special festivals were held in honor of the abhidhamma, which involved the recital of important texts and the granting of awards to participants. In contemporary Myanmar (Burma), where the study of abhidhamma continues to be highly esteemed, the seventh book of the PAli ABHIDHARMAPItAKA, the PAttHANA ("Conditions"), is regularly recited in festivals that the Burmese call pathan pwe. Pathan pwe are marathon recitations that go on for days, conducted by invited abhidhammikas who are particularly well versed in the PatthAna, the text that is the focus of the festival. The pathan pwe serves a function similar to that of PARITTA recitations, in that it is believed to ward off baleful influences, but its main designated purpose is to forestall the decline and disappearance of the Buddha's dispensation (P. sAsana; S. sASANA). The TheravAda tradition considers the PatthAna to be the Buddha's most profound exposition of ultimate truth (P. paramatthasacca; S. PARAMARTHASATYA), and according to the PAli commentaries, the PatthAna is the first constituent of the Buddha's dispensation that will disappear from the world as the religion faces its inevitable decline. The abhidhammikas' marathon recitations of the PatthAna, therefore, help to ward off the eventual demise of the Buddhist religion. This practice speaks of a THERAVADA orientation in favor of scholarship that goes back well over a thousand years. Since at least the time of BUDDHAGHOSA (c. fifth century CE), the life of scholarship (P. PARIYATTI), rather than that of meditation or contemplation (P. PAtIPATTI), has been the preferred vocational path within PAli Buddhist monasticism. Monks who devoted themselves exclusively to meditation were often portrayed as persons who lacked the capacity to master the intricacies of PAli scholarship. Even so, meditation was always recommended as the principal means by which one could bring scriptural knowledge to maturity, either through awakening or the realization (P. pativedha; S. PRATIVEDHA) of Buddhist truths. See also ABHIDHARMIKA.
AbhidharmamahAvibhAsA. (T. Chos mngon pa bye brag bshad pa chen po; C. Apidamo dapiposha lun; J. Abidatsuma daibibasharon; K. Abidalma taebibasa non 阿毘達磨大毘婆沙論). In Sanskrit, "Great Exegesis of ABHIDHARMA," also commonly known as MahAvibhAsA; a massive VAIBHAsIKA treatise on SARVASTIVADA abhidharma translated into Chinese by the scholar-pilgrim XUANZANG and his translation bureau between 656 and 659 at XIMINGSI in the Tang capital of Chang'an. Although no Sanskrit version of this text is extant, earlier Chinese translations by Buddhavarman and others survive, albeit only in (equally massive) fragments. The complete Sanskrit text of the recension that Xuanzang used was in 100,000 slokas; his translation was in 200 rolls, making it one of the largest single works in the Buddhist canon. According to the account in Xuanzang's DA TANG XIYU JI, four hundred years after the Buddha's PARINIRVAnA, King KANIsKA gathered five hundred ARHATs to recite the Buddhist canon (TRIPItAKA). The ABHIDHARMAPItAKA of this canon, which is associated with the SarvAstivAda school, is said to have been redacted during this council (see COUNCIL, FOURTH). The central abhidharma treatise of the SarvAstivAda school is KATYAYANĪPUTRA's JNANAPRASTHANA, and the AbhidharmamahAvibhAsA purports to offer a comprehensive overview of varying views on the meaning of that seminal text by the five hundred arhats who were in attendance at the convocation. The comments of four major ABHIDHARMIKAs (Ghosa, DHARMATRATA, VASUMITRA, and Buddhadeva) are interwoven into the MahAvibhAsA's contextual analysis of KAtyAyanīputra's material from the JNAnaprasthAna, making the text a veritable encyclopedia of contemporary Buddhist scholasticism. Since the MahAvibhAsA also purports to be a commentary on the central text of the SarvAstivAda school, it therefore offers a comprehensive picture of the development of SarvAstivAda thought after the compilation of the JNAnaprasthAna. The MahAvibhAsA is divided into eight sections (grantha) and several chapters (varga), which systematically follow the eight sections and forty-three chapters of the JNAnaprasthAna in presenting its explication. Coverage of each topic begins with an overview of varying interpretations found in different Buddhist and non-Buddhist schools, detailed coverage of the positions of the four major SarvAstivAda Abhidharmikas, and finally the definitive judgment of the compilers, the KAsmīri followers of KAtyAyanĪputra, who call themselves the VibhAsAsAstrins. The MahAvibhAsA was the major influence on the systematic scholastic elaboration of SarvAstivAda doctrine that appears (though with occasional intrusions from the positions of the SarvAstivAda's more-progressive SAUTRANTIKA offshoot) in VASUBANDHU's influential ABHIDHARMAKOsABHAsYA, which itself elicited a spirited response from later SarvAstivAda-VaibhAsika scholars, such as SAMGHABHADRA in his *NYAYANUSARA. The MahAvibhAsa was not translated into Tibetan until the twentieth century, when a translation entitled Bye brag bshad mdzod chen mo was made at the Sino-Tibetan Institute by the Chinese monk FAZUN between 1946 and 1949. He presented a copy of the manuscript to the young fourteenth DALAI LAMA on the Dalai Lama's visit to Beijing in 1954, but it is not known whether it is still extant.
abhidharma. (P. abhidhamma; T. chos mngon pa; C. apidamo/duifa; J. abidatsuma/taiho; K. abidalma/taebop 阿毘達磨/對法). In Sanskrit, abhidharma is a prepositional compound composed of abhi- + dharma. The compound is typically glossed with abhi being interpreted as equivalent to uttama and meaning "highest" or "advanced" DHARMA (viz., doctrines or teachings), or abhi meaning "pertaining to" the dharma. The SARVASTIVADA Sanskrit tradition typically follows the latter etymology, while the THERAVADA PAli tradition prefers the former, as in BUDDHAGHOSA's gloss of the term meaning either "special dharma" or "supplementary dharma." These definitions suggest that abhidharma was conceived as a precise (P. nippariyAya), definitive (PARAMARTHA) assessment of the dharma that was presented in its discursive (P. sappariyAya), conventional (SAMVṚTI) form in the SuTRAS. Where the sutras offered more subjective presentations of the dharma, drawing on worldly parlance, simile, metaphor, and personal anecdote in order to appeal to their specific audiences, the abhidharma provided an objective, impersonal, and highly technical description of the specific characteristics of reality and the causal processes governing production and cessation. There are two divergent theories for the emergence of the abhidharma as a separate genre of Buddhist literature. In one theory, accepted by most Western scholars, the abhidharma is thought to have evolved out of the "matrices" (S. MATṚKA; P. mAtikA), or numerical lists of dharmas, that were used as mnemonic devices for organizing the teachings of the Buddha systematically. Such treatments of dharma are found even in the sutra literature and are probably an inevitable by-product of the oral quality of early Buddhist textual transmission. A second theory, favored by Japanese scholars, is that abhidharma evolved from catechistic discussions (abhidharmakathA) in which a dialogic format was used to clarify problematic issues in doctrine. The dialogic style also appears prominently in the sutras where, for example, the Buddha might give a brief statement of doctrine (uddesa; P. uddesa) whose meaning had to be drawn out through exegesis (NIRDEsA; P. niddesa); indeed, MAHAKATYAYANA, one of the ten major disciples of the Buddha, was noted for his skill in such explications. This same style was prominent enough in the sutras even to be listed as one of the nine or twelve genres of Buddhist literature (specifically, VYAKARAnA; P. veyyAkarana). According to tradition, the Buddha first taught the abhidharma to his mother MAHAMAYA, who had died shortly after his birth and been reborn as a god in TUsITA heaven. He met her in the heaven of the thirty-three (TRAYASTRIMsA), where he expounded the abhidharma to her and the other divinities there, repeating those teachings to sARIPUTRA when he descended each day to go on his alms-round. sAriputra was renowned as a master of the abhidharma. Abhidharma primarily sets forth the training in higher wisdom (ADHIPRAJNAsIKsA) and involves both analytical and synthetic modes of doctrinal exegesis. The body of scholastic literature that developed from this exegetical style was compiled into the ABHIDHARMAPItAKA, one of the three principal sections of the Buddhist canon, or TRIPItAKA, along with sutra and VINAYA, and is concerned primarily with scholastic discussions on epistemology, cosmology, psychology, KARMAN, rebirth, and the constituents of the process of enlightenment and the path (MARGA) to salvation. (In the MAHAYANA tradition, this abhidharmapitaka is sometimes redefined as a broader "treatise basket," or *sASTRAPItAKA.)
abhidharmapitaka. (P. abhidhammapitaka; T. chos mngon pa'i sde snod; C. lunzang; J. ronzo; K. nonjang 論藏). The third of the three "baskets" (PItAKA) of the Buddhist canon (TRIPItAKA). The abhidharmapitaka derives from attempts in the early Buddhist community to elucidate the definitive significance of the teachings of the Buddha, as compiled in the SuTRAs. Since the Buddha was well known to have adapted his message to fit the predilections and needs of his audience (cf. UPAYAKAUsALYA), there inevitably appeared inconsistencies in his teachings that needed to be resolved. The attempts to ferret out the definitive meaning of the BUDDHADHARMA through scholastic interpretation and exegesis eventually led to a new body of texts that ultimately were granted canonical status in their own right. These are the texts of the abhidharmapitaka. The earliest of these texts, such as the PAli VIBHAnGA and PUGGALAPANNATTI and the SARVASTIVADA SAMGĪTIPARYAYA and DHARMASKANDHA, are structured as commentaries to specific sutras or portions of sutras. These materials typically organized the teachings around elaborate doctrinal taxonomies, which were used as mnemonic devices or catechisms. Later texts move beyond individual sutras to systematize a wide range of doctrinal material, offering ever more complex analytical categorizations and discursive elaborations of the DHARMA. Ultimately, abhidharma texts emerge as a new genre of Buddhist literature in their own right, employing sophisticated philosophical speculation and sometimes even involving polemical attacks on the positions of rival factions within the SAMGHA. ¶ At least seven schools of Indian Buddhism transmitted their own recensions of abhidharma texts, but only two of these canons are extant in their entirety. The PAli abhidhammapitaka of the THERAVADA school, the only recension that survives in an Indian language, includes seven texts (the order of which often differs): (1) DHAMMASAnGAnI ("Enumeration of Dharmas") examines factors of mentality and materiality (NAMARuPA), arranged according to ethical quality; (2) VIBHAnGA ("Analysis") analyzes the aggregates (SKANDHA), conditioned origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPADA), and meditative development, each treatment culminating in a catechistic series of inquiries; (3) DHATUKATHA ("Discourse on Elements") categorizes all dharmas in terms of the skandhas and sense-fields (AYATANA); (4) PUGGALAPANNATTI ("Description of Human Types") analyzes different character types in terms of the three afflictions of greed (LOBHA), hatred (DVEsA), and delusion (MOHA) and various related subcategories; (5) KATHAVATTHU ("Points of Controversy") scrutinizes the views of rival schools of mainstream Buddhism and how they differ from the TheravAda; (6) YAMAKA ("Pairs") provides specific denotations of problematic terms through paired comparisons; (7) PAttHANA ("Conditions") treats extensively the full implications of conditioned origination. ¶ The abhidharmapitaka of the SARVASTIVADA school is extant only in Chinese translation, the definitive versions of which were prepared by XUANZANG's translation team in the seventh century. It also includes seven texts: (1) SAMGĪTIPARYAYA[PADAsASTRA] ("Discourse on Pronouncements") attributed to either MAHAKAUstHILA or sARIPUTRA, a commentary on the SaMgītisutra (see SAnGĪTISUTTA), where sAriputra sets out a series of dharma lists (MATṚKA), ordered from ones to elevens, to organize the Buddha's teachings systematically; (2) DHARMASKANDHA[PADAsASTRA] ("Aggregation of Dharmas"), attributed to sAriputra or MAHAMAUDGALYAYANA, discusses Buddhist soteriological practices, as well as the afflictions that hinder spiritual progress, drawn primarily from the AGAMAs; (3) PRAJNAPTIBHAsYA[PADAsASTRA] ("Treatise on Designations"), attributed to MaudgalyAyana, treats Buddhist cosmology (lokaprajNapti), causes (kArana), and action (KARMAN); (4) DHATUKAYA[PADAsASTRA] ("Collection on the Elements"), attributed to either PuRnA or VASUMITRA, discusses the mental concomitants (the meaning of DHATU in this treatise) and sets out specific sets of mental factors that are present in all moments of consciousness (viz., the ten MAHABHuMIKA) or all defiled states of mind (viz., the ten KLEsAMAHABHuMIKA); (5) VIJNANAKAYA[PADAsASTRA] ("Collection on Consciousness"), attributed to Devasarman, seeks to prove the veracity of the eponymous SarvAstivAda position that dharmas exist in all three time periods (TRIKALA) of past, present, and future, and the falsity of notions of the person (PUDGALA); it also provides the first listing of the four types of conditions (PRATYAYA); (6) PRAKARAnA[PADAsASTRA] ("Exposition"), attributed to VASUMITRA, first introduces the categorization of dharmas according to the more developed SarvAstivAda rubric of RuPA, CITTA, CAITTA, CITTAVIPRAYUKTASAMSKARA, and ASAMSKṚTA dharmas; it also adds a new listing of KUsALAMAHABHuMIKA, or factors always associated with wholesome states of mind; (7) JNANAPRASTHANA ("Foundations of Knowledge"), attributed to KATYAYANĪPUTRA, an exhaustive survey of SarvAstivAda dharma theory and the school's exposition of psychological states, which forms the basis of the massive encyclopedia of SarvAstivAda-VaibhAsika abhidharma, the ABHIDHARMAMAHAVIBHAsA. In the traditional organization of the seven canonical books of the SarvAstivAda abhidharmapitaka, the JNANAPRASTHANA is treated as the "body" (sARĪRA), or central treatise of the canon, with its six "feet" (pAda), or ancillary treatises (pAdasAstra), listed in the following order: (1) PrakaranapAda, (2) VijNAnakAya, (3) Dharmaskandha, (4) PrajNaptibhAsya, (5) DhAtukAya, and (6) SaMgītiparyAya. Abhidharma exegetes later turned their attention to these canonical abhidharma materials and subjected them to the kind of rigorous scholarly analysis previously directed to the sutras. These led to the writing of innovative syntheses and synopses of abhidharma doctrine, in such texts as BUDDHAGHOSA's VISUDDHIMAGGA and ANURUDDHA's ABHIDHAMMATTHASAnGAHA, VASUBANDHU's ABHIDHARMAKOsABHAsYA, and SAMGHABHADRA's *NYAYANUSARA. In East Asia, this third "basket" was eventually expanded to include the burgeoning scholastic literature of the MAHAYANA, transforming it from a strictly abhidharmapitaka into a broader "treatise basket" or *sASTRAPItAKA (C. lunzang).
AbhirupA NandA. In PAli, "NandA the Lovely"; one of three prominent nuns named NandA mentioned in the PAli canon (the others being JANAPADAKALYAnĪ NANDA and SUNDARĪ NANDA), all of whom share similar stories. According to PAli sources, AbhirupA NandA was said to be the daughter of the SAkiyan (S. sAKYA) chieftain Khemaka and lived in Kapilavatthu (S. KAPILAVASTU). She was renowned for her extraordinary beauty, for which she was given the epithet AbhirupA (Lovely). So popular was she that her parents became vexed by the many suitors who sought her hand in marriage. As was the SAkiyan custom, NandA was entitled to choose her future husband, but on the day she was to wed, her fiancé died and her parents forced her into the monastic order against her will. Exceedingly proud of her beauty and having no real religious vocation, she avoided visiting the Buddha lest he rebuke her for her vanity. Learning of her reluctance, the Buddha instructed MahApajApatī (S. MAHAPRAJAPATĪ), his stepmother and head of the nuns' order, to arrange for every nun in her charge to come to him for instruction. NandA, in fear, sent a substitute in her place but the ruse was uncovered. When NandA was finally compelled to appear before the Buddha, he created an apparition of lovely women standing and fanning him. NandA was enthralled by the beauty of the conjured maidens, whom the Buddha then caused to age, grow decrepit, die, and rot, right before her eyes. The Buddha then preached to her about the fragility of physical beauty. Having been given a suitable subject of meditation (KAMMAttHANA), NandA eventually gained insight into the impermanence (ANITYA), suffering (DUḤKHA), and lack of self (ANATMAN) of all conditioned things and attained arahatship. The source for the stories related to AbhirupA NandA is the commentarial note to verses nineteen and twenty of the PAli THERĪGATHA, a text only known to the PAli tradition.
AbhisamayAlaMkAra. (T. Mngon par rtogs pa'i rgyan). In Sanskrit, "Ornament of Realization"; a major scholastic treatise of the MAHAYANA, attributed to MAITREYANATHA (c. 350CE). Its full title is AbhisamayAlaMkAranAmaprajNApAramitopadesasAstra (T. Shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa'i man ngag gi bstan bcos mngon par rtogs pa'i rgyan) or "Treatise Setting Forth the Perfection of Wisdom called 'Ornament for Realization.'" In the Tibetan tradition, the AbhisamayAlaMkAra is counted among the five treatises of Maitreya (BYAMS CHOS SDE LNGA). The 273 verses of the AbhisamayAlaMkAra provide a schematic outline of the perfection of wisdom, or PRAJNAPARAMITA, approach to enlightenment, specifically as delineated in the PANCAVIMsATISAHASRIKAPRAJNAPARAMITA ("Perfection of Wisdom in Twenty-Five Thousand Lines"). This detailed delineation of the path is regarded as the "hidden teaching" of the prajNApAramitA sutras. Although hardly known in East Asian Buddhism (until the modern Chinese translation by FAZUN), the work was widely studied in Tibet, where it continues to hold a central place in the monastic curricula of all the major sects. It is especially important for the DGE LUGS sect, which takes it as the definitive description of the stages of realization achieved through the Buddhist path. The AbhisamayAlaMkAra treats the principal topics of the prajNApAramitA sutras by presenting them in terms of the stages of realizations achieved via the five paths (PANCAMARGA). The eight chapters of the text divide these realizations into eight types. The first three are types of knowledge that are essential to any type of practice and are generic to both the mainstream and MahAyAna schools. (1) The wisdom of knowing all modes (SARVAKARAJNATA), for the bodhisattva-adepts who are the putative target audience of the commentary, explains all the characteristics of the myriad dharmas, so that they will have comprehensive knowledge of what the attainment of enlightenment will bring. (2) The wisdom of knowing the paths (MARGAJNATA), viz., the paths perfected by the sRAVAKAs, is a prerequisite to achieving the wisdom of knowing all modes. (3) The wisdom of knowing all phenomena (SARVAJNATA) is, in turn, a prerequisite to achieving the wisdom of knowing the paths. With (4) the topic of the manifestly perfect realization of all aspects (sarvAkArAbhisambodha) starts the text's coverage of the path itself, here focused on gaining insight into all aspects, viz., characteristics of dharmas, paths, and types of beings. By reaching (5) the summit of realization (murdhAbhisamaya; see MuRDHAN), one arrives at the entrance to ultimate realization. All the realizations achieved up to this point are secured and commingled through (6) gradual realization (anupurvAbhisamaya). The perfection of this gradual realization and the consolidation of all previous realizations catalyze the (7) instantaneous realization (ekaksanAbhisamaya). The fruition of this instantaneous realization brings (8) realization of the dharma body, or DHARMAKAYA (dharmakAyAbhisambodha). The first three chapters thus describe the three wisdoms incumbent on the buddhas; the middle four chapters cover the four paths that take these wisdoms as their object; and the last chapter describes the resultant dharma body of the buddhas and their special attainments. The AbhisamayAlaMkAra provides a synopsis of the massive prajNApAramitA scriptures and a systematic outline of the comprehensive path of MahAyAna. The AbhisamayAlaMkAra spurred a long tradition of Indian commentaries and other exegetical works, twenty-one of which are preserved in the Tibetan canon. Notable among this literature are Arya VIMUKTISEnA's Vṛtti and the ABHISAMAYALAMKARALOKA and Vivṛti (called Don gsal in Tibetan) by HARIBHADRA. Later Tibetan commentaries include BU STON RIN CHEN GRUB's Lung gi snye ma and TSONG KHA PA's LEGS BSHAD GSER PHRENG.
Abstract Syntax Notation 1 "language, standard, protocol" (ASN.1, X.208, X.680) An {ISO}/{ITU-T} {standard} for transmitting structured {data} on {networks}, originally defined in 1984 as part of {CCITT X.409} '84. ASN.1 moved to its own standard, X.208, in 1988 due to wide applicability. The substantially revised 1995 version is covered by the X.680 series. ASN.1 defines the {abstract syntax} of {information} but does not restrict the way the information is encoded. Various ASN.1 encoding rules provide the {transfer syntax} (a {concrete} representation) of the data values whose {abstract syntax} is described in ASN.1. The standard ASN.1 encoding rules include {BER} (Basic Encoding Rules - X.209), {CER} (Canonical Encoding Rules), {DER} (Distinguished Encoding Rules) and {PER} (Packed Encoding Rules). ASN.1 together with specific ASN.1 encoding rules facilitates the exchange of structured data especially between {application programs} over networks by describing data structures in a way that is independent of machine architecture and implementation language. {OSI} {Application layer} {protocols} such as {X.400} {MHS} {electronic mail}, {X.500} directory services and {SNMP} use ASN.1 to describe the {PDU}s they exchange. Documents describing the ASN.1 notations: {ITU-T} Rec. X.680, {ISO} 8824-1; {ITU-T} Rec. X.681, {ISO} 8824-2; {ITU-T} Rec. X.682, {ISO} 8824-3; {ITU-T} Rec. X.683, {ISO} 8824-4 Documents describing the ASN.1 encoding rules: {ITU-T} Rec. X.690, {ISO} 8825-1; {ITU-T} Rec. X.691, {ISO} 8825-2. [M. Sample et al, "Implementing Efficient Encoders and Decoders for Network Data Representations", IEEE Infocom 93 Proc, v.3, pp. 1143-1153, Mar 1993. Available from Logica, UK]. See also {snacc}. (2005-07-03)
Abstract Syntax Notation 1 ::: (language, standard, protocol) (ASN.1, X.208, X.680) An ISO/ITU-T standard for transmitting structured data on networks, originally defined in due to wide applicability. The substantially revised 1995 version is covered by the X.680 series.ASN.1 defines the abstract syntax of information but does not restrict the way the information is encoded. Various ASN.1 encoding rules provide the transfer Encoding Rules - X.209), CER (Canonical Encoding Rules), DER (Distinguished Encoding Rules) and PER (Packed Encoding Rules).ASN.1 together with specific ASN.1 encoding rules facilitates the exchange of structured data especially between application programs over networks by describing data structures in a way that is independent of machine architecture and implementation language.OSI Application layer protocols such as X.400 MHS electronic mail, X.500 directory services and SNMP use ASN.1 to describe the PDUs they exchange.Documents describing the ASN.1 notations: ITU-T Rec. X.680, ISO 8824-1; ITU-T Rec. X.681, ISO 8824-2; ITU-T Rec. X.682, ISO 8824-3; ITU-T Rec. X.683, ISO 8824-4Documents describing the ASN.1 encoding rules: ITU-T Rec. X.690, ISO 8825-1; ITU-T Rec. X.691, ISO 8825-2.[M. Sample et al, Implementing Efficient Encoders and Decoders for Network Data Representations, IEEE Infocom 93 Proc, v.3, pp. 1143-1153, Mar 1993. Available from Logica, UK].See also snacc.(2005-07-03)
accumulator ::: (processor) In a central processing unit, a register in which intermediate results are stored. Without an accumulator, it would be necessary to the accumulator which usually has direct paths to and from the arithmetic and logic unit (ALU).The canonical example is summing a list of numbers. The accumulator is set to zero initially, each number in turn is added to the value in the accumulator and only when all numbers have been added is the result written to main memory.Modern CPUs usually have many registers, all or many of which can be used as accumulators. For this reason, the term accumulator is somewhat archaic. Use arithmetic). Confusingly, though, an A register name prefix may also stand for address, as for example on the Motorola 680x0 family.2. (programming) A register, memory location or variable being used for arithmetic or logic (as opposed to addressing or a loop index), especially one a particular routine or stretch of code. The FOOBAZ routine uses A3 as an accumulator.[Jargon File] (1999-04-20)
accumulator "processor" In a {central processing unit}, a {register} in which intermediate results are stored. Without an accumulator, it would be necessary to write the result of each calculation (addition, multiplication, {shift}, etc.) to {main memory} and read them back. Access to main memory is slower than access to the accumulator which usually has direct paths to and from the {arithmetic and logic unit} (ALU). The {canonical} example is summing a list of numbers. The accumulator is set to zero initially, each number in turn is added to the value in the accumulator and only when all numbers have been added is the result written to main memory. Modern CPUs usually have many registers, all or many of which can be used as accumulators. For this reason, the term "accumulator" is somewhat archaic. Use of it as a synonym for "register" is a fairly reliable indication that the user has been around for quite a while and/or that the architecture under discussion is quite old. The term in full is almost never used of microprocessor registers, for example, though symbolic names for arithmetic registers beginning in "A" derive from historical use of the term "accumulator" (and not, actually, from "arithmetic"). Confusingly, though, an "A" register name prefix may also stand for "address", as for example on the {Motorola} {680x0} family. 2. "programming" A register, memory location or variable being used for arithmetic or logic (as opposed to addressing or a loop index), especially one being used to accumulate a sum or count of many items. This use is in context of a particular routine or stretch of code. "The FOOBAZ routine uses A3 as an accumulator." [{Jargon File}] (1999-04-20)
ACME "company, jargon" /ak'mee/ 1. A Company that Makes Everything. The {canonical} imaginary business. Possibly also derived from the word "acme" meaning "highest point". 2. A program for {MS-DOS}. [What does it do?] (1994-11-08)
ACME ::: (company, jargon) /ak'mee/ 1. A Company that Makes Everything. The canonical imaginary business. Possibly also derived from the word acme meaning highest point.2. A program for MS-DOS.[What does it do?] (1994-11-08)
A few centuries after the composition of the JNānaprasthāna, or c. first half of the second-century CE, Sarvāstivāda exegetes compiled a massive commentary to the text, entitled the ABHIDHARMAMAHĀVIBHĀsĀ, which followed the root text's chapters and section divisions but exponentially expanded the coverage of the school's teachings. Because of their adherence to the exegetical approaches outlined in that commentary, later masters of the Sarvāstivāda school in KASHMIR-GANDHĀRA termed themselves "VAIBHĀsIKA." ¶ The JNānaprasthāna is probably the last of the canonical Sarvāstivāda abhidharma texts to have been composed and contains a systematic overview of the emblematic doctrines of the mature school. Distinctive Sarvāstivāda doctrines treated in the text include the full roster of the four conditions (PRATYAYA) and six causes (HETU); the Sarvāstivāda's eponymous teaching that factors (dharma) exist in all three time periods (TRIKĀLA) of the past, present, and future; the definitive classification schema for the mental concomitants (CAITTA); and the listing of the four conditioned characteristics (SAMSKṚTALAKsAnA) of dharmas, viz., origination (JĀTI), continuance (STHITI), senescence (JARĀ), and desinence (anityatā, ANITYA; viz., death). The JNānaprasthāna's outline of Sarvāstivāda abhidharma is based on a soteriological schema, ultimately deriving from the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS. The opening chapter on miscellaneous factors begins with a discussion of the highest worldly factors (laukikāgradharma), perhaps the major conceptual innovation of the text, that is, dharmas at the moment of the transition from ordinary person (PṚTHAGJANA) to noble one (ĀRYA), when they catalyze access to the path of vision (DARsANAMĀRGA). The JNānaprasthāna thus uses its treatment of the highest worldly dharmas as an interpretative tool to integrate its discussion of the major stages in the path, from the mundane path of practice (LAUKIKA-BHĀVANĀMĀRGA), to the path of vision, the supramundane path of cultivation (LOKOTTARA-BHĀVANĀMĀRGA), and the path of the realized adept (AsAIKsAMĀRGA; see also PANCAMĀRGA). This focus also highlights the major difference between Sarvāstivāda and Pāli abhidharma materials: whereas Pāli texts include substantial coverage of such preliminary practices as morality and choosing a meditation subject, the JNānaprasthāna is principally concerned with the more advanced stages of the path. The second critical contribution of the JNānaprasthāna is its systematization of the six causes (HETU). These six are not found in the ĀGAMAs, and only four are listed in earlier Sarvāstivāda abhidharma texts, such as the VIJNĀNAKĀYA[PĀDAsĀSTRA]. Kātyāyanīputra's systematization of this list seems to have been intended to demonstrate the causal connections that pertained between the stages of the path. Overall, the JNānaprasthāna is best known not for its doctrinal innovations but instead for its grand systematization of Sarvāstivāda abhidharma.
Agamas: The canon of scriptures of Jainism.
Agama. (T. lung; C. ahan jing; J. agongyo; K. aham kyong 阿含經). In Sanskrit and PAli, "text" or "scripture"; a general term for received scriptural tradition. The term Agama is commonly paired with two other contrasting terms: Agama and YUKTI (reasoning) are the means of arriving at the truth; Agama and ADHIGAMA (realization) are the two divisions of the BUDDHADHARMA-the verbal or scriptural tradition and that which is manifested through practice. In its Sanskrit usage, the term Agama is also used to refer more specifically to the four scriptural collections of the mainstream tradition (now lost in Sanskrit but preserved in Chinese translation), attributed to the Buddha and his close disciples, which correspond to the four PAli NIKAYAs: (1) DĪRGHAGAMA or "Long Discourses," belonging to the DHARMAGUPTAKA school and corresponding to the PAli DĪGHANIKAYA; (2) MADHYAMAGAMA or "Medium Discourses," associated with the SARVASTIVADA school and corresponding to the PAli MAJJHIMANIKAYA; (3) SAMYUKTAGAMA or "Connected Discourses," belonging to the SarvAstivAda school (with a partial translation perhaps belonging to the KAsYAPĪYA school) and corresponding to the PAli SAMYUTTANIKAYA; and (4) EKOTTARAGAMA or "Numerically Arranged Discourses," variously ascribed to the Dharmaguptakas, or less plausibly to the MAHASAMGHIKA school or its PRAJNAPTIVADA offshoot, and corresponding to the PAli AnGUTTARANIKAYA. Despite the similarities in the titles of these collections, there are many differences between the contents of the Sanskrit Agamas and the PAli nikAyas. The KHUDDAKANIKAYA ("Miscellaneous Collection"), the fifth nikAya in the PAli canon, has no equivalent in the extant Chinese translations of the Agamas; such miscellanies, or "mixed baskets" (S. ksudrakapitaka), were however known to have existed in several of the MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS, including the Dharmaguptaka, MahAsAMghika, and MAHĪsASAKA.
“A generic personification of a class of spiritual beings described as the embodiment of essential wisdom (Bodhi) and absolute purity. They dwell in the fourth Arupa Dhatu (formless world) or Buddhakshetra, and are the first or the highest hierarchy of the five orthodox Dhyani Buddhas. There was a Sramana (an Arhat) of this name (see Eitel’s Sansk. Chin. Dict.), a native of Kashmir, ‘who introduced Buddhism into Kustan and laboured in Tibet (in the seventh century of our era). He was the best translator of the semi-esoteric Canon of Northern Buddhism, and a contemporary of the great Samantabhadra . . .” (TG 358-9).
AjNAtakaundinya. (P. ANNAtakondaNNa / ANNAkondaNNa; T. Kun shes kaun di nya; C. Aruojiaochenru; J. Anyakyojinnyo; K. Ayakkyojinyo 阿若憍陳如). In Sanskrit, "Kaundinya (P. KondaNNa) who Knows"; the first person to understand the insights of the Buddha, as delivered in the first sermon, the DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANASuTRA (P. DHAMMACAKKAPPAVATTANASUTTA), and the first disciple to take ordination as a monk (BHIKsU), following the simple EHIBHIKsUKA (P. ehi bhikkhu), or "come, monk," formula: "Come, monk, the DHARMA is well proclaimed; live the holy life for the complete ending of suffering." Kaundinya was one of the group of five ascetics (BHADRAVARGĪYA) converted by the Buddha at the ṚsIPATANA (P. Isipatana) MṚGADAVA (Deer Park), located just north-east of the city of VArAnasī. According to the PAli account, he was a brAhmana older than the Buddha, who was especially renowned in physiognomy. After the birth of the infant GAUTAMA, he was one of eight brAhmanas invited to predict the infant's future and the only one to prophesize that the child would definitely become a buddha rather than a wheel-turning monarch (CAKRAVARTIN). He left the world as an ascetic in anticipation of the bodhisattva's own renunciation and was joined by the sons of four of the other eight brAhmanas. Kaundinya and the other four ascetics joined the bodhisattva in the practice of austerities, but when, after six years, the bodhisattva renounced extreme asceticism, they left him in disgust. After his enlightenment, the Buddha preached to the five ascetics at the Ṛsipatana deer park, and Kaundinya was the first to realize the truth of the Buddha's words. The PAli canon describes Kaundinya's enlightenment as proceeding in two stages: first, when the Buddha preached the Dhammacakkappavattanasutta, he attained the opening of the dharma eye (DHARMACAKsUS), the equivalent of stream-entry (SROTAAPANNA), and five days later, when the Buddha preached his second sermon, the ANATTALAKKHAnASUTTA, he attained the level of ARHAT. The Buddha praised him both times by exclaiming "Kaundinya knows!," in recognition of which AjNAta ("He Who Knows") was thereafter prefixed to his name. Later, at a large gathering of monks at JETAVANA grove in sRAVASTĪ, the Buddha declared AjNAtakaundinya to be preeminent among his disciples who first comprehended the dharma, and preeminent among his long-standing disciples. AjNAtakaundinya received permission from the Buddha to live a solitary life in the Chaddantavana forest and only returned after twelve years to take leave of the Buddha before his own PARINIRVAnA. After his cremation, AjNAtakaundinya's relics were given to the Buddha, who personally placed them in a silver reliquary (CAITYA) that spontaneously appeared from out of the earth.
alias ::: 1. (operating system) A name, usually short and easy to remember and type, that is translated into another name or string, usually long and difficult memory when the interpreter starts and are expanded without needing to refer to any file.2. (networking) One of several alternative hostnames with the same Internet address. E.g. in the Unix hosts database (/etc/hosts or NIS map) the first field on a line is the Internet address, the next is the official hostname (the canonical name or CNAME), and any others are aliases.Hostname aliases often indicate that the host with that alias provides a particular network service such as archie, finger, FTP, or World-Wide Web. The alias (e.g. www.doc.ic.ac.uk) from one Internet address to another, without the clients needing to be aware of the change.3. (file system) The name used by Apple computer, Inc. for symbolic links when they added them to the System 7 operating system in 1991. (1997-10-22)4. (programming) Two names (identifiers), usually of local or global variables, that refer to the same resource (memory location) are said to be to different memory locations, aliasing can be introduced by the use of address arithmetic and pointers or language-specific features, like C++ references.Statically deciding (e.g. via a program analysis executed by a sophisticated compiler) which locations of a program will be aliased at run time is an undecidable problem.[G. Ramalingam: The Undecidability of Aliasing, ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS), Volume 16, Issue 5, September 1994, Pages: 1467 - 1471, ISSN:0164-0925.](2004-09-12)
alias 1. "operating system" A name, usually short and easy to remember and type, that is translated into another name or string, usually long and difficult to remember or type. Most {command interpreters} (e.g. {Unix}'s {csh}) allow the user to define aliases for commands, e.g. "alias l ls -al". These are loaded into memory when the interpreter starts and are expanded without needing to refer to any file. 2. "networking" One of several alternative {hostnames} with the same {Internet address}. E.g. in the {Unix} {hosts} database (/etc/hosts or {NIS} map) the first field on a line is the {Internet address}, the next is the official hostname (the "{canonical} name" or "{CNAME}"), and any others are aliases. Hostname aliases often indicate that the host with that alias provides a particular network service such as {archie}, {finger}, {FTP}, or {web}. The assignment of services to computers can then be changed simply by moving an alias (e.g. www.doc.ic.ac.uk) from one {Internet address} to another, without the clients needing to be aware of the change. 3. "file system" The name used by {Apple computer, Inc.} for {symbolic links} when they added them to the {System 7} {operating system} in 1991. (1997-10-22) 4. "programming" Two names ({identifiers}), usually of local or global {variables}, that refer to the same resource ({memory} location) are said to be aliased. Although names introduced in {programming languages} are typically mapped to different {memory} locations, aliasing can be introduced by the use of {address} arithmetic and {pointers} or language-specific features, like {C++} {references}. Statically deciding (e.g. via a {program analysis} executed by a sophisticated {compiler}) which locations of a {program} will be aliased at run time is an {undecidable} problem. [G. Ramalingam: "The Undecidability of Aliasing", ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS), Volume 16, Issue 5, September 1994, Pages: 1467 - 1471, ISSN:0164-0925.] (2004-09-12)
AmoghapAsa (Lokesvara). (T. Don yod zhags pa; C. Bukong Juansuo; J. Fuku Kenjaku; K. Pulgong Kyonsak 不空羂索). A popular tantric form of AVALOKITEsVARA, primarily distinguished by his holding of a snare (pAsa); his name is interpreted as "Lokesvara with the unfailing snare." Like Avalokitesvara, he is worshipped as a savior of beings, his snare understood to be the means by which he rescues devotees. His worship seems to have developed in India during the sixth century, as evidenced by the 587 Chinese translation of the AmoghapAsahṛdayasutra (the first chapter of the much longer AmoghapAsakalparAjasutra) by JNAnagupta. Numerous translations of scriptures relating to AmoghapAsa by BODHIRUCI, XUANZANG, and AMOGHAVAJRA and others up into the tenth century attest to the continuing popularity of the deity. The earliest extant image of AmoghapAsa seems to be in Japan, in the monastery of ToDAIJI in Nara, dating from the late seventh century. There are many extant images of the god in northwest India from the ninth and tenth centuries; some earlier images of Avalokitesvara from the eighth century, which depict him holding a snare, have been identified as AmoghapAsa, although the identification remains uncertain. Tibetan translations of the AmoghapAsahṛdayasutra and the AmoghapAsakalparAjasutra are listed in the eighth-century LDAN DKAR MA catalogue, though it is later translations that are included in the BKA' 'GYUR, where they are classified as kriyAtantras. (The Tibetan canon includes some eight tantras concerning AmoghapAsa.) Numerous images of AmoghapAsa from Java dating to the early second millennium attest to his popularity in that region; in the Javanese custom of deifying kings, King Visnuvardhana (d. 1268) was identified as an incarnation of AmoghapAsa. AmoghapAsa can appear in forms with any number of pairs of hands, although by far the most popular are the six-armed seated and eight-armed standing forms. Other than his defining snare, he often carries a three-pointed staff (tridanda) but, like other multiarmed deities, can be seen holding almost any of the tantric accoutrements. AmoghapAsa is depicted in bodhisattva guise and, like Avalokitesvara, has an image of AMITABHA in his crown and is occasionally accompanied by TARA, BHṚKUTĪ, SudhanakumAra, and HAYAGRĪVA.
AnAthapindada. (P. AnAthapindika; T. Mgon med zas sbyin; C. Jigudu zhangzhe; J. Gikkodoku choja; K. Kŭpkodok changja 給孤獨長者). In Sanskit, "Feeder of the Defenseless"; a wealthy merchant from the city of sRAVASTĪ who became such a great patron of the SAMGHA that the Buddha declared him to be chief among laymen (UPASAKA) in his munificence. His personal name was Sudatta; AnAthapindada was a sobriquet suggesting his philanthropic qualities. AnAthapindada's father-in-law introduced him to the Buddha, and he was quickly converted, becoming in the process a stream-enterer (SROTAAPANNA). AnAthapindada built numerous dwellings, guest houses, and residential parks for the Buddha and his monastic order and was unstinting in his donation of requisites. The most famous of the residences he built was the JETAVANA park on the outskirts of srAvastī, which he purchased from the prince JETA (JetakumAra) by covering the entire property with gold coins. Prince Jeta himself donated the entrance to the park, over which he built a splendid gate. AnAthapindada had numerous buildings constructed at the site-including the Buddha's own residence, the GANDHAKUtĪ, or perfumed chamber-to serve the Buddha and the monastic community during the rains retreat (VARsA). The very same spot had served as a monastery and rains retreat center for previous buddhas as well, although the extent of the establishments varied. Jeta's Grove was said to be the Buddha's favorite residence and, according to tradition, he passed nineteen rains retreats there. After the laywoman VIsAKHA built the grand monastery MṚGARAMATṚPRASADA in srAvastī, the Buddha would alternate between both residences, spending the day at one and the night at another. The Buddha preached numerous sermons to AnAthapindada who, in turn, was fond of debating with ascetics and teachers of other religions. Although skilled in business, AnAthapindada was in his later years reduced to penury. He is said to have died shortly after feeding the monks with gruel prepared from his own cooking pot. One of the more poignant exchanges in the PAli canon involves AnAthapindada and is recorded in the AnAthapindikovAdasutta, the 143rd sutta in the PAli MAJJHIMANIKAYA (a recension of unidentified affiliation appears in the Chinese translation of the EKOTTARAGAMA). When AnAthapindada was on his deathbed, the Buddha sent sARIPUTRA, one of his two chief disciples, along with ANANDA as his attendant, to visit him. Learning that AnAthapindada was in great pain, sAriputra taught him a fairly standard discourse on how to guard the senses (INDRIYASAMVARA) so as to remain unattached toward sensory experience and thereby develop a state of consciousness that clings to nothing. At the conclusion of the discourse, AnAthapindada was brought to tears; seeing him weep, sAriputra asked him whether he was deteriorating. AnAthapindada said that he was actually lamenting the fact that, throughout his years of attending the Buddha and his monks, he had not once heard this kind of instruction. sAriputra responded that such teachings were intended for the monks, not the laity, but AnAthapindada begged him to make such teachings available to the laity as well, since some of them had "little dust in their eyes" and would be able to understand. Soon afterward that evening, AnAthapindada was reborn in TUsITA heaven and, as a young divinity (DEVA), visited the Buddha and praised the virtues of the Jetavana and of sAriputra, of whom AnAthapindada was especially fond.
angels was expressly forbidden (canon 35).
antilegomena ::: n. pl. --> Certain books of the New Testament which were for a time not universally received, but which are now considered canonical. These are the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistles of James and Jude, the second Epistle of Peter, the second and third Epistles of John, and the Revelation. The undisputed books are called the Homologoumena.
antipope ::: n. --> One who is elected, or claims to be, pope in opposition to the pope canonically chosen; esp. applied to those popes who resided at Avignon during the Great Schism.
ApadAna. In PAli, "Heroic Tales" or "Narratives" (cf. S. AVADANA); the thirteenth book of the KHUDDAKANIKAYA of the PAli SUTTAPItAKA, this collection includes hagiographies of 547 monks and forty nuns, all arahant (S. ARHAT) disciples who lived during the lifetime of the Buddha. The text also contains two introductory chapters in verse. The first, the "BuddhApadAna," is a series of encomiums praising the merits and perfections (P. pAramī; S. PARAMITA) of the Buddha and an account of the past lives during which he mastered these qualities. The second chapter, the "PaccekabuddhApadAna," deals with solitary buddhas who do not teach (paccekabuddha; S. PRATYEKABUDDHA). Quite distinctively, the ApadAna names thirty-five buddhas of antiquity, in contrast to the twenty-four listed in the BUDDHAVAMSA; this is one of the reasons that the ApadAna is presumed to be one of the latest books in the PAli canon. The third and fourth chapters offer accounts of the noble deeds of the senior disciples, including many of the most famous names in Buddhist history. Each story focuses on a specific meritorious action performed by one of these elders while they trained under a buddha in a previous lifetime, followed by an account of what wholesome result that action produced in subsequent lifetimes, and how this ultimately led them to achieve arahantship in the present life. The collection thus highlights the merit that results from perfecting specific types of moral actions.
Apart from the remarkable learning that these earlier works display, two things are noteworthy about them. The first is that they are principally based on a single source language or Buddhist tradition. The second is that they are all at least a half-century old. Many things have changed in the field of Buddhist Studies over the past fifty years, some for the worse, some very much for the better. One looks back in awe at figures like Louis de la Vallée Poussin and his student Msgr. Étienne Lamotte, who were able to use sources in Sanskrit, PAli, Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan with a high level of skill. Today, few scholars have the luxury of time to develop such expertise. Yet this change is not necessarily a sign of the decline of the dharma predicted by the Buddha; from several perspectives, we are now in the golden age of Buddhist Studies. A century ago, scholarship on Buddhism focused on the classical texts of India and, to a much lesser extent, China. Tibetan and Chinese sources were valued largely for the access they provided to Indian texts lost in the original Sanskrit. The Buddhism of Korea was seen as an appendage to the Buddhism of China or as a largely unacknowledged source of the Buddhism of Japan. Beyond the works of "the PAli canon," relatively little was known of the practice of Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. All of this has changed for the better over the past half century. There are now many more scholars of Buddhism, there is a much higher level of specialization, and there is a larger body of important scholarship on each of the many Buddhist cultures of Asia. In addition, the number of adherents of Buddhism in the West has grown significantly, with many developing an extensive knowledge of a particular Buddhist tradition, whether or not they hold the academic credentials of a professional Buddhologist. It has been our good fortune to be able to draw upon this expanding body of scholarship in preparing The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism.
apocrypha. (C. yijing/weijing; J. gikyo/gikyo; K. ŭigyong/wigyong 疑經/僞經). Buddhist scholars have appropriated (though not without some controversy) the Judeo-Christian religious term "apocrypha" to refer to indigenous sutras composed outside the Indian cultural sphere, but on the model of translated Indian or Serindian scriptures. Such scriptures were sometimes composed in conjunction with a revelatory experience, but many were intentionally forged using their false ascription to the Buddha or other enlightened figures as a literary device to enhance both their authority and their prospects of being accepted as authentic scriptures. Many of the literary genres that characterize Judeo-Christian apocrypha are found also in Buddhist apocrypha, including the historical, didactic, devotional, and apocalyptic. Both were also often composed in milieus of social upheaval or messianic revivalism. As Buddhism moved outside of its Indian homeland, its scriptures had to be translated into various foreign languages, creating openings for indigenous scriptures to be composed in imitation of these translated texts. Ferreting out such inauthentic indigenous scripture from authentic imported scripture occupied Buddhist bibliographical cataloguers (see JINGLU), who were charged with confirming the authenticity of the Buddhist textual transmission. For the Chinese, the main criterion governing scriptural authenticity was clear evidence that the text had been brought from the "Outer Regions" (C. waiyu), meaning India or Central Asia; this concern with authenticating a text partially accounts for why Chinese translations of Buddhist scriptures typically included a colophon immediately following the title, giving the name of the translator (who was also sometimes the importer of the scripture), along with the place where, and often the imperial reign era during which the translation was made. Scriptures for which there was no such proof were in danger of being labeled as texts of "suspect" or "suspicious" authenticity (yijing) or condemned as blatantly "spurious" or "counterfeit" scriptures (weijing). The presence of indigenous cultural elements, such as yin-yang cosmology, local spirits, or rituals and liturgies associated with folk religion could also be enough to condemn a scripture as "spurious." In Tibet, "treasure texts" (GTER MA) were scriptures or esoteric teachings attributed to enlightened beings or lineage holders that purported to have been buried or hidden away until they could be rediscovered by qualified individuals. Because of their association with a revelatory experience, such "treasure texts" carried authority similar to that of translated scripture. Different classifications of apocryphal scriptures have been proposed, based on genre and style, social history, and doctrinal filiations. In one of the ironies of the Buddhist textual transmission, however, many of the scriptures most influential in East Asian Buddhism have been discovered to be indigenous "apocrypha," not translated scriptures. Such indigenous scriptures were able to appeal to a native audience in ways that translated Indian materials could not, and the sustained popularity of many such "suspect" texts eventually led cataloguers to include them in the canon, despite continuing qualms about their authenticity. Such "canonical apocrypha" include such seminal scriptures as the FANWANG JING ("BrahmA's Net Sutra"), RENWANG JING ("Humane Kings Sutra"), and the YUANJUE JING ("Perfect Enlightenment Sutra"), as well as treatises like the DASHENG QIXIN LUN ("Awakening of Faith"). Similar questions of authenticity can be raised regarding scriptures of Indian provenance, since it is virtually impossible to trace with certainty which of the teachings ascribed to the Buddha in mainstream canonical collections (TRIPItAKA) such as the PAli canon can be historically attributed to him. Similarly, the MAHAYANA sutras, which are also attributed to the Buddha even though they were composed centuries after his death, are considered apocryphal by many of the MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS, including the modern THERAVADA tradition; however, modern scholars do not use the term "Buddhist apocrypha" to describe MahAyAna texts.
Apocrypha ::: (Gre. to Hide or to Uncover) It is used in a technical sense to refer to certain Jewish books written in the Hellenistic-Roman period that came to be included in the Old Greek Jewish scriptures (and thus in the Eastern Christian biblical canon) and in the Latin Vulgate Roman Catholic canon, but not in the Jewish or Protestant biblical canons. See also Bible, Septuagint.
apocryphal ::: a. --> Pertaining to the Apocrypha.
Not canonical. Hence: Of doubtful authority; equivocal; mythic; fictitious; spurious; false.
as canonical lore is the case of Satan. The Old Testament speaks of an adversary, ha-satan. It is a
Asmonean, Hasmonean (Hebrew) “The Asmonean priest-kings promulgated the canon of the Old Testament in contradistinction to the Apocrypha or Secret Books of the Alexandrian Jews — kabalists. Till John Hyrcanus they were Asideans (Chasidim) and Pharisees (Parsees), but then they became Sadducees or Zadokites — asserters of sacerdotal rule as contradistinguished from rabbinical” (IU 2:135).
As regards the New Testament, the Gospels are esoteric books, in which the teachings of the ancient wisdom are built around the alleged story of the mission of Jesus, a teacher who lived at a somewhat earlier date than that assigned him. The epistles of Paul are the work of one with some claim to the title of an initiate, who speaks of Christ as the logos in man, and apparently knows naught of the life story of Jesus. The Revelation of St. John is a purely symbolic esoteric work, of a Qabbalistic character, curiously enough still retained in the Christian canon.
atthakathA. In PAli, lit. "recital of meaning" or "exegesis"; referring specifically to the "commentaries" to the first four NIKAYAs, or scriptural collections, that comprise the PAli Buddhist canon (tipitaka; S. TRIPItAKA). According to THERAVADA tradition, MAHINDA brought the PAli tipitaka and atthakathAs to Sri Lanka from the Indian mainland during the third century CE, during the time of King AsOKA. The language of those Indian commentaries is unknown, but they were initially written down in Sri Lanka in some sort of Sinhalese PRAKRIT. That first Sinhalese recension of the four atthakathAs was superseded when, two centuries later, the renowned TheravAda scholiast, BUDDHAGHOSA, rewrote them in PAli and wrote a lengthy prolegomenon to this massive body of commentarial literature, which he titled the VISUDDHIMAGGA ("Path of Purification"). In conjunction with the systematic overview provided in the Visuddhimagga, the atthakathAs thus claim to offer a comprehensive account of the full panoply of Buddhist doctrine. The atthakathA to the last, and latest, of the nikAyas, the KHUDDAKANIKAYA ("Miscellaneous Discourses"), was composed separately, probably sometime between 450 and 600 CE, by the prolific PAli commentator DHAMMAPALA, and seems to draw on a separate textual recension from that used by Buddhaghosa.
Atthakavagga. (S. Arthavargīya; C. Yizu jing; J. Gisokukyo; K. Ŭijok kyong 義足經). In PAli, "The Octet Chapter" [alt. "The Chapter on Meaning," as the Chinese translation suggests], an important chapter of the SUTTANIPATA. Based on analysis of the peculiar meters and grammatical formations used in this text, philologists have reached a broad consensus that the Atthakavagga and its companion chapter, the PArAyanavagga, are among the very earliest strata of extant PAli literature and may have existed even during the Buddha's own lifetime. The PAli suttas include citations and exegeses of some of the verses from the Atthakavagga, and the MAHANIDESA, a commentary that covers the text, is accepted as canonical in the PAli canon (tipitaka, S. TRIPItAKA). All this evidence suggests its relative antiquity within the canon. The teachings contained in the chapter seem to suggest an early stratum of Buddhist teachings, prior to their formalization around fixed numerical lists of doctrines. The technical terminology that becomes emblematic of the standardized Buddhist presentation of doctrine is also relatively absent in its verses (GATHA). The Atthakavagga offers a rigorous indictment of the dangers inherent in "views" (P. ditthi; S. DṚstI) and displays a skepticism about religious dogmas in general, seeing them as virulent sources of attachment that lead ultimately to conceit, quarrels, and divisiveness. Some scholars have suggested that the kind of thoroughgoing critique of views presented in the Atthakavagga might have been the prototype of the later MADHYAMAKA logical approach, which sought to demonstrate the fallacies inherent in any philosophical statement. The verses also seem to represent an earlier stage in the evolution of Buddhist institutions, when monks still lived alone in the forest or with small groups of fellow ascetics, rather than in larger urban monasteries. Monks are still referred to as hermits or "seers" (P. isi, S. ṛsi), a generic Indian term for religious recluses, rather than the formal Buddhist term bhikkhu (BHIKsU) as is seen in the prose passages. A two-roll Chinese translation of a Sanskrit or Middle Indic recension of the text was made by ZHI QIAN during the Wu dynasty (c. 223-253 CE).
Avanti. (T. Srung byed; C. Abanti [guo]; J. Ahandai[koku]; K. Abanje [kuk] 阿般提[國]). In Sanskrit and PAli, an Indian kingdom in the southwest subcontinent, north of present-day Mumbai; its capital was Ujjayinī (P. Ujjenī); the dialect spoken there was related to, and perhaps the ancestor of, the language used in the PAli canon. Avanti was located along the major southern Indian trade route (the DaksinApatha) that passed through sRAVASTĪ in central India, one of the main centers of early Buddhism. Buddhist missionaries following this trade route began to proselytize in the southwest even during the Buddha's lifetime. KAtyAyana, also known as "KAtyAyana the Great" (MAHAKATYAYANA; P. MahAkaccAna), one of the Buddha's ten major disciples, hailed from the Avanti region and later returned to his native land to disseminate Buddhism. He is said to have requested that the Buddha allow for special dispensation to ordain new monks in outlying regions without the requisite number of ten monastic witnesses. PuRnA (P. Punna) was another important disciple from the coastal area of this region (SurpAraka), who returned there to proselytize as well. He is the subject of the PunnovAdasutta (no. 145 in the PAli MAJJHIMANIKAYA) and the PurnAvadAna, which describe his resolve to spread the teachings of Buddhism. Buddhism became firmly established in the Avanti region at least by the time of King AsOKA; Asoka's son, MAHINDA, who later transmitted Buddhism to the island kingdom of Sri Lanka (Ceylon), is said to have been a native of its capital, Ujjayinī. Avanti was a stronghold of the STHAVIRANIKAYA, and its monks led the opposition to ten disputed items in the monastic discipline that resulted in the schism with the MAHASAMGHIKA order.
canon. A term used generically to designate Buddhist scriptural collections in a whole range of canonical Asian languages, including the Indic "three baskets" (TRIPItAKA), the East Asian "scriptures of the great repository" (DAZANGJING), and the Tibetan BKA' 'GYUR and BSTAN 'GYUR. Beyond these canons, Buddhists in these various traditions also typically used their own local collections of texts, collections that often were quite distinct from those of the officially sanctioned canons. See also KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG; TAISHo SHINSHu DAIZoKYo; SuTRA; sASTRA; BODHISATTVAPItAKA; APOCRYPHA.
canon bit ::: --> That part of a bit which is put in a horse&
canon bone ::: --> The shank bone, or great bone above the fetlock, in the fore and hind legs of the horse and allied animals, corresponding to the middle metacarpal or metatarsal bone of most mammals. See Horse.
canoness ::: n. --> A woman who holds a canonry in a conventual chapter.
canonic ::: a. --> Alt. of Cannonical
canonical: Describes a representation of an object (e.g. an expression, a transformation) in a way that is preferred, perhaps unique or considered natural due to certain properties that it exhibits, even though there may be other equivalent representations.
canonical (Historically, "according to religious law") 1. "mathematics" A standard way of writing a formula. Two formulas such as 9 + x and x + 9 are said to be equivalent because they mean the same thing, but the second one is in "canonical form" because it is written in the usual way, with the highest power of x first. Usually there are fixed rules you can use to decide whether something is in canonical form. Things in canonical form are easier to compare. 2. "jargon" The usual or standard state or manner of something. The term acquired this meaning in computer-science culture largely through its prominence in {Alonzo Church}'s work in computation theory and {mathematical logic} (see {Knights of the Lambda-Calculus}). Compare {vanilla}. This word has an interesting history. Non-technical academics do not use the adjective "canonical" in any of the senses defined above with any regularity; they do however use the nouns "canon" and "canonicity" (not "canonicalness"* or "canonicality"*). The "canon" of a given author is the complete body of authentic works by that author (this usage is familiar to Sherlock Holmes fans as well as to literary scholars). "The canon" is the body of works in a given field (e.g. works of literature, or of art, or of music) deemed worthwhile for students to study and for scholars to investigate. The word "canon" derives ultimately from the Greek "kanon" (akin to the English "cane") referring to a reed. Reeds were used for measurement, and in Latin and later Greek the word "canon" meant a rule or a standard. The establishment of a canon of scriptures within Christianity was meant to define a standard or a rule for the religion. The above non-technical academic usages stem from this instance of a defined and accepted body of work. Alongside this usage was the promulgation of "canons" ("rules") for the government of the Catholic Church. The usages relating to religious law derive from this use of the Latin "canon". It may also be related to arabic "qanun" (law). Hackers invest this term with a playfulness that makes an ironic contrast with its historical meaning. A true story: One Bob Sjoberg, new at the {MIT AI Lab}, expressed some annoyance at the incessant use of jargon. Over his loud objections, {GLS} and {RMS} made a point of using as much of it as possible in his presence, and eventually it began to sink in. Finally, in one conversation, he used the word "canonical" in jargon-like fashion without thinking. Steele: "Aha! We've finally got you talking jargon too!" Stallman: "What did he say?" Steele: "Bob just used "canonical" in the canonical way." Of course, canonicality depends on context, but it is implicitly defined as the way *hackers* normally expect things to be. Thus, a hacker may claim with a straight face that "according to religious law" is *not* the canonical meaning of "canonical". (2002-02-06)
canonical ::: (Historically, according to religious law)1. (mathematics) A standard way of writing a formula. Two formulas such as 9 + x and x + 9 are said to be equivalent because they mean the same thing, use to decide whether something is in canonical form. Things in canonical form are easier to compare.2. (jargon) The usual or standard state or manner of something. The term acquired this meaning in computer-science culture largely through its prominence in Alonzo Church's work in computation theory and mathematical logic (see Knights of the Lambda-Calculus).Compare vanilla.This word has an interesting history. Non-technical academics do not use the adjective canonical in any of the senses defined above with any regularity; field (e.g. works of literature, or of art, or of music) deemed worthwhile for students to study and for scholars to investigate.The word canon derives ultimately from the Greek kanon (akin to the English cane) referring to a reed. Reeds were used for measurement, and in Latin and The usages relating to religious law derive from this use of the Latin canon. It may also be related to arabic qanun (law).Hackers invest this term with a playfulness that makes an ironic contrast with its historical meaning. A true story: One Bob Sjoberg, new at the MIT AI Lab, We've finally got you talking jargon too! Stallman: What did he say? Steele: Bob just used canonical in the canonical way.Of course, canonicality depends on context, but it is implicitly defined as the way *hackers* normally expect things to be. Thus, a hacker may claim with a straight face that according to religious law is *not* the canonical meaning of canonical.(2002-02-06)
canonically ::: adv. --> In a canonical manner; according to the canons.
canonical name (CNAME) A host's official name as opposed to an alias. The official name is the first hostname listed for its {Internet address} in the hostname database, {/etc/hosts} or the {Network Information Service} (NIS) map hosts.byaddr ("hosts" for short). A host with multiple network interfaces may have more than one Internet address, each with its own canonical name (and zero or more aliases). You can find a host's canonical name using {nslookup} if you say set querytype=CNAME and then type a hostname. (1994-11-29)
canonical name ::: (CNAME) A host's official name as opposed to an alias. The official name is the first hostname listed for its Internet address in the hostname database, for short). A host with multiple network interfaces may have more than one Internet address, each with its own canonical name (and zero or more aliases).You can find a host's canonical name using nslookup if you say set querytype=CNAME (1994-11-29)
canonicalness ::: n. --> The quality of being canonical; canonicity.
canonicals ::: n. pl. --> The dress prescribed by canon to be worn by a clergyman when officiating. Sometimes, any distinctive professional dress.
canonical status. The practice preempted no one from begetting ex nihilo and ad infinitum his
canonicate ::: n. --> The office of a canon; a canonry.
canonicity ::: n. --> The state or quality of being canonical; agreement with the canon.
canonicity "theory, jargon" The extent to which something is {canonical}. (1995-03-03)
canonicity ::: (theory, jargon) The extent to which something is canonical. (1995-03-03)
canonistic ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a canonist.
canonist ::: n. --> A professor of canon law; one skilled in the knowledge and practice of ecclesiastical law.
canonization ::: n. --> The final process or decree (following beatifacation) by which the name of a deceased person is placed in the catalogue (canon) of saints and commended to perpetual veneration and invocation.
The state of being canonized or sainted.
canonized ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Canonize
canonize ::: v. t. --> To declare (a deceased person) a saint; to put in the catalogue of saints; as, Thomas a Becket was canonized.
To glorify; to exalt to the highest honor.
To rate as inspired; to include in the canon.
canonizing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Canonize
canon ::: n. --> A law or rule.
A law, or rule of doctrine or discipline, enacted by a council and confirmed by the pope or the sovereign; a decision, regulation, code, or constitution made by ecclesiastical authority.
The collection of books received as genuine Holy Scriptures, called the sacred canon, or general rule of moral and religious duty, given by inspiration; the Bible; also, any one of the canonical Scriptures. See Canonical books, under Canonical, a.
canonry ::: n. pl. --> A benefice or prebend in a cathedral or collegiate church; a right to a place in chapter and to a portion of its revenues; the dignity or emoluments of a canon.
canonship ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Canopus in Egypt; as, the Canopic vases, used in embalming.
canon: The concept of an accepted list of great literature which constitutes the essential tradition of English
Beal, Samuel. (1825-1889). British translator of Chinese Buddhist works. A graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, he worked as a chaplain in the British navy and rector of various Anglican parishes, including Wark and Northumberland. In 1877, Beal was appointed as lecturer, and later professor, of Chinese at University College, London, where he specialized in Chinese Buddhist materials. Beal is perhaps best known for his translations of the travelogues of Chinese Buddhist pilgrims to India, including FAXIAN (c. 399/337-422), Song Yun (c. 516-523), and XUANZANG (600/602-664). Especially influential was his translation of Xuanzang's travelogue DA TANG XIYU JI, which he rendered as Si-Yu-Ki: Buddhist Records of the Western World (two volumes, 1884). Beal's anthology of Chinese Buddhist texts, A Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese (1872), includes translations of a wide range of important Buddhist texts. Beal also compiled one of the first Western-language catalogues of the Chinese Buddhist canon. Other books of his include The Romantic Legend of sAkya Buddha (1876) and Texts from the Buddhist Canon, commonly known as Dhammapada (1878).
beatification ::: n. --> The act of beatifying, or the state of being beatified; esp., in the R. C. Church, the act or process of ascertaining and declaring that a deceased person is one of "the blessed," or has attained the second degree of sanctity, -- usually a stage in the process of canonization.
beatify ::: v. t. --> To pronounce or regard as happy, or supremely blessed, or as conferring happiness.
To make happy; to bless with the completion of celestial enjoyment.
To ascertain and declare, by a public process and decree, that a deceased person is one of "the blessed" and is to be reverenced as such, though not canonized.
Because this second Koryo canon was renowned throughout East Asia for its scholarly accuracy, it was used as the basis of the modern Japanese TAISHo SHINSHu DAIZoKYo ("New Edition of the Buddhist Canon Compiled during the Taisho Reign Era"), edited by TAKAKUSU JUNJIRo and Watanabe Kaikyoku, published using movable-type printing between 1924 and 1935, which has become the standard reference source for East Asian Buddhist materials. See also DAZANGJING.
bestows sight. [Rf Drower, Canonical Prayerbook
bhAnaka. In Sanskrit and PAli, "reciter," especially referring to monks in a monastic community whose vocation was to memorize, recite, and transmit to the next generation one of the various collections (NIKAYA, AGAMA) of the scriptural canon (SuTRAPItAKA). See DHARMABHAnAKA.
BJC4000 A colour {bubble jet} printer from {Canon}. Released in September 1994. It features 720 x 360 dots per inch in black and white mode and 360 x 360 in colour. It has two cartridges: one for black and one for the three primary colours so it prints true black when printing in colour. (1994-11-29)
BJC4000 ::: A colour bubble jet printer from Canon. Released in September 1994. It features 720 x 360 dots per inch in black and white mode and 360 x 360 in colour. It has two cartridges: one for black and one for the three primary colours so it prints true black when printing in colour. (1994-11-29)
bka' 'gyur. (kangyur). In Tibetan, "translation of the word [of the Buddha]," one of the two traditional divisions of the Tibetan Buddhist canon, along with the BSTAN 'GYUR, the translation of the treatises (sASTRA). The bka' 'gyur comprises those SuTRAs and TANTRAs that were accepted by the tradition as spoken or directly inspired by the Buddha. The collection was redacted, primarily by the fourteenth-century polymath BU STON RIN CHEN GRUB, based upon earlier catalogues, lists, and collections of texts, particularly a major collection at SNAR THANG monastery. The four major editions of the bka' 'gyur presently in circulation (called the Co ne, SNAR THANG, SDE DGE, and Beijing editions after the places they were printed) go back to two earlier branches of the textual tradition, called Them spangs ma and 'Tshal pa in modern scholarship. The first xylographic print of the bka' 'gyur was produced in China in 1410; the Sde dge bka' 'gyur, edited by Si tu Gstug lag chos kyi 'byung gnas (1700-1774) was printed in the Tibetan kingdom of Sde dge (in present-day Sichuan province) in 1733. While the collection is traditionally said to include 108 volumes (an auspicious number), most versions contain somewhat fewer. The Snar thang edition holds ninety-two volumes, divided as follows: thirteen volumes of VINAYA, twenty-one volumes of PRAJNAPARAMITA, six volumes of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA, six volumes of the RATNAKutASuTRA, thirty volumes of other sutras, and twenty-two volumes of tantras. The BON tradition formulated its own bka' 'gyur, based on the Buddhist model, in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century.
Bodawpaya. (r. 1782-1819). Burmese king and sixth monarch of the Konbaung dynasty (1752-1885). Originally known as Badon Min, he was the fourth son of Alaungpaya (r. 1752-1760), founder of the dynasty, and ascended to the throne through usurpation. His official regnal title was Hsinpyumyashin, "Lord of Many White Elephants"; the name by which he is most commonly known, Bodawpaya, "Lord Grandfather," is a posthumous sobriquet. Immediately upon becoming king in 1782, he began construction of a new capital, AMARAPURA, and convened a conclave of abbots, known as the THUDHAMMA (P. Sudhamm) council, to oversee a reform of the Burmese SAMGHA. In 1784, he conquered the kingdom of Arakan and transported its colossal palladium, the MAHAMUNI image of the Buddha (see ARAKAN BUDDHA), to Amarapura and enshrined it in a temple to the north of the city. Later, in 1787 he dispatched a Buddhist mission to Arakan to bring the Arakanese THERAVADA saMgha into conformity with Thudhamma standards. In 1791 Buddhist missions were sent from the capital to forty-two cities around the realm, each equipped with Thudhamma handbooks and newly edited copies of the Buddhist canon (tipitaka; S. TRIPItAKA). The missions were charged with the threefold task of defrocking unworthy monks, disestablishing local monastic fraternities, and reordaining worthy monks from these local groups into a single empire-wide monastic order under Thudhamma control. In conjunction with this policy of saMgha unification, a standardized syllabus for monastic education was promulgated and monks and novices throughout the realm were thenceforth required to pass state-administered PAli examinations or to leave the order. That same year (1791), Bodawpaya retired from the palace, placing the daily affairs of the kingdom in the hands of his son, the crown prince. While retaining ultimate royal authority, he donned the robes of a mendicant and took up residence at Mingun, some fifteen miles north of Amarapura on the opposite bank of the Irrawaddy River. There, he oversaw for several years the construction of the great Mingun pagoda, which, if it had been completed, would have been the largest pagoda in the world. The labor force for this project, numbering some twenty thousand people, was conscripted from the vanquished kingdom of Arakan. Strict and austere in temperament, Bodawpaya was quick to suppress heresy and banned the use of intoxicants and the slaughter of cattle, on penalty of death. He was enamored of Hindu science and sent several missions to India to acquire Brahmanical treatises on medicine, alchemy, astrology, calendrics, and what he hoped would be original Indian recensions of Buddhist scriptures. His missions reached BODHGAYA and returned with models of the main shrine and maps of its environs, which were used to create a miniature replica of the site at Mingun. He appointed Indian brAhmanas to refine court punctilio and attempted to reform the Burmese calendar along Indian lines. The calendar reforms were rejected by monastic leaders and this rebuff appears to have caused the king to become increasingly critical of the monkhood. Toward the end of his reign, Bodawpaya defrocked the Thudhamma patriarch, declaring the dispensation (P. sAsana; S. sASANA) of Gotama (GAUTAMA) Buddha to be extinct and its saMgha therefore defunct. This attempt to disestablish the Burmese saMgha met with little success outside the capital and was later abandoned. Bodawpaya's military campaigns against Arakan and Assam extended the borders of the Burmese empire to the frontiers of the British East India Company. The cruelty of Bodawpaya's rule in Arakan created an influx of refugees into British territory, who were regularly pursued by Burmese troops. Although British diplomacy kept tensions with the Burmese kingdom under control throughout Bodawpaya's reign, the stage was set for eventual military conflict between the two powers and the subsequent British conquest of Burma in three wars during the nineteenth century.
bogo-sort "algorithm, humour" /boh"goh-sort"/ (Or "stupid-sort") The archetypical perversely awful {algorithm} (as opposed to {bubble sort}, which is merely the generic *bad* algorithm). Bogo-sort is equivalent to repeatedly throwing a deck of cards in the air, picking them up at random, and then testing whether they are in order. It serves as a sort of canonical example of awfulness. Looking at a program and seeing a dumb algorithm, one might say "Oh, I see, this program uses bogo-sort." Also known as "monkey sort" after the {Infinite Monkey Theorem}. Compare {brute force}, {Lasherism}. {An implementation (http://stdout.org/~adam/psort)}. [{Jargon File}] (2002-04-07)
breviary ::: n. --> An abridgment; a compend; an epitome; a brief account or summary.
A book containing the daily public or canonical prayers of the Roman Catholic or of the Greek Church for the seven canonical hours, namely, matins and lauds, the first, third, sixth, and ninth hours, vespers, and compline; -- distinguished from the missal.
brute force ::: (programming) A primitive programming style in which the programmer relies on the computer's processing power instead of using his own intelligence heavy-handed, tedious way, full of repetition and devoid of any elegance or useful abstraction (see also brute force and ignorance).The canonical example of a brute-force algorithm is associated with the travelling salesman problem (TSP), a classical NP-hard problem:Suppose a person is in, say, Boston, and wishes to drive to N other cities. In what order should the cities be visited in order to minimise the distance travelled?The brute-force method is to simply generate all possible routes and compare the distances; while guaranteed to work and simple to implement, this algorithm is consider, and for N = 1000 - well, see bignum). Sometimes, unfortunately, there is no better general solution than brute force. See also NP-complete.A more simple-minded example of brute-force programming is finding the smallest number in a large list by first using an existing program to sort the list in ascending order, and then picking the first number off the front.Whether brute-force programming should actually be considered stupid or not depends on the context; if the problem is not terribly big, the extra CPU time algorithm may imply more long-term complexity cost and bug-chasing than are justified by the speed improvement.When applied to cryptography, it is usually known as brute force attack.Ken Thompson, co-inventor of Unix, is reported to have uttered the epigram When in doubt, use brute force. He probably intended this as a ha ha only serious, cleverness is often a difficult one that requires both engineering savvy and delicate aesthetic judgment.[Jargon File] (1995-02-14)
brute force "programming" A primitive programming style in which the programmer relies on the computer's processing power instead of using his own intelligence to simplify the problem, often ignoring problems of scale and applying naive methods suited to small problems directly to large ones. The term can also be used in reference to programming style: brute-force programs are written in a heavy-handed, tedious way, full of repetition and devoid of any elegance or useful abstraction (see also {brute force and ignorance}). The {canonical} example of a brute-force algorithm is associated with the "{travelling salesman problem}" (TSP), a classical {NP-hard} problem: Suppose a person is in, say, Boston, and wishes to drive to N other cities. In what order should the cities be visited in order to minimise the distance travelled? The brute-force method is to simply generate all possible routes and compare the distances; while guaranteed to work and simple to implement, this algorithm is clearly very stupid in that it considers even obviously absurd routes (like going from Boston to Houston via San Francisco and New York, in that order). For very small N it works well, but it rapidly becomes absurdly inefficient when N increases (for N = 15, there are already 1,307,674,368,000 possible routes to consider, and for N = 1000 - well, see {bignum}). Sometimes, unfortunately, there is no better general solution than brute force. See also {NP-complete}. A more simple-minded example of brute-force programming is finding the smallest number in a large list by first using an existing program to sort the list in ascending order, and then picking the first number off the front. Whether brute-force programming should actually be considered stupid or not depends on the context; if the problem is not terribly big, the extra CPU time spent on a brute-force solution may cost less than the programmer time it would take to develop a more "intelligent" algorithm. Additionally, a more intelligent algorithm may imply more long-term complexity cost and bug-chasing than are justified by the speed improvement. When applied to {cryptography}, it is usually known as {brute force attack}. {Ken Thompson}, co-inventor of {Unix}, is reported to have uttered the epigram "When in doubt, use brute force". He probably intended this as a {ha ha only serious}, but the original {Unix} {kernel}'s preference for simple, robust and portable {algorithms} over {brittle} "smart" ones does seem to have been a significant factor in the success of that {operating system}. Like so many other tradeoffs in software design, the choice between brute force and complex, finely-tuned cleverness is often a difficult one that requires both engineering savvy and delicate aesthetic judgment. [{Jargon File}] (1995-02-14)
bstan 'gyur. (tengyur). In Tibetan, "the translated treatises," or sASTRA collection; referring to the second of the two major divisions of the Tibetan Buddhist canon, along with the BKA' 'GYUR, or "translated word [of the Buddha]." The bstan 'gyur collection contains approximately 225 volumes of commentarial literature and independent works, comprising more than 3,500 texts, most of which were written by Indian Buddhist exegetes. It exists in numerous editions, but was less frequently printed than its companion collection, the bka' 'gyur. Subjects covered include hymns of praise (stotra), SuTRA commentaries, works on PRAJNAPARAMITA, MADHYAMAKA and YOGACARA philosophies, ABHIDHARMA, and VINAYA, TANTRA commentaries, and technical treatises on logic, grammar, poetics, medicine, and alchemy.
bubble sort A sorting technique in which pairs of adjacent values in the list to be sorted are compared and interchanged if they are out of order; thus, list entries "bubble upward" in the list until they bump into one with a lower sort value. Because it is not very good relative to other methods and is the one typically stumbled on by {naive} and untutored programmers, hackers consider it the {canonical} example of a naive algorithm. The canonical example of a really *bad* algorithm is {bogo-sort}. A bubble sort might be used out of ignorance, but any use of bogo-sort could issue only from brain damage or willful perversity. [{Jargon File}]
Buddhacarita. (T. Sangs rgyas kyi spyod pa; C. Fosuoxing zan; J. Butsushogyosan; K. Pulsohaeng ch'an 佛所行讚). In Sanskrit, "Acts [viz., Life] of the Buddha"; the title of two verse compositions written in the first and second centuries CE that were intended to serve as a complete biography of the historical Buddha. The first was by the monk Sangharaksa (c. first century CE), whose work survives today only in its Chinese translation. The second version, which became hugely popular across Asia, was composed by the well-known Indian philosopher-poet AsVAGHOsA (c. second century), who was supposedly an opponent of Buddhism until he converted after losing a debate with the VAIBHAsIKA teacher PARsVA. Because of the early date of Asvaghosa's epic poem, it is of great importance for both the history of Indian Buddhism, as well as the study of classical Indian linguistics and thought. Asvaghosa's version of the Buddha's life begins with a description of his parents-King sUDDHODANA and Queen MAYA-and ends with the events that immediately follow his death, or PARINIRVAnA. His text is written in the style of high court poetry, or kAvya. In keeping with this style, the Buddhacarita is characterized by lengthy digressions and elaborate descriptions. For example, one entire canto is devoted to a detailed description of the sight of the women sleeping in the palace that precedes GAUTAMA's renunciation (pravrajya; see PRAVRAJITA). Canto XII provides an invaluable outline of the ancient Indian SAMkhya philosophical system. The Buddhacarita has served an important role within the Buddhist tradition itself, as the canonical works do not offer a systematic, chronological account of the Buddha's life from his birth through his death. Only the first half of the Buddhacarita is extant in its original Sanskrit; the remainder survives in Tibetan and Chinese translations.
Buddhadatta. (fl. c. fifth century CE). A prominent PAli scholar-monk from South India who is presumed by the tradition to have been a personal acquaintance of the preeminent PAli commentator BUDDHAGHOSA. Buddhadatta lived and wrote his several works at BhutamangalagAma monastery in the Cola country (Tamil Nadu) of South India, although it is also said he trained at the MAHAVIHARA in ANURADHAPURA in Sri Lanka. Buddhadatta is best known as the author of the ABHIDHAMMAVATARA, the oldest of the noncanonical PAli works on ABHIDHAMMA (S. ABHIDHARMA). The text is a primer of PAli abhidhamma, divided into twenty-four chapters called niddesa (S. nirdesa; "exposition"), which displays many affinities with Buddhaghosa's VISUDDHIMAGGA. Other works attributed to Buddhadatta include the Vinayavinicchaya, the Uttaravinicchaya, and the RupArupavibhAga. Some authorities also attribute to him the MadhuratthavilAsinī and the JinAlankAra.
Buddhaghosa. (S. Buddhaghosa) (fl. c. 370-450 CE). The preeminent PAli commentator, who translated into PAli the Sinhalese commentaries to the PAli canon and wrote the VISUDDHIMAGGA ("Path of Purification"), the definitive outline of THERAVADA doctrine.There are several conflicting accounts of Buddhaghosa's origins, none of which can be dated earlier than the thirteenth century. The Mon of Lower Burma claim him as a native son, although the best-known story, which is found in the CulAVAMSA (chapter 37), describes Buddhaghosa as an Indian brAhmana who grew up in the environs of the MAHABODHI temple in northern India. According to this account, his father served as a purohita (brAhmana priest) for King SangAma, while he himself became proficient in the Vedas and related Brahmanical sciences at an early age. One day, he was defeated in a debate by a Buddhist monk named Revata, whereupon he entered the Buddhist SAMGHA to learn more about the Buddha's teachings. He received his monk's name Buddhaghosa, which means "Voice of the Buddha," because of his sonorous voice and impressive rhetorical skills. Buddhaghosa took Revata as his teacher and began writing commentaries even while a student. Works written at this time included the NAnodaya and AttHASALINĪ. To deepen his understanding (or according to some versions of his story, as punishment for his intellectual pride), Buddhaghosa was sent to Sri Lanka to study the Sinhalese commentaries on the PAli Buddhist canon (P. tipitaka; S. TRIPItAKA). These commentaries were said to have been brought to Sri Lanka in the third century BCE, where they were translated from PAli into Sinhalese and subsequently preserved at the MAHAVIHARA monastery in the Sri Lankan capital of ANURADHAPURA. At the MahAvihAra, Buddhghosa studied under the guidance of the scholar-monk SanghapAla. Upon completing his studies, he wrote the great compendium of TheravAda teachings, Visuddhimagga, which summarizes the contents of the PAli tipitaka under the threefold heading of morality (sīla; S. sĪLA), meditative absorption (SAMADHI), and wisdom (paNNA; S. PRAJNA). Impressed with his expertise, the elders of the MahAvihAra allowed Buddhaghosa to translate the Sinhalese commentaries back into PAli, the canonical language of the TheravAda tipitaka. Attributed to Buddhaghosa are the VINAYA commentaries, SAMANTAPASADIKA and KankhAvitaranī; the commentaries to the SUTTAPItAKA, SUMAnGALAVILASINĪ, PAPANCASuDANĪ, SARATTHAPPAKASINĪ, and MANORATHAPuRAnĪ; also attributed to him is the PARAMATTHAJOTIKA (the commentary to the KHUDDAKAPAtHA and SUTTANIPATA). Buddhaghosa's commentaries on the ABHIDHAMMAPItAKA (see ABHIDHARMA) include the SAMMOHAVINODANĪ and PANCAPPAKARAnAttHAKATHA, along with the AtthasAlinī. Of these many works, Buddhaghosa is almost certainly author of the Visuddhimagga and translator of the commentaries to the four nikAyas, but the remainder are probably later attributions. Regardless of attribution, the body of work associated with Buddhaghosa was profoundly influential on the entire subsequent history of Buddhist scholasticism in the TheravAda traditions of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia.
buddhavacana. (T. sangs rgyas kyi bka'; C. foyu; J. butsugo; K. puro 佛語). In Sanskrit and PAli, "word of the Buddha"; those teachings accepted as having been either spoken by the Buddha or spoken with his sanction. Much traditional scholastic literature is devoted to the question of what does and does not qualify as the word of the Buddha. The SuTRAPItAKA and the VINAYAPItAKA of the Buddhist canon (TRIPItAKA), which are claimed to have been initially redacted at the first Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, FIRST), held in RAJAGṚHA soon after the Buddha's death, is considered by the tradition-along with the ABHIDHARMAPItAKA, which was added later-to be the authentic word of the Buddha; this judgment is made despite the fact that the canon included texts that were spoken, or elaborated upon, by his direct disciples (e.g., separate versions of the BHADDEKARATTASUTTA, which offer exegeses by various disciples of an enigmatic verse the Buddha had taught) or that included material that clearly postdated the Buddha's death (such as the MAHAPARINIRVAnASuTRA, which tells of the events leading up to, and immediately following, the Buddha's demise, or the NAradasutta, which refers to kings who lived long after the Buddha's time). Such material could still be considered buddhavacana, however, by resort to the four references to authority (MAHAPADEsA; CATURMAHAPADEsA). These four types of authority are found listed in various SuTRAs, including the eponymous PAli MahApadesasutta, and provide an explicit set of criteria through which to evaluate whether a teaching is the authentic buddhavacana. Teachings could be accepted as authentic if they were heard from four authorities: (1) the mouth of the Buddha himself; (2) a SAMGHA of wise elders; (3) a group of monks who were specialists in either the dharma (dharmadhara), vinaya (vinayadhara), or the proto-abhidharma (mAtṛkAdhara); or (4) a single monk who was widely learned in such specializations. The teaching should then be compared side by side with the authentic SuTRA and VINAYA; if found to be compatible with these two strata of the canon and not in contradiction with reality (DHARMATA), it would then be accepted as the buddhavacana and thus marked by the characteristics of the Buddha's words (buddhavacanalaksana). Because of this dispensation, the canons of all schools of Buddhism were never really closed, but could continue to be reinvigorated with new expressions of the Buddha's insights. In addition, completely new texts that purported to be from the mouths of the buddha(s) and/or BODHISATTVAs, such as found in the MAHAYANA or VAJRAYANA traditions, could also begin to circulate and be accepted as the authentic buddhavacana since they too conformed with the reality (dharmatA) that is great enlightenment (MAHABODHI). For example, a MahAyAna sutra, the AdhyAsayasaNcodanasutra, declares, "All which is well-spoken, Maitreya, is spoken by the Buddha." The sutra qualifies the meaning of "well spoken" (subhAsita), explaining that all inspired speech should be known to be the word of the Buddha if it is meaningful and not meaningless, if it is principled and not unprincipled, if it brings about the extinction and not the increase of the afflictions (KLEsA), and if it sets forth the qualities and benefits of NIRVAnA and not the qualities and benefits of SAMSARA. However, the authenticity of the MahAyAna sutras (and later the tantras) was a topic of great contention between the proponents of the MahAyAna and mainstream schools throughout the history of Indian Buddhism and beyond. Defenses of the MahAyAna as buddhavacana appear in the MahAyAna sutras themselves, with predictions of the terrible fates that will befall those who deny their authenticity; and arguments for the authenticity of the MahAyAna sutras were a stock element in writings by MahAyAna authors as early as NAGARJUNA and extending over the next millennium. Related, and probably earlier, terms for buddhavacana are the "teaching of the master" (S. sAstuḥ sAsanam) and the "dispensation of the Buddha" (buddhAnusAsanam). See also APOCRYPHA, DAZANGJING, GTER MA.
Bu ston chos 'byung. (Buton Chojung). A history of Buddhism in India and Tibet composed in 1322 by the Tibetan polymath BU STON RIN CHEN GRUB. The full name of the work is Bde bar gshegs pa'i bstan pa'i gsal byed chos kyi 'byung gnas gsung rab rin po che'i mdzod; it is available in English in the 1931-1932 translation of major parts by EUGÈNE OBERMILLER, done in collaboration with Mongolian monks educated in Tibetan monasteries. The text is in two parts: a history and an important general catalogue of Tibetan Buddhist canonical literature, one of the first of its kind. The first chapter of the Chos 'byung draws on the VYAKHYAYUKTI and is a general discussion of the exposition and study of Buddhist doctrine. The second chapter is a traditional history dealing with the spread of the doctrine in the human world, the three turnings of the wheel of DHARMA (DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANA), the councils (SAMGĪTI), the collection of the Buddhist doctrine into authoritative scriptures, the date of the Buddha, the followers who came after him, and the decline of the doctrine in India. The history of Buddhism in Tibet is divided into a section on the earlier (SNGA DAR) and later spread (PHYI DAR) of the doctrine. The third section is the general catalogue of Buddhist canonical literature in Tibetan translation. It is divided into SuTRAs and TANTRAs, then again into the words of the Buddha (bka') and authoritative treatises (bstan bcos). The words of the Buddha are subdivided based on the three turnings of the wheel of the dharma with a separate section on MAHAYANA sutras; treatises are divided into treatises explaining specific works of the Buddha (again subdivided based on the three turnings of the wheel of the dharma), general expositions, and miscellaneous treatises. Bu ston similarly divides the tantras into words of the Buddha and authoritative treatises and deals with both under the division into four "sets" (sde) of KRIYA, CARYA, and YOGA, and MAHAYOGA tantras. This latter division is again subdivided into method (UPAYA), wisdom (PRAJNA), and both (ubhaya) tantras. In MKHAS GRUB DGE LEGS DPAL BZANG's explanation (Rgyud sde spyi'i rnam bzhag), a work based on Bu ston's model, but incorporating the influential scheme of TSONG KHA PA, the divisions of mahAyoga are subsumed under the general category of ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA (highest yoga tantra). The tantric commentaries are organized following the same schema.
Bu ston rin chen grub. (Buton Rinchen Drup) (1290-1364). A Tibetan scholar, translator, and encyclopedist, renowned for systematizing the Tibetan Buddhist canon into its present form. According to Tibetan hagiographies, Bu ston was born into a lineage of tantric practitioners and considered a reincarnation of the Kashmiri master sAKYAsRĪBHADRA. Having mastered tantric ritual at an early age, he then received ordination at the age of eighteen. He trained under numerous teachers, studying all branches of Buddhist learning and eventually earned a reputation especially for his knowledge of the KALACAKRATANTRA. At age thirty, Bu ston accepted the abbacy of ZHWA LU monastery in central Tibet, where he authored and taught his most influential works; his entire corpus fills twenty-eight volumes in one edition. Bu ston's tenure at Zhwa lu was so influential that it provided the name for a new lineage, the so-called Zhwa lu pa (those of Zhwa lu) or the Bu lugs tshul (the tradition of Bu ston). In about 1332 Bu ston completed his famous history of Buddhism (BU STON CHOS 'BYUNG) and it was during this time that, based on previous canonical lists, he began to reformulate a classification system for organizing the Tibetan canon. Bu ston was not the only editor (among them were Dbu pa blo gsal and Bcom ldan rig pa'i ral gri), but he was the most important figure in the final redaction of the BKA' 'GYUR and BSTAN 'GYUR; he compared manuscripts from the two major manuscript collections at SNAR THANG and 'Tshal, added other works not found there, eliminated indigenous Tibetan works, decided on criteria for inclusion in the canon, standardized terminology, and decided on categories under which to include the many volumes. It is customary in modern works to include Bu ston in the SA SKYA sect and indeed his explanations of the ABHISAMAYALAMKARA and the ABHIDHARMASAMUCCAYA, among others, are considered authoritative by that sect. But his influence is not limited to that sect; for example, TSONG KHA PA's commentary on the perfection of wisdom (LEGS BSHAD GSER 'PHRENG), and his explanation of the different types of tantra (SNGAGS RIM CHEN MO) (both authoritative texts in the DGE LUGS sect) borrow heavily from Bu ston's work. Bu ston is one of several key figures in the history of Tibetan Buddhism to be referred to as kun mkhyen, or "all knowing."
but in occult and, generally, in noncanonical
CakkavattisīhanAdasutta. (C. Zhuanlun shengwang xiuxing jing; J. Tenrinjoo shugyokyo; K. Chollyun songwang suhaeng kyong 轉輪聖王修行經). In PAli, "Discourse on the Lion's Roar of the Wheel-Turning Emperor"; the twenty-sixth sutta of the DĪGHANIKAYA (a separate DHARMAGUPTAKA recension appears as the sixth SuTRA in the Chinese translation of the DĪRGHAGAMA and a separate SarvAstivAda recension as the seventieth sutra in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMAGAMA); the scripture is known especially for being the only sutta in the PAli canon that mentions the name of the Buddha's successor, Metteya (MAITREYA). Before a gathering of monks at the town of MAtulA in MAGADHA, the Buddha tells the story of a universal or wheel-turning monarch (cakkavattin; S. CAKRAVARTIN) named Dalhanemi, wherein he explains that righteousness and order are maintained in the world so long as kings observe their royal duties. Dalhanemi's successors, unfortunately, gradually abandoned their responsibilities, leading to immorality, strife, and the shortening of life spans from eighty thousand years to a mere ten; the sutta thus attributes the origins of evil in the world to the neglect of royal duty. Upon reaching this nadir, people finally recognize the error of their ways and begin anew to practice morality. The observance of morality leads to improved conditions, until eventually a universal monarch named Sankha appears, who will prepare the way for the advent of the future-Buddha Metteya (Maitreya).
cannon bone ::: --> See Canon Bone.
cannonical ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a canon; established by, or according to a , canon or canons.
Canon: (Gr. kanon, rule) A term reminiscent of the arts and crafts, sometimes applied, since Epicurus who replaced the ancient dialectics by a canonics (kanonike), to any norm or rule which the logical process obeys. Thus John Stuart Mill speaks of five experimental methods as being regulated by certain canons. Kant defined canon as the sum total of all principles a priori of the correct use of our powers of knowledge. See Baconian method, Mill's methods. -- K.F.L.
Canonical Correlation ::: A correlational technique used when there are two or more X and two or more Y. (Example: The correlation between (age and sex) and (income and life satisfaction)
Canonical Encoding Rules ::: (protocol, standard) (CER) A restricted variant of BER for producing unequivocal transfer syntax for data structures described by ASN.1.Whereas BER gives choices as to how data values may be encoded, CER and DER select just one encoding from those allowed by the basic encoding rules, eliminating all of the options. They are useful when the encodings must be preserved, e.g. in security exchanges.CER and DER differ in the set of restrictions that they place on the encoder. The basic difference between CER and DER is that DER uses definitive length form and CER uses indefinite length form.Documents: ITU-T X.690, ISO 8825-1.See also PER. (1998-05-19)
Canonical Encoding Rules "protocol, standard" (CER) A restricted variant of {BER} for producing unequivocal {transfer syntax} for data structures described by {ASN.1}. Whereas {BER} gives choices as to how data values may be encoded, CER and {DER} select just one encoding from those allowed by the basic encoding rules, eliminating all of the options. They are useful when the encodings must be preserved, e.g. in security exchanges. CER and {DER} differ in the set of restrictions that they place on the encoder. The basic difference between CER and {DER} is that {DER} uses definitive length form and CER uses indefinite length form. Documents: {ITU-T} X.690, {ISO} 8825-1. See also {PER}. (1998-05-19)
Canonical Prayerbook of the Mandaeans, The. (tr.) E. S.
Canonization ::: Process by which certain literary works of ancient Israel were determined to be divinely inspired and ultimately entered into the Hebrew Bible; the process began in the 7th century B.C.E and was concluded by the 2nd century C.E.
Canon ::: The collection of books of the Bible recognized as authoritative.
cationic cocktail "hardware" (Or "Downy cocktail") Diluted fabric softener sprayed on computer room carpets to prevent static electricity from being built up by feet shuffling on carpet. The {canonical} cationic cocktail is one part unscented liquid fabric softener (in the US, usually "Downy" brand) to five parts water. "Cationic" is the chemical term for the most common active ingredient in fabric softeners. The use of the term "cocktail" may be influenced by its use in other jargons, especially pharmacological and chemical, to denote a mixture which, like cationic cocktail, typically contains no alcohol and would be unwise to drink. (1998-04-04)
cationic cocktail ::: (hardware) (Or Downy cocktail) Diluted fabric softener sprayed on computer room carpets to prevent static electricity from being built up by feet shuffling on carpet.The canonical cationic cocktail is one part unscented liquid fabric softener (in the US, usually Downy brand) to five parts water.Cationic is the chemical term for the most common active ingredient in fabric softeners. The use of the term cocktail may be influenced by its use in other like cationic cocktail, typically contains no alcohol and would be unwise to drink. (1998-04-04)
cat ::: (tool) (From catenate) Unix's command which copies one or more entire files to the screen or some other output sink without pause.See also dd, BLT.Among Unix fans, cat is considered an excellent example of user-interface design, because it delivers the file contents without such verbosity as spacing because it does not require the files to consist of lines of text, but works with any sort of data.Among Unix haters, cat is considered the canonical example of *bad* user-interface design, because of its woefully unobvious name. It is far more often used to blast a file to standard output than to concatenate files. The name cat for the former operation is just as unintuitive as, say, LISP's cdr.Of such oppositions are holy wars made. (1994-11-29)
cat "tool" (From "catenate") {Unix}'s command which copies one or more entire files to the screen or some other output sink without pause. See also {dd}, {BLT}. Among {Unix} fans, cat is considered an excellent example of user-interface design, because it delivers the file contents without such verbosity as spacing or headers between the files (the {pr} command can be used to do this), and because it does not require the files to consist of lines of text, but works with any sort of data. Among Unix haters, cat is considered the {canonical} example of *bad* user-interface design, because of its woefully unobvious name. It is far more often used to {blast} a file to standard output than to concatenate files. The name "cat" for the former operation is just as unintuitive as, say, LISP's {cdr}. Of such oppositions are {holy wars} made. (1994-11-29)
CER {Canonical Encoding Rules}
Chajang. (慈藏) (d.u.; fl. c. 590-658/alt. 608-686). Korean VINAYA master (yulsa) of the Silla dynasty. Born into the royal "true bone" (chin'gol) class of the Silla aristocracy, Chajang lost his parents at an early age and was ordained at the monastery of Wonnyongsa. Chajang traveled to China in 636 and during his sojourn on the mainland made a pilgrimage to WUTAISHAN, where he had a vision of the BODHISATTVA MANJUsRĪ. Returning to Silla Korea in 643, he is said to have brought back a set of the Buddhist canon and packed the boat on which he returned with Buddhist banners, streamers, and other ritual items. He is also claimed to have returned with treasures he had received directly from MaNjusrī, including sAKYAMUNI Buddha's own gold-studded monk's robe (K. kasa; KAsAYA) wrapped in purple silk gauze, as well as the Buddha's skull bone and finger joint. Back in Silla, Chajang began looking for the place where MaNjusrī had told him the relics should be enshrined. After a long search, he finally found the spot in 646, where he constructed a "Diamond Precept Platform" (Kŭmgang kyedan) and enshrined one portion of the Buddha's relics. This platform was the origin of the important Korean monastery of T'ONGDOSA, which became the center of vinaya practice in Korea. Chajang is also said to have established SINHŬNGSA, WoLCHoNGSA, and HWANGNYONGSA and supervised the construction of the famous nine-story wooden pagoda at Hwangnyongsa, which was completed in 645. He was also appointed the state overseer of the SAMGHA (taegukt'ong), the top ecclesiastical office in the Silla Buddhist institution. Chajang was in charge of regulations concerning the conduct of monks and nuns all over the country, as well as overseeing at a state level the repair and maintenance of temples, the correct attention to the details of Buddhist ceremonial ritual, and the proper display of Buddhist religious images. His concern to improve the discipline and decorum of Korean monks led to his emphasis on vinaya study and practice, and he did much to encourage the study and dissemination of the vinaya in Korea, including writing commentaries to the SARVASTIVADA and DHARMAGUPTAKA vinayas. Chajang also instituted the UPOsADHA rite of having monks recite the PRATIMOKsA once every fortnight on full- and new-moon days. For his efforts, Chajang was revered by later generations as a teacher of the Dharmaguptaka vinaya (known in East Asia as the "Four-Part Vinaya"; see SIFEN LÜ) and the founder of the Korean analogue to the Chinese NANSHAN LÜ ZONG of DAOXUAN. In 650, at Chajang's suggestion, the Silla court adopted the Tang Chinese calendrical system, an important step in the Sinicization of the Korean monarchy. Various works attributed to Chajang include the Amit'a kyong ŭigi ("Notes on the AMITABHASuTRA"), Sabun yul kalma sagi ("Personal Notes on the Karman Section of the Four-Part Vinaya"), and Kwanhaeng pop ("Contemplative Practice Techniques"); none of his writings are extant.
Chanyuan zhuquanji duxu. (J. Zengen shosenshu tojo; K. Sonwon chejonjip toso 禪源諸詮集都序). In Chinese, lit., "Prolegomenon to the 'Collected Writings on the Source of Chan'"; composed by the CHAN and HUAYAN exegete GUIFENG ZONGMI sometime between 828 and 835; typically known by its abbreviated title of "Chan Prolegomenon" (C. Duxu; J. Tojo; K. Toso) and often referred to in English as the "Chan Preface." The text is a comprehensive overview of the Chan collection (Chanyuan zhuquanji), which is said to have been one hundred rolls (juan) in length, but is now entirely lost. Pei Xiu's (787?-860) own preface to Zongmi's "Prolegomenon" describes this collection as a massive anthology of essential prose and verse selections drawn from all the various Chan schools, which was so extensive that Pei says it deserves to be designated as a separate "Chan basket" (Chanzang; see PItAKA), complementing the other "three baskets" (TRIPItAKA) of the traditional Buddhist canon. In order to provide a comprehensive overview of this massive collection of Chan material, Zongmi seeks to assess in his "Prolegomenon" the teachings of eight representative schools of Tang-dynasty Chan: JINGZHONG ZONG, Northern school (BEI ZONG), BAOTANG ZONG, Nanshan Nianfo men Chan zong, the Shitou school of SHITOU XIQIAN (which would eventually evolve into the CAODONG and YUNMEN schools), NIUTOU ZONG, the Heze school of HEZEI SHENHUI, and the HONGZHOU ZONG (or "Jiangxi" as it is called in the text) of MAZU DAOYI. In an effort to bridge both the ever-growing gap between the contending Chan lineages and also their estranged relations with the doctrinal schools (C. jiao, see K. KYO) that derive from the written scriptures of Buddhism, Zongmi provides in his "Prolegomenon" an overarching hermeneutical framework (see JIAOXIANG PANSHI) through which to evaluate the teachings of both the Chan and doctrinal schools. This framework is built around a series of polarities, such as the three core teachings of the scriptures and the three axiomatic perspectives of Chan, the words of the Chan masters and the mind of the Buddha, sudden awakening and gradual practice, and original enlightenment (BENJUE) and nonenlightenment. In order to demonstrate the continuities between Chan and jiao, Zongmi proceeds to demonstrate how various doctrinal traditions align with the three core teachings of the scriptures and how the eight representative Chan schools correlate with the three axiomatic perspectives of Chan. He then correlates the three doctrinal teachings with the three Chan perspectives, thus demonstrating the fundamental correspondence between the Chan and the scriptures. The last polarity he examines, that between original enlightenment and nonenlightenment, also enables Zongmi to outline an etiology of both delusion and awakening, which provides the justification for a soteriological schema that requires an initial sudden awakening followed by continued gradual cultivation (DUNWU JIANXIU). Zongmi's luster faded in China during the Song dynasty, but his vision of the Chan tradition as outlined in his "Prolegomenon" was extremely influential in YONGMING YANSHOU's ZONGJING LU; indeed, it is now believed that the Zongjing lu subsumes a substantial part of Zongmi's lost "Chan Canon" (viz., his Chanyuan zhuquanji). Zongmi and his "Prolegomenon" found a particularly enthusiastic proponent in Korean Son in the person of POJO CHINUL, who placed Zongmi's preferred soteriological schema of sudden awakening followed by gradual cultivation at the core of Korean Son practice. Zongmi's works continued to be widely read in Korea after Chinul's time and, since the seventeenth century, Korean Buddhist seminaries (kangwon) included the "Prolegomenon" (K. Toso) in the SAJIP ("Fourfold Collection"), the four key texts of the Korean monastic curriculum.
chapter ::: n. --> A division of a book or treatise; as, Genesis has fifty chapters.
An assembly of monks, or of the prebends and other clergymen connected with a cathedral, conventual, or collegiate church, or of a diocese, usually presided over by the dean.
A community of canons or canonesses.
A bishop&
Chodang chip. (C. Zutang ji; J. Sodoshu 祖堂集). In Korean, "Patriarchs' Hall Collection"; one of the earliest "lamplight histories" (CHUANDENG LU), viz., lineage records, of the CHAN tradition, compiled in 952 by the monks Jing (K. Chong) (d.u.) and Yun/Jun (K. Un/Kyun) (d.u.) of the monastery of Chaojingsi in Quanzhou (in present-day Fujian provine). The Chodang chip builds on an earlier Chan history, the BAOLIN ZHUAN, on which it seems largely to have been based. According to one current theory, the original text by Jing and Yun was a short work in a single roll, which was expanded into ten rolls early in the Song dynasty and subsequently reissued in twenty rolls in the definitive 1245 Korean edition. The anthology includes a preface by the compilers' teacher and collaborator Zhaoqing Shendeng/Wendeng (884-972), also known as the Chan master Jingxiu, who also appends verse panegyrics after several of the biographies in the collection. The Chodang chip provides biographies of 253 figures, including the seven buddhas of the past (SAPTATATHAGATA), the first Indian patriarch (ZUSHI) MAHAKAsYAPA up to and including the sixth patriarch (LIUZU) of Chan in China, HUINENG, and monks belonging to the lineages of Huineng's putative disciples QINGYUAN XINGSI and NANYUE HUAIRANG. In contrast to the later JINGDE CHUANDENG LU, the Chodang chip mentions the lineage of Qingyuan before that of Nanyue. In addition to the biographical narrative, the entries also include short excerpts from the celebrated sayings and dialogues of the persons it covers. These are notable for including many features that derive from the local vernacular (what has sometimes been labeled "Medieval Vernacular Sinitic"); for this reason, the text has been the frequent object of study by Chinese historical linguists. The Chodang chip is also significant for containing the biographies of several Silla-dynasty monks who were founders of, or associated with, the Korean "Nine Mountains School of Son" (KUSAN SoNMUN), eight of whom had lineage ties to the Chinese HONGZHOU ZONG of Chan that derived from MAZU DAOYI; the anthology in fact offers the most extensive body of early material on the developing Korean Son tradition. This emphasis suggests that the two compilers may themselves have been expatriate Koreans training in China and/or that the extant anthology was substantially reedited in Korea. The Chodang chip was lost in China after the Northern Song dynasty and remained completely unknown subsequently to the Chinese Chan and Japanese Zen traditions. However, the 1245 Korean edition was included as a supplement to the Koryo Buddhist canon (KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG), which was completed in 1251 during the reign of the Koryo king Kojong (r. 1214-1259), and fortunately survived; this is the edition that was rediscovered in the 1930s at the Korean monastery of HAEINSA. Because the collection is extant only in a Koryo edition and because of the many Korean monks included in the collection, the Chodang chip is often cited in the scholarly literature by its Korean pronunciation.
Chos kyi 'byung gnas. (Chokyi Jungne) (1700-1774). Tibetan Buddhist scholar recognized as the eighth TAI SI TU incarnation, remembered for his wide learning and his editorial work on the Tibetan Buddhist canon. He traveled extensively throughout his life, maintaining strong relationships with the ruling elite of eastern Tibet and the Newar Buddhists of the Kathmandu Valley. Born in the eastern Tibetan region of SDE DGE, Chos kyi 'byung gnas was recognized as a reincarnate lama (SPRUL SKU) by the eighth ZHWA DMAR, from whom he received his first vows. He would go on to study with KAḤ THOG Rigs 'dzin Tshe dbang nor bu (1698-1755), from whom he learned about GZHAN STONG ("other emptiness"). At the age of twenty-one, he accompanied several important Bka' brgyud hierarchs, the Zhwa dmar and the twelfth KARMA PA, to Kathmandu, a journey that was to have a profound impact on the young Si tu's life. He returned to eastern Tibet in 1724, where he was received favorably by the king of Sde dge, Bstan pa tshe ring (Tenpa Tsering, 1678-1738). Under the latter's patronage, Chos kyi 'byung gnas founded DPAL SPUNGS monastery in 1727, which became the new seat for the Si tu lineage (they are sometimes called the Dpal spungs si tu). Between the years 1731 and 1733, he undertook the monumental task of editing and correcting a new redaction of the BKA' 'GYUR section of the Tibetan Buddhist canon, to be published at the printing house of Sde dge. Although in his day Tibetan knowledge of Indian linguistic traditions had waned, Chos kyi 'byung gnas devoted much of his later life to the study of Sanskrit grammar and literature, which he had first studied with Newar panditas during his time in Kathmandu. He sought out new Sanskrit manuscripts in order to establish more precise translations of Sanskrit works already translated in the Tibetan canon; he is esteemed in Tibet for his knowledge of Sanskrit grammar. In addition to his prolific scholarly work, Chos kyi 'byung gnas was an accomplished painter as well as a gifted physician, much sought after by the aristocracy of eastern Tibet. In 1748, he visited Nepal once again, where he translated the SvayambhupurAna, the legends concerning the SVAYAMBHu STuPA, into Tibetan. He was received amicably by the rulers JayaprakAsamalla (1736-1768) of Kathmandu, Ranajitamalla (1722-1769) of what is now Bhaktapur, and PṛthvīnArAyana sAha, who would unify the Kathmandu Valley under Gorkhali rule several decades later. Chos kyi 'byung gnas' collected writings cover a vast range of subjects including lengthy and detailed diaries and an important history of the KARMA BKA' BRGYUD sect coauthored by his disciple Be lo Tshe dbang kun khyab (Belo Tsewang Kunkyap, b. 1718). He is retrospectively identified as an originator of what would become known as Khams RIS MED movement, which gained momentum in early nineteenth century Sde dge.
Choson Pulgyo t'ongsa. (朝鮮佛教通史). In Korean, "A Comprehensive History of Choson Buddhism"; compiled by the Buddhist historian Yi Nŭnghwa (1868-1943). Yi's Choson Pulgyo t'ongsa is the first modern attempt to write a comprehensive history of Korean (or Choson as it was then known) Buddhism. The text was first published by Sinmun'gwan in 1918. The first volume narrates the history of Korean Buddhism from its inception during the Three Kingdoms period up until the time of the Japanese occupation. Information on the temples and monasteries established by Koreans and a report on the current number of monks and nuns are also appended to end of this volume. The second volume narrates the history of Buddhism in India after the Buddha's death. The compilation of the canon (TRIPItAKA; DAZANGJING) and the formation of the various schools and traditions are provided in this volume. The third and final volume provides a commentary on some of the more important events described in volume one. Yi relied heavily on biographies of eminent monks and stele inscriptions. Yi's text is still considered an important source for studying the history of Korean Buddhism.
chronicle ::: n. --> An historical register or account of facts or events disposed in the order of time.
A narrative of events; a history; a record.
The two canonical books of the Old Testament in which immediately follow 2 Kings. ::: v. t.
cittamAtra. (T. sems tsam; C. weixin; J. yuishin; K. yusim 唯心). In Sanskrit, lit. "mind-only"; a term used in the LAnKAVATARASuTRA to describe the notion that the external world of the senses does not exist independently of the mind and that all phenomena are mere projections of consciousness. Because this doctrine is espoused by the YOGACARA, that school is sometimes referred to as cittamAtra. The doctrine is closely associated with the eight consciousness (VIJNANA) theory set forth in the "ViniscayasaMgrahanĪ" of the YOGACARABHuMIsASTRA and in the MAHAYANASAMGRAHA and ABHIDHARMASAMUCCAYA that are supplemental to that work. In East Asia, these texts are associated with the name of the MahAyAna writer ASAnGA and his quasi-mythological teacher MAITREYA or MAITREYANATHA. According to this theory, there are not only six consciousnesses (vijNAna), viz., the visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile consciousnesses, and the mental consciousness (manovijNAna) well known to canonical Buddhism; there are two further consciousnesses, called the afflicted mind (KLIstAMANAS) and the storehouse consciousness (ALAYAVIJNANA). The AlayavijNAna is also known as the sarvabīja, or the consciousness that carries all the seeds or potentialities (BĪJA). The CittamAtra school holds that mental states leave a residual impression that is carried by the AlayavijNAna. These impressions (VASANA) literally "perfume" or "suffuse" this underlying consciousness, where they lie dormant as seeds. Among the many categories of seeds, two are principal: the residual impressions giving rise to a new form of life (VIPAKA) in the six realms of existence, and the residual impression that is basic ignorance causing all ordinary mental states to appear in a distorted way, i.e., bifurcated into subject and object. Vasubandhu, who is said to have been converted to the CittamAtra doctrine by his brother Asanga, argues in his TRIMsIKA (TriMsikAvijNaptimAtratA[siddhi]kArikA), the famous "Thirty Verses on Consciousness-Only," that there could not possibly be an atomic basis for objects known by mind. In the absence of an atomic basis, only the ripening of the residual impressions left on the AlayavijNAna can account for the variety of mental states and experience, and only this doctrine of mind-only can properly account for the purification of mind and the final attainment of BODHI. The object and subject share the same mental nature because they both arise from the residual impressions left on the AlayavijNAna, hence the doctrine of cittamAtra, mind-only.
cittasaMprayuktasaMskAra. (T. sems dang mtshungs ldan gyi 'du byed; C. xin xiangying fa; J. shinsoobo; K. sim sangŭng pop 心相應法). In Sanskrit, "conditioned forces associated with thought"; an ABHIDHARMA term synonymous with the mental concomitants (CAITTA), the dharmas that in various combinations accompany mind or thought (CITTA). The ABHIDHARMAKOsABHAsYA, for example, explains that mind and its concomitants always appear in conjunction with one another and cannot be independently generated. These factors are "associated" because of five equalities that they share with mind, i.e., equality as to (1) support (AsRAYA), in this context, meaning the six sensory bases; (2) object (ALAMBANA), viz., the six sensory objects; (3) aspect (AKARA), the aspects of sensory cognition; (4) time (kAla), because they occur simultaneously; and (5) the number of their substance (DRAVYA), because mind and its concomitants are in a one-to-one association. The different schools of ABHIDHARMA enumerate various lists of such forces. The VAIBHAsIKA school of SARVASTIVADA abhidharma lists forty-six cittasamprayuktasaMskAras, while the mature YOGACARA system of MAHAYANA scholasticism gives a total of fifty-one, listed in six categories. The VaibhAsika and YogAcAra schools also posited a contrasting category of "conditioned forces dissociated from thought" (CITTAVIPRAYUKTASAMSKARA), which served to account for specific types of complex moral and mental processes (such as where both physicality and mentality were temporarily suspended in higher meditative absorptions), and anomalous doctrinal problems. (The PAli equivalent cittasaMpayuttasankhAra is attested, but only rarely, in PAli commentarial literature; it does not appear in canonical ABHIDHAMMA texts. This doctrinal category therefore has no significance in the THERAVADA abhidhamma.) For more detailed discussion, see CAITTA; and for the complete lists, see SEVENTY-FIVE DHARMAS OF THE SARVASTIVADA SCHOOL and ONE-HUNDRED DHARMAS OF THE YOGACARA SCHOOL in the List of Lists.
cittaviprayuktasaMskAra. (T. sems dang ldan pa ma yin pa'i 'du byed; C. xin buxiangying fa; J. shinfusoobo; K. sim pulsangŭng pop 心不相應法). In Sanskrit, "conditioned forces dissociated from thought"; forces that are associated with neither materiality (RuPA) nor mentality (CITTA) and thus are listed in a separate category of factors (DHARMA) in ABHIDHARMA materials associated with the SARVASTIVADA school and in the hundred-dharmas (BAIFA) list of the YOGACARA school. These conditioned forces were posited to account for complex moral and mental processes (such as the states of mind associated with the higher spheres of meditation, where both physicality and mentality were temporarily suspended), and anomalous doctrinal problems (such as how speech was able to convey meaning or how group identity was established). A standard listing found in the DHARMASKANDHA and PRAKARAnAPADA, two texts of the SarvAstivAda abhidharma canon, includes sixteen dissociated forces: (1) possession (PRAPTI); (2) equipoise of nonperception (ASAMJNASAMAPATTI); (3) equipoise of cessation (NIRODHASAMAPATTI); (4) nonperception (AsaMjNika); (5) vitality (JĪVITA); (6) homogeneity (sabhAgatA); (7) acquisition the corporeal basis (*AsrayapratilAbha); (8) acquisition of the given entity (*vastuprApti); (9) acquisition of the sense spheres (*AyatanaprApti); the four conditioned characteristics (SAMSKṚTALAKsAnA), viz., (10) origination, or birth (JATI); (11) continuance, or maturation (STHITI); (12) senescence, or decay (JARA); and (13) desinence, or death (anityatA); (14) name set (nAmakAya); (15) phrase set (padakAya); 16) syllable set (vyaNjanakAya). The later treatise ABHIDHARMAKOsABHAsYA includes only fourteen, dropping numbers 7, 8, 9 and adding nonpossession (APRAPTI). These listings, however, constituted only the most generic and comprehensive types employed by the VAIBHAsIKA school of SarvAstivAda abhidharma; the cittaviprayuktasaMskAras thus constituted an open category, and new forces could be posited as the need arose in order to resolve thorny doctrinal issues. The four conditioned characteristics (saMskṛtalaksana) are a good example of why the cittaviprayuktasaMskAra category was so useful in abhidharma-type analysis. In the SarvAstivAda treatment of causality, these four characteristics were forcesthat exerted real power over compounded objects, escorting an object along from origination, to continuance, to senescence or decay, until the force "desinence," or death finally extinguishes it; this rather tortured explanation was necessary in order to explain how factors that the school presumed continued to exist in all three time periods (TRIKALA) of past, present, and future nevertheless still appeared to undergo change. The YOGACARA school subsequently includes twenty-four cittaviprayuktasaMskAras in its list of one hundred dharmas (see BAIFA), including such elements as the state of an ordinary being (pṛthagjanatva), time (KALA), place (desa), and number (saMkhyA).
classicalism ::: n. --> A classical idiom, style, or expression; a classicism.
Adherence to what are supposed or assumed to be the classical canons of art.
classicalist ::: n. --> One who adheres to what he thinks the classical canons of art.
clementine ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Clement, esp. to St. Clement of Rome and the spurious homilies attributed to him, or to Pope Clement V. and his compilations of canon law.
CNAME "networking" The {canonical name} query type for {Domain Name System}. This query asks a DNS {server} for a {host}'s official {hostname}. (1994-12-22)
CNAME ::: (networking) The canonical name query type for Domain Name System. This query asks a DNS server for a host's official hostname. (1994-12-22)
codex ::: n. --> A book; a manuscript.
A collection or digest of laws; a code.
An ancient manuscript of the Sacred Scriptures, or any part of them, particularly the New Testament.
A collection of canons.
coefficient of X ::: Hackish speech makes heavy use of pseudo-mathematical metaphors. Four particularly important ones involve the terms coefficient, factor, index, information about the way the speaker mentally models whatever he or she is describing.Foo factor and foo quotient tend to describe something for which the issue is one of presence or absence. The canonical example is fudge factor. It's not won except for the luck factor, but using *quotient* emphasises that it was bad luck overpowering good luck (or someone else's good luck overpowering your own).Foo index and coefficient of foo both tend to imply that foo is, if not strictly measurable, at least something that can be larger or smaller. Thus, you and thus say coefficient of bogosity, whereas others might feel it is a combination of factors and thus say bogosity index.[Jargon File] (1994-11-29)
complin ::: n. --> The last division of the Roman Catholic breviary; the seventh and last of the canonical hours of the Western church; the last prayer of the day, to be said after sunset.
condition out ::: To prevent a section of code from being compiled by surrounding it with a conditional compilation directive whose condition is always false. The canonical examples of these directives are
control-C ::: (character) (Or ETX, End of Text) The ASCII character with code 3.Control-C is the interrupt character used on many operating systems, including Unix and MS-DOS to abort a running program.Among BSD Unix hackers, the canonical humorous response to Give me a break! is Control C.[Jargon File] (1995-03-16)
Council, 1st. The term translated as "council" is SAMGĪTI, literally "recitation," the word used to describe the communal chanting of the Buddha's teaching. The term suggests that the purpose of the meeting was to recite the TRIPItAKA in order to codify the canon and remove any discrepancies concerning what was and was not to be included. The first Buddhist council is said to have been held in a cave at RAJAGṚHA shortly after the Buddha's passage into PARINIRVAnA, although its historicity has been questioned by modern scholars. There are numerous accounts of the first council and much scholarship has been devoted to their analysis. What follows draws on a number of sources to provide a general description. The accounts agree that, in the SAMGHA, there was an elderly monk named SUBHADRA, a former barber who had entered the order late in life. He always carried a certain animus against the Buddha because when Subhadra was a layman, the Buddha supposedly refused to accept a meal that he had prepared for him. After the Buddha's death, Subhadra told the distraught monks that they should instead rejoice because they could now do as they pleased, without the Buddha telling them what they could and could not do. MAHAKAsYAPA overheard this remark and was so alarmed by it that he thought it prudent to convene a meeting of five hundred ARHATs to codify and recite the rules of discipline (VINAYA) and the discourses (SuTRA) of the Buddha before they became corrupted. With the patronage of King AJATAsATRU, a meeting was called. At least one arhat, GAVAMPATI, declined to participate, deciding instead to pass into nirvAna before the council began. This led to an agreement that no one else would pass into nirvAna until after the conclusion of the council. At the time that the council was announced, ANANDA, the Buddha's personal attendant and therefore the person who had heard the most discourses of the Buddha, was not yet an arhat and would have been prevented from participating. However, on the night before the council, he fortuitously finished his practice and attained the status of arhat. At the council, MahAkAsyapa presided. He interrogated UPALI about the rules of discipline (PRATIMOKsA) of both BHIKsUs and BHIKsUnĪs. He then questioned Ananda about each of the discourses the Buddha had delivered over the course of his life, asking in each case where and on whose account the discourse had been given. In this way, the VINAYAPItAKA and the SuTRAPItAKA were established. (In many accounts, the ABHIDHARMAPItAKA is not mentioned, but in others it is said the abhidharmapitaka was recited by MahAkAsyapa or by Ananda.) Because of his extraordinary powers of memory, Ananda was said to be able to repeat sixty thousand words of the Buddha without omitting a syllable and recite fifteen thousand of his stanzas. It was at the time of his recitation that Ananda informed the council that prior to his passing the Buddha told him that after his death, the saMgha could disregard the minor rules of conduct. Since he had neglected to ask the Buddha what the minor rules were, however, it was decided that all the rules would be maintained. Ananda was then chastised for (1) not asking what the minor rules were, (2) stepping on the Buddha's robe while he was sewing it, (3) allowing the tears of women to fall on the Buddha's corpse, (4) not asking the Buddha to live for an eon (KALPA) or until the end of the eon although the Buddha strongly hinted that he could do so (see CAPALACAITYA), and (5) urging the Buddha to allow women to enter the order. (There are several versions of this list, with some including among the infractions that Ananda allowed women to see the Buddha's naked body.) The entire vinayapitaka and sutrapitaka was then recited, which is said to have required seven months. According to several accounts, after the recitation had concluded, a group of five hundred monks returned from the south, led by a monk named PurAna. When he was asked to approve of the dharma and vinaya that had been codified by the council, he declined, saying that he preferred to remember and retain what he had heard directly from the mouth of the Buddha rather than what had been chanted by the elders. PurAna also disputed eight points of the vinaya concerning the proper storage and consumption of food. This incident, whether or not it has any historical basis, suggests that disagreements about the contents of the Buddha's teaching began to arise shortly after his death.
Council, 4th. Two different events are referred to as the fourth council. According to the account of the Chinese pilgrim XUANZANG, four hundred years after the Buddha's death, King KANIsKA called an assembly of five hundred ARHATs, either in GANDHARA or KASHMIR, to compile the canon once again. Under the direction of the monk VASUMITRA, the SARVASTIVADA monks compiled the VINAYA and composed the ABHIDHARMAMAHAVIBHAsA. This council is not now considered to have been a historical event and the MahAvibhAsA was likely composed long after the reign of Kaniska. The second event that is known as the fourth council took place in Sri Lanka under King VAttAGAMAnI ABHAYA in 25 BCE. Up until this time the canon (P. tipitaka, S. TRIPItAKA) had been maintained entirely orally, with different monastic families of monks responsible for its recitation (see DHARMABHAnAKA). Fearing that famine and social discord might lead to the death of those monks and hence the loss of the canon, the king convened a council at the MAHAVIHARA in the capital of ANURADHAPURA, where the canon was recited by five hundred monks and then inscribed onto palm leaves. According to tradition this was the first time that the canon was committed to writing. See also SAMGĪTI.
Council, 5th. What Burmese Buddhism regards as the fifth council was convened in 1868, when King MINDON MIN summoned 2,400 learned monks from throughout the kingdom to Mandalay to revise and recite the PAli tipitaka. The recitation of the canon lasted over a period of seven months. In 1871, the revised Burmese canon was inscribed in Burmese script on 729 stone slabs that were erected, each in its own shrine, in concentric rings around the massive Kuthodaw Pagoda (Pagoda of Great Merit). The entire complex occupies fourteen acres and is situated to the northeast of the fortified city at the base of Mandalay Hill. Nearby is the Sandamuni Pagoda, constructed along a similar plan; it enshrines 1,171 slabs on which are inscribed the PAli commentaries.
Council, 6th. What the THERAVADA school calls the sixth council was held in Rangoon from 1954 to 1956, commemorating the 2,500th anniversary of the Buddha's passage into PARINIRVAnA. The convocation was sponsored by the Burmese government under Prime Minister U Nu. A special cave was constructed for the purpose, since the first council was also said to have been held in a cave. At this event, attended by some two thousand five hundred monks from eight TheravAda countries, the PAli canon was edited and recited, with discrepancies among versions in the various Southeast Asian scripts noted and corrected. MAHASI SAYADAW was appointed to the dual position of pucchaka (questioner) and osana (editor). See also SAMGĪTI.
Csoma de Kőros, Alexander. (1784-1842). Early European scholar of Tibet and its Buddhist culture. Csoma de Kőros was born in Transylvania, to a family descended from Magyar nobility. He developed an early interest in the origins of his Hungarian ancestry, which led him to dedicate himself to learning more about the history of the Hungarian language. Through his studies in Arabic, he eventually came to the conclusion that Hungarian had developed in the Tarim Basin of modern Xinjiang province in China, and so in 1819 he set out on foot for Yarkand in Turkestan. He crossed the mountains into Ladakh and reached KASHMIR in 1822. There, he spent a year travelling between Srinagar and Leh (the capital of Ladakh) in the hopes of finding a caravan to join in order to make his way to Yarkand. On one of these journeys, Csoma de Kőros met William Moorcroft, a veterinarian working for the British government. Moorcroft suggested that Csoma de Kőros' research might benefit more from traveling to LHA SA to learn about Tibetan language and literature. Although he never reached Lha sa, Csoma de Kőros spent nine years in monasteries in Ladakh and Zanskar learning Tibetan and studying Tibetan Buddhist texts. He devoted much of his research time to mastering Buddhist terminology. In 1830, he left for Calcutta, where he would live for eleven years. In Calcutta, Csoma de Kőros worked for the British East Indian Company through the Asiatic Society cataloguing Tibetan texts that were sent by BRIAN HOUGHTON HODGSON (1800-1894). He also published the first Tibetan grammar and dictionary in English, a translation of a ninth-century catalogue of Buddhist terminology, the MAHAVYUTPATTI, and a number of scholarly articles on the Tibetan canon. He died of malaria in Darjeeling (1842) as he continued his search for the ancestral homeland of the Hungarian people. Although Csoma de Kőros was not a Buddhist, he was declared a BODHISATTVA by Taisho University in Tokyo in 1933 and is often described as the "Father of Tibetology."
Cudapanthaka. (P. Culapanthaka/Cullapantha; T. Lam phran bstan; C. Zhutubantuojia; J. Chudahantaka; K. Chudobant'akka 注荼半托迦). An eminent ARHAT declared in PAli sources as foremost among the Buddha's disciples in his ability to create mind-made bodies (MANOMAYAKAYA) and to manipulate mind (cittavivatta). Cudapanthaka was the younger of two brothers born to a merchant's daughter from RAJAGṚHA who had eloped with a slave. Each time she became pregnant, she wanted to return home to give birth to her children, but both were born during her journey home. For this reason, the brothers were named "Greater" Roadside (MahApanthaka; see PANTHAKA) and "Lesser" Roadside. The boys were eventually taken to RAjagṛha and raised by their grandparents, who were devoted to the Buddha. The elder brother Panthaka often accompanied his grandfather to listen to the Buddha's sermons and was inspired to be ordained. He proved to be an able monk, skilled in doctrine, and eventually attained arhatship. He later ordained his younger brother Cudapanthaka but was gravely disappointed in his brother's inability to memorize even a single verse of the dharma. Panthaka was so disappointed that he advised his brother to leave the order, much to the latter's distress. Once, the Buddha's physician JĪVAKA invited the Buddha and his monks to a morning meal. Panthaka gathered the monks together on the appointed day to attend the meal but intentionally omitted Cudapanthaka. So hurt was Cudapanthaka by his brother's contempt that he decided to return to lay life. The Buddha, knowing his mental state, comforted the young monk and taught him a simple exercise: he instructed him to sit facing east and, while repeating the phrase "rajoharanaM" ("cleaning off the dirt"), continue to wipe his face with a clean cloth. As Cudapanthaka noticed the cloth getting dirty from wiping off his sweat, he gained insight into the reality of impermanence (ANITYA) and immediately attained arhatship and was equipped with the four analytical knowledges (PRATISAMVID), including knowledge of the entire canon (TRIPItAKA). (According to other versions of the story, he came to a similar realization through sweeping.) Thereafter Cudapanthaka became renowned for his vast learning, as well as for his supranormal powers. He was a master of meditative concentration (SAMADHI) and of the subtle-materiality absorptions (RuPAVACARADHYANA). He could simultaneously create a thousand unique mind-made bodies (MANOMAYAKAYA), while other meditative specialists in the order could at best produce only two or three. ¶ Cudapanthaka is also traditionally listed as the last of the sixteen arhat elders (sOdAsASTHAVIRA), who were charged by the Buddha with protecting his dispensation until the advent of the next buddha, MAITREYA. In CHANYUE GUANXIU's standard Chinese depiction, Cudapanthaka sits among withered trees, his left hand raised with fingers slightly bent, and his right hand resting on his right thigh, holding a fan.
Culaniddesa. In PAli, "Shorter Exposition," second part of the Niddesa ("Exposition"), an early commentarial work on the SUTTANIPATA included in the PAli SUTTAPItAKA as the eleventh book of the KHUDDAKANIKAYA; also written as Cullaniddesa. Attributed by tradition to the Buddha's chief disciple, SAriputta (S. sARIPUTRA), the Niddesa is divided into two sections: the MAHANIDDESA ("Longer Exposition"), and Culaniddesa. The MahAniddesa comments on the sixteen suttas (S. SuTRA) of the AttHAKAVAGGA chapter of the SuttanipAta, while the Culaniddesa comments on the sixteen suttas of the ParAyanavagga chapter and on the KhaggavisAnasutta (see KHAdGAVIsAnA). The MahAniddesa and Culaniddesa do not comment on any of the remaining contents of the SuttanipAta, a feature that has suggested to historians that at the time of their composition the Atthakavagga and ParAyanavagga were autonomous anthologies not yet incorporated into the SuttanipAta, and that the KhaggavisAnasutta likewise circulated independently. The exegesis given to the SuttanipAta by the MahA- and Culaniddesa displays the influence of the PAli ABHIDHAMMA (S. ABHIDHARMA) and passages from it are frequently quoted in the VISUDDHIMAGGA. Both parts of the Niddesa are formulaic in structure, a feature that appears to have been designed as a pedagogical aid to facilitate memorization. In Western scholarship, there has long been a debate regarding the dates of these two compositions, with some scholars dating them as early as the third century BCE, others to as late as the second century CE. The MahA- and Culaniddesa are the only commentarial texts besides the SUTTAVIBHAnGA of the VINAYAPItAKA to be included in the Sri Lankan and Thai recensions of the PAli canon. In contrast, the Burmese canon includes two additional early commentaries, the NETTIPAKARAnA and PEtAKOPADESA, as books sixteen and seventeen in its version of the KhuddakanikAya.
Dasheng fayuan yilin zhang. (J. Daijo hoon girinjo; K. Taesŭng pobwon ŭirim chang 大乗法苑義林章). In Chinese, "(Edited) Chapters on the Forest of Meaning of the Dharma-Garden of MAHĀYĀNA"; composed by the eminent Chinese monk KUIJI. This treatise consists of twenty-nine chapters in seven rolls, but a thirty-three chapter edition is known to have been transmitted to Japan in the second half of the twelfth century. Each chapter is concerned with an important doctrinal matter related to the YOGĀCĀRABHuMIsĀSTRA. Some chapters, for instance, discuss the various canons (PItAKA), two truths (SATYADVAYA), five faculties (INDRIYA), the sixty-two views (DṚstI), eight liberations (AstAVIMOKsA), and buddha-lands (BUDDHAKsETRA), to name but a few. Because of its comprehensive doctrinal coverage, the Dasheng fayuan yilin zhang has served as an invaluable source of information on early YOGĀCĀRA thought in China.
Dasuttarasutta. (S. Dasottarasutra; C. Shishang jing; J. Jujokyo; K. Sipsang kyong 十上經). In Pāli, "Discourse on Expanding Decades," or "Tenfold Series"; the thirty-fourth, and last, sutta of the DĪGHANIKĀYA. Several fragments of the Sanskrit recension of the text, the Dasottarasutra, were discovered in TURFAN and these appear to represent the same SARVĀSTIVĀDA recension that was translated in Chinese by AN SHIGAO (Chang ahan shibaofa jing) sometime between 148 and 170 CE; this was one of the earliest Chinese renderings of a Buddhist scripture. A DHARMAGUPTAKA recension also appears as the tenth sutra in the Chinese translation of the DĪRGHĀGAMA. According to this Pāli version, this scripture was preached by Sāriputta (sĀRIPUTRA) in Campā to a congregation of five hundred monks. For the edification of his listeners, and so that they might more easily be liberated and attain nibbāna (NIRVĀnA), Sāriputta presents a systematic outline of the dhamma (DHARMA), using a schema of numerical classification that organizes the doctrine into groups ranging from a single factor (e.g., "the one thing to be developed," viz., mindfulness of the body) up to groups of ten (e.g., the ten wholesome ways of action). This sutta thus provides one of the first canonical recensions of the "matrices" (P. mātikā; S. MĀTṚKĀ) that are thought to mark the incipiency of abhidhamma (S. ABHIDHARMA) exegesis, and its exegetical style is closely connected to that used in the SAnGĪTISUTTA (S. SaMgītisutra); several of its exegetical categories are also reproduced in the SAMGĪTIPARYĀYA of the Sarvāstivāda abhidharma.
database transaction "database" A set of related changes applied to a {database}. The term typically implies that either all of the changes should be applied or, in the event of an error, none of them, i.e. the transaction should be {atomic}. Atomicity is one of the {ACID} properties a transaction can have, another is {isolation} - preventing interference between processes trying to access the database {cocurrently}. This is usually achieved by some form of {locking} - where one process takes exclusive control of a database {table} or {row} for the duration of the transaction, preventing other processes from accessing the locked data. The canonical example of a transaction is transferring money between two bank accounts by subtracting it from one and adding it to the other. Some {relational database management systems} require the user to explicitly start a transaction and then either commit it (if all the individual steps are successful) or roll it back (if there are any errors). (2013-06-03)
Da Tang neidian lu. (J. Dai To naitenroku; K. Tae Tang naejon nok 大唐内典録). In Chinese, "The Great Tang Record of Inner [viz., Buddhist] Classics"; a catalogue of the Buddhist canon compiled by the Chinese monk DAOXUAN (596-667). While preparing an inventory of scriptures for the newly established library at the monastery of XIMINGSI, Daoxuan was unsatisfied with the quality of existing scriptural catalogues (JINGLU) and decided to compile his own. Daoxuan's catalogue draws heavily on earlier catalogues, such as the LIDAI SANBAO JI, CHU SANZANG JIJI, Fajing lu, and Renshou lu. The Da Tang neidian lu consists of ten major sections. The first section is the comprehensive catalogue of scriptures, which more or less corresponds to the list found in the Lidai sanbao ji. The second section, a taxonomy of scriptures, also largely corresponds to the Renshou lu. The third section lists the actual contents of Ximingsi's library and thus serves as an important source for studying the history of this monastery and its scriptural collection. The fourth section provides a list of texts appropriate for recitation. The fifth section deals with texts that contain mistakes and discusses their significance. The sixth section lists texts composed in China. The seventh and eighth sections cover miscellaneous texts and APOCRYPHA (162 in total). The ninth section lists previous scriptural catalogues of the past, and the tenth section discusses the virtues of reciting scriptures.
day, to be accredited after a while as valid. In some cases they were given canonical or deutero-
dazangjing. (J. daizokyo; K. taejanggyong 大藏經). In Chinese, "scriptures of the great repository"; the term the Chinese settled upon to describe their Buddhist canon, supplanting the Indian term TRIPItAKA ("three baskets"). The myriad texts of different Indian and Central Asian Buddhist schools were transmitted to China over a millennium, from about the second through the twelfth centuries CE, where they were translated with alacrity into Chinese. Chinese Buddhists texts therefore came to include not only the tripitakas of several independent schools of Indian Buddhism, but also different recensions of various MAHĀYĀNA scriptures and Buddhist TANTRAs, sometimes in multiple translations. As the East Asian tradition developed its own scholarly traditions, indigenous writings by native East Asian authors, composed in literary Chinese, also came to be included in the canon. These materials included scriptural commentaries, doctrinal treatises, biographical and hagiographical collections, edited transcriptions of oral lectures, Chinese-Sanskrit dictionaries, scriptural catalogues (JINGLU), and so on. Because the scope of the Buddhist canon in China was therefore substantially broader than the traditional tripartite structure of an Indian tripitaka, the Chinese coined alternative terms to refer to their collection of Buddhist materials, including "all the books" (yiqie jing), until eventually settling on the term dazangjing. The term dazangjing seems to derive from a Northern Song-dynasty term for an officially commissioned "great library" (dazang) that was intended to serve as a repository for "books" (jing) sanctioned by the court. Buddhist monasteries were the first places outside the imperial palaces that such officially sanctioned libraries were established. These collections of the official canonical books of Chinese Buddhism were arranged not by the VINAYA, SuTRA, ABHIDHARMA, and sĀSTRA categories of India, but in shelf lists that were more beholden to the categorizations used in court libraries. The earliest complete Buddhist canons in China date from the fifth century; by the eighth century, these manuscript collections included over one thousand individual texts in more than five thousand rolls. By the tenth century, woodblock printing techniques had become sophisticated enough that complete printed Buddhist canons began to be published, first during the Song dynasty, and thence throughout East Asia. The second xylographic canon of the Korean Koryo dynasty, the KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG, was especially renowned for its scholarly accuracy; it included some 1,514 texts, in 6,815 rolls, carved on 81,258 individual woodblocks, which are still housed today in the scriptural repository at the monastery of HAEINSA. The second Koryo canon is arranged with pride of place given to texts from the Mahāyāna tradition:
Dazhidu lun. (J. Daichidoron; K. Taejido non 大智度論). In Chinese, "Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom"; an important Chinese text that is regarded as the translation of a Sanskrit work whose title has been reconstructed as *MāhāprājNāpāramitāsāstra or *MahāprajNāpāramitopedesa. The work is attributed to the MADHYAMAKA exegete NĀGĀRJUNA, but no Sanskrit manuscripts or Tibetan translations are known and no references to the text in Indian or Tibetan sources have been identified. The work was translated into Chinese by the KUCHA monk KUMĀRAJĪVA (344-413) between 402 and 406; it was not translated into Chinese again. Some scholars speculate that the work was composed by an unknown Central Asian monk of the SARVĀSTIVĀDA school who had "converted" to MADHYAMAKA, perhaps even Kumārajīva himself. The complete text was claimed to have been one hundred thousand slokas or one thousand rolls (zhuan) in length, but the extant text is a mere one hundred rolls. It is divided into two major sections: the first is Kumārajīva's full translation of the first fifty-two chapters of the text; the second is his selective translations from the next eighty-nine chapters of the text. The work is a commentary on the PANCAVIMsATISĀHASRIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA, and is veritable compendium of Buddhist doctrine, replete with quotations from a wide range of Indian texts. Throughout the translation, there appear frequent and often substantial interlinear glosses and interpolations, apparently provided by Kumārajīva himself and targeting his Chinese readership; it is the presence of such interpolations that has raised questions about the text's Indian provenance. In the first thirty-four rolls, the Dazhidu lun provides a detailed explanation of the basic concepts, phrases, places, and figures that appear in the PaNcaviMsatisāhasrikāprajNāpāramitā (e.g., BHAGAVAT, EVAM MAYĀ sRUTAM, RĀJAGṚHA, buddha, BODHISATTVA, sRĀVAKA, sĀRIPUTRA, suNYATĀ, NIRVĀnA, the six PĀRAMITĀ, and ten BALA). The scope of the commentary is extremely broad, covering everything from doctrine, legends, and rituals to history and geography. The overall concern of the Dazhidu lun seems to have been the elucidation of the concept of buddhahood, the bodhisattva career, the MAHĀYĀNA path (as opposed to that of the HĪNAYĀNA), PRAJNĀ, and meditation. The Dazhidu lun thus served as an authoritative source for the study of Mahāyāna in China and was favored by many influential writers such as SENGZHAO, TIANTAI ZHIYI, FAZANG, TANLUAN, and SHANDAO. Since the time of the Chinese scriptural catalogue KAIYUAN SHIJIAO LU (730), the Dazhidu lun, has headed the roster of sĀSTRA materials collected in the Chinese Buddhist canon (DAZANGJING; see also KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG); this placement is made because it is a principal commentary to the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ sutras that open the SuTRA section of the canon. Between 1944 and 1980, the Belgian scholar ÉTIENNE LAMOTTE published an annotated French translation of the entire first section and chapter 20 of the second section as Le Traité de la Grande Vertu de Sagesse, in five volumes.
death, so designated in Drower, The Canonical
decretal ::: a. --> Appertaining to a decree; containing a decree; as, a decretal epistle.
An authoritative order or decree; especially, a letter of the pope, determining some point or question in ecclesiastical law. The decretals form the second part of the canon law.
The collection of ecclesiastical decrees and decisions made, by order of Gregory IX., in 1234, by St. Raymond of Pennafort.
den things. Ferrar, The Uticanonical Jewish Books,
deuterocanonical ::: a. --> Pertaining to a second canon, or ecclesiastical writing of inferior authority; -- said of the Apocrypha, certain Epistles, etc.
deuterogamy ::: n. --> A second marriage, after the death of the first husband of wife; -- in distinction from bigamy, as defined in the old canon law. See Bigamy.
Dhammapada. (S. Dharmapada; T. Chos kyi tshigs su bcad pa; C. Faju jing; J. Hokkugyo; K. Popku kyong 法句經). In Pāli, "Verses of Dharma"; the second book of the KHUDDAKANIKĀYA of the Pāli SUTTAPItAKA. The Dhammapada is an anthology of verses, arranged topically, many of which are also found in other books of the Pāli canon, although it is unclear whether the Dhammapada was compiled from them. Some of the same verses are also found in JAINA and Hindu sources. The current Pāli text contains 423 verses divided into twenty-six chapters; the verses are broadly associated with the topic of each particular chapter, which have predominantly ethical themes. The verses and chapters are sometimes arranged in pairs, e.g., "The Fool" and "The Sage," "The World" and "The Buddha," etc. As possible evidence of the popularity of the collection, there are several extant recensions of Dharmapadas in languages other than Pāli, including a GĀNDHĀRĪ version and several in Chinese translation that derive from Sanskrit or Middle Indic versions of the collection. The chapters and verses of these other recensions often bear little resemblance to the Pāli version, some having alternate arrangements of the chapters and verses, others having many more total verses in their collections. These differences suggest that such anthologies of gnomic verses were being made independently in disparate Buddhist communities throughout India and Central Asia, often borrowing liberally, and haphazardly, from earlier recensions. A version of the UDĀNAVARGA compiled by Dharmatrāta, a larger work containing all the verses from the Dhammapada, became a basic text of the BKA' GDAMS sect in Tibet; the Pāli version of the Dhammapada was translated into Tibetan by the twentieth-century scholar DGE 'DUN CHOS 'PHEL. The Dhammapada has long been one of the most beloved of Buddhist texts in the West. Since its first translation into a Western language (Latin) in 1855 by the Danish scholar Victor Fausboll (1821-1908), it has been rendered numerous times into English (well over fifty translations have been made) and other languages.
Dhammapāla. (d.u.). A celebrated Pāli commentator and author, Dhammapāla is known to have flourished sometime after the time of BUDDHAGHOSA (fl. fifth century CE), though his precise dates are uncertain. Numerous works are attributed to him, although the accuracy of these attributions is sometimes suspect because of the many Pāli authors who have the same name. The SĀSANAVAMSA states that Dhammapāla lived at Badaratittha in southern India. In several of his works, Dhammapāla records that he is a native of KaNcipuram and that he studied at the MAHĀVIHĀRA in the Sinhalese capital of ANURĀDHAPURA. THERAVĀDA congregations affiliated with the Mahāvihāra existed among the Tamils in South India, and it appears that he was familiar with their commentarial traditions. According to one legend, Dhammapāla was so renowned for his intelligence that the local king of KaNcipuram offered him his daughter in marriage. Being interested instead in a life of renunciation and scholarship, Dhammapāla prayed for his release before an image of the Buddha, whereupon the gods carried him away to a place where he could be ordained as a Buddhist monk. Seven of Dhammapāla's commentaries (AttHAKATHĀ) are devoted to the KHUDDAKANIKĀYA division of the SUTTAPItAKA; these include the PARAMATTHADĪPANĪ (a commentary on the UDĀNA, ITIVUTTAKA, VIMĀNAVATTHU, PETAVATTHU, THERAGĀTHĀ, and THERĪGĀTHĀ), as well as exegeses of the Vimānavatthu, Petavatthu, Itivuttaka, and CARIYĀPItAKA. He also wrote commentaries to the NETTIPPAKARAnA and the VISUDDHIMAGGA, the latter of which is titled the PARAMATTHAMANJuSĀ. Dhammapāla also wrote several subcommentaries (tīkā) on Buddhaghosa's exegeses of the Pāli canon, including the Līnatthavannanā on the suttapitaka, and subcommentaries on the JĀTAKA, the BUDDHAVAMSA, and the ABHIDHAMMAPItAKA.
dhāranī. (T. gzungs; C. tuoluoni/zongchi; J. darani/soji; K. tarani/ch'ongji 陀羅尼/總持). In Sanskrit, "mnemonic device," "code." The term is derived etymologically from the Sanskrit root √dhṛ ("to hold" or "to maintain"), thus suggesting something that supports, holds, or retains; hence, a verbal formula believed to "retain" or "encapsulate" the meaning of lengthier texts and prolix doctrines, thus functioning as a mnemonic device. It is said that those who memorize these formulae (which may or may not have semantic meaning) gain the power to retain the fuller teachings that the dhāranī "retain." Commenting on the BODHISATTVABHuMISuTRA, Buddhist exegetes, such as the sixth-century Chinese scholiast JINGYING HUIYUAN, describe dhāranī as part of the equipment or accumulation (SAMBHĀRA) that BODHISATTVAs need to reach full enlightenment, and classify dhāranī into four categories, i.e., those associated with (1) teachings (DHARMA), (2) meaning (ARTHA), (3) spells (MANTRA), and (4) acquiescence (KsĀNTI). The first two types are involved with learning and remembering the teachings and intent of Buddhist doctrine and thus function as "codes." In the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ literature, for example, a dhāranī can be a letter of the alphabet associated with a meaningful term: e.g., the letter "a" serves as code for remembering the term "ādy-anutpannatva" ("unproduced from the very beginning"). The third type (mantradhāranī) helps the bodhisattva to overcome adversity, counter baleful influences, and bestow protection (see PARĪTTA). The fourth type assists the bodhisattva in acquiescing to the true nature of dharmas as unproduced (ANUTPATTIKADHARMAKsĀNTI), giving him the courage to remain in the world for the sake of all sentient beings. Dhāranī sometimes occur at the conclusion of a Mahāyāna sutra as a terse synopsis of the fuller teaching of the sutra, again drawing on their denotation as codes. The DHARMAGUPTAKA school of mainstream Buddhism, which may date to as early as the third or second century BCE, included a dhāranī collection (dhāranīpitaka) as an addition to the usual tripartite division of the Buddhist canon (TRIPItAKA), an indication of how widespread the use of dhāranī was across the Buddhist tradition. Dhāranī also appear often in Buddhist tantras and one prevailing theory in the scholarship had been that they were the root source from which tantric literature developed. The connection between dhāranī and the TANTRAs is tenuous, however, and seems not to be found before eighth-century materials. More likely, then, dhāranī should be treated as a pan-Buddhistic, rather than a proto-tantric, phenomenon. Indeed, the DAZHIDU LUN (*MahāprajNāpāramitāsāstra), attributed to NĀGĀRJUNA, includes facility in dhāranī among the skills that all ordained monks should develop and mastery of ten different types of dhāranī as a central part of the training of bodhisattvas. See also MANTRA.
dharmabhānaka. (P. dhammabhānaka; T. chos smra ba; C. shuofashi; J. sepposhi; K. solbopsa 法師). In Sanskrit, "reciter of the dharma"; a term used to describe a monastic vocation. Before the Buddhist canon was committed to writing, perhaps four hundred years after the Buddha's death, the canon was transmitted orally within monastic families of reciters. In the Pāli tradition, "reciters" were typically assigned to memorize one specific subcategory of the canon, i.e., Mahjjhimabhānaka ("reciters of the MAJJHIMANIKĀYA"), Jātakabhānaka ("reciters of the JĀTAKA"), etc. The term also occurs in the MAHĀYĀNA sutras to describe a teacher of the Mahāyāna; indeed, such teachers may have played an important role in the dissemination of the Mahāyāna sutras.
Dharmadinnā. (P. Dhammadinnā; T. Chos kyis sbyin; C. Tanmotina biqiuni/Fale biqiuni; J. Donmadaina bikuni/Horaku bikuni; K. Tammajena piguni/Pomnak piguni 曇摩提那比丘尼/法樂比丘尼). An eminent ARHAT nun, declared by the Buddha to be foremost among his nun disciples in the gift of preaching. According to Pāli sources, she was married to a rich merchant of Rājagaha (S. RĀJAGṚHA) named VISĀKHA. Visākha was a lay disciple of the Buddha, but his behavior toward his wife changed after he became a nonreturner (ANĀGĀMIN). When he explained why, Dhammadinnā requested permission to renounce the world and become a Buddhist nun. So highly did Visākha regard his wife's piety that he informed Bimbisāra, the king of MAGADHA, who arranged for her to be carried to the nuns' convent on a golden palanquin. Dhammadinnā dwelled in solitude and soon became an arhat of the highest degree, equipped with the four analytical knowledges (patisambhidā; S. PRATISAMVID), which included knowledge of the entire Buddhist canon. When she returned to Rājagaha to venerate the Buddha, her former husband Visākha approached her with questions on doctrine, which she easily answered. Visākha reported this to the Buddha, who praised Dhammadinnā's proficiency in preaching. Dhammadinnā's preeminence in preaching was a result of a vow she made during the time of the past buddha Padumuttara, when she witnessed a nun who was praised for her eloquence and vowed to achieve the same.
Dharmaguptaka. (T. Chos sbas pa; C. Fazangbu/Tanwudebu; J. Hozobu/Donmutokubu; K. Popchangbu/Tammudokpu 法蔵部/曇無德部). In Sanskrit, "Adherents of Dharmagupta"; one of the eighteen traditional "mainstream" (that is, non-MAHĀYĀNA) schools of early Indian Buddhism. There are various theories on the origin of the school in Buddhist literature. The SARVĀSTIVĀDA treatise SAMAYABHEDOPARACANACAKRA states that the Dharmaguptaka separated from the MAHĪsĀSAKA school, one of the collateral branches of the Sarvāstivāda school (probably sometime around the late second or early first centuries BCE), while inscriptional evidence and Tibetan sources instead suggest it was one strand of the VIBHAJYAVĀDA (P. Vibhajjavāda) school, a collateral line of the STHAVIRANIKĀYA that was most active in KASHMIR-GANDHĀRA, and Sri Lanka. There is inscriptional evidence from the northwest of the Indian subcontinent for the continued existence of the school into the seventh century. The school is named after the eponymous teacher Dharmagupta (c. third century BCE), even though the school itself traces its lineage back to MAHĀMAUDGALYĀYANA (P. Mahāmoggallāna), one of the two main disciples of the Buddha. Unlike the typical tripartite division of the canon (TRIPItAKA), viz., SuTRAPItAKA, VINAYAPItAKA, and ABHIDHARMAPItAKA, the Dharmaguptaka canon is said to have consisted of five divisions, adding to the usual three a collection on BODHISATTVA doctrines and practices (BODHISATTVAPItAKA) and a DHĀRAnĪ collection (dhāranīpitaka). Some of the distinctive tenets of the school are (1) the Buddha is not included among the members of the SAMGHA and thus a gift given to him is superior to offerings made to the community as a whole; (2) there are four characteristics (CATURLAKsAnA) of compounded things-origination, maturation, decay, and extinction-of which the first three were conditioned (SAMSKṚTA) and the last unconditioned (ASAMSKṚTA); (3) the path of the buddhas and bodhisattvas is distinct from that of the sRĀVAKAs; (4) non-buddhists (TĪRTHIKA) cannot attain the five kinds of superknowledge (ABHIJNĀ); (5) the body of an ARHAT is free from the contaminants (ANĀSRAVA). Because of their views about the Buddha's superiority to the broader saMgha, the school also emphasized the extraordinary merit accruing from offerings made to a STuPA, which was considered to be the contemporary representation of the Buddha because of the relics (sARĪRA) it enshrined. Due to the convergence of some of the school's doctrines with those of the MAHĀSĀMGHIKA, it has been suggested that the school may have had its origins within the Sthaviranikāya but was subsequently influenced by MahāsāMghika ideas. One of the enduring influences of the Dharmaguptaka school in Buddhist history comes from its vinaya, which came to be adopted widely throughout East Asia; this so-called "Four-Part Vinaya" (SIFEN LÜ, *Dharmaguptaka vinaya) was translated into Chinese in 405 by BUDDHAYAsAS (c. fifth century CE) and is still used today in the East Asian Buddhist traditions. The recension of the DĪRGHĀGAMA (C. Chang Ahan jing) that was translated into Chinese in 413 CE by Buddhayasas and ZHU FONIAN is also attributed to the Dharmaguptaka school.
dharma. (P. dhamma; T. chos; C. fa; J. ho; K. pop 法). In Sanskrit, "factor," or "element"; a polysemous term of wide import in Buddhism and therefore notoriously difficult to translate, a problem acknowledged in traditional sources; as many as ten meanings of the term are found in the literature. The term dharma derives from the Sanskrit root √dhṛ, which means "to hold" or "to maintain." In Vedic literature, dharma is often used to refer to the sacrifice that maintains the order of the cosmos. Indian kings used the term to refer to the policies of their realms. In Hinduism, there is an important genre of literature called the dharmasāstra, treatises on dharma, which set forth the social order and the respective duties of its members, in relation to caste, gender, and stage of life. Based on this denotation of the term, many early European translators rendered dharma into English as "law," the same sense conveyed in the Chinese translation of dharma as fa (also "law"). ¶ In Buddhism, dharma has a number of distinct denotations. One of its most significant and common usages is to refer to "teachings" or "doctrines," whether they be Buddhist or non-Buddhist. Hence, in recounting his search for truth prior to his enlightenment, the Buddha speaks of the dharma he received from his teachers. After his enlightenment, the Buddha's first sermon was called "turning the wheel of the dharma" (DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANA). When the Buddha described what he himself taught to his disciples, he called it the DHARMAVINAYA, with the vinaya referring to the rules of monastic discipline and the dharma referring presumably to everything else. This sense of dharma as teaching, and its centrality to the tradition, is evident from the inclusion of the dharma as the second of the three jewels (RATNATRAYA, along with the Buddha and the SAMGHA, or community) in which all Buddhists seek refuge. Commentators specified that dharma in the refuge formula refers to the third and fourth of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS: the truth of the cessation (NIRODHASATYA) of the causes that lead to suffering and the truth of the path (MĀRGA) to that cessation. Here, the verbal root of dharma as "holding" is evoked etymologically to gloss dharma as meaning something that "holds one back" from falling into states of suffering. A distinction was also drawn between the dharma or teachings as something that is heard or studied, called the scriptural dharma (ĀGAMA-dharma), and the dharma or teachings as something that is made manifest in the consciousness of the practitioner, called the realized dharma (ADHIGAMA-dharma). ¶ A second (and very different) principal denotation of dharma is a physical or mental "factor" or fundamental "constituent element," or simply "phenomenon." In this sense, the individual building blocks of our compounded (SAMSKṚTA) existence are dharmas, dharma here glossed as something that "holds" its own nature. Thus, when Buddhist texts refer to the constituent elements of existence, they will often speak of "all dharmas," as in "all dharmas are without self." The term ABHIDHARMA, which is interpreted to mean either "higher dharma" or "pertaining to dharma," refers to the analysis of these physical and mental factors, especially in the areas of causation and epistemology. The texts that contain such analyses are considered to be one of the three general categories of the Buddhist canon (along with SuTRA and vinaya), known as the TRIPItAKA or "three baskets." ¶ A third denotation of the term dharma is that of "quality" or "characteristic." Thus, reference is often made to dharmas of the Buddha, referring in this sense not to his teachings but to his various auspicious qualities, whether they be physical, verbal, or mental. This is the primary meaning of dharma in the term DHARMAKĀYA. Although this term is sometimes rendered into English as "truth body," dharmakāya seems to have originally been meant to refer to the entire corpus (KĀYA) of the Buddha's transcendent qualities (dharma). ¶ The term dharma also occurs in a large number of important compound words. SADDHARMA, or "true dharma," appears early in the tradition as a means of differentiating the teachings of the Buddha from those of other, non-Buddhist, teachers. In the MAHĀYĀNA sutras, saddharma was used to refer, perhaps defensively, to the Mahāyāna teachings; one of the most famous Mahāyāna sutras is the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, known in English as the "Lotus Sutra," but whose full title is "White Lotus of the True Dharma Sutra." In Buddhist theories of history, the period after the death of the Buddha (often said to last five hundred years) is called the time of the true dharma. This period of saddharma is followed, according to some theories, by a period of a "semblance" of the true dharma (SADDHARMAPRATIRuPAKA) and a period of "decline" (SADDHARMAVIPRALOPA). The term DHARMADHĀTU refers to the ultimate nature of reality, as does DHARMATĀ, "dharma-ness." It should also be noted that dharma commonly appears in the designations of persons. Hence, a DHARMABHĀnAKA is a preacher of the dharma, a DHARMAPĀLA is a deity who protects the dharma; in both terms, dharma refers to the Buddhist doctrine. A DHARMARĀJAN is a righteous king (see CAKRAVARTIN), especially one who upholds the teachings of the Buddha. For various rosters of dharmas, see the List of Lists appendix.
dharmavinaya. (P. dhammavinaya; T. chos 'dul ba; C. falü; J. horitsu; K. pomnyul 法律). In Sanskrit, the "teaching" (DHARMA) and "discipline" (VINAYA) expounded by the Buddha and recommended to his followers as the highest refuge and spiritual guide after his demise. The compound dharmavinaya, with dharma referring to the Buddha's discourses (SuTRA) and vinaya referring to monastic discipline, appears to be an early term used prior to the development of the ABHIDHARMA as a separate category of teachings and the tripartite division of the Buddhst canon (TRIPItAKA). Dharmavinaya is one of the terms (along with BUDDHADHARMA) within the tradition that is closest to what in the West is called "Buddhism." Generally, the sutras and the vinaya were collectively called dharmavinaya; the Chinese term falü may also less precisely refer only to the monastic precepts (see PRĀTIMOKsA) and does not always denote two separate categories.
Dhātukathā. In Pāli, "Discourse on Elements"; traditionally listed as the third of the seven canonical books of the THERAVĀDA abhidhammapitaka, and probably deriving from the middle stratum of Pāli abhidhamma literature, after the earlier VIBHAnGA and PUGGALAPANNATTI, but before the later KATHĀVATTHU; the proposed dating varies widely, but the first century BCE is its terminus ad quem. The Dhātukathā presents a psychological analysis of noble states of mind, supplementing the subject matter of the DHAMMASAnGAnI. Its fourteen chapters are presented in catechetic style, describing the relationship that pertains between specific factors (dhamma; S. DHARMA) and the three broader categories of the aggregates (khandha; S. SKANDHA), elements (DHĀTU), and sense-fields (ĀYATANA). In its analysis of the relationships that pertain between these various factors and categories, rigorous definitions of each factor are provided. The analytical approach taken in the text-e.g., whether a specific factor is both included and not included in a particular category, etc.-anticipates the sophisticated logical analysis found later in the four antinomies (CATUsKOtI). The Dhātukathā is reminiscent in style and exegetical approach to the SARVĀSTIVĀDA DHĀTUKĀYA, and may derive from a common urtext, although there are few similarities in their respective contents.
Distinguished Encoding Rules "communications, data" (DER) An {X.690} encoding format (or {transfer syntax}) for data structures described by {ASN.1} that specifies exactly one way to encode a value thus ensuring a unique, {canonical}, {serialised} representation. DER is a restricted variant of {BER}. For example, DER has exactly one way to encode a {Boolean} value. DER is used in {cryptography}, e.g. for {digital certificates} such as {X.509}. (2016-05-05)
Divyāvadāna. In Sanskrit, "Divine Exploits"; a collection of thirty-eight "heroic tales" or "narratives" (AVADĀNA). Avadānas are the tenth of the twelvefold (DVĀDAsĀnGA[PRAVACANA]) categorization of the traditional genres of Buddhist literature and relate the past and present deeds of a person, either lay or ordained, who in some specific fashion exemplifies Buddhist ethics and practice. The present characters in the stories in the Divyāvadāna are often identified as persons whom the Buddha encountered in a former life. Thus, its tales have a narrative structure similar to JĀTAKA stories, in which an event in the present offers an opportunity to recount a story from the past, which in turn illuminates details regarding present circumstances. Themes that run throughout the Divyāvadāna include the realization of positive or negative consequences of action (KARMAN), the importance of moral discipline, and the great merit (PUnYA) that can be accrued through service or reverence offered to the buddhas or to sites related to the buddhas, such as a STuPA. The Divyāvadāna includes thirty-six avadānas and two SuTRAs. Famous stories found in the Divyāvadāna collection include the Purnāvadāna, the story of the monk PuRnA, and the AsOKĀVADĀNA, which recounts the birth, life, and reign of King AsOKA, the monarch whom the Buddhist tradition considers the great protector of the religion. Although the style and language of the works vary tremendously, more than half of the tales also appear in the MuLASARVĀSTIVĀDA VINAYA. Given their debt to vinaya literature, it is not surprising that many of the tales in the Divyāvadāna often make reference to points of monastic discipline (VINAYA). This association with the Mulasarvāstivāda vinaya suggests that these stories could date as far back as the beginning of the Common Era. However, the oldest extant manuscript of the Divyāvadāna dates only to the seventeenth century, and there is no reference to a text by that title in a Buddhist source prior to that date. There also is no Tibetan or Chinese translation of the text, although many of its stories are found in the Tibetan and Chinese canons. (For example, twenty-one of the thirty-eight stories of the collection are found in the vinaya section of the Tibetan canon.) This has led some scholars to conclude that, although the stories themselves are quite old, the particular compilation as the Divyāvadāna may be rather late. A number of stories from the Divyāvadāna were translated by EUGÈNE BURNOUF in his 1844 Introduction à l'histoire du Buddhisme indien. The first Sanskrit edition of the entire text was undertaken in 1866 by Edward B. Cowell and Robert A. Neil. The Divyāvadāna legends had a significant influence on Buddhist art and were often the subject of Buddhist sculptures and paintings. For instance, in the "Sahasodgata" chapter of this collection, the Buddha describes the "wheel of existence" (BHAVACAKRA), which became a popular subject of painting in many of the Buddhist traditions.
dombī Heruka. A tantric adept counted among the eighty-four MAHĀSIDDHAs, often depicted riding a tiger with his consort. As recorded in his hagiographies, he was originally king of the Indian region of MAGADHA and received teachings on the HEVAJRATANTRA from the SIDDHA VIRuPA. These he practiced for twelve years in secret while continuing to skillfully administer his kingdom. He then secretly took a low-caste musician, a dombī, as his consort and continued his practice of TANTRA with her. (The word heruka is rendered khrag thung, "blood drinker," in Tibetan.) When his subjects discovered their king's transgression of customary social and caste restrictions, dombī Heruka abdicated the throne and disappeared with his consort into the jungle, where they continued to practice tantric yoga for twelve years. Later, the kingdom was wrought with famine and the subjects searched for their former king to request his assistance. dombī Heruka then emerged from the jungle astride a tigress, brandishing a snake in one hand. Displaying miraculous signs of his mastery, he denied the subjects' request and departed for the celestial realms. dombī Heruka is an important member of the lineage of the Hevajratantra and, according to some accounts, was a disciple of NĀROPA as well as a teacher of ATIsA DĪPAMKARAsRĪJNĀNA. Seventeen texts attributed to him are preserved in the BSTAN 'GYUR section of the Tibetan Buddhist canon. He is also known as dombīpa.
domino ::: n. --> A kind of hood worn by the canons of a cathedral church; a sort of amice.
A mourning veil formerly worn by women.
A kind of mask; particularly, a half mask worn at masquerades, to conceal the upper part of the face. Dominos were formerly worn by ladies in traveling.
A costume worn as a disguise at masquerades, consisting of a robe with a hood adjustable at pleasure.
Drower, E. S. (ed.). The Canonical Prayerbook of the
Drower, The Canonical Prayerbook of the Manda-
Drower, The Canonical Prayerhook of the Man-
ecclesiastes ::: a. --> One of the canonical books of the Old Testament.
-(ed.). The Uncanonical Jewish Books. London:
elevator controller An archetypal dumb embedded-systems application, like {toaster} (which superseded it). During one period (1983--84) in the deliberations of ANSI X3J11 (the C standardisation committee) this was the canonical example of a really stupid, memory-limited computation environment. "You can't require "printf(3)" to be part of the default run-time library - what if you're targeting an elevator controller?" Elevator controllers became important rhetorical weapons on both sides of several {holy wars}.
Enoch, Books of ::: Extra canonical apocalyptic books relating to Enoch, who “walked with God” (Gen. 5:24); the earliest of the three was composed in the 2nd century B.C. E.
Even though the Taisho is often considered to be the definitive East Asian canon, it does not offer truly critical editions of its texts. The second Koryo canon's reputation for accuracy was so strong that the Japanese editors adopted it wholesale as the textus receptus for the modern Taisho edition of the canon, i.e., where there was a Koryo edition available for a text, the Taisho editors simply copied it verbatim, listing in footnotes alternate readings found in other canons, but not attempting to evaluate the accuracy of those readings or to establish a critical edition. Hence, to a large extent, the Taisho edition of the dazangjing is a modern typeset edition of the xylographical Koryo canon, with an updated arrangement of its contents based on modern historiographical criteria.
Fahua wenju. (J. Hokke mongu; K. Pophwa mun'gu 法華文句). In Chinese, "Words and Phrases of the 'Lotus Sutra'"; a major commentary on the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, taught by TIANTAI ZHIYI and put into writing by his disciple Guanding (561-632), in alt. ten or twenty rolls. Along with the MOHE ZHIGUAN and the FAHUA XUANYI, the Fahua wenju is considered one of Zhiyi's three great commentaries. The lectures that formed the basis of the Fahua wenju were delivered by Zhiyi in 587 at the monastery of Jinzhaisi in Jinling (present-day Jiangsu province), and they offered a thorough exegetical analysis of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra. The Fahua wenju was incorporated in the Song-dynasty Buddhist canon at the recommendation of the Tiantai monk Ciyun Zunshi (964-1032) in 1024. The treatise employs a fourfold exegetical technique (sishi) unique to Zhiyi and his TIANTAI ZONG, viz., exegesis via: (1) causes and conditions, (2) classification of the teachings (see JIAOXIANG PANSHI), (3) fundamentals and traces, and (4) contemplation on the mind. Throughout the Fahua wenju, the interpretations of other teachers, such as DAOSHENG, are critiqued. An influential commentary on the Fahua wenju known as the Fahua wenju ji was prepared by JINGXI ZHANRAN.
Fangshan shijing. (房山石經). In Chinese, "Lithic Scriptures of Fangshan," the world's largest collection of scriptures written on stone, located in the Fangshan district about forty miles southwest Beijing. The blocks are now stored on Shijingshan (Stone Scriptures Hill) in nine separate caves, among them the Leiyindong (Sound of Thunder Cave), near the monastery of YUNJUSI (Cloud Dwelling Monastery). The carving of the lithic scriptures was initiated during the Daye era (604-617) by the monk Jingwan (d. 639) with the support of Empress Xiao (?-630) and her brother Xiao Yu (574-647). Among the scriptures carved during Jingwan's lifetime were the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), the MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA ("Nirvāna Sutra"), and the AVATAMSAKASuTRA ("Flower Garland Sutra"). The project continued up through the Tianqi era (1621-1627) of the Ming dynasty. The collection now includes 1,122 Buddhist scriptures carved on 14,278 lithographs, or stone slabs. The Fangshan canon is a product of the Chinese belief that Buddhism had entered the "dharma-ending age" (MOFA; see SADDHARMAVIPRALOPA): by carving the Buddhist canon on stone, this project was thus one way of helping to ensure that the Buddhist scriptures would survive the inevitable demise of the religion. Most of the scriptures in the Fangshan canon represent textual lineages that derive from recensions that circulated during the Tang and Khitan Liao dynasties. The monk Xuanfa (fl. c. 726-755) initiated a project to carve the entire canon after being presented with a copy of the handwritten Kaiyuan manuscript canon (see KAIYUAN SHIJIAO LU) by the Tang princess Jinxian (689-732). During the rule of the Khitan Liao emperors Shengzong (r. 983-1031), Xingzong (r. 1032-1054), and Daozong (r. 1055-1100), the new Qidan canon was carved on xylographs (viz., woodblocks), with the lithic carving of the same texts carried out in tandem at Yunjusi for several decades. By the late eleventh century, all nine caves had been filled to capacity. Consequently, in 1117, a pit was excavated in the southwestern section of Yunjusi to bury a new set of carvings initiated by the monk Tongli (1049-1098); these texts were mostly commentarial and exegetical writings, rather than sutra translations. By the time of the Jin dynasty (1115-1234), most of the mainstream Mahāyāna canonical scriptures had been carved. In the twelfth century, during the Song dynasty, the growing popularity of tantric materials and the ĀGAMAs prompted a supplementary carving project to add them to the Fangshan canon. However, the Fangshan Shijing does not exclusively contain Buddhist texts. In the third year of the Xuande era (1428) of the Ming dynasty, many Daoist scriptures were carved with an intent similar to that of the Buddhists: to ensure that these texts were transmitted to posterity. The Buddhist Association of China made rubbings of a substantial part of the extant lithographs in 1956. For modern historians, these rubbings offer a rich tapestry of information for studying the textual history of the Buddhist canon and the social history and culture of Buddhism in northern China. See also DAZANGJING.
flatten ::: To remove structural information, especially to filter something with an implicit tree structure into a simple sequence of leaves; also tends to imply mapping to flat ASCII. This code flattens an expression with parentheses into an equivalent canonical form.[Jargon File]
flatten To remove structural information, especially to filter something with an implicit tree structure into a simple sequence of leaves; also tends to imply mapping to {flat ASCII}. "This code flattens an expression with parentheses into an equivalent {canonical} form." [{Jargon File}]
floating-point ::: (programming) A number representation consisting of a mantissa, M, an exponent, E, and an (assumed) radix (or base) . The number represented is M*R^E where R is the radix - usually ten but sometimes 2.Many different representations are used for the mantissa and exponent themselves. The IEEE specify a standard representation which is used by many hardware floating-point systems.See also floating-point accelerator, floating-point unit.Normalisation is the process of converting a floating point number into canonical form where any number other than zero has a mantissa whose first digit is non-zero.Opposite: fixed-point. (1995-03-21)
for values of "jargon" A common rhetorical maneuver at {MIT} is to use any of the canonical {random numbers} as placeholders for variables. "The max function takes 42 arguments, for arbitrary values of 42". "There are 69 ways to leave your lover, for 69 = 50". This is especially likely when the speaker has uttered a random number and realises that it was not recognised as such, but even "non-random" numbers are occasionally used in this fashion. A related joke is that pi equals 3 - for small values of pi and large values of 3. This usage probably derives from the programming language MAD ({Michigan Algorithm Decoder}), an {ALGOL}-like language that was the most common choice among mainstream (non-hacker) users at {MIT} in the mid-1960s. It had a {control structure} FOR VALUES OF X = 3, 7, 99 DO ... that would repeat the indicated instructions for each value in the list (unlike the usual FOR that generates an {arithmetic sequence} of values). MAD is long extinct, but similar for-constructs still flourish (e.g. in {Unix}'s {shell} languages). [{Jargon File}] (1994-12-16)
for values of ::: (jargon) A common rhetorical maneuver at MIT is to use any of the canonical random numbers as placeholders for variables. The max function takes non-random numbers are occasionally used in this fashion. A related joke is that pi equals 3 - for small values of pi and large values of 3.This usage probably derives from the programming language MAD (Michigan Algorithm Decoder), an ALGOL-like language that was the most common choice among arithmetic sequence of values). MAD is long extinct, but similar for-constructs still flourish (e.g. in Unix's shell languages).[Jargon File] (1994-12-16)
Fozu tongji. (J. Busso toki; K. Pulcho t'onggi 佛祖統紀). In Chinese, "Chronicle of the Buddhas and Patriarchs," a massive history of Buddhism and TIANTAI orthodoxy written in the manner of an official chronicle, composed by ZHIPAN (1220-1275) in fifty-four rolls. The chronicle begins with the life of the Buddha, the division of his relics (sARĪRA), and the compilation of the Buddhist canon (see TRIPItAKA; DAZANGJING). The fifth roll details the lives of the twenty-four Indian patriarchs, beginning with MAHĀLĀsYAPA and ending with SiMha bhiksu. This theory of the twenty-four patriarchs is also found in TIANTAI ZHIYI's magnum opus MOHE ZHIGUAN, wherein it is stated that the transmission ends after SiMha bhiksu was killed by the tyrant Mihirakula, the king of Damila. Rolls six and seven discuss the nine patriarchs in China, starting with Huiwen (d.u.), NANYUE HUISI, Zhiyi, Guanding (561-632), Zhiwei (d. 680), Huiwei (634-713), and JINGXI ZHANRAN; roll eight covers the rest in the series of patriarchs leading up to SIMING ZHILI. The rest of the chronicle details the lives of worthy monks of other traditions. Other important charts and histories are provided in the last few rolls. The Fozu tongji thus serves as an important source for studying the history of the Tiantai tradition and the ways in which the school envisioned Buddhist orthodoxy during the Song dynasty.
fritterware ::: An excess of capability that serves no productive end. The canonical example is font-diddling software on the Mac (see macdink); the term describes anything that eats huge amounts of time for quite marginal gains in function but seduces people into using it anyway. See also window shopping.[Jargon File]
fritterware An excess of capability that serves no productive end. The canonical example is font-diddling software on the Mac (see {macdink}); the term describes anything that eats huge amounts of time for quite marginal gains in function but seduces people into using it anyway. See also {window shopping}. [{Jargon File}]
GandhavaMsa. In Pāli, "History of Books," a traditional history of Pāli literature, written in Burma by a forest-dwelling monk named NandapaNNā. The text, which is in mixed prose and verse, is dated to the seventeenth century by some scholars and to the nineteenth century by others. The text discusses the arrangement of the tipitaka (S. TRIPItAKA) and the authorship of the commentaries, subcommentaries, and numerous extracanonical treatises on various topics, ranging from grammar to doctrine. While exceedingly short (the original manuscript consisted of only twelve palm leaves), the GandhavaMsa has proven invaluable for the historical understanding of the development of Pāli literature.
Gassendi, Pierre: (1592-1655) Was a leading opponent of Cartesianism and of Scholastic Aristotelianism in the field of the physical sciences. Though he was a Catholic priest, with orthodox views in theology, he revived the materialistic atomism of Epicurus and Lucretius. Born in Provence, and at one time Canon of Dijon, he became a distinguished professor of mathematics at the Royal College of Paris in 1645. He seems to have been sincerely convinced that the Logic, Physics and Ethics of Epicureanism were superior to any other type of classical or modern philosophy. His objections to Descartes' Meditationes, with the Cartesian responses, are printed with the works of Descartes. His other philosophical works are Commentarius de vita moribus et placitis Epicuri (Amsterdam, 1659). Syntagma philosophiae Epicuri (Amsterdam, 1684). -- V.J.B.
gensym "library" /jen'sim/ (From the {MacLISP} for "generated symbol") To invent a new name for something temporary, in such a way that the name is almost certainly not in conflict with one already in use. The canonical form of a gensym is "Gnnnn" where nnnn represents a number; any {LISP} {hacker} would recognise G0093 (for example) as a gensym. Gensymmed names are useful for storing or uniquely identifying crufties. [{Jargon File}] (1999-10-31)
gensym ::: (library) /jen'sim/ (From the MacLISP for generated symbol) To invent a new name for something temporary, in such a way that the name is almost certainly not in conflict with one already in use.The canonical form of a gensym is Gnnnn where nnnn represents a number; any LISP hacker would recognise G0093 (for example) as a gensym. Gensymmed names are useful for storing or uniquely identifying crufties.[Jargon File] (1999-10-31)
Gombojab. (T. Mgon po skyabs). (fl. eighteenth century). An important Mongolian scholar and translator, renowned for his knowledge of the four languages of the Qing dynasty: Chinese, Tibetan, Manchu, and Mongol. He was appointed by Emperor Yongzheng as director of the School of the Tibetan Language (Xi fan xue zong guan) and provided translations from Tibetan into Chinese for the Chinese canon (including a work by the fifth DALAI LAMA on the seven medicine buddhas) as well as a work on the correct proportions of Buddha images. He translated from Chinese into Tibetan XUANZANG's account of his journey to the West, the DA TANG XIYU JI. His most influential work was the "History of Buddhism in China" (Rgya nag chos 'byung), which remained a major Tibetan source on Chinese history and Buddhism. It had three parts: a general geographical and historical description of China, a history of Buddhism in China based on "Lives of Eminent Monks" (GAO SENG ZHUAN), and a Tibetan translation of the catalogue (C. JINGLU) of the Chinese Buddhist canon (C. DAZANGJING). The work also contained historical information on Buddhism in Mongolia. Other works include a book on WUTAISHAN in Tibetan; the story of the sandalwood Buddha, also in Tibetan; a Tibetan-Mongolian dictionary; and a work in Mongolian on the proper pronunciation of Sanskrit. Lesser works include a Tibetan-Chinese glossary of medicines for Mongolian visitors to Chinese pharmacies.
gorp /gorp/ (CMU, perhaps from the canonical hiker's food, Good Old Raisins and Peanuts) Another {metasyntactic variable}, like {foo} and {bar}.
gorp ::: /gorp/ (CMU, perhaps from the canonical hiker's food, Good Old Raisins and Peanuts) Another metasyntactic variable, like foo and bar.
Gospels Usually, the four accepted or canonical gospels of the New Testament, being the three synoptic gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke — and the Gospel according to John. They are an authorized and approved selection from a far larger number of Gospels, extant, partially extant, and lost, attributed to various disciples and apostles, claiming to give accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ and his apostles.
gṛhastha. (P. gahattha; T. khyim na gnas pa; C. zaijia; J. zaike; K. chaega 在家). In Sanskrit, lit. "householder," a married male who has a family and supports his household through his labor. The householder is often contrasted with the sRAMAnA or BHIKsU, who has renounced the life of the householder and the social entanglements it entails (see PRAVRAJITA). The term is often translated simply as "layman" to indicate this distinction from the Buddhist clergy. It is important to note, however, that a householder is not necessarily an UPĀSAKA, a term also often translated as "layman," but perhaps better rendered as "lay [male] disciple." An upāsaka is a householder who has at minimum taken refuge in the three jewels (RATNATRAYA), and who may also hold any of the five upāsaka precepts (see PANCAsĪLA). Householders play important roles in Buddhism, primarily by providing alms to the SAMGHA. The Buddha offered specific teachings for them, generally consisting of advice on how to live an ethical life and accumulate merit so that they will be reborn in heaven (see P. ANUPUBBIKATHĀ, the "graduated discourse"). A number of householders figure prominently in the canon, including the Buddha's wealthy patron ANĀTHAPIndADA. Although among the Buddha's disciples, householders generally do not practice or excel at meditation, there are some exceptions, most notably CITTA. It is said that householders who excel at the practice of meditation achieve the state of the ANĀGĀMIN. Pāli texts state that a layperson who becomes an ARHAT must be ordained as a monk or nun within seven days or die; the body of a layperson, unpurified by monastic vows, is considered incapable of supporting such a state of enlightenment. Although gṛhastha is sometimes used interchangeably with GṚHAPATI, the latter term seems to connote an especially wealthy and influential householder who is a patron of Buddhism.
Gtam zhing. (Tamshing). A monastery founded in 1501-1505 by the Bhutanese treasure revealer (GTER STON) PADMA GLING PA, located in the Chos skor valley of Bum thang, central Bhutan; its full name is Gtam zhing lhun grub chos gling. The monastery contains some of the oldest extant mural painting in Bhutan, executed based upon the iconographic canons laid down by Padma gling pa himself.
gter ma. (terma). In Tibetan, "hidden treasures" or "treasure text," a source of Tibetan Buddhist and BON sacred objects, including a wide range of manuscripts, relics, statuary, and ritual implements from earlier periods. Such treasure texts have been found in caves, mountains, lakes, valleys, or sequestered away in monasteries, sometimes within a pillar. Whether gter ma are BUDDHAVACANA, i.e., authentic words of the Buddha (or a buddha) or whether they are APOCRYPHA, is contested. In the RNYING MA canon, a division is made between gter ma and BKA' MA, the latter made up of commonly authenticated canonical works. Some gter ma are authentic (although proper criteria for authenticity is a subject of debate in both traditional and modern sources), and some are clearly forgeries and fabricated antiquities. Gter ma are of three types: sa gter ("earth treasure"), dgongs gter ("mind treasure"), and dag snang ("pure vision"). Those physically discovered in caves and so on are sa gter; they may be revealed in a public gathering (khrom gter) or found privately (gsang gter) and then shown to others; they may be accompanied by a prophecy (lung bstan; gter lung; see VYĀKARAnA) of the discovery, made at the time of concealment; the gter ma may have a guardian (gter srung), and the revealer (GTER STON) is often assisted by a dĀKINĪ. Dgongs gter are discovered in the mindstream of the revealer, placed there as seeds to be found, coming from an earlier lifetime, often as a direct disciple of PADMASAMBHAVA. Dag snang are discovered by the revealer through the power of the innate purity of the mind. Gter ma are associated most closely with the RNYING MA sect, although not exclusively so. The basic account of gter ma, in which myth and historical fact are interwoven, relates that prior to the persecution of Buddhism by GLANG DAR MA (reigned c. 838-842), PADMASAMBHAVA hid many teachings, often dictated to YE SHES MTSHO RGYAL, as treasures to be discovered in later times in order to ensure the continuation of the doctrine and to provide appropriate teachings for future generations. The first Tibetan gter ma appear sometime after the start of the second dispensation (PHYI DAR), c. 1000, with the rise of the new (GSAR MA) sects of BKA' GDAMS, SA SKYA, and BKA' BRGYUD, who in many cases call into question the authenticity of earlier Tibetan practices and translations. Gter ma became more common in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Prominent among the revealers is PADMA LAS 'BREL RTSAL, a shadowy figure who revealed the RDZOGS CHEN SNYING THIG that KLONG CHEN RAB 'BYAMS PA then systematized into the definitive RDZOGS CHEN teachings. Klong chen pa's scholarly presentation was again made more accessible through a series of gter ma (called the KLONG CHEN SNYING THIG) discovered by 'JIGS MED GLING PA. These are the basis of the rdzogs chen teachings as they are commonly found today in most branches of the Rnying ma sect. According to traditional accounts, Padmasambhava taught a system of meditation called the MKHA' 'GRO SNYING THIG ("Heart Essence of the dākinī") to PADMA GSAL, the daughter of king KHRI SRONG SDE BTSAN, in whose heart he had inscribed a sacred syllable after bringing her back from the dead. They were discovered there by Padma las 'brel rtsal and Klong chen pa, who are her reincarnations. Besides this widely acknowledged tradition, there are numerous other gter ma that form the basis of practices and rituals in specific Rnying ma monasteries. For example, the main line of teachings and consecrations (ABHIsEKA) in the DPAL YUL monastery in the Khams region of eastern Tibet, and in its reestablished Indian branch near Mysore in South India, is based on gter ma teachings combining Rnying ma and Bka' brgyud practices, revealed by Mi 'gyur rdo rje and redacted by KARMA CHAGS MED; the gter ma discovered by PADMA GLING PA are held in great reverence by the 'BRUG PA BKA' BRGYUD sect in Bhutan; and the secret teachings of the fifth DALAI LAMA (1617-1682) that later locate and legitimate the role of the Dalai Lamas in the Dge lugs pa sect originated in gter ma that he revealed. The different gter ma were brought together in a quasi-canonical form by 'JAM MGON KONG SPRUL BLO GROS MTHA' YAS in his RIN CHEN GTER MDZOD ("Treasury of Precious Treasure Teachings"). It is believed that the sacred and even political space of Tibet is empowered through the discovery of gter ma and, by extension, that the religious practice of a region is empowered through the discovery of treasures within it.
Guangshengsi. (廣勝寺). In Chinese, "Monastery of Vast Triumph"; located in the Zhaocheng county seat in southern Shanxi province, the monastery's foundation legend traces its history back to 147 CE. The monastery is comprised of two monastic compounds, called the lower (xiasi) and upper (shangsi) Guangsheng monasteries. The upper monastery was rebuilt in 769 CE during the Tang, when the Taizong emperor (r. 762-779 CE) bestowed upon it the current name of Guangsheng or "Vast Triumph." Upper Guangsheng monastery was known for housing both Buddhist relics and two editions of the Buddhist canon (DAZANGJING), one dating from the Jin dynasty (1115-1234 CE), the other from the Yuan (1271-1368 CE). Lower Guangsheng monastery was originally an independent monastery. It is unique in that its main shrine hall, which dates from 1319 CE during the Yuan dynasty, was not specifically Buddhist or Daoist but was instead dedicated to a local god-Mingying Wang, the King of Righteous Response. The monastery was later subsumed by its neighbor, Upper Guangsheng monastery, and since the Ming dynasty (1368-1644 CE) has been known as Lower Guangsheng monastery.
guardian angels, in noncanonical lore, is to be
Gunavarman. (C. Qiunabamo; J. Gunabatsuma; K. Kunabalma 求那跋摩) (367-431 CE). A Kashmiri monk who was an important early translator of Buddhist VINAYA and BODHISATTVA preceptive materials into Chinese. He was a prince of Kubhā, who was ordained at the age of twenty and eventually became known as a specialist in the Buddhist canon (TREPItAKA). Upon his father's death, he was offered the throne, but refused, and instead embarked on travels throughout Asia to preach the dharma, including to Java, where he helped to establish the Buddhist tradition. Various miracles are associated with the places he visited, such as fragrance wafting in the air when he meditated and a dragon-like creature who was seen ascending to heaven in his presence. In 424 CE, Gunavarman traveled to China and was invited by Emperor Wen of the Liu Song dynasty to come to the capital in Nanjing. Upon his arrival, a monastery was built in his honor and Gunavarman lectured there on various sutras. During his sojourn in China, he translated some eighteen rolls of seminal Buddhist texts into Chinese, including the BODHISATTVABHuMI, and several other works associated with the BODHISATTVAsĪLA, the DHARMAGUPTAKA VINAYA (SIFEN LÜ), and monastic and lay precepts. Gunavarman was a central figure in founding the order of nuns (BHIKsUNĪ) in China and he helped arrange the ordination of several Chinese nuns whose hagiographies are recorded in the BIQIUNI ZHUAN.
Gyi jo lo tsā ba Zla ba'i 'od zer. (Gyijo lotsāwa Dawe Öser) (c. eleventh century). A Tibetan translator renowned as the first scholar to render the KĀLACAKRATANTRA into Tibetan. The year in which this project was completed, 1027, marks the beginning of the modern Tibetan calendar. Gyi jo lo tsā ba composed translations of many other tantric works still preserved in both the BKA' 'GYUR and BSTAN 'GYUR sections of the Tibetan Buddhist canon.
Haeinsa. (海印寺). In Korean, "Ocean-Seal Monastery," or "Oceanic-Reflection Monastery"; the twelfth district monastery (PONSA) of the contemporary CHOGYE CHONG of Korean Buddhism, located on Kaya Mountain, in Hapch'on, South Kyongsang province. Along with SONGGWANGSA and T'ONGDOSA, Haeinsa is considered to be one of the "three-jewel monasteries" (SAMBO SACH'AL) which represent one of the three jewels of Buddhism (RATNATRAYA); Haeinsa is traditionally designated the "Dharma-Jewel Monastery" (Poppo sach'al) because of its pair of scriptural repositories, which house the woodblocks of the second Koryo-dynasty carving of the Buddhist canon (KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG; see also DAZANGJING). These paired halls are placed on top of a hill overlooking the main buddha hall in order to accentuate Haeinsa's role as a surrogate for the DHARMA. Haeinsa was established in 802 to celebrate the successful healing of King Aejang's (r. 800-808) queen by the two monks Sunŭng (d.u.) and Yijong (d.u.). The woodblock canon carved in the first half of the thirteenth century was moved to Haeinsa during the reign of King T'aejo (r. 1392-1398). In 1392, King T'aejo also repaired Haeinsa's old pagoda, and King Sejo (r. 1455-1468) later repaired the library halls housing the canon (Changgyonggak). The monastery went through extensive repairs again for three years from 1488 to 1490, but most of its treasures of old (with the fortunate exception of the woodblocks) were lost in a series of fires that broke out in the compounds between the years 1862 and 1874. Most of the buildings that stand today were rebuilt after those conflagrations.
halting problem ::: The problem of determining in advance whether a particular program or algorithm will terminate or run forever. The halting problem is the canonical example of a otherwise the algorithm attempting to answer the question will itself run forever.Some special cases of the halting problem are partially solvable given sufficient resources. For example, if it is possible to record the complete are at most N possible different states then the algorithm can run for at most N steps without looping.A program analysis called termination analysis attempts to answer this question for limited kinds of input algorithm. (1994-10-20)
halting problem The problem of determining in advance whether a particular program or {algorithm} will terminate or run forever. The halting problem is the {canonical} example of a {provably unsolvable} problem. Obviously any attempt to answer the question by actually executing the algorithm or simulating each step of its execution will only give an answer if the algorithm under consideration does terminate, otherwise the algorithm attempting to answer the question will itself run forever. Some special cases of the halting problem are partially solvable given sufficient resources. For example, if it is possible to record the complete state of the execution of the algorithm at each step and the current state is ever identical to some previous state then the algorithm is in a loop. This might require an arbitrary amount of storage however. Alternatively, if there are at most N possible different states then the algorithm can run for at most N steps without looping. A program analysis called {termination analysis} attempts to answer this question for limited kinds of input algorithm. (1994-10-20)
Hanshan Deqing. (J. Kanzan Tokusei; K. Kamsan Tokch'ong 憨山德清) (1546-1623). In Chinese, "Crazy Mountain, Virtuous Clarity"; Ming-dynasty Chinese CHAN master of the LINJI ZONG; also known as Chengyin. Hanshan was a native of Quanjiao in Jinling (present-day Nanjing in Jiangsu province). He entered the monastery at age eleven and was ordained at the age of eighteen. Hanshan then studied under the monks Yungu Fahui (d.u.) and Fangguang (d.u.) of Mt. Funiu and later retired to WUTAISHAN. In 1581, Hanshan organized an "unrestricted assembly" (WUZHE DAHUI) led by five hundred worthies (DADE) on Mt. Wutai. In 1587, Hanshan received the patronage of the empress dowager, who constructed on his behalf the monastery Haiyinsi in Qingzhou (present-day Shandong province) and granted the monastery a copy of the Buddhist canon. Hanshan, however, lost favor with Emperor Shenzong (r. 1572-1620) and was sent to prison in Leizhou (present-day Guangdong province). In 1597, Hanshan reestablished himself on CAOXISHAN, where he devoted most of his time to restoring the meditation hall, conferring precepts, lecturing on scriptures, and restructuring the monastic regulations. In 1616, he established the Chan monastery of Fayunsi on LUSHAN's Wuru Peak. In 1622, Hanshan returned to Mt. Caoxi and passed away the next year. Hanshan was particularly famous for his cultivation of Chan questioning meditation (KANHUA CHAN) and recollection of the Buddha's name (NIANFO). Along with YUNQI ZHUHONG (1535-1615), DAGUAN ZHENKE (a.k.a. Zibo) (1542-1603), and OUYI ZHIXU (1599-1655), Hanshan was known as one of the four great monks of the Ming dynasty. Hanshan was later given the posthumous title Chan master Hongjue (Universal Enlightenment). His teachings are recorded in the Hanshan dashi mengyou quanji.
hello, world "programming" The canonical, minimal, first program that a programmer writes in a new {programming language} or {development environment}. The program just prints "hello, world" to {standard output} in order to verify that the programmer can successfully edit, compile and run a simple program before embarking on anything more challenging. Hello, world is the first example program in the {C} programming book, {K&R}, and the tradition has spread from there to pretty much every other language and many of their textbooks. Environments that generate an unreasonably large executable for this trivial test or which require a {hairy} compiler-linker invocation to generate it are considered bad. {Hello, World in over 400 programming languages (http://www.roesler-ac.de/wolfram/hello.htm)}. (2013-10-27)
hello, world ::: The canonical minimal test message in the C/Unix universe or any of the minimal programs that emit this message. Traditionally, the first program a C coder generate an unreasonably large executable for this trivial test or which require a hairy compiler-linker invocation to generate it are considered bad (see X).
heretical belief Origen, it is said, was never canonized.
Hermas The Pastor of Hermas or The Shepherd of Hermas is an early Christian book, attributed to Hermas because that name occurs several times in it, though the authorship is doubtful. It was widely known in the East and regarded as inspired, receiving a respect approximating that paid to the canonical New Testament. It had wide vogue as early as the 2nd century. Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen quote it as scripture; and Origen identifies the author with the Hermas mentioned in Romans. Though it is impossible to assign to it a definite date of composition, conjecture points to the time of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius (117-161 AD). Full of legends and allegories, it presents in suggestive forms the gospel of love, but the name of Jesus Christ does not occur. It was thought by some to be Jewish in origin and contains passages from the Zohar. It has come down to us in several Latin translations, but only fragments of the Greek manuscript have yet come to hand.
homologoumena ::: n. pl. --> Those books of the New Testament which were acknowledged as canonical by the early church; -- distinguished from antilegomena.
hostname ::: 1. (Or sitename). The unique name by which a computer is known on a network, used to identify it in electronic mail, Usenet news, or other forms of electronic information interchange.On Internet the hostname is an ASCII string, e.g. foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk which, consists of a local part (foldoc) and a domain name (doc.ic.ac.uk). The hostname the Domain Name System (DNS) or resolver. It is possible for one computer to have several hostnames (aliases) though one is designated as its canonical name.It is often possible to guess a hostname for a particular institution. This is useful if you want to know if they operate network services like anonymous FTP, this fails, prepend ftp. or www. as appropriate, e.g. www.data-io.com. You can use the ping command as a quick way to test whether a hostname is valid.The folklore interest of hostnames stems from the creativity and humour they often display. Interpreting a sitename is not unlike interpreting a vanity roughly descending order). The obligatory comment is Harris's Lament: All the good ones are taken!See also network address.2. Berkeley Unix command to set and get the application level name used by the host.Unix manual page: hostname(1). (1995-02-16)
hostname 1. (Or "sitename"). The unique name by which a computer is known on a {network}, used to identify it in {electronic mail}, {Usenet} {news}, or other forms of electronic information interchange. On the {Internet} the hostname is an {ASCII} string, e.g. "foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk" which, consists of a local part (foldoc) and a {domain} name (doc.ic.ac.uk). The hostname is translated into an {Internet address} either via the {hosts file}, {NIS} or by the {Domain Name System} (DNS) or {resolver}. It is possible for one computer to have several hostnames (aliases) though one is designated as its {canonical} name. It is often possible to guess a hostname for a particular institution. This is useful if you want to know if they operate network services like {anonymous FTP}, {World-Wide Web} or {finger}. First try the institution's name or obvious abbreviations thereof, with the appropriate {domain} appended, e.g. "mit.edu". If this fails, prepend "ftp." or "www." as appropriate, e.g. "www.data-io.com". You can use the {ping} command as a quick way to test whether a hostname is valid. The folklore interest of hostnames stems from the creativity and humour they often display. Interpreting a sitename is not unlike interpreting a vanity licence plate; one has to mentally unpack it, allowing for mono-case and length restrictions and the lack of whitespace. Hacker tradition deprecates dull, institutional-sounding names in favour of punchy, humorous, and clever coinages (except that it is considered appropriate for the official public gateway machine of an organisation to bear the organisation's name or acronym). Mythological references, cartoon characters, animal names, and allusions to SF or fantasy literature are probably the most popular sources for sitenames (in roughly descending order). The obligatory comment is Harris's Lament: "All the good ones are taken!" See also {network address}. 2. {Berkeley} {Unix} command to set and get the application level name used by the host. {Unix manual page}: hostname(1). (1995-02-16)
Huayan bu. (J. Kegonbu; K. Hwaom pu 華嚴部). In Chinese, the "Huayan Division," one of the four major divisions into which the MAHĀYĀNA section of the Chinese Buddhist canon (see DAZANGJING) is divided. This division contains primarily the different Chinese translations of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA and its independent chapters. According to the scriptural catalogue (JINGLU) KAIYUAN SHIJIAO LU, this division comprises twenty-six texts (in 187 rolls) that were catalogued along with the different recensions of the AvataMsakasutra.
huguo Fojiao. (J. gokoku Bukkyo; K. hoguk Pulgyo 護國佛敎). In Chinese, "state-protection Buddhism," referring to the sociopolitical role Buddhism played in East Asia to protect the state against war, insurrection, and natural disasters. The doctrinal justification for such a protective role for Buddhism derives from the "Guanshiyin pusa pumen pin" ("Chapter on the Unlimited Gate of the BODHISATTVA AVALOKITEsVARA") and the "Tuoluoni pin" (DHĀRAnĪ chapter) of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), the "Huguo pin" ("Chapter on Protecting the State") of the RENWANG JING ("Scripture for Humane Kings"), and the "Zhenglun pin" ("Chapter on Right View") of the SUVARnAPRABHĀSOTTAMASuTRA ("Golden Light Sutra"). For example, the Suvarnaprabhāsottamasutra states that a ruler who accepts that sutra and has faith in the dharma will be protected by the four heavenly kings (CĀTURMAHĀRĀJAKĀYIKA); but if he neglects the dharma, the divinities will abandon his state and calamity will result. The "Huguo pin" of the Renwang jing notes that "when the state is thrown into chaos, facing all sorts of disasters and being destroyed by invading enemies," kings should set up in a grand hall one hundred buddha and bodhisattva images and one hundred seats, and then invite one hundred eminent monks to come there and teach the Renwang jing. This ritual, called the "Renwang Assembly of One-Hundred Seats" (C. Renwang baigaozuo hui; J. Ninno hyakukozae; K. Inwang paekkojwa hoe) would ward off any calamity facing the state and was held in China, Japan, and Korea from the late sixth century onward. In Japan, these three scriptures were used to justify the role Buddhism could play in protecting the state; and the Japanese reformist NICHIREN (1222-1282) cites the Suvarnaprabhāsottamasutra in his attempts to demonstrate that the calamities then facing Japan were a result of the divinities abandoning the state because of the government's neglect of the true teachings of Buddhism. The notion of state protection also figured in the introduction of ZEN to Japan. In 1198, the TENDAI and ZEN monk MYoAN EISAI (1141-1215) wrote his KoZEN GOKOKURON ("Treatise on the Promulgation of Zen as a Defense of the State"), which explained why the new teachings of Zen would both protect the state and allow the "perfect teachings" (see JIAOXIANG PANSHI) of Tendai to flourish. ¶ "State-protection Buddhism" has also been posited as one of the defining characteristics of Korean Buddhism. There are typically four types of evidence presented in support of this view. (1) Such rituals as the Inwang paekkojwa hoe (Renwang jing recitation) were held at court at least ten times during the Silla dynasty and increased dramatically to as many as one hundred twenty times during the succeeding Koryǒ dynasty. (2) Monasteries and STuPAs were constructed for their apotropaic value in warding off calamity. During the Silla dynasty, e.g., HWANGNYONGSA and its nine-story pagoda, as well as Sach'onwangsa (Four Heavenly Kings Monastery), were constructed for the protection of the royal family and the state during the peninsular unification wars. During the succeeding Koryo dynasty, the KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG (Korean Buddhism canon) was carved (twice) in the hopes that state support for this massive project would prompt the various buddhas and divinities (DEVA) to ward off foreign invaders and bring peace to the kingdom. (3) Eminent monks served as political advisors to the king and the government. For example, Kwangjong (r. 949-975), the fourth monarch of the Koryǒ dynasty, established the positions of wangsa (royal preceptor) and kuksa (state preceptor, C. GUOSHI), and these offices continued into the early Choson dynasty. (4) Monks were sometimes at the vanguard in repelling foreign invaders, such as the Hangmagun (Defeating Māra Troops) in twelfth-century Koryo, who fought against the Jurchen, and the Choson monks CH'oNGHo HYUJoNG (1520-1604) and SAMYoNG YUJoNG (1544-1610), who raised monks' militias to fight against the Japanese during the Hideyoshi invasions of the late sixteenth century. In the late twentieth century, revisionist historians argued that the notion of "state-protection Buddhism" in Korea may reflect as much the political situation of the modern and contemporary periods as any historical reality, and may derive from the concept of "chingo kokka" (protecting the state) advocated by Japanese apologists during the Buddhist persecution of the Meiji period (1868-1912).
Hŭngch'onsa. (興天寺). In Korean, "Flourishing Heaven Monastery"; the head monastery of the school of Doctrine (KYO) during the Choson dynasty, located in Songbuk-ku in the capital of Seoul. When Queen Sindok (d. 1395) died, King Taejo (r. 1392-1398) ordered in 1396 that this monastery be constructed to the east of the queen's royal tomb. At the king's command, a Sarigak (a three-story reliquary pavilion) and a Sarit'ap (a reliquary STuPA) were erected at the north side of the monastery. Ceremonies to guide the spirit of the deceased queen, including the Uranbun ritual (see ULLAMBANA), were held during the seventh and eighth months. In 1408, Hŭngch'onsa was officially affiliated with the Hwaom school (C. HUAYAN ZONG), but was designated a generic Kyo monastery in 1424, when the seven schools of Choson-dynasty Buddhism were amalgamated into the two schools of Kyo (Doctrine) and SoN (Meditation). The Buddhist canon (taejanggyong; C. DAZANGJING; see KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG) was enshrined at the monastery in the ninth month of 1440. The monastery burned to the ground in 1510, and its large bronze monastery bell was moved to Toksu Palace. At King Sonjo's (r. 1567-1608) command, the monastery was reconstructed in 1569 at the old location of the Hamch'wi kiosk. The monastery's name was changed to Sinhŭngsa in 1794, but then changed back to Hŭngch'onsa in 1865. The monastery is known for its Kŭngnak pojon (SUKHĀVATĪ Hall) and MYoNGBU CHoN (Hall of Judgment), both of which are Seoul municipal cultural properties.
Hyeyong. (惠永) (1228-1294). Korean monk of the Koryo dynasty. In 1238, Hyeyong was ordained by Ch'ungyon (d.u.) at the monastery of Nambaegwolsa. Hyeyong passed the Son (CHAN) examinations held at WANGNYUNSA in 1244 and was subsequently given a position at Hŭngdoksa. In 1259, he was given the title Samjung taesa, and four years later, he was elevated to the status of head seat (sujwa). In 1267, Hyeyong moved to the temple Songnisa. Hyeyong's reputation grew, and he was eventually elevated to the highest status of SAMGHA overseer (sŭngt'ong) in 1269. He also resided at such monasteries as PULGUKSA, T'ONGDOSA, and Chunghŭngsa. In 1290, he led a mission of one hundred monks who specialized in copying Buddhist scriptures to Yuan China and delivered a lecture in the capital. He also copied the Buddhist canon in gold. In 1292, he was given the title Poja Kukchon (National Worthy whose Compassion is Universal) and was also given the title of saMgha overseer of the five teachings (Ogyodo Sŭngtong). He resided at the monastery of Tonghwasa and remained there until his death in 1294. Hyeyong composed a treatise entitled the Paegŭihae.
icchantika. (T. 'dod chen; C. yichanti; J. issendai; K. ilch'onje 一闡提). In Sanskrit, "incorrigibles"; a term used in the MAHĀYĀNA tradition to refer to a class of beings who have lost all potential to achieve enlightenment or buddhahood. The term seems to derive from the present participle icchant (desiring), and may be rendered loosely into English as something like "hedonist" or "dissipated" (denotations suggested in the Tibetan rendering 'dod chen (po), "subject to great desire"). (The Sinographs are simply a transcription of the Sanskrit.) The Mahāyāna MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA states that persons become icchantika when they refuse to accept such basic principles as the law of causality, have lost their moral compass, are no longer concerned about either present actions or their future consequences, do not associate with spiritual mentors, and generally do not follow the teachings of the Buddha. In the LAnKĀVATĀRASuTRA, an icchantika is defined as a being who is explicitly antagonistic to the "bodhisattva collection" (BODHISATTVAPItAKA) of the canon, viz., to Mahāyāna scriptures, and who falsely claims that those scriptures do not conform to the SuTRA and the VINAYA. As a consequence of their disdain for the dharma, icchantikas were commonly assumed to be condemned to an indefinite period (and, according to some texts, an eternity) in the hells (see NĀRAKA). Certain bodhisattvas, such as KsITIGARBHA, could, however, voluntarily choose to become icchantikas by renouncing all of their own wholesome faculties (KUsALAMuLA) in order to save even the denizens of the hells. In East Asia, there was a major debate about whether icchantikas were subject to eternal damnation or whether even they retained the innate capacity to attain enlightenment. The Chinese monk DAOSHENG (355-434) rejected the implication that Buddhism would condemn any class of being to hell forever. He went so far as to reject the accuracy of passages suggesting such a fate that appeared in the first Chinese rendering of the Mahāparinirvānasutra made by FAXIAN and BUDDHABHADRA in 418. DHARMAKsEMA's subsequent translation of the sutra in 421, however, affirmed Daosheng's view that the buddha-nature (C. FOXING; S. BUDDHADHĀTU) was inherent in all beings, even icchantikas. The FAXIANG school of YOGĀCĀRA Buddhism was the only school of East Asian Buddhism that posited the existence of icchantikas, which it viewed as beings who had destroyed the pure seeds (BĪJA) innate in the mind through their heinous actions and thus had lost all hope of becoming buddhas. Virtually all other schools of East Asian Buddhism, however, asserted the doctrine of the universality of the buddha-nature in all sentient beings (and, in some cases, even in inanimate objects), and thus rejected any implication that icchantikas were bereft of all prospect of achieving buddhahood. See also SAMUCCHINNAKUsALAMuLA; QINI[ZUI].
ICI "language" An extensible, interpretated language by Tim Long with {syntax} similar to {C}. ICI adds high-level garbage-collected {associative} data structures, {exception} handling, sets, {regular expressions}, and {dynamic arrays}. Libraries provide additional types and functions to support common needs such as I/O, simple {databases}, character based screen handling, direct access to {system calls}, {safe pointers}, and {floating-point}. ICI runs on {Microsoft Windows}, {MS-DOS}, {Unix}, and {Linux} and in {embedded} environments. {(http://zeta.org.au/~atrn/ici/)}. {(ftp://ftp.research.canon.com.au/pub/misc/ici)}. E-mail: Andy Newman "andy@research.canon.com.au". Mailing list: ici@research.canon.com.au. (1999-12-07)
I didn't change anything! An aggrieved cry often heard as bugs manifest during a regression test. The {canonical} reply to this assertion is "Then it works just the same as it did before, doesn't it?" See also {one-line fix}. This is also heard from applications programmers trying to blame an obvious applications problem on an unrelated systems software change, for example a divide-by-0 fault after terminals were added to a network. Usually, their statement is found to be false. Upon close questioning, they will admit some major restructuring of the program that shouldn't have broken anything, in their opinion, but which actually {hosed} the code completely. [{Jargon File}]
I didn't change anything! ::: An aggrieved cry often heard as bugs manifest during a regression test. The canonical reply to this assertion is Then it works just the same as it did shouldn't have broken anything, in their opinion, but which actually hosed the code completely.[Jargon File]
imitation ::: n. --> The act of imitating.
That which is made or produced as a copy; that which is made to resemble something else, whether for laudable or for fraudulent purposes; likeness; resemblance.
One of the principal means of securing unity and consistency in polyphonic composition; the repetition of essentially the same melodic theme, phrase, or motive, on different degrees of pitch, by one or more of the other parts of voises. Cf. Canon.
infinito ::: a. --> Infinite; perpetual, as a canon whose end leads back to the beginning. See Infinite, a., 5.
in noncanonical lore, and ranked variously as a
interstice ::: n. --> That which intervenes between one thing and another; especially, a space between things closely set, or between the parts which compose a body; a narrow chink; a crack; a crevice; a hole; an interval; as, the interstices of a wall.
An interval of time; specifically (R. C. Ch.), in the plural, the intervals which the canon law requires between the reception of the various degrees of orders.
In the 3rd century BC the language used throughout Northern India was practically one, and it was derived directly from the speech of the Vedic Aryans, retaining many Vedic forms lost in the later classical Sanskrit. The basis of the language used in the Buddhist canon was that used in Ujjayini, the capital of the Avanti district. The chief doctrines of Buddhism are recorded in the works known as the Suttas (Sutras in Sanskrit) — there being four Nikayas consisting of 16 volumes; the fifth Nikaya being the Jatakas (birth stories of the Buddha).
īryāpatha. (P. iriyāpatha; T. spyod lam; C. weiyi; J. igi; K. wiŭi 威儀). In Sanskrit, lit. "movement," referring specifically to a set of four "postures," "deportments," or modes of physical activity, in progressive order of ease: walking (CAnKRAMA [alt. gamana]; P. caraM), standing (sthāna; P. thāna, titthaM), sitting (nisanna; P. nisinna), and lying down (saya/sayana; P. sayaM/sayāna). Because the body was presumed typically to be always in one or another of these postures, they constituted specific objects of mindfulness of the body (KĀYĀNUPAsYANĀ; P. kāyānupassanā; see also SMṚTYUPASTHĀNA) and there are accounts of monks attaining the rank of ARHAT in each of the four postures. The īryāpatha figure prominently in ĀNANDA's enlightenment experience. After striving in vain all night to perfect his practice before the start of the first Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, FIRST), where the canon was to be redacted, Ānanda had given up, only to become enlightened as he was in the process of lying down to rest-and thus technically between postures. ¶ The term īryāpatha can refer in other contexts to general behavior or "deportment" (but typically to religiously salutary deportment) or to a specific "course" of religious and/or ascetic practice.
ism. In noncanonical lore (Enoch and Baruch
I was apprised of a branch of extracanonical writings new to me: pseudepigrapha, particularly
JACAL {JAffer's Canonical ALgebra}
JAffer's Canonical ALgebra ::: (mathematics, tool) (JACAL) A symbolic mathematics program, most of which was written in Scheme by Aubrey Jaffer. . (1999-06-27)
JAffer's Canonical ALgebra "mathematics, tool" (JACAL) A {symbolic mathematics} program, most of which was written in {Scheme} by Aubrey Jaffer. {(http://swissnet.ai.mit.edu/~jaffer/JACAL.html)}. (1999-06-27)
Janapadakalyānī Nandā. (S. Janapandakalyānī Rupanandā; T. Yul gyi bzang mo dga' mo). In Pāli, "Nandā, the Prettiest in the Land"; one of three prominent nuns named Nandā mentioned in the Pāli canon (the others being ABHIRuPĀ NANDĀ and SUNDARĪ NANDĀ), all of whom share similar stories. According to Pāli sources, Janapadakalyānī Nandā was a Sākiyan (S. sĀKYA) woman of great beauty, who was betrothed to the Buddha's half-brother NANDA. On their wedding day, the Buddha visited her fiancé Nanda's palace in Kapilavatthu (S. KAPILAVASTU) and extended his felicitations. He caused Nanda to accompany him on his return to the monastery where he was staying and there asked Nanda to enter the order; Nanda reluctantly assented, but only after the Buddha used his supernatural powers to show him his prospects for enjoying heavenly maidens far more beautiful than his betrothed if he practiced well. Later, Nanda became an arahant (S. ARHAT). Janapadakalyānī was overcome with grief at Nanda's ordination. Since she felt she had nothing else to live for, as soon as women were allowed to enter the order, she decided to become a nun under the leadership of Mahāpajāpatī (S. MAHĀPRAJĀPATĪ). Still attached to her own loveliness, for a long time Janapadakalyānī refused to visit the Buddha for fear that he would speak disparagingly of physical beauty. When finally one day she went together with her companions to hear the Buddha preach, the Buddha, knowing her state of mind, created an apparition of an extraordinarily beautiful woman fanning him. Janapadakalyānī was transfixed by the beauty of the maiden, whom the Buddha then caused to age, die, and decompose right before her very eyes. As the Buddha described the impermanence of physical beauty, Janapadakalyānī attained stream-entry (P. sotāpatti; see SROTAĀPANNA) and, shortly thereafter, arahanthip (see S. ARHAT). The source for the stories related to JANAPADAKALYĀnĪ NANDĀ are the DHAMMAPADAttHAKATHĀ and the Udāya, both texts known only to the Pāli tradition.
Jataka (Sanskrit) Jātaka [from the verbal root jan to be born] A birth story; the 550 Jataka tales form one of the books of the Khuddaka Nikaya of the Buddhist canon. These stories are supposed to have been related by the Buddha and are considered by some to be the accounts of his former lives, and by others to be a group of tales built of occult truth and past experiences of the Buddha and treated in an allegorical way by some of his first and greatest disciples in order to depict a synopsis of the evolutionary history of the human race.
jinglu. (J. kyoroku; K. kyongnok 經). In Chinese, "scriptural catalogues"; a genre of Buddhist literature unique to East Asian Buddhism. Because the Chinese state presumed the authority to authorize which texts (including Buddhist scriptures) were allowed to circulate, the Chinese Buddhist institution from early in its history began to compile catalogues of scriptures that were deemed authentic, and thus suitable for inclusion in the Buddhist canon (DAZANGJING), and texts that were deemed suspect and thus potentially to be excluded from the canon (see APOCRYPHA). Scriptural catalogues began to be compiled within a century of the beginnings of the translation of Buddhist texts into Chinese, or sometime around the middle of the third century, and some eighty catalogues were compiled over the next one thousand five hundred years, with the majority dating from the Tang dynasty (618-907) or before. As Buddhist canons came to be compiled in Korea and Japan as well, those countries also began to create their own catalogues. For the Chinese cataloguers, the main standard of scriptural authority was whether there was clear evidence that a scripture had been imported from outside China and then translated into Chinese; any evidence that indigenous material had intruded into texts, whether that evidence involved vocabulary, thought, or practice, could lead to those texts being judged as apocrypha. Important catalogues include DAO'AN's ZONGLI ZHONGJING MULU, the earliest catalogue, composed c. 374; Sengyou's CHU SANZANG JIJI from 515, which established the principal categories into which all subsequent cataloguers would classify texts; Fei Changfang's LIDAI SANBAO JI from 597, which fabricated many translator attributions to texts that had previously been listed as anonymous, so as to quash potential questions about the reliability of the Buddhist textual transmission; DAOXUAN's DA TANG NEIDIAN LU from 664; and Zhisheng's KAIYUAN SHIJIAO LU from 730, the catalogue par excellence, whose scriptural listings would provide the definitive content and organization of the East Asian Buddhist canon from that point onward.
jingtu sanbu jing. (J. jodo sanbukyo; K. chongt'o sambu kyong 淨土三部經). In Chinese, "the three scriptures on the pure land," a designation for three main sutras that focus on AMITĀBHA Buddha and his PURE LAND of SUKHĀVATĪ; these are generally considered to be the central canonical sutras of the pure land schools, and especially of the Japanese JoDOSHu and JoDO SHINSHu. The three scriptures are (1) SUKHĀVATĪVYuHASuTRA, the "[Larger] Sutra on the Buddha of Immeasurable Life" (Wuliangshou jing); (2) "Sutra on the Contemplation of the Buddha of Immeasurable Life" (GUAN WULIANGSHOU JING); and (3) AMITĀBHASuTRA, the "[Smaller] Sutra on the Buddha Amitābha" (Amituo jing). The writings of the pure land school are to a large extent commentaries on or exegeses of these three scriptures.
JNānagupta. (C. Shenajueduo; J. Janakutta; K. Sanagulta 闍那崛多) (523-600). Indian monk from GANDHĀRA, who arrived in China around 559 and became a prolific translator of Indian materials into Chinese; some thirty-five of his translations are still extant and preserved in the Chinese canon (DAZANGJING). He is perhaps best known for his retranslation of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), which included portions of the scripture that did not appear in KUMĀRAJĪVA's pioneering translation made two centuries before, especially the important "Chapter on Devadatta." He also translated the AdhyāsayasaNcodana, the VIMALAKĪRTINIRDEsA, the Abhiniskramanasutra (a possible translation of the MAHĀVASTU), and several DHĀRAnĪ sutras.
Jubilees, Book of ::: Extra-canonical work, dating from the middle of the Second Temple period, purporting to be a secret revelation to Moses, upon his second ascent to Mount Sinai.
Kaiyuan Shijiao lu. (J. Kaigen Shakkyoroku; K. Kaewon Sokkyo nok 開元釋教録). In Chinese, "Record of sĀKYAMUNI's Teachings, Compiled during the Kaiyuan Era"; a comprehensive catalogue (JINGLU) of Buddhist texts compiled by the monk Zhisheng (658-740) in 730. The catalogue began as Zhisheng's own private record of Buddhist scriptures but was adopted soon afterward by the Tang imperial court as an official catalogue of the Chinese Buddhist canon (DAZANGJING) and entered into the canon as well. Zhisheng divided his catalogue into two major sections, a chronological register (rolls one through ten) and a topical register (rolls eleven through twenty). The chronological register contains a list of translated scriptures, organized according to translator's name and the period during which the text was translated. Because this register provides alternative titles of texts, numbers of volumes and rolls, names of translators, and a list of alternate translations, it is an invaluable tool for studying the production and circulation of Buddhist texts in medieval China. The topical register contains "lists of canonical texts" (ruzang lu), which subsequently became the standard rosters from which East Asian Buddhism constructed its canon. This roster also includes 406 titles of texts classified as APOCRYPHA, that is, scriptures listed as either of "doubtful authenticity" (YIJING) or explicitly "spurious" (weijing), which Zhisheng determined were probably of indigenous Chinese origin and therefore not authentic translations of the Buddha's words (BUDDHAVACANA). The renown of the catalogue is due to the great strides Zhisheng made toward eliminating discrepancies between the chronological and topical rosters, inconsistencies that had marred previous catalogues. The content and structure of all later catalogues is derived from Zhisheng's work, making the Kaiyuan Shijiao lu the most important of all the Buddhist scriptural catalogues compiled in East Asia.
Kālacakratantra. (T. Dus kyi 'khor lo rgyud). A late ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA that was highly influential in Tibet. Although the title of the tantra is often translated as "Wheel of Time," this translation is not attested in the text itself. Kālacakra is the name of the central buddha of the tantra, and the tantra deals extensively with time (kāla) as well as various macrocosmic and microcosmic cycles or wheels (CAKRA). According to legend, King SUCANDRA came to India from his kingdom of sAMBHALA and asked that the Buddha set forth a teaching that would allow him to practice the dharma without renouncing the world. In response, the Buddha, while remaining at Vulture Peak (GṚDHRAKutAPARVATA) in RĀJAGṚHA in the guise of a monk, set forth the Kālacakratantra at Dhānyakataka in southern India (near present-day Amarāvatī) in the guise of the buddha Kālacakra. The king returned to sambhala, where he transcribed the tantra in twelve thousand verses. This text is referred to as the root tantra (mulatantra) and is no longer extant. He also wrote a commentary in sixty thousand verses, also lost. He built a three-dimensional Kālacakra MAndALA at the center of the country, which was transformed into an ideal realm for Buddhist practice, with 960 million villages. The eighth king of sambhala, MaNjusrīkīrti, condensed the original version of the tantra into the abridged version (the Laghukālacakra). A later king of sambhala, Pundarīka, composed the VIMALAPRABHĀ commentary, considered crucial for understanding the tantra. These two texts were eventually transported from sambhala to India. Internal evidence in the text makes it possible to date the composition of the tantra rather precisely to between the dates 1025 and 1040 CE. This was the period of Muslim invasions of northern India under Mahmud of Ghazni, during which great destruction of Buddhist institutions occurred. The tantra, drawing on Hindu mythology, describes a coming apocalyptic war in which Buddhist armies will sweep out of sambhala, defeat the barbarians (mleccha), described as being followers of Madhumati (i.e., Muhammad), and restore the dharma in India. After its composition in northern India, the tantra was promulgated by such figures as Pindo and his disciple ATIsA, as well as NĀROPA. From India, it spread to Nepal and Tibet. The millennial quality of the tantra has manifested itself at particular moments in Tibetan history. Prior to World War II, the PAn CHEN LAMA bestowed the Kālacakra initiation in China in an effort to repel the Japanese invaders. The fourteenth DALAI LAMA has given the initiation many times around the world to promote world peace. ¶ The tantra is an anuttarayogatantra dedicated to the buddha Kālacakra and his consort Visvamātā. However, it differs from other tantras of this class in several ways, including its emphasis on the attainment of a body of "empty form" (sunyatābimba) and on its six-branched yoga (sadangayoga). The tantra itself, that is, the Laghukālacakra or "Abridged Kālacakra," has five chapters, which in the Tibetan commentarial tradition is divided into three sections: outer, inner, and other or alternative. The outer, corresponding to the first chapter, deals with the cosmos and treats such topics as cosmology, astrology, chronology, and eschatology (the story of the apocalyptic war against the barbarians is told there). For example, this section describes the days of the year; each of the days is represented in the full Kālacakra mandala as 360 golden (day/male) and dark (night/female) deities in union, with a single central Kālacakra and consort (YAB YUM) in the center. The universe is described as a four-tiered mandala, whose various parts are homologous to the cosmic body of a buddha. This section was highly influential in Tibetan astrology and calendrics. The new calendar of the Tibetans, used to this day, starts in the year 1027 and is based on the Kālacakra system. The inner Kālacakra, corresponding to the second chapter, deals with human embryology, tantric physiology, medicine, yoga, and alchemy. The human body is described as a microcosm of the universe. The other or alternative Kālacakra, corresponding to the third, fourth, and fifth chapters, sets forth the practice of Kālacakra, including initiation (ABHIsEKA), SĀDHANA, and knowledge (JNĀNA). Here, in the stage of generation (UTPATTIKRAMA), the initiate imagines oneself experiencing conception, gestation, and birth as the child of Kālacakra and Vismamātā. In the stage of completion (NIsPANNAKRAMA), one practices the six-branched yoga, which consists of retraction (pratyāhāra), concentration (DHYĀNA), breath control (PRĀnĀYĀMA), retention (dhāranā), recollection (ANUSMṚTI), and SAMĀDHI. In the last of these six branches, 21,600 moments of immutable bliss are created, which course through the system of channels and CAKRAS to eliminate the material aspects of the body, resulting in a body of "empty form" and the achievement of buddhahood as Kālacakra. The Sekoddesatīkā of Nadapāda (or Nāropa) sets forth this distinctive six-branched yoga, unique to the Kālacakra system. ¶ BU STON, the principal redactor of the canon in Tibetan translation, was a strong proponent of the tantra and wrote extensively about it. DOL PO PA SHES RAB RGYAL MTSHAN, a fourteenth-century JO NANG PA writer, championed the Kālacakra over all other Buddhist writings, assigning its composition to a golden age (kṛtayuga). Red mda' ba gzhon nu blo gros, an important scholar associated with SA SKYA sect, regarded the tantra as spurious. TSONG KHA PA, who was influenced by all of these writers, accepted the Kālacakratantra as an authentic ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA but put it in a category by itself.
Kālāmasutta. (C. Qielan jing; J. Garankyo; K. Karam kyong 伽藍經). In Pāli, "Instruction to the Kālāmas"; popular Western designation for a Pāli sutta (SuTRA) in the AnGUTTARANIKĀYA; delivered to the Kālāma people of Kesaputta, which is more commonly titled in modern Southeast Asian editions of the Pāli canon as the Kesamuttisutta or Kesaputtisutta. (A separate SARVĀSTIVĀDA recension appears as the sixteenth SuTRA in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMĀGAMA; the Sinographs Qielan are a transcription of Kālāma, so this seems to have been the title used for the scripture in the northwest Indian tradition). The sermon is prominently cited in Western writings on Buddhism for its advocacy of free inquiry and a putatively rational approach to religion, which is exempt from intolerance and dogmatism. In classical commentarial materials, however, the text is not interpreted in this way and is rarely mentioned. According to the Pāli recension, the Kālāmas had been visited by many religious teachers and had received conflicting testimony from them on what constituted the religious life; they also were put off by these teachers' tendency to praise only their own dogmas and to revile those of their rivals. Confused, the Kālāmas asked the Buddha to arbitrate. In his response, the Buddha rejects the validity of testimony simply because it is widely known, grounded in "tradition" (anussava; S. ANUsRAVA), appearing in scripture, or taught by a respected teacher. All these standards are said to be unreliable for understanding truth and falsity. Instead, the Buddha encourages them to follow what they themselves learn through their own training to be blamable or praiseworthy, harmful or beneficial. The Buddha then helps the Kālāmas to understand for themselves that the three afflictions of greed or craving (RĀGA; LOBHA), hatred (DVEsA; P. dosa), and delusion (MOHA) are harmful and should therefore be abandoned, while their absence is beneficial and should therefore be developed. The discourse concludes with the Buddha's instruction on how to project in all directions the four divine abidings (BRAHMAVIHĀRA) of loving-kindness (MAITRĪ), compassion (KARUnĀ), empathetic joy (MUDITĀ), and impartiality (UPEKsĀ) and a brief account of the solace that comes to those whose minds are free from hatred and defilement.
Kalinga. (T. Ka ling ga; Jielingqie; J. Karyoga; K. Kallŭngga 羯陵伽). An Indian kingdom on the eastern coast of the subcontinent; identified with the modern state of Orissa. In the eighth year of his reign, the Mauryan emperor AsOKA (third century BCE) conquered Kalinga. In his inscriptions, Asoka states that the resulting carnage caused him to turn away from violence and toward the dharma. Kalinga is mentioned in the Pāli canon as one of seven states that flourished at the time of the mythical king, Renu, but it is not included in the classical list of sixteen nations (janapada). During his previous life as VESSANTARA, the BODHISATTVA gave the kingdom of Kalinga his white elephant, Pacaya, in order to alleviate that country's drought. A TOOTH RELIC of the Buddha is said to have been enshrined at the Kalinga capital, Dantapura, and, later during the reign of the Sinhalese king, Sirimeghavanna, it was carried to Sri Lanka, where it was installed as the palladium of the Sinhalese royal house. From ancient times, there were close relations between the kings of Kalinga and Sri Lanka. During the reign of Aggabodhi II, the king and queen of Kalinga came to the island, renounced their thrones, and entered the order. The royal houses of both kingdoms frequently exchanged brides, and many descendants of the Kalinga dynasty are mentioned as having been crowned king of Sri Lanka. Māgha, the twelfth-century invader and scourge of Buddhism on the island, is also said to have hailed from Kalinga. During the early centuries of the Common Era, Kalinga was an important source for Buddhist and Brahmanical cultural influence among the Pyu and Mon peoples of Burma, contributing to the emergence of Buddhist civilization in Southeast Asia. Kalinga is also one of the twenty-four sacred sites associated with the CAKRASAMVARATANTRA. See also PĪtHA.
Kanjur (Tibetan) bka’ ’gyur (kang-gyur, kan-jur) [from bka’ sacred word + ’gyur translation] The portion of the Tibetan Buddhist canon containing the sutras, the texts ascribed to the Buddha himself and called the “Buddha Word” (Sanskrit buddha-vachana). The second part of the Tibetan Buddhist cannon, the Tanjur, contains sastras or commentaries and other scholastic works. The Kanjur consists almost entirely of works translated from Sanskrit or other Indian languages. Although the texts contained in the Kanjur are overwhelmingly of Indian origin, the compilation of the Kanjur was done in Tibet, and in structure it differs greatly from the old Indian Tripitakas. Four more or less complete recensions of the Buddhist canon survive: the Pali, the Chinese, the Tibetan, and the Mongolian, this last, however, being a translation of the Tibetan. The first three recensions differ from each other in content and arrangement. The overall arrangement of the Kanjur is in three sections, giving the Sanskrit names: Vinaya (monastic discipline), Sutra (discourses of the Buddha), and Tantra (esoteric and ritual texts). The Sutra section is divided into several subsections. Each section or subsection contains numerous individual texts.
Kāsyapaparivarta. (T. 'Od srung gi le'u; C. Yiri monibao jing; J. Yuinichi manihokyo; K. Yuil manibo kyong 遺日摩尼寶經). In Sanskrit, "The KĀsYAPA Chapter"; a SuTRA from one of the earliest strata of Indian MAHĀYĀNA Buddhism, probably dating from sometime in the first century CE. The sutra offers an overview of practices emblematic of BODHISATTVAs, which are arranged in several groups of four practices apiece. The text cites a "bodhisattva canon" (BODHISATTVAPItAKA) as the source for the teaching on the six perfections (PĀRAMITĀ) and offers one of the earliest mentions of the "thought of enlightenment" (BODHICITTA) in its Mahāyāna interpretation as the aspiration to achieve buddhahood. A bodhisattva who generates this thought even for the first time is said to be superior to the solitary buddhas (PRATYEKABUDDHA) and disciples (sRĀVAKA). Disciples are also censured as not being true sons of the Buddha, an early expression of the later Mahāyāna school's more explicit denunciations of the so-called HĪNAYĀNA. The sutra also refers to bodhisattva precepts (see BODHISATTVAsĪLA), which will subsequently be elaborated upon in such texts as MAITREYA/ASAnGA's BODHISATTVABHuMI and in such Chinese APOCRYPHA as the FANWANG JING. The Kāsyapaparivarta was one of the first sutras translated into Chinese, by the Indo-Scythian monk *LOKAKsEMA (c. 178-198 CE) in 179 CE; a later recension is also included in the massive RATNAKutA collection of sutras. The Kāsyapaparivarta is one of a substantial number of scriptures in the Ratnakuta collection for which Sanskrit recensions have been rediscovered and edited. Its Sanskrit manuscript was first discovered in KHOTAN in the 1890s and was more than one thousand years old; other Sanskrit fragments have subsequently been recovered.
Kaukkutika. [alt. Gokulika] (T. Bya gag 'tshong ba; C. Jiyin bu; J. Keiinbu; K. Kyeyunpu 鷄胤部). In Sanskrit, "those from KUKKUtĀRĀMA"; a major monastery in PĀtALIPUTRA; one of the three main subgroups of the MAHĀSĀMGHIKA school of mainstream (NIKĀYA) Buddhism, along with the LOKOTTARAVĀDA [alt. Ekavyavahārika] and the CAITYA. The school is said to have placed pride of place on the ABHIDHARMAPItAKA, treating the VINAYA and SuTRA as preparatory training, and emphasized the logical analysis of the abhidharma to the more expository and provisional expressions of truth found in the other two sections of the canon. This early collateral line of the MahāsāMghika school seems to have been most prominent around the end of the second century BCE, before it eventually split into the BAHUsRUTĪYA and PRAJNAPTIVĀDA subbranches.
Khuddakanikāya. (S. Ksudrakapitaka; T. Phran tshegs sde; C. Xiaobu; J. Shobu; K. Sobu 小部). In Pāli, "Miscellaneous Collection"; the fifth and last division of the PĀLI SUTTAPItAKA. Such miscellanies, or "mixed baskets" (S. ksudrakapitaka), were known to have existed in several of the mainstream Buddhist schools, including the DHARMAGUPTAKA, MAHĀSĀMGHIKA, and MAHĪsĀSAKA, but none of these recensions are extant (and there is no specific analogue in the Chinese ĀGAMA translations). The Pāli miscellany is composed of fifteen independent books, some of them representing the earliest strata of the Pāli canon, others relatively late compositions. The works are generally in verse, including the KHUDDAKAPĀtHA, DHAMMAPADA, UDĀNA, ITIVUTTAKA, SUTTANIPĀTA, VIMĀNAVATTHU, PETAVATTHU, THERAGĀTHĀ, THERĪGĀTHĀ, JĀTAKA, APADĀNA, BUDDHAVAMSA, and CARIYĀPItAKA. The Khuddhakanikāya contains in addition a commentary on portions of the Suttanipāta, called the MAHĀNIDDESA and CulANIDDESA, and one treatise, the PAtISAMBHIDĀMAGGA, that conforms to the abhidhamma in style and content. The Burmese recension of the Pāli canon adds to the collection four other works: the MILINDAPANHA, Suttasangaha, PEtAKOPADESA, and NETTIPPAKARAnA, making nineteen books in all.
Khuddakapātha. In Pāli, "Miscellaneous Readings"; first of the fifteen books contained in the KHUDDAKANIKĀYA of the Pāli SUTTAPItAKA and comprised of excerpts taken from earlier canonical texts. This late Pāli composition is mentioned as a canonical text only in the commentaries. The KHUDDAKAPĀtHA appears in the Pali Text Society's English translation series as The Minor Readings.
Khuddaka-patha (Pali) Khuddaka-pāṭha [from khuddaka little one + pāṭha reading, text] A Buddhist scripture given to neophytes upon joining the Samgha (the Buddhist brotherhood); first book in the Khuddaka-Nikaya — a collection of short canonical Buddhist books. This brief text contains some of the most beautiful poems in Buddhist literature, and the reverential feelings evoked by reading it are unquestionably the principal reason for its use. It opens with a profession of faith in the Buddha, in the Doctrine, and in the Order.
killer micro [Popularised by Eugene Brooks] A {microprocessor}-based machine that infringes on mini, mainframe, or supercomputer performance turf. Often heard in "No one will survive the attack of the killer micros!", the battle cry of the downsizers. Used especially of {RISC} architectures. The popularity of the phrase "attack of the killer micros" is doubtless reinforced by the movie title "Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes" (one of the {canonical} examples of so-bad-it's-wonderful among hackers). This has even more flavour now that killer micros have gone on the offensive not just individually (in workstations) but in hordes (within {massively parallel computers}). [{Jargon File}]
Kisā Gotamī. (S. *Kṛsā Gautamī). In Pāli, "Gotamī the emaciated"; an eminent arahant (S. ARHAT) therī, who was declared by the Buddha to be foremost among his nun disciples in the wearing of coarse robes (lukhacīvara). The story of Kisā Gotamī is found in several places in the Pāli canon and commentaries and is one of the most beloved narratives in the THERAVĀDA world for its poignancy. Born to a poor family in the city of Sāvatthi (S. sRĀVASTĪ), her personal name was Gotamī, and she received the epithet Kisā ("lean," or "emaciated") because she was so thin. She was fortunate to marry into a wealthy family, although she was not treated with respect until she bore a son. Her happiness was short lived, however, for her son died just as he became old enough to run around and play. Driven mad with grief, Kisā Gotamī wandered about carrying her son's body at her hip, seeking everywhere for medicine to restore him to life. She was mocked and driven away by everyone she approached, until a kind man finally took pity on her and directed her to the Buddha. In response to her pleas to revive her son, the Buddha told her he would do so if she would bring him a mustard seed from a household in which no one had died. Searching frantically from house to house and ultimately finding none that had not experienced the death of loved ones, she came to realize the inevitability of death and so was able finally to lay her child's body to rest in the charnel ground. Returning to the Buddha, she sought admission into the nun's order and was ordained. She promptly became a stream-enterer (sotāpanna; S. SROTAĀPANNA) and, soon afterward, an arahant (S. ARHAT). In a previous existence, she had witnessed Padumuttara Buddha declare one of his nuns foremost among those who wear coarse robes, and it was then that she vowed to one day earn that same title.
Koryoguk sinjo taejang kyojong pyollok. (高麗國新雕大藏校正別). In Korean, "Supplementary Record of Collation Notes to the New Carving of the Great Canon of the Koryo Kingdom"; a thirty-roll compilation of editorial notes to the carving of the second edition of the Korean Buddhist canon (see KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG), compiled in 1247 by the monk-editor Sugi (d.u.) and his editorial team. See SUGI.
Koryo taejanggyong. (高麗大藏經). In Korean, "The Koryo [Dynasty] Scriptures of the Great Repository"; popularly known in Korean as the P'ALMAN TAEJANGGYoNG ("The Scriptures of the Great Repository in Eighty Thousand [Xylographs]"); referring specifically to the second of the two xylographic canons produced during the Koryo dynasty (937-1392) and widely regarded as one of the greatest cultural achievements of the Korean Buddhist tradition. The first Koryo edition of the canon was carved between 1011 and c. 1087 but was destroyed in 1234 during the Mongol invasion of the Korean peninsula. The second edition was carved between 1236 and 1251 and included some 1,514 texts in 6,815 rolls, all carved on 81,258 individual woodblocks, which are still housed today in the Scriptural Repository Hall at the monastery of HAEINSA. This massive project was carried out at royal behest by its general editor SUGI (d.u.) and an army of thousands of scholars and craftsmen. The court supported this project because of the canon's potential value in serving as an apotropaic talisman, which would prompt the various buddhas, as well as the divinities (DEVA) in the heaven of the thirty-three [divinities] (TRĀYASTRIMsA), to ward off foreign invaders and bring peace to the kingdom. By protecting Buddhism through a state project to preserve its canonical teachings, therefore, Buddhism would in turn protect the state (viz., "state-protection Buddhism," K. hoguk pulgyo, C. HUGUO FOJIAO). Sugi left thirty rolls (kwon) of detailed collation notes about the editorial procedures he and his team followed in compiling the new canon, the KORYoGUK SINJO TAÉJANG KYOJoNG PYoLLOK (s.v.). Sugi's notes make clear that the second Koryo edition followed the Song Kaibao and first Koryo xylographic canons in its style and format but drew its readings in large measure from the Khitan Buddhist canon compiled by the Liao dynasty in the north of China. The xylographs typically include twenty-three lines of fourteen characters apiece, with text carved on both sides of the block. The second Koryo canon is arranged with pride of place given to texts from the MAHĀYĀNA tradition:
Kubjottarā. (P. Khujjuttarā; T. Rgur 'jog; C. Jiushouduoluo; J. Kujutara; K. Kusudara 久壽多羅). In Sanskrit, "Hunchbacked"; an eminent lay disciple best known from Pāli sources, whom the Buddha declared to be foremost among laywomen of wide learning (P. bahussuta; S. bahusruta); she was the slave of Sāmāvatī (S. sYĀMĀVATĪ), the wife of Udena and queen of Kosambī (S. Kausambī). Kubjottarā was hunchbacked, which was said to have been retribution for having once, in a previous existence, mocked a solitary buddha (paccekabuddha; S. PRATYEKABUDDHA) for having this same disfigurement. In another lifetime, she had made a nun do chores for her, which led to her rebirth as a slave. As the servant of Sāmāvatī, Kubjottarā was sent to the market every day with eight coins to purchase flowers, where she would spend four coins and pocket the rest. One day, she witnessed the Buddha preach and at once became a stream-enterer (sotāpanna; S. SROTAĀPANNA). Returning to the palace, she confessed her previous wrongdoing to Sāmāvatī, who immediately forgave her; the slave then related the contents of the Buddha's sermon. Fascinated, Sāmāvatī requested Kubjottarā to listen to the Buddha's sermons every day and tell her and her harem attendants the Buddha's message upon returning to the palace. Through Kubjottarā's instructions, Sāmāvatī and her attendants also became stream-enterers. Kubjottarā suggested that they pierce a hole in the walls of the harem so that they could watch as the Buddha passed in the street below and worship him. After her mistress's death, Kubjottarā spent her time in religious works, teaching and preaching the DHARMA. She was said to be extremely intelligent and to have memorized the entire canon (tipitaka; S. TRIPItAKA).
Kyongho Songu. (鏡虚惺牛) (1849-1912). The preeminent Korean SoN master of his generation, renowned for his efforts to revitalize Korean Buddhism at the end of the Choson dynasty. Kyongho lost his father at an early age, and his mother entrusted him to the monastery of Ch'onggyesa in Kwangju, where he became a monk. He was tonsured by the monk Kyeho (d.u.) in 1857, but when Kyeho later renounced his vows, Kyongho left for Tonghaksa, where he continued his studies under the monk Manhwa Kwanjun (1850-1919). Later, Kyongho went to the hermitage Ch'onjangam in Hongju and became the disciple of the monk Yongam (d.u.). For the next twenty years, Kyongho taught at various places including Ch'onjangam, Kaesimsa, and PUSoKSA. In 1899, he settled down at the major monastery of HAEINSA, where he presided over the publication of Buddhist scriptures and the reopening of POJO CHINUL's SUSoNSA. Kyongho is presumed to be the author of the SoNMUN CH'WARYO ("Selected Essentials from the Gate of Son"), an anthology of the essential canon of the Korean Son school. Kyongho subsequently led the life of an itinerant monk until his death in 1912. Kyongho was a strong advocate for the revitalization of GONG'AN meditation practice (kanhwa Son; see KANHUA CHAN) and did much to reestablish what was then a moribund meditation tradition in Korean Buddhism. Among his disciples, MAN'GONG WoLMYoN (1871-1946) and HANAM CHUNGWoN (1876-1951) are most famous. Largely through the influence of his disciples, many modern and contemporary Korean Son monks came to trace their lineages back to Kyongho.
Language of Science: See Scientific Empiricism II B 1. Lao Tzu: Whether the founder of Taoism (tao chia) was the same as Li Erh and Li An, whether he lived before or after Confucius, and whether the Tao Te Ching (Eng. trans.: The Canon of Reason and Virtue by P. Carus, The Way and Its Power by A. Waley, etc.) contains his teachings are controversial. According to the Shih Chi (Historical Records), he was a native of Chu (in present Honan), land of romanticism in the south, and a custodian of documents whom Confucius went to consult on rituals. Thus he might have been a priest-teacher who, by advocating the doctrine of "inaction", attempted to preserve the declining culture of his people, the suppressed people of Yin, while Confucius worked hard to promote the culture of the ruling people of Chou. -- W.T.C.
Laozi huahu jing. (J. Roshi kekokyo; K. Noja hwaho kyong 老子化胡經). In Chinese, "Scripture on Laozi's Conversion of the Barbarians," an indigenous Chinese scripture (see APOCRYPHA), of which only the first and tenth rolls are extant. The fragments of the text were discovered at the Central Asian cave site of DUNHUANG by the French Sinologist PAUL PELLIOT. A text known as the Laozi huahu jing is known to have been written by the Daoist priest Wang Fu (fl. c. third century CE) in the Western Jin dynasty, but the Dunhuang manuscript by the same title seems not to be Wang Fu's text; this assumption derives from the fact that the Dunhuang manuscript makes reference to Manichean thought, which was not introduced to China until later during the Tang dynasty. The Laozi huahu jing was written in China to advance the theory that the Daoist progenitor Laozi traveled to the West, where he became the Buddha. This theory appears as early as the year 166 in a petition submitted to the Emperor Huan (R. 146-168) of the Latter Han Dynasty. By positing a Chinese origin for the presumably imported religion of Buddhism, the Laozi huahu jing may have been written either to argue for the primacy of Daoism over Buddhism or to suggest that there was common ground between the imported tradition of Buddhism and indigenous Chinese religion. The Daoist canon contains a related text that similarly posits Laozi's identity as sĀKYAMUNI Buddha: the Santian neijie jing ("Inner Explanations of the Three Heavens"), which explains how Laozi left for KASHMIR in the ninth century BCE, where he converted both the king and his subjects to Daoism. After this success, he continued on to India, where he was subsequently reborn as sākyamuni, thus demonstrating that Buddhism is nothing more than Daoism in foreign guise. Later, Daoist texts written during the thirteenth century provide descriptions of as many as eighty-one different incarnations of Laozi; several of these descriptions draw liberally from Buddhist sources.
laser printer "printer" A non-impact high-resolution printer which uses a rotating disk to reflect laser beams to form an electrostatic image on a selenium imaging drum. The developer drum transfers toner from the toner bin to the charged areas of the imaging drum, which then transfers it onto the paper into which it is fused by heat. Toner is dry ink powder, generally a plastic heat-sensitive polymer. Print resolution currently (2001) ranges between 300 and 2400 dots per inch (DPI). Laser printers using chemical photoreproduction techniques can produce resolutions of up to 2400 DPI. Print speed is limited by whichever is slower - the printer hardware (the "engine speed"), or the software {rendering} process that converts the data to be printed into a {bit map}. The print speed may exceed 21,000 lines per minute, though printing speed is more often given in pages per minute. If a laser printer is rated at 12 pages per minute (PPM), this figure would be true only if the printer is printing the same data on each of the twelve pages, so that the bit map is identical. This speed however, is rarely reached if each page contains different codes, text, and graphics. In 2001, Xerox's Phaser 1235 and 2135 (with Okidata engines) could print up to 21 colour ppm at 1200x1200 DPI using a single-pass process. Colour laser printers can reach 2400 DPI easily (e.g. an HP LaserJet 8550). Some printers with large amounts of RAM can print at engine speed with different text pages and some of the larger lasers intended for graphics design work can print graphics at full engine speed. Although there are dozens of retail brands of laser printers, only a few {original equipment manufacturers} make {print engines}, e.g. {Canon}, {Ricoh}, {Toshiba}, and {Xerox}. (2002-01-06)
laser printer ::: (printer) A non-impact high-resolution printer which uses a rotating disk to reflect laser beams to form an electrostatic image on a selenium imaging fused by heat. Toner is dry ink powder, generally a plastic heat-sensitive polymer.Print resolution currently (2001) ranges between 300 and 2400 dots per inch (DPI). Laser printers using chemical photoreproduction techniques can produce resolutions of up to 2400 DPI.Print speed is limited by whichever is slower - the printer hardware (the engine speed), or the software rendering process that converts the data to be printed into a bit map.The print speed may exceed 21,000 lines per minute, though printing speed is more often given in pages per minute. If a laser printer is rated at 12 pages speed however, is rarely reached if each page contains different codes, text, and graphics.In 2001, Xerox's Phaser 1235 and 2135 (with Okidata engines) could print up to 21 colour ppm at 1200x1200 DPI using a single-pass process.Colour laser printers can reach 2400 DPI easily (e.g. an HP LaserJet 8550). Some printers with large amounts of RAM can print at engine speed with different text pages and some of the larger lasers intended for graphics design work can print graphics at full engine speed.Although there are dozens of retail brands of laser printers, only a few original equipment manufacturers make print engines, e.g. Canon, Ricoh, Toshiba, and Xerox.(2002-01-06)
La Vallée Poussin, Louis de. (1869-1938). Pioneering Belgian scholar of Buddhism, who is considered the founder of the Franco-Belgian school of European Buddhist Studies and one of the foremost European scholars of Buddhism during the twentieth century. La Vallée Poussin studied Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese under SYLVAIN LÉVI at the Sorbonne in Paris and HENDRIK KERN at Leiden, before becoming a professor of comparative Greek and Latin grammar at the University of Ghent in 1895, where he taught for the next three decades. La Vallée Poussin became especially renowned for his multilingual approach to Buddhist materials, in which all available recensions of a text in the major canonical languages of the Buddhist tradition were carefully studied and compared. Indicative of this approach is La Vallée Poussin's massive French translation of VASUBANDHU's ABHIDHARMAKOsABHĀsYA (later translated into English in four volumes), which uses the Chinese recension (in an annotated Japanese edition) as the textus receptus but draws heavily on Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan materials in order to present a comprehensive, annotated translation of the text, placed squarely within the broader context of the SARVĀSTIVĀDA ABHIDHARMA. La Vallée Poussin also published the first complete renderings in a Western language of DHARMAPĀLA/XUANZANG's CHENG WEISHI LUN (*VijNaptimātratāsiddhi) and sĀNTIDEVA's BODHICARYĀVATĀRA. He also published editions, translations, and studies of central YOGĀCĀRA, MADHYAMAKA, and tantric texts, in addition to a number of significant topical studies, including one on the Buddhist councils (SAMGĪTI). In 1916, his Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College, Oxford, were published as The Way to Nirvāna: Six Lectures on Ancient Buddhism as a Discipline of Salvation. Of his many students, perhaps the most renowned was the Belgian ÉTIENNE LAMOTTE.
Ldan kar ma. (Denkarma). One of the earliest known catalogues of Tibetan Buddhist texts translated during the imperial period of the early dissemination (SNGA DAR) of Buddhism in Tibet; also spelled Ldan dkar ma or Lhan kar ma. The work, preserved in the BSTAN 'GYUR section of the Tibetan canon, was compiled in the early ninth century and catalogues more than seven hundred distinct texts. Its name is derived from the Ldan kar (Denkar) palace in which it was written. The work is an important aid for scholars in determining which Buddhist texts were known and available during this early period of Tibetan history. It also illustrates the development of early principles for categorizing Buddhist literature, prefiguring the formation of the modern canon with its BKA' 'GYUR and bstan 'gyur sections. MAHĀYĀNA sutras are listed first, followed by HĪNAYĀNA sutras, treatises (sĀSTRA), TANTRAs, DHĀRAnĪs, praises (STOTRA), prayers (PRAnIDHĀNA), auspicious verses (mangalagāthā), VINAYA texts, and works on logic (NYĀYA). The collection ends with a list of revisions and translations in progress. See also JINGLU.
Lévi, Sylvain. (1863-1935). Influential nineteenth-century European scholar of the YOGĀCĀRA school of Buddhism. Born in Paris to Alsatian parents, Lévi had a conservative Jewish education and held his first teaching position at a conservative seminary in Paris. Educated in Sanskrit at the University of Paris, Lévi became a lecturer at the École des Hautes Études in Paris in 1886. There, he taught Sanskrit until he became professor of Sanskrit language and literature at the Collège de France in 1894, a position that he would hold until 1935. Lévi went to India and Japan to carry out his research and also traveled extensively in Korea, Nepal, Vietnam, and Russia. He eventually became the director of the École des Hautes Études. In addition to Sanskrit, Lévi also read classical Chinese, Tibetan, and Kuchean and was one of the first Western scholars to study Indian Buddhism through translations that were extant only in those secondary canonical languages. Perhaps his most significant translations were of seminal texts of the YOGĀCĀRA school, including renderings of VASUBANDHU's twin synopses, the VIMsATIKĀ and TRIMsIKĀ (1925), and ASAnGA's MAHĀYĀNASuTRĀLAMKĀRA, thus introducing the major writings of this important Mahāyāna scholastic school to the Western scholarly world. Lévi also published on classical Indian theater, the history of Nepal, and Sanskrit manuscripts from Bali. Together with TAKAKUSU JUNJIRo, Lévi was the cofounder of the joint Japanese-French Hobogirin, an encyclopedic dictionary of Buddhism, the compilation of which continues to this day.
leviticus ::: n. --> The third canonical book of the Old Testament, containing the laws and regulations relating to the priests and Levites among the Hebrews, or the body of the ceremonial law.
Lidai sanbao ji. (J. Rekidai sanboki; K. Yoktae sambo ki 歴代三寶紀). In Chinese, "Record of the Three Jewels throughout Successive Dynasties," a private scriptural catalogue (JINGLU) composed by Fei Changfang (d.u.) in 597. The Lidai sanbao ji professes to be a history of the dissemination of the three jewels (RATNATRAYA) in China and provides lists of translated scriptures, indigenous works, or APOCRYPHA, and discussion of the circumstances of their compilation. The catalogue is in fifteen rolls, covering 2,268 texts in a total of 6,417 rolls. The first three rolls of the catalogue provide a chronology of the major events in the history of Buddhism from the Zhou through the Han dynasties. Rolls four through twelve detail the different translations of Buddhist scriptures made in China during different dynastic periods and present them in chronological order. Rolls thirteen and fourteen present a roster of the complete MAHĀYĀNA and HĪNAYĀNA TRIPItAKAs. Finally, the fifteenth roll provides an afterword, a table of contents of the Lidai sanbao ji, and a list of other scriptural catalogues that Fei consulted in the course of compiling his own catalogue. Fei's organizational principle is unique among the Chinese cataloguers and serves to legitimize specific scriptural translations by associating them with the Chinese dynastic succession. Fei's record is particularly important for its attention to scriptures translated in northern China and its attempt to authenticate the translation and authorship of certain apocryphal texts. Fei was especially concerned in his catalogue to reduce the number of scriptures that previously had been listed as anonymous, in order to quash potential questions about the reliability of the Buddhist textual transmission (a concern that Daoists at the Chinese court were then exploiting in their competition for imperial patronage). Fei thus blatantly fabricated scores of attributions for translations that previously had been listed as anonymous. These attributions were later adopted by the state-authorized Da Zhou lu, compiled in 695, which ensured that these scriptures would subsequently enter the mainstream of the Buddhist textual transmission. Fei's translator fabrications resulted in substantial numbers of Chinese Buddhist scriptures that were apocryphal and yet accepted as canonical; this list includes many of the most influential scriptures and commentaries in East Asian Buddhism, including the YUANJUE JING, RENWANG JING, and DASHENG QIXIN LUN.
line noise "communications" 1. Spurious characters due to electrical {noise} in a communications link, especially an {EIA-232} serial connection. Line noise may be induced by poor connections, interference or {crosstalk} from other circuits, electrical storms, {cosmic rays}, or (notionally) birds crapping on the phone wires. 2. Any chunk of data in a file or elsewhere that looks like the results of electrical line noise. 3. Text that is theoretically a readable text or program source but employs {syntax} so bizarre that it looks like line noise. Yes, there are languages this ugly. The canonical example is {TECO}, whose input syntax is often said to be indistinguishable from line noise. Other non-{WYSIWYG} editors, such as {Multics} "{qed}" and {Unix} "{ed}", in the hands of a real hacker, also qualify easily, as do deliberately {obfuscate}d languages such as {INTERCAL}. [{Jargon File}] (1994-12-22)
Logia (Greek) Sayings, referring to the spoken teachings of an initiate to his disciples, as distinct from written teachings; sometimes equivalent to agrapha (unwritten teachings) and the aporrheta (things that must not be revealed) of the Mysteries. It usually refers to such sayings believed to have been given by Jesus and not recorded in the canon, but the secret basis on which Matthew and other evangelists constructed their Gospels. Certain schools of early Christians, whom afterwards were called heretics — the Nazarenes and the Ebionites — based their teachings and rules upon some of these secret discourses. They could only be interpreted by those possessing the keys, hence Jerome, who was employed by the ecclesiastical authorities to translate some of them, could not make much out of them; and what he did make out was hard to reconcile with the canonical Gospels.
luohan. (J. rakan; K. nahan 羅漢). In Chinese, ARHAT, referring to groups of venerated disciples of the Buddha who in their popular forms served as objects of cultic worship in East Asia. Countless paintings and statues of arhats were created, and legends and miracle stories concerning them circulated throughout the East Asian region. The arhats were commonly worshipped in groups of sixteen, eighteen, and five hundred, the last two of which developed without a canonical basis. Especially important was the cult of sixteen (later sometimes expanded to eighteen) arhat disciples (see sOdAsASTHAVIRA), whom the Buddha ordered to forgo PARINIRVĀnA and to continue to dwell in this world in order to preserve the Buddhist teachings until the coming of the future buddha, MAITREYA. Each of these arhats was assigned a residence and a retinue of disciples. Once Maitreya had advented on earth, the arhats would be charged with gathering the remaining relics of the current buddha sĀKYAMUNI and erecting one last STuPA to hold them, after which they would finally pass into PARINIRVĀnA. In China, arhat cults were popular particularly during the medieval period. Statues and paintings of arhats were enshrined throughout the land and Buddhists made offerings before those images. The Wuyue court even sponsored an annual summoning ritual of the five hundred arhats from the tenth century onward. The Song-dynasty court continued to sponsor the same ritual to pray for the welfare of the court and to ward off the evils. In Korea, the Koryo (918-1392) court performed a ritual for the five hundred arhats more than twenty-five times between 1053 and the end of the dynasty. The ritual was principally intended to pray for precipitation and protection from foreign invasion. This ritual even continued into the early Choson (1392-1910) period. Still today, most of the larger Korean monasteries will have on their campus an arhat hall (nahan chon), which enshrines paintings and/or images, typically of the group of sixteen. In Japan, the arhat cults were especially connected with the ZEN school. In particular, many monasteries associated with the SoToSHu have a hall dedicated to the arhats, which usually enshrines images of the sixteen, and the tradition engages in monthly and semiannual rituals dedicated to the arhats. In the Soto tradition, arhats are believed to play both salvific and apotropaic roles.
maccabees ::: n. pl. --> The name given later times to the Asmonaeans, a family of Jewish patriots, who headed a religious revolt in the reign of Antiochus IV., 168-161 B. C., which led to a period of freedom for Israel.
The name of two ancient historical books, which give accounts of Jewish affairs in or about the time of the Maccabean princes, and which are received as canonical books in the Roman Catholic Church, but are included in the Apocrypha by Protestants. Also
Madhyamāgama. (P. Majjhimanikāya; T. Dbu ma'i lung; C. Zhong ahan jing; J. Chuagongyo; K. Chung aham kyong 中阿含觀). In Sanskrit, the "Medium [Length] Scriptures"; the division of the Sanskrit SuTRAPItAKA corresponding closely to, but also substantially larger, than the MAJJHIMANIKĀYA of the Pāli canon. The Madhyamāgama collection is no longer extant in an Indic language but is preserved in its entirety in a Chinese translation made by Gautama SaMghadeva between 397 and 398; a few fragments of a Sanskrit recension have been discovered (such as at TURFAN), and there are Tibetan translations of some individual sutras from the collection. The extant Sanskrit fragments are ascribed to the SARVĀSTIVĀDA school; since these fragments correspond closely to the Chinese renderings, it is generally accepted that the Chinese translation of the Madhyamāgama represents the Sarvāstivāda school's recension of this collection. The Madhyamāgama contains 222 sutras, eighty of which correspond to suttas in the Pāli AnGUTTARANIKĀYA, eleven to suttas in the SAMYUTTANIKĀYA, and twelve to suttas in the DĪGHANIKĀYA. Of the Pāli Majjhimanikāya's 152 suttas, ninety-eight have corresponding recensions in the Madhyamāgama. See also ĀGAMA.
Mahākātyāyana. (P. Mahākaccāna; T. Ka tya'i bu chen po; C. Mohejiazhanyan; J. Makakasen'en; K. Mahagajonyon 摩訶迦旃延). Also known as Kātyāyana (P. Kaccāna, Kaccāyana); Sanskrit name of one of the Buddha's chief disciples and an eminent ARHAT deemed foremost among the Buddha's disciples in his ability to elaborate on the Buddha's brief discourses. According to the Pāli accounts, where he is known as Mahākaccāna, he was the son of a brāhmana priest who served King Candappajjota of AVANTI. He was learned in the Vedas and assumed his father's position upon his death. He was called Kaccāna because of the golden hue of his body and because it was the name of his clan. Once, he and seven companions were sent by the king to invite the Buddha to Avanti, the capital city of Ujjenī (S. Ujjayinī). The Buddha preached a sermon to them, whereupon they all attained arhatship and entered the order. Mahākaccāna took up residence in a royal park in Ujjenī, where he was treated with great honor by the king. He was such an able preacher and explicator of doctrine that many persons joined the order, until, it is said, the entire kingdom of Avanti sparkled with yellow robes. He became most renowned for his discourses in the MADHUPIndIKASUTTA, Kaccāyanasutta, and Parāyanasutta. In a previous life, Mahākaccāna was a thaumaturge (vijjādhara; S. VIDHYĀDHARA) during the time of the buddha Padumuttara. It was then that he first made the vow to win the eminence he eventually did under Gotama (S. Gautama) Buddha. Although living far away in Avanti, Mahākaccāna often went to hear the Buddha preach, and the assembled elders always left a place for him. He is said to have requested the Buddha to allow for special dispensation to ordain new monks in outlying regions without the requisite number of monastic witnesses. Mahākaccāna was noted for his ability to provide detailed exegeses of the Buddha's sometimes laconic instructions and brief verses, and several suttas in the Pāli canon are ascribed to him. According to tradition, he is the author of the NETTIPPAKARAnA and the PEtAKOPADESA, which seek to provide the foundational principles that unify the sometimes variant teachings found in the suttas; these texts are some of the earliest antecedents of commentarial exegesis in the Pāli tradition and are the only commentaries included in the suttapitaka proper. He is also said to be the author of the Pāli grammar, the Kaccāyanavyākarana. According to the Sanskrit tradition, Mahākātyāyana was the initiator of the STHAVIRANIKĀYA branch of the mainstream Buddhist schools and traditional compiler of the ABHIDHARMA. The JNĀNAPRASTHĀNA of the SARVĀSTIVĀDA ABHIDHARMAPItAKA is attributed to him, but it was certainly composed several hundred years later by an author of the same name. He is often depicted holding an alm's bowl (PĀTRA) or with his fingers interlaced at his chest. Like many of the great arhats, Mahākātyāyana appears frequently in the MAHĀYĀNA sutras, sometimes merely as a member of the audience, sometimes playing a more significant role. In the VIMALAKĪRTINIRDEsA, he is one of the sRĀVAKA disciples who is reluctant to visit the lay BODHISATTVA VIMALAKĪRTI. In the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, he is one of four arhats who understand the parable of the burning house and who rejoices in the teaching of the one vehicle (EKAYĀNA); later in the sutra, the Buddha prophesies his eventual attainment of buddhahood.
Mahāmudropadesa. (T. Phyag rgya chen po'i man ngag). In Sanskrit, "Instructions on the Great Seal"; a text known primarily through its Tibetan translations. It records seminal instructions on the view and practice of MAHĀMUDRĀ, taught by TILOPA to his disciple NĀROPA on the banks of the Ganges River. Due to this setting, the works is commonly known in Tibet as the Phyag chen gang gā ma ("Ganges Mahāmudrā") or simply the Gang gā ma. Several versions are preserved in the Tibetan Buddhist canon and the writings of various Tibetan Buddhist masters.
Mahāniddesa. In Pāli, "Longer Exposition," first part of the Niddesa ("Exposition"), an early commentarial work on the SUTTANIPĀTA included in the Pāli SUTTAPItAKA as the eleventh book of the KHUDDAKANIKĀYA. The Niddesa is attributed by tradition to the Buddha's chief disciple, Sāriputta (S. sĀRIPUTRA), and is divided into two sections: the Mahāniddesa and the CulANIDDESA ("Shorter Exposition"). The Mahāniddesa comments on the sixteen suttas (S. SuTRA) of the AttHAKAVAGGA chapter of the Suttanipāta; the Culaniddesa comments on the sixteen suttas of the Parāyanavagga chapter and on the Khaggavisānasutta (see KHAdGAVIsĀnA). The Mahāniddesa and Culaniddesa do not comment on any of the remaining contents of the Suttanipāta, a feature that has suggested to historians that at the time of their composition the Atthakavagga and Parāyanavagga were autonomous anthologies not yet incorporated into the Suttanipāta, and that the Khaggavisānasutta likewise circulated independently. The exegesis of the Suttanipāta by the Mahā- and Culaniddesa displays the influence of the Pāli ABHIDHAMMA (S. ABHIDHARMA) and passages from it are frequently quoted in the VISUDDHIMAGGA. Both parts of the Niddesa are formulaic in structure, a feature that appears to have been designed as a pedagogical aid to facilitate memorization. In Western scholarship, there has long been a debate regarding their dates of composition, with some scholars dating them as early as the third century BCE, others to as late as the second century CE. The Mahā- and Culaniddesa are the only commentarial texts besides the SUTTAVIBHAnGA of the VINAYAPItAKA to be included in the Sri Lankan and Thai recensions of the Pāli canon. In contrast, the Burmese canon includes two additional early commentaries, the NETTIPAKARAnA and PEtAKOPADESA, as books sixteen and seventeen in its recension of the Khuddakanikāya.
mahāpadesa. (P. mahāpadesa; T. chen po bstan pa; C. dashuo; J. daisetsu; K. taesol 大). In Sanskrit, "great authorities"; one of the categories employed in Buddhist hermeneutics to determine textual authority, that is, to judge after the Buddha's death, when he was no longer available as the final arbiter, whether a specific teaching was the authentic word of the Buddha (BUDDHAVACANA). According to this system of evaluation, someone might claim that a specific teaching is the word of the Buddha because of it having been heard from one of four possible authorities: (1) from the Buddha, (2) from a community (SAMGHA) of senior monks, (3) from a smaller group of learned elder monks, and (4) from a single learned monk. When someone claims to have heard a teaching directly from one of these four sources, the saMgha may determine whether it is the word of the Buddha by ascertaining whether it corresponds to the teachings of the SuTRAs and is in agreement with the VINAYA. If it does, it is to be accepted as the word of the Buddha; if it does not, it is to be rejected. In the Pāli tradition, the four are set forth in the Mahāpadesasutta, which is found in the canon both as an independent text and as incorporated into the MAHĀPARINIBBĀNASUTTA. The Sanskrit versions of the topic, in both mainstream and MAHĀYĀNA materials, add a third criterion to this conformity with the sutras and with the vinaya: that the words not go against "the way things are" (DHARMATĀ).
Mahāparinibbānasuttanta. (S. MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA; C. Youxing jing/Da banniepan jing; J. Yugyokyo/Daihatsunehangyo; K. Yuhaeng kyong/Tae panyolban kyong 遊行經/大般涅槃經). In Pāli, the "Discourse on the Great Decease" or the "Great Discourse on the Final Nirvāna"; the sixteenth sutta of the Pāli DĪGHANIKĀYA and longest discourse in the Pāli canon. (There were also either Sanskrit or Middle Indic recensions of this mainstream Buddhist version of the scripture, which should be distinguished from the longer MAHĀYĀNA recension of the scripture that bears the same title; see MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA.) There are six different Chinese translations of this mainstream version of the text, including a DHARMAGUPTAKA recension in the Chinese translation of the DĪRGHĀGAMA and an independent translation in three rolls by FAXIAN. This scripture recounts in six chapters the last year of Buddha's life, his passage into PARINIRVĀnA, and his cremation. In the text, the Buddha and ĀNANDA travel from Rājagaha (S. RĀJAGṚHA) to Kusināra (S. KUsINAGARĪ) in fourteen stages, meeting with different audiences to whom the Buddha gives a variety of teachings. The narrative contains numerous sermons on such subjects as statecraft, the unity of the SAMGHA, morality, the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS, and the four great authorities (MAHĀPADEsA) for determining the authenticity of Buddhist doctrines following the Buddha's demise. The Buddha crosses a river using his magical powers and describes to the distraught where their deceased loved ones have been reborn. Becoming progressively more ill, the Buddha decides to spend his final rains retreat (P. vassa; S. VARsĀ) with Ānanda meditating in the forest near VEnUGRĀMAKA, using his powers of deep concentration to hold his disease in check. He is eighty years old and describes his body as being like an old cart held together by straps. When the Buddha expresses his wish to address the saMgha, Ānanda assumes that there is a teaching that the Buddha has not yet taught. The Buddha replies that he was not one who taught with a "teacher's fist" (P. ācariyamutthi) or "closed fist," holding back some secret teaching, but that he has in fact already revealed everything. The Buddha also says that he is not the head of the saMgha and that after his death each monk should "be an island unto himself" with the DHARMA as his island (P. dīpa; S. dvīpa) and his refuge. ¶ While meditating at the CĀPĀLACAITYA, the Buddha mentions to Ānanda three times that a TATHĀGATA has the power to live for an eon or until the end of an eon. (The Pāli commentaries take "eon" here to mean "his full allotted lifespan," not a cosmological period.) Ānanda, however, misses the hint and does not ask him to do so. MĀRA then appears to remind the Buddha of what he told him at the time of his enlightenment: that he would not enter nibbāna (NIRVĀnA) until he had trained monks and disciples who were able to teach the dhamma (S. DHARMA). Māra tells the Buddha that that task has now been accomplished, and the Buddha eventually agrees, "consciously and deliberately" renouncing his remaining lifespan and informing Māra that he will pass away in three months' time. The earth then quakes, causing the Buddha to explain to Ānanda the eight reasons for an earthquake, one of which is that a tathāgata has renounced his life force. It is only at that point that Ānanda implores the Buddha to remain until the end of the eon, but the Buddha tells him that the appropriate time for his request has passed, and recalls fifteen occasions on which he had told Ānanda of this remarkable power and how each time Ānanda had failed to ask him to exercise it. The Buddha then explains to a group of monks the four great authorities (MAHĀPADEsA), the means of determining the authenticity of a particular doctrine after the Buddha has died and is no longer available to arbitrate. He then receives his last meal from the smith CUNDA. The dish that the Buddha requests is called SuKARAMADDAVA, lit., "pig's delight." There has been a great deal of scholarly discussion on the meaning of this term, centering upon whether it is a pork dish, such as mincemeat, or something eaten by pigs, such as truffles or mushrooms. At the meal, the Buddha announces that he alone should be served the dish and what was left over should be buried, for none but a buddha could survive eating it. Shortly after finishing the dish, the Buddha is afflicted with the dysentery from which he would eventually die. The Buddha then converts a layman named Pukkusa, who offers him gold robes. Ānanda notices that the color of the robes pales next to the Buddha's skin, and the Buddha informs him that the skin of the Buddha is particularly bright on two occasions, the night when he achieves enlightenment and the night that he passes away. Proceeding to the outskirts of the town of Kusinagarī, the Buddha lies down on his right side between twin sāla (S. sĀLA) trees, which immediately bloom out of season. Shortly before dying, the Buddha instructs Ānanda to visit Cunda and reassure him that no blame has accrued to him; rather, he should rejoice at the great merit he has earned for having given the Buddha his last meal. Monks and divinities assemble to pay their last respects to the Buddha. When Ānanda asks how monks can pay respect to the Buddha after he has passed away, the Buddha explains that monks, nuns, and laypeople should visit four major places (MAHĀSTHĀNA) of pilgrimage: the site of his birth at LUMBINĪ, his enlightenment at BODHGAYĀ, his first teaching at ṚsIPATANA (SĀRNĀTH), and his PARINIRVĀnA at Kusinagarī. Anyone who dies while on pilgrimage to one of these four places, the Buddha says, will be reborn in the heavens. Scholars have taken these instructions as a sign of the relatively late date of this sutta (or at least this portion of it), arguing that this admonition by the Buddha is added to promote pilgrimage to four already well-established shrines. The Buddha instructs the monks to cremate his body in the fashion of a CAKRAVARTIN. He says that his remains (sARĪRA) should be enshrined in a STuPA to which the faithful should offer flowers and perfumes in order to gain happiness in the future. The Buddha then comforts Ānanda, telling him that all things must pass away and praising him for his devotion, predicting that he will soon become an ARHAT. When Ānanda laments the fact that the Buddha will pass away at such a "little mud-walled town, a backwoods town, a branch township," rather than a great city, the Buddha disabuses him of this notion, telling him that Kusinagarī had previously been the magnificent capital of an earlier cakravartin king named Sudarsana (P. Sudassana). The wanderer SUBHADRA (P. Subhadda) then becomes the last person to be ordained by the Buddha. When Ānanda laments that the monks will soon have no teacher, the Buddha explains that henceforth the dharma and the VINAYA will be their teacher. As his last disciplinary act before he dies, the Buddha orders that the penalty of brahmadanda (lit. the "holy rod") be passed on CHANDAKA (P. Channa), his former charioteer, which requires that he be completely shunned by his fellow monks. Then, asking three times whether any of the five hundred monks present has a final question, and hearing none, the Buddha speaks his last words, "All conditioned things are subject to decay. Strive with diligence." The Buddha's mind then passed into the first stage of meditative absorption (P. JHĀNA; S. DHYĀNA) and then in succession through the other three levels of the subtle-materiality realm (RuPADHĀTU) and then through the four levels of the immaterial realm (ĀRuPYADHĀTU). He then passed back down through the same eight levels to the first absorption, then back up to the fourth absorption, and then passed away, at which point the earth quaked. Seven days later, his body was prepared for cremation. However, the funeral pyre could not be ignited until the arrival of MAHĀKĀsYAPA (P. Mahākassapa), who had been away at the time of the Buddha's death. After he arrived and paid his respects, the funeral pyre ignited spontaneously. The relics (sARĪRA) of the Buddha remaining after the cremation were taken by the Mallas of Kusinagarī, but seven other groups of the Buddha's former patrons also came to claim the relics. The brāhmana DROnA (P. Dona) was called upon to decide the proper procedure for apportioning the relics. Drona divided the relics into eight parts that the disputing kings could carry back to their home kingdoms for veneration. Drona kept for himself the urn he used to apportion the relics; a ninth person was given the ashes from the funeral pyre. These ten (the eight portions of relics, the urn, and the ashes) were each then enshrined in stupas. At this point the scripture's narrative ends. A similar account, although with significant variations, appears in Sanskrit recensions of the Mahāparinirvānasutra.
Maha-Parinibbana-Sutta or Suttanta (Pali) Mahā-Parinibbāna-Sutta [from mahā great + parinibbāna complete nirvana + sutta, suttanta text, book] The Book of the Great Decease of the Buddhist Pali canon, “one of the most authoritative of the Buddhist sacred writings” (TG 200).
*MahāprajNāpāramitāsutra. (T. Shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa chen po'i mdo; C. Dabore boluomiduo jing; J. Daihannya haramittakyo; K. Taebanya paramilta kyong 大般若波羅蜜多經). In Sanskrit, the "Sutra on the Great Perfection of Wisdom"; a massive compilation of PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ scriptural literature said to have been preached by the Buddha in four different places to sixteen discrete assemblies. These sixteen assemblies correspond to sixteen separate perfection of wisdom sutras, including such seminal works as the sATASĀHASRIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA ("PrajNāpāramitā in One Hundred Thousand Lines") and the VAJRACCHEDIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA ("Diamond Sutra"), which are integrated in this text into a single narrative. This recension of the scripture is only extant in a Chinese translation made in six hundred rolls by XUANZANG and his translation team between the years 660 and 663. Xuanzang's recension is by far the largest of all the prajNāpāramitā scriptures in the Chinese Buddhist canon (DAZANGJING), constituting about a third of the entire prajNāpāramitā section. The MahāprajNāpāramitāsutra also often holds pride of place as the first sutra found in many traditional East Asian Buddhist scriptural canons, such as the KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG. (In Tibet, the sATASĀHASRIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ in sixteen volumes comes at the start of the prajNāpāramitā section.) There has been speculation that the Chinese version of the well-known PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀHṚDAYASuTRA ("Heart Sutra"), which was also translated by Xuanzang, may be a redaction of sections of this Chinese recension of the MahāprajNāpāramitāsutra, made as a mneumonic encoding (DHĀRAnĪ) of the massive perfection of wisdom literature.
mahāprātihārya. (P. mahāpātihāriya; T. cho 'phrul chen po; C. shenbianxiang; J. jinpenso; K. sinbyonsang 神變相). In Sanskrit, "great miracle." This and the "dual miracle" (YAMAKAPRĀTIHĀRYA) are two popular miracles that the Buddha performed during his career, frequently narrated in both canonical and commentarial literature and also widely depicted in Buddhist art. Both the mahāprātihārya and the yamakaprātihārya are generally understood to have taken place in the city of sRĀVASTĪ. In the mahāprātihārya, the Buddha creates duplicates of himself, his dopplegängers then appearing in various terrestrial and heavenly abodes. In one instance, the Buddha produces a doppelgänger that remains on earth while he then goes to the TUsITA heaven to preach the dharma to his mother MĀYĀ. In another instance, the Buddha creates several duplicates of himself so that everyone present in his audience can interact with him privately.
Mahāvihāra. (C. Mohepiheluo; J. Mahabihara/Makabikara; K. Mahabihara 摩訶毘訶羅). In Pāli, the "Great Monastery"; built in the third century BCE for the elder MAHINDA at ANURĀDHAPURA by the Sinhala king DEVĀNAMPIYATISSA, following the king's conversion to Buddhism. The Mahāvihāra became the headquarters of the orthodox THERAVĀDA fraternity on the island, with many important shrines, such as the MAHĀTHuPA, located on its grounds. Its authority was challenged by the ABHAYAGIRI and JETAVANA secessionist fraternities in the first century BCE and fourth century CE, respectively. Five hundred monks from Mahāvihāra were said to have participated in the first commitment to writing of a Buddhist canon, which occurred during the reign of VAttAGĀMAnI ABHAYA (the patron of Abhayagiri) in the last decades BCE. During the reign of Mahāsena, in the late third century CE, a royal decree forbade giving alms to the monks of the monastery, causing the monastery to be vacated for nine years; during this time, some of the buildings were destroyed, but they were eventually rebuilt. BUDDHAGHOSA composed his sutta commentaries while residing at the monastery. After the capital was moved from Anurādhapura to Pulatthipura, near the beginning of the ninth century, the monastery lost much of its influence and eventually fell into decay.
Main works: Le fondemcnt de l'induction, 187; Psychologie et metaphysique, 1885; Etudes sur le syllogisme, 1907; Note sur le pari de Pascal. --L.W. Lamaism: (from Tibetan b La-ma, honorable title of a monk) The religious beliefs and institutions of Tibet, derived from Mahayana Buddhism (q.v.) which was first introduced in the 7th century by the chieftain Sron-tsan-gampo, superimposed on the native Shamaistic Bon religion, resuscitated and mixed with Tantric (q.v.) elements by the mythic Hindu Padmasambhava, and reformed by the Bengalese Atisa in the 11th and Tsong-kha-pa at the turn of the 14th century. The strong admixture of elements of the exorcismal, highly magically charged and priest-ridden original Bon, has given Buddhism a turn away from its philosophic orientation and produced in Lamaism a form that places great emphasis on mantras (q.v.) -- the most famous one being om mani padme hum) -- elaborate ritual, and the worship of subsidiary tutelary deities, high dignitaries, and living incarnations of the Buddha. This worship is institutionalized, with a semblance of the papacy, in the double incarnation of the Bodhisattva (q.v.) in the Dalai-Lama who resides with political powers at the capital Lhasa, and the more spiritual head Tashi-Lama who rules at Tashi-Ihum-po. Contacts with Indian and Chinese traditions have been maintained for centuries and the two canons of Lamaism, the Kan-jur of 108 books and the Tan-jur of 225 books represent many translations as well as original works, some of great philosophical value. -- K.F.L.
Maitrīpa/Maitrīpāda. (c. 1007-1085). A tantric adept and scholar from north India, especially associated with the transmission of instructions and songs of realization on the doctrine of MAHĀMUDRĀ. He is known by several names: the Tibetan form Maitrīpa or its Sanskrit original Maitrīpāda; as a Buddhist monk, Matrīgupta; as a tantric adept, Advayavajra and Avadhutipāda. Born in Bengal, Maitrīpa began his training as a Brahmanical scholar but later converted to Buddhism after debating with the scholar NĀROPA. He then received ordination and studied at the Buddhist universities of NĀLANDĀ and VIKRAMAsĪLA under such eminent masters as RATNĀKARAsĀNTI. Maitrīpa is said to have become a great academician, but he was also practicing TANTRA in secret. According to some traditions, Maitrīpa was expelled when liquor and a female consort were found in his room, perhaps by ATIsA DĪPAMKARAsRĪJNĀNA, who was resident abbot of Vikramasīla at the time. He then sought out the adept savaripa in south India and, after a series of trials, was accepted as his disciple, receiving various tantric instructions. Maitrīpa later returned to the north, marrying the king of Malabar's daughter and composing numerous treatises on tantric theory and practice, especially that of amanasikāra ("no mental activity"), which are preserved in the BSTAN 'GYUR portion of the Tibetan Buddhist canon. He was an important teacher of MAR PA.
Mandalay. The last royal capital of the Burmese Konbaung kingdom, prior to the British conquest of Burma (Myanmar). The city is situated on the eastern bank of the Irrawaddy River, twelve miles north of AVA (Inwa) and five miles north of AMARAPURA, both previous capitals of the Konbaung dynasty (1752-1885). Built in 1857 by MINDON MIN (r. 1853-1878) at the base of the eponymous Mandalay Hill, its construction was carried out at the place where the Buddha is said to have made a prophecy that a great Buddhist capital would arise on that spot in the 2,400th year after the parinibbāna. Very similar in plan to Amarapura, Mandalay is laid out in a grid pattern, at the center of which is a royal precinct in the shape of a perfect square surrounded by a wide moat and a brickwork defensive wall. The wall is pierced by twelve gates, three on each side, crowned with multistoried tiered pavilions (B. pyatthat), symbols of royal authority. Broad avenues run perpendicularly from the gates to the center of the royal compound where the palace and ancillary buildings are located. Destroyed during Allied bombing in World War II, these structures have recently been restored. The city's most famous shrine is the MAHĀMUNI pagoda, which houses the colossal bronze Mahāmuni image of Gotama Buddha (see ARAKAN BUDDHA). Originally housed in the palladium of Arakan, the Mahāmuni was seized by King Bodawpaya (r. 1782-1819) when he conquered that kingdom in 1785. As had been the case with the founding of earlier capitals, the construction of Mandalay was regarded as inaugurating a golden age wherein the religion, culture, and political fortunes of the Burmese kingdom would flourish. In connection with the prophecy, in 1868, Mindon Min summoned 2,400 learned monks to the capital from throughout the kingdom to revise the Pāli TIPItAKA in what came to be regarded by the Burmese as the fifth Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, FIFTH). In 1871, the revised Burmese canon was inscribed on 729 stone slabs that were erected, each in its own shrine, in concentric rings around the massive Kuthodaw pagoda (Pagoda of Great Merit). The entire complex occupies fourteen acres and is situated to the northeast of the fortified city at the base of Mandalay Hill. Nearby is the Sandamuni pagoda, constructed along a similar plan, which houses 1,171 slabs on which are inscribed the Pāli commentaries. Another monument constructed for the synod is the Kyauktawgyi pagoda modeled after the ANANDA TEMPLE at PAGAN, which contains a colossal seated statue of the Buddha. Commemorating Mandalay's foundation legend is the Shweyattaw temple, also built by Mindon Min and located halfway up a stairway leading to the top of Mandalay Hill. The structure houses a colossal standing image of the Buddha covered in gold leaf, whose outstretched arm points to the city center, marking the spot where the Buddha delivered his prophecy. In addition to its pagodas and temples, the city boasted numerous monasteries and colleges making it one of the major scholastic centers of the kingdom. Mandalay ceased to be the Burmese capital in 1885 when it fell to British troops at the conclusion of the Third Anglo-Burmese War.
Mangalasutta. In Pāli, "Discourse on the Auspicious"; one of the best-loved and most frequently recited texts in the Southeast Asian Buddhist world. The Mangalasutta appears in an early scriptural anthology, the SUTTANIPĀTA; a later collection, the KHUDDAKAPĀtHA; and in a postcanonical anthology of "protection texts," the PARITTA. The text itself is a mere twelve verses in length and is accompanied by a brief preface inquiring about what is true auspiciousness. The Buddha's response provides a straightforward recital of auspicious things, beginning with various social virtues and ending with the achievement of nibbāna (S. NIRVĀnA). The Mangalasutta's great renown derives from its inclusion in the Paritta, a late anthology of texts that are chanted as part of the protective rituals performed by Buddhist monks to ward off misfortunes; indeed, it is this apotropaic quality of the scripture that accounts for its enduring popularity. Paritta suttas refer to specific discourses delivered by the Buddha that are believed to offer protection to those who either recite the sutta or listen to its recitation. Other such auspicious apotropaic suttas are the RATANASUTTA ("Discourse on the Precious") and the METTĀSUTTA ("Discourse on Loving-Kindness"). These paritta texts are commonly believed in Southeast Asia to bring happiness and good fortune when chanted by the SAMGHA. The Mangalasutta has been the subject of many Pāli commentaries, one of the largest of which, the Mangalatthadīpanī, composed in northern Thailand in the sixteenth century, is over five hundred pages in length and continues to serve as the core of the monastic curriculum in contemporary Thailand. The Mangalasutta's twelve verses are: "Many divinities and humans, desiring well-being, have thought about auspiciousness; tell us what is the highest auspiciousness./ Not to associate with fools, to associate with the wise, to worship those worthy of worship-that is the highest auspiciousness./ To live in a suitable place and to have done good deeds before, having a proper goal for oneself-that is the highest auspiciousness./ Learning, craftsmanship, and being well-trained in discipline, being well-spoken-that is the highest auspiciousness./ Care for mother and father, supporting wife and children, and types of work that bring no conflict-that is the highest auspiciousness./ Generosity, morality, helping relatives and performing actions that are blameless-that is the highest auspiciousness./ Ceasing and refraining from evil, abstaining from intoxicants, diligence in morality-that is the highest auspiciousness./ Respect, humility, contentment, gratitude, listening to the dhamma at the proper time-that is the highest auspiciousness./ Patience, obedience, seeing ascetics and timely discussions of the dhamma-that is the highest auspiciousness./ Ascetic practice, the religious life, seeing the four noble truths, and the realization of nibbāna-that is the highest auspiciousness./ If someone's mind is sorrowless, stainless, secure, and does not shake when touched by the things of the world-that is the highest auspiciousness./ Having acted in this wise, unconquered everywhere they go to well-being everywhere-for them, this is the highest auspiciousness."
Manpukuji. (萬福寺). In Japanese, "Myriad Blessings Monastery"; located in Uji, outside Kyoto, Japan. Currently, Manpukuji is the headquarters (honzan) of the oBAKUSHu of the ZEN tradition. The monastery was founded by the émigré CHAN (Zen) master YINYUAN LONGXI with the support of the shogun Tokugawa Ietsuna (1639-1680). Construction began in 1661 and the dharma hall was completed the next year with the help of the grand counselor Sakai Tadakatsu (1587-1662). In 1664, Yinyuan left his head disciple MU'AN XINGTAO in charge and retired to his hermitage at Manpukuji. Mu'an thus became the second abbot of Manpukuji and oversaw the construction of the buddha hall, the bell tower, the patriarchs' hall, and so forth. For several generations, émigré Chinese monks dominated the abbacy of Manpukuji. The construction of Manpukuji was modeled after Yinyuan's old monastery of Wanfusi (which is pronounced Manpukuji in Japanese) in Fuzhou (present-day Fujian province). The major icons were also prepared by émigré Chinese artists and, along with the famous portrait of Yinyuan, are now considered important cultural artifacts. Mu'an's disciple Tetsugen Doko (1630-1682) led a project to carve a complete set of xylographs of the Ming dynasty edition of the Buddhist canon, which is now housed at Manpukuji; this edition, commonly called the obaku canon, is one of the few complete xylographic canons still extant in East Asia (cf. the second carving of the Korean Buddhist canon, KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG).
mansionary ::: a. --> Resident; residentiary; as, mansionary canons.
Mar pa Chos kyi blo gros. (Marpa Chokyi Lodro) (1012-1097). A renowned Tibetan translator and lay Buddhist master who played an important role in the later transmission (PHYI DAR) of Buddhism from India to Tibet. He is regarded as the Tibetan founder of the BKA' BRGYUD sect of Tibetan Buddhism, which traces its lineage to India and the MAHĀSIDDHAs TILOPA and NĀROPA. In his traditional biographies, Mar pa is generally regarded as a reincarnation of the Indian mahāsiddha DOMBĪ HERUKA. Mar pa was born to wealthy landowners in the southern Tibetan region of LHO BRAG and quickly proved to be a gifted child. As an adult, Mar pa was characterized as having a volatile temper, although ultimately compassionate. His parents sent their son to study Sanskrit and Indian vernacular languages with the translator 'BROG MI SHĀKYA YE SHES in western Tibet. Because resources for studying Buddhism in Tibet were limited as the so-called dark period between the earlier dissemination (SNGA DAR) and later dissemination (phyi dar) came to an end, Mar pa decided to make the harrowing journey to India to seek instruction from Buddhist masters. He would make three journeys there over the course of his life. He first spent three years in Nepal, acclimating to the new environment and continuing his study of local languages. There he met two Nepalese teachers, Chitherpa and Paindapa, who offered many religious instructions but also encouraged Mar pa to seek out the master who would become his chief guru, the great SIDDHA NĀROPA. According to tradition, Mar pa studied under Nāropa at the forest retreat of Pullahari, receiving initiations and teachings of several important tantric lineages, especially those of the BKA' 'BABS BZHI (four transmissions) that Nāropa had received from his principal teacher TILOPA. Despite the fame of this encounter, contemporary Tibetan sources indicate that Mar pa himself never claimed to have studied directly with Nāropa, who had already passed away prior to Mar pa's trip to India. Mar pa's other great master was the Indian siddha MAITRĪPA, from whom he received instruction in MAHĀMUDRĀ and the tradition of DOHĀ, or spiritual song. Mar pa received other tantric transmissions from Indian masters such as JNānagarbha and Kukkurīpā. Upon his return to Tibet, Mar pa married several women, the most well known being BDAG ME MA, who figures prominently in the life story of MI LA RAS PA. He began his career as teacher and translator, while also occupying himself as landowner and farmer. He had intended to pass his dharma lineage to his son DARMA MDO SDE, for whom Mi la ras pa's famous tower was built, but the child was killed in an equestrian accident. Mar pa's accumulated instructions were later passed to four principal disciples: Ngog Chos sku rdo rje (Ngok Choku Dorje), Mes tshon po (Me Tsonpo), 'Tshur dbang nge (Tsur Wangnge), and the renowned YOGIN and poet Mi la ras pa. At least sixteen works translated from Sanskrit by Mar pa are preserved in the Tibetan Buddhist canon. He is also known as Mar pa LO TSĀ BA (Marpa the Translator) and Lho brag pa (Man from Lhodrak). Among the biographies of Mar pa, one of the most famous is that by GTSANG SMYON HERUKA.
matin ::: n. --> Morning.
Morning worship or service; morning prayers or songs.
Time of morning service; the first canonical hour in the Roman Catholic Church. ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the morning, or to matins; used in the
mātṛkā. (P. mātikā; T. phyi mo; C. modalijia; J. matarika; K. madalliga 摩怛理迦). In Sanskrit, lit. "matrix" and related etymologically to that English word; systematized "matrices" or "lists" of terms and topics appearing in the SuTRAs, which served as the nucleus of the ABHIDHARMA literature. Important early disciples of the Buddha, including sĀRIPUTRA, MAHĀMAUDGALYĀYANA, and MAHĀKĀTYĀYANA, are said to have compiled such lists in order to systematize the disparate teachings found in the Buddha's discourses, using these rosters as mnemonic devices for teaching the DHARMA to their students. The earliest matrices may have been such common dharma lists as the five aggregates (SKANDHA), twelve sense spheres (ĀYATANA), and eighteen elements (DHĀTU). These relatively simple lists were gradually elaborated into complex matrices that were intended to provide a systematic overview of the full range of Buddhist spiritual development, such as an exhaustive matrix of twenty-two triads (such as wholesome, unwholesome, and indeterminate) and one hundred dyads that provides the exegetical framework for the DHAMMASAnGAnI, the first book in the Pāli ABHIDHAMMA. None of the early matrices of the SARVĀSTIVĀDA or YOGĀCĀRA schools are extant, but they can be reconstructed from culling the lists treated in their abhidharma literatures; these rosters closely follow those appearing in the Pāli abhidhamma. By tying together, expanding upon, and systematizing these various matrices, the different schools of abhidharma constructed scholastically meticulous and coherent exegeses of Buddhist doctrine and soteriology. The mātṛkā thus served as the forerunner of the adhidharma, and the abhidharma thus represents an elaboration and analysis of these lists. In some early accounts, in fact, a matrix was essentially synonymous with the abhidharma, and both terms are used in differing accounts of the initial recitation of the Buddhist canon following the Buddha's demise; indeed, the ABHIDHARMAPItAKA is sometimes even referred to as the mātṛkāpitaka.
Merraton, etc.)—in noncanonical writings, Meta- ]
metasyntactic variable "grammar" Strictly, a {variable} used in {metasyntax}, but often used for any name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever thing is under discussion, or any random member of a class of things under discussion. The word {foo} is the {canonical} example. To avoid confusion, hackers never (well, hardly ever) use "foo" or other words like it as permanent names for anything. In filenames, a common convention is that any filename beginning with a metasyntactic-variable name is a {scratch} file that may be deleted at any time. To some extent, the list of one's preferred metasyntactic variables is a cultural signature. They occur both in series (used for related groups of variables or objects) and as singletons. Here are a few common signatures: {foo}, {bar}, {baz}, quux, quuux, quuuux...: MIT/Stanford usage, now found everywhere. At MIT (but not at Stanford), {baz} dropped out of use for a while in the 1970s and '80s. A common recent mutation of this sequence inserts {qux} before quux. bazola, ztesch: Stanford (from mid-'70s on). {foo}, {bar}, thud, grunt: This series was popular at CMU. Other CMU-associated variables include ack, barf, foo, and {gorp}. {foo}, {bar}, fum: This series is reported to be common at {Xerox PARC}. {fred}, {barney}: See the entry for {fred}. These tend to be Britishisms. {toto}, titi, tata, tutu: Standard series of metasyntactic variables among francophones. {corge}, {grault}, {flarp}: Popular at Rutgers University and among {GOSMACS} hackers. zxc, spqr, {wombat}: Cambridge University (England). shme: Berkeley, GeoWorks, Ingres. Pronounced /shme/ with a short /e/. {foo}, {bar}, zot: {Helsinki University of Technology}, Finland. blarg, wibble: New Zealand Of all these, only "foo" and "bar" are universal (and {baz} nearly so). The compounds {foobar} and "foobaz" also enjoy very wide currency. Some jargon terms are also used as metasyntactic names; {barf} and {mumble}, for example. See also {Commonwealth Hackish} for discussion of numerous metasyntactic variables found in Great Britain and the Commonwealth. [{Jargon File}] (1995-11-13)
metasyntactic variable ::: (grammar) Strictly, a variable used in metasyntax, but often used for any name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever thing is under foo is the canonical example. To avoid confusion, hackers never (well, hardly ever) use foo or other words like it as permanent names for anything.In filenames, a common convention is that any filename beginning with a metasyntactic-variable name is a scratch file that may be deleted at any time.To some extent, the list of one's preferred metasyntactic variables is a cultural signature. They occur both in series (used for related groups of variables or objects) and as singletons. Here are a few common signatures: foo, bar, baz, quux, quuux, quuuux...: MIT/Stanford usage, now found everywhere. At MIT (but not at Stanford), baz dropped out of use for a while in the 1970s and '80s. A common recent mutation of this sequence inserts qux before quux. bazola, ztesch: Stanford (from mid-'70s on). foo, bar, thud, grunt: This series was popular at CMU. Other CMU-associated variables include ack, barf, foo, and gorp. foo, bar, fum: This series is reported to be common at Xerox PARC. fred, barney: See the entry for fred. These tend to be Britishisms. toto, titi, tata, tutu: Standard series of metasyntactic variables among francophones. corge, grault, flarp: Popular at Rutgers University and among GOSMACS hackers. zxc, spqr, wombat: Cambridge University (England). shme: Berkeley, GeoWorks, Ingres. Pronounced /shme/ with a short /e/. foo, bar, zot: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland. blarg, wibble: New ZealandOf all these, only foo and bar are universal (and baz nearly so). The compounds foobar and foobaz also enjoy very wide currency.Some jargon terms are also used as metasyntactic names; barf and mumble, for example.See also Commonwealth Hackish for discussion of numerous metasyntactic variables found in Great Britain and the Commonwealth.[Jargon File] (1995-11-13)
metasyntactic variable ::: (grammar) Strictly, a variable used in metasyntax, but often used for any name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever thing is under foo is the canonical example. To avoid confusion, hackers never (well, hardly ever) use foo or other words like it as permanent names for anything.In filenames, a common convention is that any filename beginning with a metasyntactic-variable name is a scratch file that may be deleted at any time.To some extent, the list of one's preferred metasyntactic variables is a cultural signature. They occur both in series (used for related groups of variables or objects) and as singletons. Here are a few common signatures:foo, bar, baz, quux, quuux, quuuux...: MIT/Stanford usage, now found everywhere. At MIT (but not at Stanford), baz dropped out of use for a while in the 1970s and '80s. A common recent mutation of this sequence inserts qux before quux.bazola, ztesch: Stanford (from mid-'70s on).foo, bar, thud, grunt: This series was popular at CMU. Other CMU-associated variables include ack, barf, foo, and gorp.foo, bar, fum: This series is reported to be common at Xerox PARC.fred, barney: See the entry for fred. These tend to be Britishisms.toto, titi, tata, tutu: Standard series of metasyntactic variables among francophones.corge, grault, flarp: Popular at Rutgers University and among GOSMACS hackers.zxc, spqr, wombat: Cambridge University (England).shme: Berkeley, GeoWorks, Ingres. Pronounced /shme/ with a short /e/.foo, bar, zot: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland.blarg, wibble: New ZealandOf all these, only foo and bar are universal (and baz nearly so). The compounds foobar and foobaz also enjoy very wide currency.Some jargon terms are also used as metasyntactic names; barf and mumble, for example.See also Commonwealth Hackish for discussion of numerous metasyntactic variables found in Great Britain and the Commonwealth.[Jargon File] (1995-11-13)
Methodology: The systematic analysis and organization of the rational and experimental principles and processes which must guide a scientific inquiry, or which constitute the structure of the special sciences more particularly. Methodology, which is also called scientific method, and more seldom methodeutic, refers not only to the whole of a constituted science, but also to individual problems or groups of problems within a science. As such it is usually considered as a branch of logic; in fact, it is the application of the principles and processes of logic to the special objects of the various sciences; while science in general is accounted for by the combination of deduction and induction as such. Thus, methodology is a generic term exemplified in the specific method of each science. Hence its full significance can be understood only by analyzing the structure of the special sciences. In determining that structure, one must consider the proper object of the special science, the manner in which it develops, the type of statements or generalizations it involves, its philosophical foundations or assumptions, and its relation with the other sciences, and eventually its applications. The last two points mentioned are particularly important: methods of education, for example, will vary considerably according to their inspiration and aim. Because of the differences between the objects of the various sciences, they reveal the following principal methodological patterns, which are not necessarily exclusive of one another, and which are used sometimes in partial combination. It may be added that their choice and combination depend also in a large degree on psychological motives. In the last resort, methodology results from the adjustment of our mental powers to the love and pursuit of truth. There are various rational methods used by the speculative sciences, including theology which adds certain qualifications to their use. More especially, philosophy has inspired the following procedures: The Soctattc method of analysis by questioning and dividing until the essences are reached; the synthetic method developed by Plato, Aristotle and the Medieval thinkers, which involves a demonstrative exposition of the causal relation between thought and being; the ascetic method of intellectual and moral purification leading to an illumination of the mind, as proposed by Plotinus, Augustine and the mystics; the psychological method of inquiry into the origin of ideas, which was used by Descartes and his followers, and also by the British empiricists; the critical or transcendental method, as used by Kant, and involving an analysis of the conditions and limits of knowledge; the dialectical method proceeding by thesis, antithesis and synthesis, which is promoted by Hegelianlsm and Dialectical Materialism; the intuitive method, as used by Bergson, which involves the immediate perception of reality, by a blending of consciousness with the process of change; the reflexive method of metaphysical introspection aiming at the development of the immanent realities and values leading man to God; the eclectic method (historical-critical) of purposive and effective selection as proposed by Cicero, Suarez and Cousin; and the positivistic method of Comte, Spencer and the logical empiricists, which attempts to apply to philosophy the strict procedures of the positive sciences. The axiomatic or hypothetico-deductive method as used by the theoretical and especially the mathematical sciences. It involves such problems as the selection, independence and simplification of primitive terms and axioms, the formalization of definitions and proofs, the consistency and completeness of the constructed theory, and the final interpretation. The nomological or inductive method as used by the experimental sciences, aims at the discovery of regularities between phenomena and their relevant laws. It involves the critical and careful application of the various steps of induction: observation and analytical classification; selection of similarities; hypothesis of cause or law; verification by the experimental canons; deduction, demonstration and explanation; systematic organization of results; statement of laws and construction of the relevant theory. The descriptive method as used by the natural and social sciences, involves observational, classificatory and statistical procedures (see art. on statistics) and their interpretation. The historical method as used by the sciences dealing with the past, involves the collation, selection, classification and interpretation of archeological facts and exhibits, records, documents, archives, reports and testimonies. The psychological method, as used by all the sciences dealing with human behaviour and development. It involves not only introspective analysis, but also experimental procedures, such as those referring to the relations between stimuli and sensations, to the accuracy of perceptions (specific measurements of intensity), to gradation (least noticeable differences), to error methods (average error in right and wrong cases), and to physiological and educational processes.
Mettāsutta. (C. Ci jing; J. Jikyo; K. Cha kyong 慈經). In Pāli, the "Discourse on Loving-Kindness"; one of the best-loved and most frequently recited texts in the THERAVĀDA Buddhist world. According to the Mettāsutta's framing narrative, a group of monks went into the forest during the rainy season to meditate. The tree deities of the forest were disturbed by the presence of the monks and sought to drive them away by frightening them during the night. The monks went to the Buddha and requested his assistance in quelling the disturbance. The Mettāsutta was the discourse that the Buddha then delivered in response, instructing the monks to meditate on loving-kindness (P. mettā; S. MAITRĪ), thinking, "May all beings be happy and safe. May they have happy minds. Whatever living beings there may be-feeble or strong, long, stout, or of medium size, short, small, large, those seen or those unseen, those dwelling far or near, those who are born as well as those yet to be born-may all beings have happy minds." Having radiated these thoughts throughout the forest, the monks were no longer troubled by the spirits. The Mettāsutta appears in an early scriptural anthology, the SUTTANIPĀTA, a later collection, the KHUDDAKAPĀtHA, and in a postcanonical anthology of "protection texts," (PARITTA). (Separate recensions appear in the Chinese translations of the EKOTTARĀGAMA and the SAMYUKTĀGAMA, the latter affiliated with the SARVĀSTIVĀDA school.) The Mettāsutta's great renown derives from its inclusion among the paritta texts, which are chanted as part of the protective rituals performed by Buddhist monks to ward off misfortunes; indeed, it is this apotropaic quality of the scripture that accounts for its enduring popularity. Paritta suttas refer to specific discourses delivered by the buddha that are believed to offer protection to those who either recite the sutta or listen to its recitation. Other such auspicious apotropaic suttas are the MAnGALASUTTA ("Discourse on the Auspicious") and the RATANASUTTA ("Discourse on the Precious"). These paritta texts are commonly believed to bring happiness and good fortune when chanted by the SAMGHA. See also BRAHMAVIHĀRA.
Mishnah, extra canonical: R. Juda Hanasi included in his Mishnah (now the Mishnah par excellence) selected materials from the older Mishnah-collections, particularly from that of R. Akiba (d. 135 A.D.) and his disciple, R. Meir. In fact, it is assumed that any anonymous statement in the Mishnah is R. Meir's (setam mathnithin R. Meir).
Mo che: Neo-Mohists, followers of Mo Tzu in the third century B.C., probably organized as a religious or fraternal order, who continued the utilitarian humanism of Mo Tzu wrote the Mo Ching (Mohist Canons) which now form part of Mo Tzu; developed the seven methods of argumentation, namely, the methods of possibility, hypothesis, imitation, comparison, parallel, analogy, and induction; discovered the "method of agreement," which includes "identity, generic relationship, co-existence, and partial resemblance," the "method of difference," which includes "duality, absence of generic relationship, separateness, and dissimilarity," and the "joint method of differences and similarities;" refuted the Sophists (pien che) theory of distinction of quality and substance; and became the outstanding logical school in Chinese philosophy. -- W.T.C.
Mulasarvāstivāda vinaya. (T. Gzhi thams cad yod par smra ba'i 'dul ba; C. Genben Shuoyiqieyou bu pinaiye; J. Konpon Setsuissaiubu binaya; K. Kŭnbon Sorilch'eyubu pinaeya 根本一切有部毘奈耶). In Sanskrit, the "Monastic Code of the MuLASARVĀSTIVĀDA," or "Original Monastic Code of the SARVĀSTIVĀDA School"; one of the six extant recensions of the VINAYA. Divergences between their respective monastic codes were one of the principal differentiating characteristics of the various mainstream schools of Indian Buddhism. The attempt to differentiate the Mulasarvāstivāda vinaya from the Sarvāstivāda vinaya (both of which are extant in Chinese translation) may well derive from a polemical claim by the MATHURĀ branch of the Sarvāstivāda school in north-central India that their tradition comprised the "root" or "foundational" monastic code of the school. Whatever the precise denotation of the term, the Mulasarvāstivāda vinaya, is by far the longest of the extant vinayas-by some calculations some four times longer than any of its counterparts. The Mulasarvāstivāda vinaya contains some material that suggests it may belong to one of the earliest strata of the vinaya literature. The text was composed in Sanskrit in the first or second centuries CE, but only a few Sanskrit fragments have been discovered at GILGIT. The code is preserved in full only in Tibetan translation, although there is also a partial (but still massive) Chinese translation made by YIJING (635-713) in the late seventh and early eighth centuries. The code details 253 rules and regulations for fully ordained monks (BHIKsU) and 364 rules for fully ordained nuns (BHIKsUNĪ) as well as precepts for male and female lay practitioners (UPĀSAKA and UPĀSIKĀ), male and female novices (sRĀMAnERA and sRĀMAnERIKĀ), and female probationers (sIKsAMĀnĀ). Because each rule requires an explanation of how it came to be established, the text is a vast source of stories (many of which do not appear in other codes) that provide essential insights into Buddhist monastic life at the time of its composition. The collection also includes discussions of areas of monastic life that receive short shrift in other recensions, such as how to escort images on procession through town or lend the SAMGHA's money with interest to laypeople. The Mulasarvāstivāda vinaya also includes many narratives (AVADĀNA) and stories, including one of the earliest Sanskrit accounts of the life of the Buddha, as well as SuTRAs that in other mainstream traditions appear in the scripture section of the canon (SuTRAPItAKA). Because of its eclectic content, the Mulasarvāstivāda vinaya functions almost as proto-canon (TRIPItAKA). The Mulasarvāstivāda vinaya is the monastic code still followed today in the Tibetan traditions of Buddhism, where it is studied primarily via the summary composed by GUnAPRABHA, entitled the VINAYASuTRA.
nairātmya. (T. bdag med; C. wuwo; J. muga; K. mua 無我). In Sanskrit, "selflessness," referring to the absence of a perduring self. It is a later scholastic term synonymous with the canonical term ANĀTMAN, lit., "nonself"; here, the same notion is turned into an abstract noun, nairātmya, hence "selflessness." This translation should not be understood in its common English meaning as a personality trait that is the opposite of selfishness. Nairātmya instead is used philosophically to refer to the quality of an absence of self. The major Buddhist philosophical schools of India differ on the precise meaning of this selflessness, based on how they define "self" (ĀTMAN). They would all agree, however, that an understanding of nairātmya is the central insight of the Buddhist path (MĀRGA) leading to liberation from the cycle of rebirth. Two types of nairātmya are distinguished, based on what it is that lacks self. The first is called the selflessness of persons (PUDGALANAIRĀTMYA), which refers to the absence of a permanent and autonomous entity among the aggregates of mind and body (NĀMARuPA) that transmigrates from lifetime to lifetime. The second type of nairātmya is called the selflessness of phenomena (i.e., phenomena other than persons), or DHARMANAIRĀTMYA, which refers to the absence of any kind of enduring element in the factors that make up the universe. Nairātmya is used in both HĪNAYĀNA and MAHĀYĀNA philosophical schools but receives particular emphasis in the Mahāyāna. In the MADHYAMAKA school, e.g., the selflessness of phenomena is defined as the absence of intrinsic nature, or SVABHĀVA; see NIḤSVABHĀVA. ¶ Nairātmyā (T. Bdag med ma; C. Wuwomu), or "Selfless," is also the name of the consort of HEVAJRA. In the HEVAJRATANTRA, she represents the overcoming of wrath.
Nakchin. (樂眞) (1045-1114). In Korean, "Enjoying Truth"; Korean scholar-monk during the mid-Koryo dynasty, also known as royal master (wangsa) Ogong T'onghye (Awakening to Emptiness, Penetrating Wisdom). Initially a student of the state preceptor (kuksa; see GUOSHI) Kyongdok Nanwon (999-1066), Nakchin passed the monk's examination (SŬNGKWA) and received the title "greatly virtuous" (taedok). After Nanwon's death, Nakchin became a close colleague of the state preceptor Taegak ŬICH'oN (1055-1101), the fifth son of the Koryo king Munjong (r. 1046-1083). After Ŭich'on surreptitiously departed for China against his royal father's wishes, the king sent Nakchin after him, and they eventually studied together under the HUAYAN teacher Jinshui Jingyuan (1011-1088), at Huiyinsi in Hangzhou. After the two monks returned to Korea, Nakchin stayed with Ŭich'on at Hŭngwangsa in the capital, where he assisted Ŭich'on in establishing the large monastic library known as the Kyojang Togam and in publishing the massive Koryo sokchanggyong ("Koryo Supplement to the Canon"), which was especially important for its inclusion of a broad cross section of the indigenous writings of East Asian Buddhist teachers. Nakchin also served as an editor of Ŭich'on's Wonjong mullyu. Nakchin eventually rose to the preeminent position of "SAMGHA overseer" (K. sŭngt'ong; C. SENGTONG) under King Sukchong (r. 1096-1105) and, in 1114, received the title royal master (wangsa).
Nanatsudera. (七寺). Japanese vernacular name of the monastery of Toenzan Chofukuji in downtown Nagoya; famous as the repository of a massive twelfth-century manuscript canon of East Asian Buddhist works that was designated an Important Cultural Property after World War II. The monastery, which is affiliated with the SHINGONSHu, was founded by GYoGI in 735 and was originally named Shogakuin. The monastery was destroyed in an air raid in March 1945, but its canon survived, stored in lacquered chests called karabitsu. In 1990, scholarly investigation of the 4,954 juan (3,398 in rolls, 1,556 in folded books) of Nantsudera's canon identified scores of juan of scriptures that were long believed to have been lost. Especially important were several previously unknown Chinese Buddhist APOCRYPHA, including seminal works of the proscribed SANJIE JIAO school. The Nanatsudera collection is considered by many scholars of East Asian Buddhism to be the most important discovery of Buddhist textual materials since the unearthing of the DUNHUANG cache in the early twentieth century.
Nanjo Bun'yu. (南条文雄) (1849-1927). Japanese Buddhist scholar who helped to introduce the modern Western discipline of Buddhist Studies to Japan; he is usually known in the West by his own preferred transcription of Nanjio Bunyiu. Nanjo was the third son of the abbot of a temple in the HIGASHI HONGANJIHA (see oTANIHA; HONGANJI) of JoDO SHINSHu, and was eventually ordained as a priest in that sect. In 1876, the Higashi Honganjiha sent Nanjo to England, where he studied Sanskrit and other Buddhist canonical languages with FRIEDRICH MAX MÜLLER (1823-1900). After eight years overseas, he returned to Japan in 1884, teaching Sanskrit and Buddhism at Tokyo Imperial University, where he was an important Japanese pioneer in Sanskrit pedagogy and the study of Indian Buddhist literature. He also held a succession of posts as professor and president of several Buddhist universities in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Nagoya. Nanjo played a critical role in reviving the study of Buddhist literature in China. While he was in Oxford, Nanjo met YANG WENHUI (1837-1911; cognomen Yang Renshan) and later arranged to send Yang copies of some three hundred Chinese Buddhist texts that had been lost in China during the depredations of the Taiping Rebellion (1851-1865). Yang was able to reprint and distribute these scriptures from his personal publication house, the Jinling Sutra Publishing Center, in Nanjing. Nanjo is best known in the West for publishing in 1883 the first comprehensive catalogue of the East Asian Buddhist canon, A Catalogue of the Chinese Translation of the Buddhist Tripitaka, the Sacred Canon of the Buddhists in China and Japan, compiled by order of the Secretary of State for India. This catalogue is especially important for making one of the first attempts to correlate the Chinese translations of Buddhist texts with their Sanskrit and Tibetan recensions. Nanjo also edited the Sanskrit recensions of such texts as the LAnKĀVATĀRASuTRA and the larger and smaller SUKHĀVATĪVYuHASuTRA (which he translated in collaboration with F. Max Müller) and assisted HENDRIK KERN in preparing his Sanskrit edition of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA.
Nanyang Huizhong. (J. Nan'yo Echu; K. Namyang Hyech'ung 南陽慧忠) (675?-775). Chinese CHAN master of the Tang dynasty; a native of Yuezhou in present-day Zhejiang province. He is said to have studied under the sixth patriarch (LIUZU) HUINENG (638-713) as a youth and to have eventually become one of his dharma successors. After Huineng's death, Nanyang led an itinerant life, traveling from one monastery to the next until he settled down on Mt. Baiya in Nanyang (present-day Henan province), whence he acquired his toponym. He is said to have remained in seclusion on the mountain for some forty years. In 761, he was invited to the palace by Emperor Suzong (r. 756-762), who honored Nanyang as his teacher. He took up residence at the monastery of Qianfusi, but later moved to Guangzhaisi at the request of Emperor Daizong (r. 762-779). Nanyang later established the monasteries of Yanchangsi and Changshousi and installed a copy of the Buddhist canon (DAZANGJING) at each site. Juizong lived during a period of great efflorescence in the Chan school, but he was not closely identified with any one school. He is, however, said to have been critical of the teachings of the Chan master MAZU DAOYI (709-788) and other HONGZHOU ZONG teachers in Sichuan in the south of China, who rejected the authority of the traditional Buddhist scriptures; he is also said to have criticized the Hongzhou interpretation of "mind is buddha" as being akin to the sREnIKA HERESY, in which the body is simply an impermanent vessel for an eternal mind or soul. The notion that "inanimate objects can preach the dharma" (wujing shuofa) is also attributed to Nanyang.
Nāropa. (1016-1100). An Indian scholar and tantric master who holds an important place in the lineages of tantric Buddhism in Tibet. According to his traditional biography, Nāropa was a brāhmana born in Bengal, who traveled to KASHMIR as a child. He was forced to marry at the age of seventeen, but the marriage ended by mutual consent after eight years. According to some sources, Nāropa's wife (or sister according to other sources) was NIGUMA, who became a famous tantric YOGINĪ. Nāropa was ordained as a Buddhist monk, entering NĀLANDĀ monastry in 1049. His talents as a scholar eventually led him to be selected to serve as abbot and as a senior instructor known by the name Abhayakīrti. In 1057, while at the monastery, he encountered an old hag (in reality a dĀKINĪ), who told him that he had understood the words of the texts he had studied but not their inner meaning. She urged him to go in search of her brother TILOPA. As a result of this encounter, Nāropa left the monastery to find Tilopa and become his disciple. Over the course of his journey, he encountered Tilopa in various forms but was unable to recognize him. Tilopa eventually revealed himself to Nāropa, subjecting him to a famous series of twelve greater and twelve lesser trials, involving serious physical injury and mental anguish. Tilopa eventually transferred his realization to Nāropa by striking him on the head with his shoe. Nāropa later compiled Tilopa's instructions and transmitted them to his own disciples. According to tradition, these students included the Tibetan translator MAR PA CHOS KYI BLO GROS, but in fact Nāropa had died before Mar pa made his first journey to India. Regardless, various instructions of Nāropa were transmitted to Tibet, the most famous of which are the NĀ RO CHOS DRUG, or "six doctrines (or yogas) of Nāropa." These practices became important for numerous Buddhist lineages but are especially associated with the BKA' BRGYUD sect, where Nāropa holds a central place in the lineage from VAJRADHARA to Tilopa to Nāropa to Mar pa to MI LA RES PA. Several works attributed to Nāropa are preserved in the Tibetan canon.
Nettippakarana. In Pāli, "The Guide," a paracanonical Pāli text dedicated to the exegesis of scripture, which is included in the longer Burmese (Myanmar) edition of the KHUDDAKANIKĀYA. The Netti (as it is often called) is traditionally ascribed to the Buddha's disciple Kaccāna (see KĀTYĀYANA; MAHĀKĀTYĀYANA), but was likely composed in India sometime around the beginning of the Common Era. Some scholars presume that the work is a revision of the closely related PEtAKOPADESA, which it ultimately superseded. Both the Netti and the Petakopadesa develop an elaborate hermeneutical theory based on the broad rubrics of "interpretation" or "guidance" (netti; cf. Skt. netri) as to "sense" (byaNjana; Skt. vyaNjana) and interpretation as to "meaning" (attha; Skt. ARTHA). The Netti is divided into two major sections: an outline of the contents, and a longer systematic set of rubrics that describe specific techniques of interpretation, in three subsections. See also VYĀKHYĀYUKTI; SANFEN KEJING.
Neviah ::: a Prophetess ::: New Testament ::: The collection of Christian canonical writings that together with “the Old Testament” (see also Apocrypha) constitute the Christian Bible.
nikāya. (T. sde; C. bu; J. bu; K. pu 部). In Sanskrit and Pāli, lit. "group" or "collection," a term with two important denotations: (1) Any of the various collections of SuTRAs, such as in the Pāli canon, e.g., the "Long Collection" (DĪGHANIKĀYA), "Middle-Length Collection" (MAJJHIMANIKĀYA), etc. The Sanskrit collections of sutras tend be called instead ĀGAMA. Nikāya is also used as a general term for the collection or "canon." (2) Any of the various groups (in the sense of schools or sects) of "mainstream" (i.e., non-Mahāyāna) Indian Buddhism. Traditional lists enumerate eighteen such groups, although there were in fact more; the names of thirty-four schools have been identified in texts and inscriptions. These groups, divided largely according to which VINAYA they followed, are sometimes referred to collectively as Nikāya Buddhism, a term that more specifically refers to monastic Buddhism after the split that occurred between the MAHĀSĀMGHIKA and STHAVIRA schools. Nikāya Buddhism is also sometimes used as a substitute for the pejorative term HĪNAYĀNA, although it appears that in India the term hīnayāna was sometimes used to refer collectively to all Nikāya schools and sometimes to refer to a specific school, such as the VAIBHĀsIKA school of SARVĀSTIVĀDA ABHIDHARMA. See also MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS.
nones ::: n. pl. --> The fifth day of the months January, February, April, June, August, September, November, and December, and the seventh day of March, May, July, and October. The nones were nine days before the ides, reckoning inclusively, according to the Roman method.
The canonical office, being a part of the Breviary, recited at noon (formerly at the ninth hour, 3 P. M.) in the Roman Catholic Church.
The hour of dinner; the noonday meal.
“ Now, that a conscious Infinite is there in physical Nature, we are assured by every sign, though it is a consciousness not made or limited like ours. All her constructions and motions are those of an illimitable intuitive wisdom too great and spontaneous and mysteriously self-effective to be described as an intelligence, of a Power and Will working for Time in eternity with an inevitable and forecasting movement in each of its steps, even in those steps that in their outward or superficial impetus seem to us inconscient. And as there is in her this greater consciousness and greater power, so too there is an illimitable spirit of harmony and beauty in her constructions that never fails her, though its works are not limited by our aesthetic canons. An infinite hedonism too is there, an illimitable spirit of delight, of which we become aware when we enter into impersonal unity with her; and even as that in her which is terrible is a part of her beauty, that in her which is dangerous, cruel, destructive is a part of her delight, her universal Ananda. Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
nslookup "networking" A {Unix} {utility program}, originally by Andrew Cherenson, for querying {Internet} {domain name servers}. The basic use is to find the {IP address} corresponding to a given {hostname} (or vice versa). By changing the query type (e.g. "set type=CNAME") other types of information can be obtained including CNAME - the {canonical name} for an alias; HINFO - the host {CPU} and {operating system} type; MINFO - mailbox or mail list information; {MX} - {mail exchanger} information; NS - the {name server} for the named zone; PTR - the hostname if the query is an IP address, otherwise the pointer to other information; SOA the domain's start-of-authority information; TXT - text information; UINFO - user information; WKS - supported {well-known services}. Other types (ANY, AXFR, MB, MD, MF, NULL) are described in {RFC 1035}. {(ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/computing/operating-systems/unix/bsd-sources/usr.sbin/named/tools/nslookup/)}. (1994-10-27)
Nu, U. (1907-1995). Burmese (Myanmar) political leader and patron of Buddhism. (U is a Burmese honorific.) As a young man, U Nu became active in anti-British agitation and in 1936 was expelled by British authorities from the University of Rangoon law school for his political activities. Thereafter, he became a leader of the Burmese nationalist movement, adopting the nationalist title "Thakin" (master), along with his comrades Aung San, Ne Win, and others. On the eve of the Japanese invasion of Burma in 1942, he was imprisoned by the British as a potential agent. He was released by the Japanese occupation forces and served as the foreign minister of their puppet regime. With growing disenchantment at Japanese mistreatment of Burmese citizens, U Nu helped to organize a clandestine guerilla resistance force that assisted the British when they retook Burma. At the conclusion of World War II, he participated in negotiations with the British for Burmese independence. He became Burma's first prime minister and served three terms in office (1948-1956, 1957-1958, 1960-1962). A devout Buddhist, he organized under government auspices national monastic curricula, promoted the practice of insight meditation (VIPASSANĀ), and, in 1956, sponsored the convention of the sixth Buddhist council (according to Burmese reckoning; see COUNCIL, SIXTH) in celebration of the 2,500th anniversary of the Buddha's parinibbāna (S. PARINIRVĀnA). The council prepared a new Burmese edition of the Pāli canon (P. tipitaka; S. TRIPItAKA), together with its commentaries and sub-commentaries, which is currently used in Burmese monastic education. U Nu also attempted, unsuccessfully, to unite the several noncommensal fraternities (Burmese GAING) of the Burmese SAMGHA into a single body. While achieving much in the religious sphere, U Nu proved unable to cope with the political crises confronting his government, and Burma descended into civil war. He resigned as prime minister in 1956, returned to office in 1957, abdicated civilian government to General Ne Win in 1958, returned to office in 1960, and finally was deposed and arrested by Ne Win in a coup d'état in 1962. U Nu was released in 1968, and a year later he organized a resistance army from exile in Thailand. A rapprochement between U Nu and Ne Win was reached in 1980, and he was allowed to return to Burma, where he devoted himself to religious affairs, in particular as director of a Buddhist translation bureau located at Kaba Aye in Rangoon (Yangon). He again entered politics during the democracy uprising of 1988, setting up a symbolic provisional government when the then-ruling Burmese Socialist government collapsed. He was placed under house arrest in 1989 by the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), a group composed of generals who succeeded Ne Win. He was released in 1992. A prolific writer on politics and Buddhism, his works include Buddhism: Theory and Practice, Burma under the Japanese, Unite and March, Towards Peace and Democracy, and his autobiography, Saturday's Son.
Oldenberg, Hermann. (1854-1920). An important scholar in the early history of Buddhist Studies in the West. Oldenberg was born in Hamburg, Germany, the son of a Protestant minister. He studied Sanskrit and Indology in Berlin, receiving his doctorate in 1875. During his career, he held positions at Berlin, Kiel, and Gottingen University, teaching comparative philology and Sanskrit. He traveled to India for the first time in 1912 and also worked in the India Office in London. Oldenberg was arguably the most influential German scholar of Buddhism of the nineteenth century. He published an edition of the Pāli VINAYAPItAKA in five volumes between 1879 and 1883. He also published an edition of the DĪPAVAMSA and collaborated with THOMAS W. RHYS DAVIDS in translating the pātimokkha (S. PRĀTIMOKsA), MAHĀVAGGA, and CulAVAGGA for FRIEDRICH MAX MÜLLER's "Sacred Books of the East" series. He also contributed translations of Vedic works to the same series. His most influential work, however, was his 1881 Buddha: sein Leben, seine Lehre, seine Gemeinde, published in English as Buddha: His Life, His Doctrine, His Order. In Oldenberg's view, the majority of the texts included in the Pāli canon had been compiled prior to the second Buddhist council (SAMGĪTI) in Vesālī (S. VAIsALĪ), said to have taken place c. 380 BCE (see COUNCIL, SECOND). He also believed that these texts had been accurately preserved in Sri Lanka. Oldenberg is therefore (together with THOMAS RHYS DAVIDS and CAROLINE RHYS DAVIDS) largely responsible for the view that the Pāli canon is the most accurate record of the Buddha and his teachings, and that it contains reliable historical information about the events in the Buddha's life. Paralleling the search for the historical Jesus, Oldenberg attempted to strip away the legends of that life, in order to offer a demythologized, historical portrayal of the Buddha. In this effort, his work is often contrasted with that of the French scholar ÉMILE SENART, who, working largely from Sanskrit texts, took a more mythological approach to the accounts of the Buddha's life. For Oldenberg, the Buddha of the later Sanskrit texts was a superhuman figure; the Buddha of the Pāli was historical and human. Oldenberg also disagreed with Senart on the nature of Buddhism, seeing its true religious significance only in the aspiration to achieve NIRVĀnA; Senart saw Buddhism as largely a popular movement that emphasized achieving happiness in the world and rebirth in the heavens. Oldenberg was the first scholar seriously to compare Pāli and Sanskrit versions of texts, a project that EUGÉNE BURNOUF had planned but was unable to undertake due to his untimely death. Based on these studies, Oldenberg sought to identify the older (and thus, in his view, the more reliable) stratum of textual materials. Oldenberg's views on both the centrality of the Pāli canon and the nature of Buddhism have remained influential in modern presentations of the religion.
’Ophanim or ’Ophannim (Hebrew) ’Ōfannīm [plural of ’ōfān wheel from ’āfan to revolve, turn] The “wheels” seen by Ezekiel, and by John in Revelation, meaning world-spheres; also used in the Sepher Yetsirah (book of creation). The ’ophanim signify the turning or revolving celestial bodies, especially the planets, with a constant eye upon the indwelling angelic hosts which give to the celestial bodies their respective individualities, their characteristic energies and substances, and which produce and control their various cyclical movements in both space and time. In this connection four of the constellations of the zodiac — Taurus the Bull, Leo the Lion, Scorpio the “Eagle,” and Aquarius the Man — have been from earliest Christian times attached to the four canonical Evangelists. In the Zohar (ii 43a) the ’ophanim are one of the ten classes of the angelic hosts comprising the yetsiratic world.
ous extracanonical works. They had a vogue in
overmind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The overmind is a sort of delegation from the supermind (this is a metaphor only) which supports the present evolutionary universe in which we live here in Matter. If supermind were to start here from the beginning as the direct creative Power, a world of the kind we see now would be impossible; it would have been full of the divine Light from the beginning, there would be no involution in the inconscience of Matter, consequently no gradual striving evolution of consciousness in Matter. A line is therefore drawn between the higher half of the universe of consciousness, parardha , and the lower half, aparardha. The higher half is constituted of Sat, Chit, Ananda, Mahas (the supramental) — the lower half of mind, life, Matter. This line is the intermediary overmind which, though luminous itself, keeps from us the full indivisible supramental Light, depends on it indeed, but in receiving it, divides, distributes, breaks it up into separated aspects, powers, multiplicities of all kinds, each of which it is possible by a further diminution of consciousness, such as we reach in Mind, to regard as the sole or the chief Truth and all the rest as subordinate or contradictory to it.” *Letters on Yoga
"The overmind is the highest of the planes below the supramental.” *Letters on Yoga
"In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light.” The Life Divine
"The Overmind is a principle of cosmic Truth and a vast and endless catholicity is its very spirit; its energy is an all-dynamism as well as a principle of separate dynamisms: it is a sort of inferior Supermind, — although it is concerned predominantly not with absolutes, but with what might be called the dynamic potentials or pragmatic truths of Reality, or with absolutes mainly for their power of generating pragmatic or creative values, although, too, its comprehension of things is more global than integral, since its totality is built up of global wholes or constituted by separate independent realities uniting or coalescing together, and although the essential unity is grasped by it and felt to be basic of things and pervasive in their manifestation, but no longer as in the Supermind their intimate and ever-present secret, their dominating continent, the overt constant builder of the harmonic whole of their activity and nature.” The Life Divine
"The overmind sees calmly, steadily, in great masses and large extensions of space and time and relation, globally; it creates and acts in the same way — it is the world of the great Gods, the divine Creators.” *Letters on Yoga
"The Overmind is essentially a spiritual power. Mind in it surpasses its ordinary self and rises and takes its stand on a spiritual foundation. It embraces beauty and sublimates it; it has an essential aesthesis which is not limited by rules and canons, it sees a universal and an eternal beauty while it takes up and transforms all that is limited and particular. It is besides concerned with things other than beauty or aesthetics. It is concerned especially with truth and knowledge or rather with a wisdom that exceeds what we call knowledge; its truth goes beyond truth of fact and truth of thought, even the higher thought which is the first spiritual range of the thinker. It has the truth of spiritual thought, spiritual feeling, spiritual sense and at its highest the truth that comes by the most intimate spiritual touch or by identity. Ultimately, truth and beauty come together and coincide, but in between there is a difference. Overmind in all its dealings puts truth first; it brings out the essential truth (and truths) in things and also its infinite possibilities; it brings out even the truth that lies behind falsehood and error; it brings out the truth of the Inconscient and the truth of the Superconscient and all that lies in between. When it speaks through poetry, this remains its first essential quality; a limited aesthetical artistic aim is not its purpose.” *Letters on Savitri
"In the overmind the Truth of supermind which is whole and harmonious enters into a separation into parts, many truths fronting each other and moved each to fulfil itself, to make a world of its own or else to prevail or take its share in worlds made of a combination of various separated Truths and Truth-forces.” Letters on Yoga
*Overmind"s.
Padmasambhava. (T. Padma 'byung gnas) (fl. eighth century). Indian Buddhist master and tantric adept widely revered in Tibet under the appellation Guru rin po che, "Precious Guru"; considered to be the "second buddha" by members of the RNYING MA sect of Tibetan Buddhism, who view him as a founder of their tradition. In Tibetan, he is also known as Padma 'byung gnas (Pemajungne), "the Lotus Born," which translates his Sanskrit name. It is difficult to assess the many legends surrounding his life and deeds, although the scholarly consensus is that he was a historical figure and did visit Tibet. The earliest reference to him is in the SBA BZHED (a work that purports to be from the eighth century, but is likely later), where he is mentioned as a water diviner and magician, suggesting that he may have been an expert in irrigation, which would have required the ability to subdue local spirits. Two texts in the Tibetan canon are attributed to him. The first is the Man ngag lta ba'i phreng ba, which is a commentary on the thirteenth chapter of the GUHYAGARBHATANTRA. The second is a commentary on the Upāyapāsapadmamālā, a MAHĀYOGA TANTRA. Regardless of his historical status and the duration of his stay in Tibet, the figure of Padmasambhava has played a key role in the narrative of Buddhism's arrival in Tibet, its establishment in Tibet, and its subsequent transmission to later generations. He is also venerated throughout the Himalayan regions of India, Bhutan, and Nepal and by the Newar Buddhists of the Kathmandu Valley. According to many of his traditional biographies, Padmasambhava was miraculously born in the center of a lotus blossom (PADMA) on Lake Danakosa in the land of OddIYĀNA, a region some scholars associate with the Swat Valley of modern Pakistan. Discovered and raised by King Indrabodhi, he abandoned his royal life to pursue various forms of Buddhist study and practice, culminating in his training as a tantric adept. He journeyed throughout the Himalayan regions of India and Nepal, meeting his first consort MANDĀRAVĀ at Mtsho padma in Himachal Pradesh, and later remaining in prolonged retreat in various locations around the Kathmandu Valley including MĀRATIKA, YANG LE SHOD and the ASURA CAVE. His reputation as an exorcist led to his invitation, at the behest of the Indian scholar sĀNTARAKsITA, to travel to Tibet in order to assist with the construction of BSAM YAS monastery. According to traditional accounts, Padmasambhava subdued and converted the indigenous deities inimical to the spread of Buddhism and, together with sāntaraksita and the Tibetan king KHRI SRONG LDE BTSAN, established the first Buddhist lineage and monastic center of Tibet. He remained in Tibet as a court priest, and, together with his Tibetan consort YE SHES MTSHO RGYAL, recorded and then concealed numerous teachings as hidden treasure texts (GTER MA), to be revealed by a later succession of masters spiritually linked to Padmasambhava. The Rnying ma sect preserves the corpus of instructions stemming from the master in two classes of materials: those revealed after his passing as treasure texts and those belonging to an unbroken oral tradition (BKA' MA). It is believed that Padmasambhava departed Tibet for his paradise known as the Glorious Copper-Colored Mountain (ZANGS MDOG DPAL RI), where he continues to reside. From the time of the later dissemination of the doctrine (PHYI DAR) in the eleventh century onwards, numerous biographies of the Indian master have been revealed as treasure texts, including the PADMA BKA' THANG YIG, BKA' THANG GSER 'PHRENG, and the BKA' THANG ZANGS GLING MA. Padmasambhava is the focus of many kinds of ritual activities, including the widely recited "Seven Line Prayer to Padmasambhava" (Tshig 'dun gsol 'debs). The tenth day of each lunar month is dedicated to Padmasambhava, a time when many monasteries, especially those in Bhutan, perform religious dances reverencing the Indian master in his eight manifestations. In iconography, Padmasambhava is depicted in eight forms, known as the guru mtshan brgyad, who represent his eight great deeds. They are Padma rgyal po, Nyi ma 'od zer, Blo ldan mchog sred, Padmasambhava, Shākya seng ge, Padmakara (also known as Sororuhavajra, T. Mtsho skyes rdo rje), Seng ge sgra sgrogs, and RDO RJE GRO LOD.
Pāli. [alt. Pāli]. The term used to designate a dialect of Middle Indo-Aryan, which serves as the canonical language of the THERAVĀDA school of mainstream Buddhism. The term pāli does not, however, appear with this denotation in the Theravāda canon, where instead it refers to a canonical text or passage, in distinction to a commentary (AttHAKATHĀ) on such a passage. By extension, then, in modern usage in both Southeast Asian nations and the West, Pāli has come to designate the language in which those passages and their commentaries are written. According to the tradition, the Buddha spoke Māgadhī, the dialect of the Indian state of MAGADHA. Although no specimens of Māgadhī survive from the period before AsOKA, linguists have determined that it differed from Pāli. It appears that the Buddha did not teach in Sanskrit but instead spoke in the local dialects of the regions of northern India in which he preached, one dialect of which may have been Māgadhī. It is assumed that, after his death, his various teachings were gathered and then regularized into an ecclesiastical language that could be comprehended and recited by monastic groups across a wide region. It appears that, after the reign of King Asoka, some Buddhist schools translated the Buddha's teachings into Sanskrit while others used Pāli, but later scholastic Pāli was also influenced by Sanskrit. According to Theravāda tradition, the Buddha's teachings were first recorded in writing in Pāli, in Sri Lanka rather than India, at the end the first century BCE. Although these texts do not survive, scholars speculate that the Pāli used in those recensions was generally equivalent to what is used in the canon as it is preserved today. Later Pāli incorporates variant vocabulary that derives in part from the local language-thus, for example, Pāli texts composed in Thailand often show the influence of Thai vernacular. There is no single script for Pāli, with the local script, including, for example, Old Mon, Khmer, Sinhalese, Burmese, Thai, and now Romanization, being employed to write the language.
Pali Canon ::: In Theravadan Buddhism, these are recognised as the canonical suttas of the Buddha. In other forms of Buddhism they are the main body of teachings and discourses that comprise the foundation for much of Buddhist philosophy and practice.
Pali Text Society. An organization founded in 1881 by the British PĀLI specialist THOMAS WILLIAM RHYS DAVIDS (1843-1922), which, according to Rhys Davids' mission statement, sought "to foster and promote the study of Pali texts." The Pali Text Society (PTS) was one response to Buddhism's growing popularity in the West in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, and the society played an essential role in sponsoring both the production of critical editions of Pāli texts and their translation into English. With the help of scholars around the world, the PTS published critical, Romanized editions of most of the Pāli Canon over the first three decades of its existence; this massive project was followed with editions of important commentarial literature and an English translation series. The PTS also started the Journal of the Pali Text Society, which continues to publish articles on both Pāli Buddhism and broader topics in Buddhist Studies. The group also published primers for learning the Pāli language and such important reference works as the Society's Pali-English Dictionary, begun by Rhys Davids and finished by his student William Stede, which is now available in a searchable electronic format online. By the time of Rhys Davids' death in 1922, the PTS had published almost thirty thousand pages of Romanized and translated Pāli materials, as well as a host of articles and essays written by Western scholars. Over the years, presidents of the PTS have included such distinguished Pāli scholars as CAROLINE A. F. RHYS DAVIDS (1858-1942), ISALINE BLEW HORNER, and K. R. Norman. In 1994, the PTS began the Fragile Palm Leaves project to collect, identify, catalogue, preserve, and copy a number of rare Pāli manuscripts that survive in the Southeast Asian Buddhist traditions.
P'alman taejanggyong. (K) (八萬大藏經). In Korean, "The Scriptures of the Great Repository in Eighty Thousand [Xylographs]," the popular name of the second Koryo edition of the Buddhist canon (K. taejanggyong; C. DAZANGJING), now housed at the monastery of HAEINSA. See KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG.
paNcānantarya. (P. paNcānantariya; T. mtsham med lnga; C. wu wujian ye; J. gomukengo; K. o muganop 五無間業). In Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, "five acts of immediate consequence" (ĀNANTARYAKARMAN) or "five great misdeeds," the worst moral offenses that one can commit. The lists vary slightly from source to source, but typically include: (1) patricide, (2) matricide, (3) killing an ARHAT, (4) spilling the blood of a buddha, and (5) causing schism in the monastic community (SAMGHABHEDA). Despite whatever wholesome actions one may perform afterwards, after death, these deeds result in the "immediate retribution" of rebirth in the AVĪCI hell. In the SĀMANNAPHALASUTTA of the Pāli canon, King Ajātasattu (AJĀTAsATRU) admits to killing his father, the former king BIMBISĀRA. The Buddha remarks that this action is what keeps King Ajātasattu from fully realizing the fruits of hearing the DHARMA. However, the most notorious of those who have committed these actions is DEVADATTA, the Buddha's own cousin, who is infamous for attempting to kill the Buddha (and in one case wounding him), murdering the arhat UTPALAVARnĀ, and then causing a schism in the saMgha. As a result of these deeds, the earth opened up and Devadatta fell into AVĪCI hell, where he is said to remain for one hundred thousand eons.
paNcavargika. (P. paNcavaggiyā; T. lnga sde; C. wuqun [biqiu]; J. gogun [biku]; K. ogun [pigu] 五群[比丘]). In Sanskrit, the "group of five"; the five ascetics who practiced austerities with the BODHISATTVA prior to his enlightenment and to whom the Buddha preached his first sermon after his enlightenment, thus becoming the Buddha's first disciples. They are ĀJNĀTAKAUndIYA (or Kaundinya), AsVAJIT, VĀsPA, MAHĀNĀMAN, and BHADRIKA. According to the Pāli account (where they are called ANNātakondaNNa or KondaNNa, Assaji, Vappa, Mahānāma, and Bhaddiya), KondaNNa had been present as one of the eight brāhmanas who attended the infant's naming ceremony, during which the prophesy was made that the prince would one day become either a wheel-turning monarch (P. cakkavatti, S. CAKRAVARTIN) or a buddha. The other four ascetics were sons of four of the other brāhmanas in attendance at the naming ceremony. When the prince gave up his practice of austerities and accepted a meal, the five ascetics abandoned him in disgust. After his enlightenment, the Buddha surveyed the world with his divine eye (S. DIVYACAKsUS) and surmised that, of all people then alive, these five ascetics were most likely to understand the profundity of his message. When he first approached them, they refused to recognize him, but the power of his charisma was such that they felt compelled to show him the honor due a teacher. He preached to them two important discourses, the DHAMMACAKKAPPAVATTANASUTTA, in which he explained the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS (S. catvāry āryasatyāni), and the ANATTALAKKHAnASUTTA (S. *Anātmalaksanasutra), in which he explained the doctrine of nonself (P. anatta, S. ANĀTMAN). Upon hearing and comprehending the first sermon, the five ascetics attained the dhammacakku (S. DHARMACAKsUS) or the "dhamma eye," an attainment equated in the Pāli canon with that of the stream-enterer (P. sotāpanna, S. SROTAĀPANNA). The five then requested to be accepted as the Buddha's disciples and were ordained as the first Buddhist monks (P. bhikkhu, S. BHIKsU), using the informal EHIBHIKsUKĀ (P. ehi bhikkhu), or "come, monk," formula. Upon hearing the second sermon, the five were completely freed of the contaminants (P. āsava, S. ĀSRAVA), becoming thereby arahants (ARHAT) freed from the prospect of any further rebirth. With this experience, there were then six arahants in the world, including the Buddha. The Pāli story of the conversion of the group of five is recounted in the MAHĀVAGGA section of the Pāli VINAYAPItAKA. The group of five appears often in JĀTAKA stories of the previous lives of the Buddha, indicating their long karmic connections to him, which result in their remarkable fortune at being the first to hear the Buddha preach the dharma. In Sanskrit materials, this group of five is usually known as the bhadravargīya, or "auspicious group."
PaNNāsajātaka. In Pāli, "Fifty Birth Stories," and sometimes referred to in Western scholarship as the "Apocryphal Jātakas"; a collection of fifty JĀTAKA stories that are not included in the canonical jātaka collection of the Pāli TRIPItAKA. There are Thai, Cambodian, and Burmese recensions of these stories, the first two of which are quite similar in structure, the last of which differs in the selection and order of the stories. This Burmese (Myanmar) recension of this collection, called the ZIMMÈ PANNĀSA, literally means the "Chiangmai Fifty," suggesting that the provenance for many of these stories may be in the northwest of Thailand near the city of Chiangmai. The dating and authorship are unknown, but the terminus ad quem for the collection is around the fifteenth century. Some of the fifty stories show clear connections to the Pāli jātaka collection; others are more similar to Sanskrit texts. Still other stories seem to have no connection to the available Pāli and Sanskrit literature and may derive from folk traditions; indeed, the grammar and syntax of the stories also seems to suggest local influences.
paramatthasangha. (S. paramārthasaMgha; T. don dam pa'i dge 'dun; C. shengyi seng; J. shogiso; K. sŭngŭisŭng 勝義僧). In Pāli, "ultimate community"; a technical term used in the Pāli commentaries to answer the question of what precisely constitutes the SAMGHA jewel among the three jewels (RATNATRAYA), as in the refuge (sARAnA) formula, "I go for refuge to the saMgha." That is, does the saMgha constitute the larger community of the Buddhist faithful, only those who have been ordained as monks or nuns, or only those who achieved some level of enlightenment? According to the Pāli tradition, the paramatthasangha consists of the seven and/or eight dakkhineyyapuggala (S. daksinīyapudgala), or "person(s) worthy to receive gifts," described in the DĪGHANIKĀYA. In keeping with the canonical definition of noble persons (P. ariyapuggala; S. ĀRYAPUDGALA), the term paramatthasangha thus refers specifically to ordained monks and nuns who have reached any of the four ĀRYA paths: that of (1) sotāpanna (S. SROTAĀPANNA), or stream-enterer, (2) sakkadāgāmi (S. SAKṚDĀGĀMIN), or once-returner, (3) anāgāmi (S. ANĀGĀMIN), or nonreturner, and (4) arahant (S. ARHAT), or worthy one. Technically speaking, then, this advanced paramatthasangha group constitutes the saMgha jewel. The paramatthasangha is contrasted in the Pāli commentaries with the SAMMUTISAnGHA (S. saMvṛtisaMgha) or "conventional saMgha," which is comprised of monks and nuns who are still puthujjanas (S. PṚTHAGJANA), or ordinary unenlightened persons. Since the paramatthasangha refers only to those who are both enlightened and ordained, the term necessarily excludes all laymen, enlightened or otherwise, as well as any nonhuman beings (such as divinities, etc.) even if they are enlightened, for nonhuman beings are ineligible for ordination as monks or nuns. Also excluded are all BODHISATTVAs, since by definition in the Pāli tradition bodhisattvas remain unenlightened persons until the night that they attain buddhahood. Buddhas are also excluded from the paramatthasangha because they comprise the buddha jewel among the three jewels. While novices technically are outside the saMgha by virtue of not having yet received higher ordination (UPASAMPADĀ), enlightened novices are nevertheless included in the paramatthasangha as objects of refuge.
pariyatti. (S. paryavāpti; C. tong; J. tsu; K. t'ong 通). In Pāli, lit. "mastery" or "comprehension" (of a body of scriptural literature), or (in later Pāli commentarial usage) the "scriptures" themselves as transmitted through an oral tradition; one of the two principal monastic vocations noted in the Pāli commentarial literature, along with PAtIPATTI (meditative practice). The pariyatti monk serves an important role within the Buddhist tradition by continuing the transmission of a corpus of scriptural literature down to the next generation. Pariyatti monks thus performed the function of a bhānaka (reciter) or DHARMABHĀnAKA (reciter of the dharma), who were typically assigned to memorize one specific subcategory of the canon, i.e., Mahjjhimabhānaka ("reciters of the MAJJHIMANIKĀYA"), Jātakabhānaka ("reciters of the JĀTAKA"), etc. Monks in the contemporary Southeast Asian traditions who study Pāli literature are now also referred to as pariyatti monks; thus the term has come to mean a "study monk." ¶ Pariyatti is also the first of three progressive kinds of religious mastery. In this context, pariyatti is understood as a thorough comprehension of the theories, terms, and texts that ground Buddhist doctrine and that are enumerated in the literature of the TRIPItAKA (the canon). The second is patipatti, or "practice" of the prescriptions encountered in one's study of pariyatti. The final stage is pativedha (S. PRATIVEDHA), direct "penetration" to truth. See also GANTHADHURA.
Pārsva. (T. Rtsibs logs; C. Xie; J. Kyo; K. Hyop 脇). A North Indian ĀBHIDHARMIKA associated with the SARVĀSTIVĀDA school, who may have lived during the second century CE. Some four hundred years after the death of the Buddha, the king KANIsKA (r. 132-152) is said to have convened an assembly of five hundred ARHATs to redact the canon; according to XUANZANG, Pārsva presided over this assembly, which came to be known as the fourth Buddhist council (SAMGĪTI; see COUNCIL, FOURTH). It was at that council that the ABHIDHARMAPItAKA of the Sarvāstivāda school was compiled, including its massive encyclopedic coverage of abhidharma scholastic debates, the ABHIDHARMAMAHĀVIBHĀsĀ. Pārsva is also claimed to have been a great expert in debate, which led him to convert AsVAGHOsA, who became his disciple after Pārsva defeated him in a public debate. In Chinese texts, Pārsva is also called Nansheng ("Hard to Be Born," probably a translation of Durjāta), since according to legend he stayed in his mother's womb until the age of six (or sixty) because of misdeeds he performed in his previous life. Some of the Chinese transmission of the lamplight (CHUANDENG LU) literature states that Pārsva was a native of central India who lived during the fifth century BCE and lists Pārsva as the ninth (as in, for example, the FOZU TONGJI) or tenth Indian patriarch (C. ZUSHI; as in the Zhiyuelu). ¶ Pārsva is also the name of the predecessor of MAHĀVĪRA (a.k.a. NIRGRANTHA-JNĀTĪPUTRA), the Buddha's contemporary in the rival JAINA school of the Indian sRAMAnA movement. This Pārsva seems to have been a historical figure, who appears on a list of twenty-four JINA in the Jaina spiritual lineage.
Patisambhidāmagga. In Pāli, "Path to Analytical Knowledge," the twelfth book of the KHUDDAKANIKĀYA. Its chief subject is the attainment of "analytical knowledge" (P. patisambhidā, S. PRATISAMVID), this being the highest attainment available to the ARHAT. This work is scholastic in nature, borrowing long passages from the VINAYAPItAKA and the SUTTAPItAKA, suggesting that it is a work of a later date, despite its traditional attribution to Sāriputta (S. sĀRIPUTRA). The Patisambhidāmagga describes in detail the nature of wisdom, including the wisdom of the Buddha, in the style of an ABHIDHAMMA text, even though it is included in the SUTTAPItAKA. It also discusses a range of central topics in Buddhist soteriology, including mindfulness of the breath (P. ānāpānasati; S. ĀNĀPĀNasmṚTI), the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS (P. cattāri ariyasaccāni; S. catvāry āryasatyāni), emptiness (P. suNNa; cf. S. suNYATĀ), supranormal powers (P. iddhi; S. ṚDDHI), the foundations of mindfulness (P. SATIPAttHĀNA; S. SMṚTYUPASTHĀNA), serenity or calmness (P. samatha; S. sAMATHA), and insight (P. VIPASSANĀ; S. VIPAsYANĀ). According to the account in the DĪPAVAMSA, the Patisambhidāmagga was one of the works rejected by the MAHĀSĀMGHIKA school from inclusion in the canon.
Patthāna. [alt. Patthānappakarana]. In Pāli, lit. "Relations," or "Foundational Conditions"; the sixth of the seven books of the Pāli ABHIDHAMMAPItAKA (but also sometimes considered the last book of that canon). This highly abstract work concerns the twenty-four conditions (P. paccaya; S. PRATYAYA) that govern the interaction of factors (P. dhamma; S. DHARMA) in the causal matrix of dependent origination (P. paticcasamuppāda; S. PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA). According to the Pāli ABHIDHAMMA, these relations, when applied to all possible combinations of phenomena, describe the entire range of conscious experience. The Patthāna is organized into four main divisions based on four distinct methods of conditionality, which it calls the positive, or "forward," method (anuloma); the negative, or "reverse," method (paccanīya); the positive-negative method (anuloma-paccanīya); and the negative-positive method (paccanīya-anuloma). Each of these four is further divided into six possible combinations of phenomena, e.g., in triplets (tika) and pairs (duka): for example, each condition is analyzed in terms of the triplet set of wholesome (P. kusala; S. KUsALA), unwholesome (P. akusala; S. AKUsALA), and neutral (P. avyākata; S. AVYĀKṚTA). The four main sections are each further subdivided into six sections, giving a total of twenty-four divisions, one for each possible mode of conditionality. The twenty-four modes are as follows: root condition (hetupaccaya), object condition (ārammanapaccaya), predominance condition (adhipatipaccaya), continuity condition (anantarapaccaya), immediate continuity condition (samanantarapaccaya), co-nascence condition (sahajātapaccaya), mutuality condition (aññamaññapaccaya), dependence condition (nissayapaccaya), reliance condition (upanissayapaccaya), antecedence condition (purejātapaccaya), consequence condition (pacchājātapaccaya), repetition condition (āsevanapaccaya), volitional action condition (kammapaccaya), fruition condition (vipākapaccaya), nutriment condition (āhārapaccaya), governing faculty condition (indriyapaccaya), absorption condition (jhānapaccaya), path condition (maggapaccaya), association condition (sampayuttapaccaya), disassociation condition (vippayuttapaccaya), presence condition (atthipaccaya), absence condition (natthipaccaya), disappearance condition (vigatapaccaya), and continuation condition (avigatapaccaya). The Patthāna is also known as the "Great Composition" (Mahāpakarana) because of its massive size: the Pāli edition in Burmese script is 2,500 pages in length, while the Thai edition spans 6,000 pages. An abbreviated translation of the Patthāna appears in the Pali Text Society's English translation series as Conditional Relations. ¶ In contemporary Myanmar (Burma), where the study of abhidhamma continues to be highly esteemed, the Patthāna is regularly recited in festivals that the Burmese call pathan pwe. Pathan pwe are marathon recitations that go on for days, conducted by invited ABHIDHAMMIKA monks who are particularly well versed in the Patthāna. The pathan pwe serves a similar function to PARITTA recitations, in that it is believed to ward off baleful influences, but its main designated purpose is to forestall the decline and disappearance of the Buddha's dispensation (P. sāsana; S. sĀSANA). The Theravāda tradition considers the Patthāna to be the Buddha's most profound exposition of ultimate truth (P. paramatthasacca; S. PARAMĀRTHASATYA) and, according to the Pāli commentaries, the Patthāna is the first constituent of the Buddha's sāsana that will disappear from the world as the religion faces its inevitable decline. The abhidhammikas' marathon recitations of the Patthāna, therefore, help to ward off the eventual demise of the Buddhist religion. See also ANULOMAPRATILOMA.
PDFTeX "tool" A modification of {TeX} to produce {PDF} output instead of the {canonical} {DVI}. {pdftexlib.tar.gz (ftp://ftp.tug.org/pub/tex/pdftexlib.tar.gz)}. {Thanh's source of pdfTeX (ftp://ftp.muni.cz/pub/tex/local/cstug/thanh/pdftex/)}. {User Manual (http://tug.cs.umb.edu/applications/pdftex/pdftex-s.pdf)}. {FAQ (http://tug.cs.umb.edu/applications/pdftex/pdfTeX-FAQ-scr.pdf)}. (2000-12-21)
PDFTeX ::: (tool, TeX, PDF) A modification of TeX to produce PDF output instead of the canonical DVI. . . . .(2000-12-21)
Perhaps the best—or worst—example of the confusion to be found in noncanonical as well
permutation "mathematics" 1. An ordering of a certain number of elements of a given set. For instance, the permutations of (1,2,3) are (1,2,3) (2,3,1) (3,1,2) (3,2,1) (1,3,2) (2,1,3). Permutations form one of the canonical examples of a "{group}" - they can be composed and you can find an inverse permutation that reverses the action of any given permutation. The number of permutations of r things taken from a set of n is n P r = n! / (n-r)! where "n P r" is usually written with n and r as subscripts and n! is the {factorial} of n. What the football pools call a "permutation" is not a permutation but a {combination} - the order does not matter. 2. A {bijection} for which the {domain} and {range} are the same set and so f(f'(x)) = f'(f(x)) = x. (2001-05-10)
permutation ::: (mathematics) 1. An ordering of a certain number of elements of a given set.For instance, the permutations of (1,2,3) are (1,2,3) (2,3,1) (3,1,2) (3,2,1) (1,3,2) (2,1,3).Permutations form one of the canonical examples of a group - they can be composed and you can find an inverse permutation that reverses the action of any given permutation.The number of permutations of r things taken from a set of n is n P r = n! / (n-r)! where n P r is usually written with n and r as subscripts and n! is the factorial of n.What the football pools call a permutation is not a permutation but a combination - the order does not matter.2. A bijection for which the domain and range are the same set and sof(f'(x)) = f'(f(x)) = x.(2001-05-10)
Petakopadesa. In Pāli, "Pitaka-Disclosure"; a paracanonical Pāli text dedicated to the interpretation of canonical texts, which is included in the longer Burmese edition of the KHUDDAKANIKĀYA. The work is traditionally ascribed to the Buddha's disciple Kaccāna (S. KĀTYĀYANA; MAHĀKĀTYĀYANA), but was likely composed in India as early as the second century BCE. A work in eight chapters, it is meant to assist those who are already versed in the dharma in the proper exegesis and explanation of specific passages, allowing them to rephrase a passage in such a way that it remains consistent in meaning with the teaching as a whole. In this way it offers an early guide to authors of commentaries. In the Pāli tradition, it was superseded by a somewhat later and similar text, the NETTIPPAKARAnA. Both the Netti and the Petakopadesa develop an elaborate hermeneutical theory based on the broad rubrics of "interpretation" or "guidance" (P. netti; cf. S. netri) regarding "sense" (vyaNjana) and interpretation regarding "meaning" (P. attha; S. ARTHA). See also SANFEN KEJING; VYĀKHYĀYUKTI.
Phap Loa. (法螺) (1284-1330). In Vietnamese, "Dharma Conch"; the second patriarch of the TRÚC LM school of Vietnamese Buddhism. His personal name was Đồng Kien Cương and was a native of Nam Sach (in northern Vietnam). He met TRẦN NHN TÔNG for the first time in 1304 and became his disciple. He received full ordination from Tràn Nhan Tông in 1305 and was given the dharma name Phap Loa. In 1308, he was officially recognized as the second patriarch of the Trúc Lam School. Buddhism prospered under his leadership. In support of Tràn Nhan Tông's goal of a unified SAMGHA, Phap Loa established in 1313 a national monastic hierarchy, according to which all monks had to register and were under his jurisdiction. Every three years, he would organize a collective ordination ceremony. He also oversaw the construction of many monasteries. By 1314, some thirty-three monasteries had been built, several with large libraries. He was also a tireless teacher, who gave frequent lectures on Chan texts and Buddhist scriptures. This was a period when many aristocrats either entered the monastic order or received precepts as lay practitioners and donated vast tracts of land to Buddhist temples. Among his disciples were the kings Tràn Anh Tông and Tràn Minh Tông. In 1311, he oversaw the printing of the complete canon and other Buddhist manuals. He also composed several works, most now lost, including commentaries on several MAHĀYĀNA sutras.
phra pa. In Thai, "forest monk," referring to monks who live in the forests rather than in towns or villages. The monks practice meditation and perform certain permitted forms of physical labor, rather than devoting their efforts to studying texts and interacting with laypeople, as village monks do. In Thailand, the most influential of the forest monk traditions was the KAMMAttHANA or "meditation" tradition begun by Ajahn (Āchān) Sao Kantisīla (1861-1941) and AJAHN MUN BHuRIDATTA, which emphasized strict adherence to the VINAYA and the practice of meditation techniques derived from the Pāli canon. See also ARANNAVĀSI, ĀRAnYA.
pitaka. (T. sde snod; C. zang; J. zo; K. chang 藏). In Sanskrit and Pāli, "basket" (in a figurative sense), or canonical "collection," viz. a collection of scriptures organized by category. (The Chinese translates pitaka as "repository.") The use of the term pitaka to refer to such collections of scriptures may derive from the custom of collecting in baskets the individual bark slips on which the pages of the scriptures were written. The VINAYA, SuTRA, and ABHIDHARMA (alt. sāstra) pitakas together constitute the TRIPItAKA (P. tipitaka), the "three baskets" of the Buddhist canon, a term that is employed in both the mainstream and MAHĀYĀNA schools. The various schools of Indian Buddhism differ, however, on precisely which texts are to be included in these collections. The abhidharma was likely added later, since early texts refer only to monks who are masters of the SuTRAPItAKA and the VINAYAPItAKA. A number of the MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS seem also to have had a bodhisattvapitaka, which included texts related to the past lives of the BODHISATTVA, such as the JĀTAKA. This term BODHISATTVAPItAKA was adopted in the MAHĀYĀNA, and it was used as the title of a single text, a specific set of Mahāyāna sutras, as well as to refer to the Mahāyāna sutras collectively. With the rise of tantric Buddhism, the term vidyādharapitaka, the pitaka of the "keepers of knowledge" (VIDYĀDHARA), came to be used to refer collectively to the Buddhist TANTRAs. See also DAZANGJING.
PrajNaptibhāsya[pādasāstra]. [alt. PrajNaptisāstra] (T. Gdags pa'i gtsug lag bstan bcos; C. Shishe lun; J. Sesetsuron; K. Sisol non 施設論). In Sanskrit, "Treatise on Designations," one of the earliest books of the SARVĀSTIVĀDA ABHIDHARMAPItAKA; it is traditionally listed as the fourth of the six ancillary texts, or "feet" (pāda), of the JNĀNAPRASTHĀNA, which is the central treatise or body (sarīra) of the Sarvāstivāda abhidharma canon. The PrajNaptibhāsya derives from the earliest stratum of Sarvāstivāda abhidharma literature, along with the DHARMASKANDHA and the SAMGĪTIPARYĀYA. YAsOMITRA and BU STON attribute authorship of the PrajNaptibhāsya to MAHĀMAUDGALYĀYANA. Unlike the rest of the canonical abhidharma texts of the Sarvāstivāda school, there is not a complete translation of this text in Chinese; the entire text survives only in a Tibetan translation ascribed to PrajNāsena. Portions of the second section of the text are, however, extant in a late Chinese translation by Dharmaraksa et al. made during the eleventh century. The Tibetan text is in three parts: (1) lokaprajNapti, which deals with the cosmogonic speculations similar to such mainstream Buddhist texts as the AGGANNASUTTA; (2) kāranaprajNapti, which deals with the causes governing the various stereotypical episodes in a bodhisattva's career (see BAXIANG), from entering the womb for his final birth to entering PARINIRVĀnA; and (3) karmaprajNapti, a general discourse on the theory of moral cause and effect (KARMAN).
prapaNca. (P. papaNca; T. spros pa; C. xilun; J. keron; K. hŭiron 戲論). In Sanskrit, lit. "diffusion," "expansion"; viz. "conceptualization" or "conceptual proliferation"; the tendency of the process of cognition to proliferate the perspective of the self (ĀTMAN) throughout all of one's sensory experience via the medium of concepts. The locus classicus for describing how sensory perception culminates in conceptual proliferation appears in the Pāli MADHUPIndIKASUTTA. As that scripture explains, any living being will be subject to an impersonal causal process of perception in which consciousness (P. viNNāna; S. VIJNĀNA) occurs conditioned by an internal sense base (INDRIYA) and an external sense object (ĀYATANA); the contact among these three brings about sensory impingement or contact (P. phassa; S. SPARsA), which in turn leads to the sensation (VEDANĀ) of that contact as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. At that point, however, the sense of ego intrudes and this process then becomes an intentional one, whereby what one feels, one perceives (P. saNNā; S. SAMJNĀ); what one perceives, one thinks about (P. vitakka; S. VITARKA); and what one thinks about, one conceptualizes (P. papaNca; S. prapaNca). By allowing oneself to experience sensory objects not as things-in-themselves but as concepts invariably tied to one's own perspective, the perceiving subject then becomes the hapless object of an inexorable process of conceptual subjugation: viz., what one conceptualizes becomes proliferated conceptually (P. papaNcasaNNāsankhā; a term apparently unattested in Sanskrit) throughout all of one's sensory experience. Everything that can be experienced in this world in the past, present, and future is now bound together into a labyrinthine network of concepts, all tied to oneself and projected into the external world as craving (TṚsnĀ), conceit (MĀNA), and wrong views (DṚstI), thus creating bondage to SAMSĀRA. By systematic attention (YONIsOMANASKĀRA) to the impersonal character of sensory experience and through sensory restraint (INDRIYASAMVARA), this tendency to project ego throughout the entirety of the perceptual process is brought to an end. In this state of "conceptual nonproliferation" (P. nippapaNca; S. NIḤPRAPANCA), perception is freed from concepts tinged by this proliferating tendency, allowing one to see the things of this world as impersonal causal products that are inevitably impermanent (ANITYA), suffering (DUḤKHA), and nonself (ANĀTMAN). ¶ The preceding interpretation reflects the specific denotation of the term as explicated in Pāli scriptural materials. In a Mahāyāna context, prapaNca may also connote "elaboration" or "superimposition," especially in the sense of a fanciful, imagined, or superfluous quality that is mistakenly projected on to an object, resulting in its being misperceived. Such projections are described as manifestations of ignorance (AVIDYĀ); reality and the mind that perceives reality are described as being free from prapaNca (NIsPRAPANCA), and the purpose of Buddhist practice in one sense can be described as the recognition and elimination of prapaNca in order to see reality clearly and directly. In the MADHYAMAKA school, the most dangerous type of prapaNca is the presumption of intrinsic existence (SVABHĀVA). In YOGĀCĀRA, prapaNca is synonymous with the "seeds" (BĪJA) that provide the basis for perception and the potentiality for future action. In this school, prapaNca is closely associated with false discrimination (VIKALPA), specifically the bifurcation of perceiving subject and perceived object (GRĀHYAGRĀHAKAVIKALPA). The goal of practice is said to be a state of mind that is beyond all thought constructions and verbal elaboration. ¶ The precise denotation of prapaNca has been the subject of much perplexity and debate within the Buddhist tradition, which is reflected in the varying translations for the term in Buddhist canonical languages. The standard Chinese rendering xilun means "frivolous debate," which reflects the tendency of prapaNca to complicate meaningful discussion about the true character of sensory cognition. The Tibetan spros ba means something like "extension, elaboration" and reflects the tendency of prapaNca to proliferate a fanciful conception of reality onto the objects of perception.
preface ::: n. --> Something spoken as introductory to a discourse, or written as introductory to a book or essay; a proem; an introduction, or series of preliminary remarks.
The prelude or introduction to the canon of the Mass. ::: v. t. --> To introduce by a preface; to give a preface to; as, to
premonstratensian ::: n. --> One of a religious order of regular canons founded by St. Norbert at Premontre, in France, in 1119. The members of the order are called also White Canons, Norbertines, and Premonstrants.
preponderancy ::: n. --> The quality or state of being preponderant; superiority or excess of weight, influence, or power, etc.; an outweighing.
The excess of weight of that part of a canon behind the trunnions over that in front of them.
Primeval self-conscious humanity — not savage by any means, however much it may have needed spiritual guidance — was watched over and protected by divine instructors, and among the arts taught by these great beings, architecture had a prominent place: “No man descended from a Palaeolithic cave-dweller could ever evolve such a science unaided, even in millenniums of thought and intellectual evolution. It is the pupils of those incarnated Rishis and Devas of the third root race, who handed their knowledge from one generation to another, to Egypt and Greece with its now lost canon of proportion. . . . It is Vitruvius who gave to posterity the rules of construction of the Grecian temples erected to the immortal gods; and the ten books of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio on Architecture, of one, in short, who was an initiate, can only be studied esoterically. The Druidical circles, the Dolmens, the Temples of India, Egypt and Greece, the Towers and the 127 towns in Europe which were found ‘Cyclopean in origin’ by the French Institute, are all the work of initiated Priest-Architects, the descendants of those primarily taught by the ‘Sons of God,’ justly called ‘The Builders’ ” (SD 1:208-9n).
processor farm "computer, parallel" A {parallel processor} where tasks are distributed, or "farmed out", by one "farmer" processor to several "worker" processors, and results are sent back to the farmer. This arrangement is suitable for {applications} which can be partitioned into many separate, independent tasks, the canonical examples being {ray tracing} and the {Mandelbrot set}. In order to be efficient, the extra time spent on communications must be small compared to the time spent processing each task. (2001-05-28)
protocanonical ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the first canon, or that which contains the authorized collection of the books of Scripture; -- opposed to deutero-canonical.
Psak ::: Decision, verdict. ::: Psalm(s) ::: The English word for the Book of Tehillim: A collection of Biblical hymns, i.e. sacred songs or poems used in worship and non-canonical passages.
Punhwangsa. (芬皇寺). In Korean, "Fragrant [viz. Virtuous] Sovereign Monastery"; one of the four major monasteries located in the Silla-dynasty capital of Kyongju. The monastery was built in 634 at the command of Queen Sondok (r. 632-647) and, at its peak, its campus covered several acres. Like its neighbor HWANGNYONGSA, Punhwangsa was established with the support of the Silla royal family and was a center of rituals performed for the protection of the state (K. hoguk Pulgyo; C. HUGUO FOJIAO). Punhwangsa is perhaps best known for its massive stone pagoda, the oldest extant example from the Silla kingdom. The pagoda was erected following Chinese Tang-dynasty models, but was constructed with black andesite stone, rather than the fired bricks used in China. About 9,700 stone bricks remain from the pagoda, twenty-five percent of which are damaged or significantly weathered. The pagoda was once seven to nine stories tall with a hollow center, but only three stories remain, and the collapse of its upper stories has filled the center with debris. A partial restoration of the pagoda in 1915 revealed a reliquary box (K. sarigu; C. SHELIJU) hidden between the second and third stories. Gold ornaments, coins, scissors, and a needle were also found in the pagoda; these are thought to have once been owned by Queen Sondok herself. The pagoda is presumed to have had doorways on each of its four sides; two guardian figures flanked each doorway. Lion statues are placed at the four corners of the pagoda's foundation platform, and lotus blossoms are carved into the granite. The famous Silla artist Sol Ko (d.u.), who lived during the reign of King Chinhŭng (r. 540-575), painted a famous fresco of the bodhisattva AVALOKITEsVARA at the monastery. In 755, King Kyongdok (r. 742-764) had a colossal standing image of BHAIsAJYAGURU, the medicine buddha, cast for Punhwangsa, which was said to have weighed some 36,000 catties (kŭn). Punhwangsa was the residence of many of the most famous Korean monks of the Silla dynasty. When the VINAYA teacher CHAJANG (d.u.; fl. c. 590-658) returned in 643 from a sojourn in Tang China with a set of the Buddhist canon, as well as Buddhist banners, streamers, and other ritual items, he resided at Punhwangsa at the queen's request. The renowned monk-scholiast WoNHYO (617-686) wrote many of his treatises and commentaries at Punhwangsa and was closely associated with the monastery. After he died, according to the SAMGUK YUSA ("Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms"), his famous literatus son, Sol Ch'ong (c. 660-730), took Wonhyo's ashes and cast them into a lifelike image, which he enshrined at the monastery. When Sol Ch'ong prostrated beside it, the image is said to have turned its head to look at the son, a posture it retained from that point on. Little of Punhwangsa remains today, but it is still a functioning monastery.
purgation ::: n. --> The act of purging; the act of clearing, cleansing, or putifying, by separating and carrying off impurities, or whatever is superfluous; the evacuation of the bowels.
The clearing of one&
quadragene ::: n. --> An indulgence of forty days, corresponding to the forty days of ancient canonical penance.
Rāma IV. (Mongkut) (1804-1868). Thai monarch who spent twenty-seven years as a monk before becoming king of Siam. As a monk between 1824 and 1851 (his ordination name was VajiraNāna), Mongkut's studies led him to conclude that the VINAYA was not being strictly observed by the Thai SAMGHA and that many rituals performed by monks did not derive from the Buddha's teachings. In 1830, he organized a small group of reformist monks called the THAMMAYUT nikai (P. Dhammayuttikanikāya), "the group that adheres strictly to the dharma," in contrast to what came to be known as the MAHANIKAI (P. Mahānikāya), the "great congregation" of monks who continued to follow the then-normative practices of Thai Buddhism. To establish this new reform tradition of Thai Buddhism, Mongkut drew on what he considered to be a pure ordination lineage from the Mon people of Burma (Myanmar). Prince Mongkut also sought to produce an authentic recension of the Pāli canon after finding the extant editions deficient and incomplete. His new movement emphasized study of the tipitaka (S. TRIPItIKA) as the basis for understanding Buddhist doctrine and rejected as unorthodox many Buddhist texts popular in Thai Buddhism (such as the Traiphumikatha as well as the JĀTAKA tales). The Thammayut movement also stressed proper monastic discipline, particularly details such as the correct way of wearing the robes (TRICĪVARA) and carrying the alms bowl (PĀTRA), as well as the proper demarcation of monastic space (SĪMĀ). Mongkut's reforms began a trend that led to the SAnGHA ADMINISTRATION ACT, passed in 1902, establishing uniform practices for all monks throughout the country. Mongkut had considerable interaction with Western missionaries and was sensitive to their bias regarding Christianity's supposed superiority over Buddhism because of its affinities for science and technology. In possible response to this European influence, Mongkut and the Thammayut movement also emphasized the rational aspects of Buddhism that sought to make their religion compatible with science and modernity. Mongkut eventually became abbot of WAT BOWONNIWET (Wat Bovoranives) in the Thai capital of Bangkok, which continues to be the headquarters of the Thammayut sect. After Mongkut ascended to the throne, the Thammayut continued to be closely associated with the royal court; the majority of Thai monks, however, have remained in the Mahanikai order. Rāma IV, to the chagrin of many Thais, is the historical (if fanciful) figure behind Anna Leonowens's memoir about her experience in the Thai court as tutor to Mongkut's children, which became the inspiration for Margaret Landon's book Anna and the King of Siam and the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I.
Rāma V. (Chulalongkorn) (1853-1910). Thai monarch revered for his efforts to modernize the country; credited with moving Thailand into the modern age and maintaining close relations with the European colonial powers, while protecting the independence of his kingdom. He was known in Thai as the Royal Buddha ("Phra Phutta Jao Luang"). Like his father, RĀMA IV, he was a strong patron of Buddhism. In 1893, he had the Pāli tipitaka (S. TRIPItAKA) published in thirty-nine volumes and distributed to five hundred monasteries of the kingdom. This was the first time that a Buddhist canon had been printed in codex form. In 1895, he sent sets to 260 academic institutions and libraries around the world. Rāma V founded both of Thailand's public Buddhist universities, Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya (affiliated with the MAHANIKAI fraternity) and Mahamakut Buddhist University (affiliated with the THAMMAYUT fraternity), in 1887 and 1893, respectively. Since the late 1980s, Rāma V has been the object of popular devotion. Books, portraits, amulets, and chanting of khatha (magic formulae) are among the manifestations of this reverence, which culminates on Chulalongkorn Day (October 23), a national holiday commemorating the monarch's death.
rang stong gzhan stong. (rang dong shen dong). In Tibetan, lit. "self-emptiness, other-emptiness," an important and persistent philosophical debate in Tibetan Buddhism, dating to the fifteenth century. The opposing factions are the DGE LUGS sect on one side and the JO NANG sect on the other, with support from certain BKA' BRGYUD and RNYING MA authors. The debate concerns issues fundamental to their understanding of what constituted enlightenment and the path to its achievement. For the Dge lugs, the most profound of all Buddhist doctrines is that all phenomena in the universe are empty of an intrinsic nature (SVABHĀVA), that the constituents of experience are not naturally endowed with a defining characteristic. Emptiness (suNYATĀ) for the Dge lugs is the fact that phenomena do not exist in and of themselves; emptiness is instead the lack of intrinsic existence. The Dge lugs then, are proponents of "self-emptiness," and argue that the hypostatized factor that an object in reality lacks (i.e., is empty of) is wrongly believed by the unenlightened to be intrinsic to the object itself. Everything, from physical forms to the omniscient mind of the Buddha, is thus equally empty. This emptiness is described by the Dge lugs as a non-affirming or simple negation (PRASAJYAPRATIsEDHA), an absence with nothing else implied in its place. From this perspective, the Dge lugs judge the sutras of the second of the three turnings of the wheel of the dharma as described in the SAMDHINIRMOCANASuTRA, "the dharma wheel of signlessness" (ALAKsAnADHARMACAKRA), to contain the definitive expression of the Buddha's most profound intention. By contrast, the Jo nang look for inspiration to the third turning of the wheel, "the dharma wheel for ascertaining the ultimate" (PARAMĀRTHAVINIsCAYADHARMACAKRA; see also *SUVIBHAKTADHARMACAKRA), especially to those statements that describe the nonduality of subject and object to be the consummate nature (PARINIsPANNA) and the understanding of that nonduality to be the highest wisdom. They describe this wisdom in substantialist terms, calling it eternal, self-arisen, and truly established. This wisdom consciousness exists autonomously and is thus not empty in the way that emptiness is understood by the Dge lugs. Instead, this wisdom consciousness is empty in the sense that it is devoid of all afflictions and conventional factors, which are extraneous to its true nature. Hence, the Jo nang speak of the "emptiness of the other," the absence of extrinsic and extraneous qualities. The Dge lugs cannot deny the presence of statements in the MAHĀYĀNA canon that speak of the TATHĀGATAGARBHA as permanent, pure, blissful, and endowed with self. But they argue that such statements are provisional, another example of the Buddha's expedient means of attracting to the faith those who find such a description appealing. The true tathāgatagarbha, they claim, is the emptiness of the mind; it is this factor, present in all sentient beings, that offers the possibility of transformation into an enlightened buddha. This is the view of CANDRAKĪRTI, they say, whom they regard as the supreme interpreter of the doctrine of emptiness. The Jo nang do not deny that this is Candrakīrti's view, but they deny Candrakīrti the rank of premier expositor of NĀGĀRJUNA's thought. For them, Candrakīrti teaches an emptiness which is a mere negation of true existence, which they equate with nihilism, or else a preliminary stage of negation that precedes an understanding of the highest wisdom. Nor do they deny that such an exposition is also to be found in Nāgārjuna's philosophical corpus (YUKTIKĀYA). But those texts, they claim, do not represent Nāgārjuna's final view, which is expressed instead in his devotional corpus (STAVAKĀYA), notably the DHARMADHĀTUSTAVA ("Praise of the Sphere of Reality"), with its more positive exposition of the nature of reality. Those who would deny its ultimate existence, such as Candrakīrti, they classify as "one-sided Madhyamakas" (phyogs gcig pa'i dbu ma pa) as opposed to the "great Madhyamakas" (DBU MA PA CHEN PO), among whom they would include the Nāgārjuna of the four hymns and ĀRYADEVA, as well as thinkers whom the Dge lugs classify as YOGĀCĀRA or SVĀTANTRIKA-MADHYAMAKA: e.g., ASAnGA, VASUBANDHU, MAITREYANĀTHA, and sĀNTARAKsITA. The Dge lugs attempt to demonstrate that the nature of reality praised by Nāgārjuna in his hymns is the same emptiness that he describes in his philosophical writings.
Ratanasutta. In Pāli, "Discourse on the Precious," one of the best loved and most widely-recited Buddhist texts in the THERAVĀDA Buddhist world (there is no analogous recension in the Chinese translations of the ĀGAMAs). The Ratanasutta appears in an early scriptural anthology, the SUTTANIPĀTA, a later collection, the KHUDDAKAPĀtHA, and in a postcanonical anthology of PARITTA ("protection texts"). The Pāli commentaries say that the discourse was first delivered to the Buddha's attendant ĀNANDA, who then went around the city of the Licchavis reciting the text and sprinkling holy water from the Buddha's own begging bowl (PĀTRA). Through this performance, the baleful spirits harassing the city were vanquished and all the people's illnesses were cured. The text itself consists of a mere seventeen verses, twelve of which recount the virtues of the three jewels (RATNATRAYA) of the Buddha, DHARMA, and SAMGHA. The Ratanasutta's great renown derives from its inclusion in the Paritta anthology, texts that are chanted as part of the protective rituals performed by Buddhist monks to ward off misfortunes; indeed, it is this apotropaic quality of the text that accounts for its enduring popularity. Paritta suttas refer to specific discourses delivered by the Buddha that are believed to offer protection to those who either recite the sutta or listen to its recitation. Other such auspicious apotropaic suttas are the MAnGALASUTTA and the METTĀSUTTA. In Southeast Asia, these paritta texts are commonly believed to bring happiness and good fortune when chanted by the saMgha. See also RAKsĀ.
Ratnakutasutra. (T. Dkon mchog brtsegs pa'i mdo; C. Dabaoji jing; J. Daihoshakukyo; K. Taebojok kyong 大寶積經). In Sanskrit, "The Jewel-Heap Sutra"; often known also as the Mahāratnakutasutra, or "The Great Jewel-Heap Sutra." Despite its title, this is actually not one SuTRA but rather an early collection of forty-nine independent MAHĀYĀNA sutras. The texts contained in this collection cover a broad range of important MAHĀYĀNA topics, including detailed discussions of emptiness (suNYATĀ), PURE LAND practices, skillful means (UPĀYA), the importance of cultivating both compassion (KARUnĀ) and wisdom (PRAJÑĀ), and other significant subjects. Many of the texts embedded in the collection are seminal to the Mahāyāna tradition. In this collection, we find treated such influential figures as the buddhas AMITĀBHA and AKsOBHYA, the BODHISATTVA MAÑJUsRĪ, and the ARHAT MAHĀKĀsYAPA. Its KĀsYAPAPARIVARTA chapter was widely cited in MADHYAMAKA treatises. The collections also contain pure land texts, including the longer SUKHĀVATĪVYuHASuTRA as well as the AKsOBHYATATHĀGATASYAVYuHA on the pure land of Aksobhya. The TrisaMvaranirdesaparivarta explains the bodhisattva VINAYA and how it differs from the vinaya of the sRĀVAKAs. Excerpts from the Ratnakutasutra were translated into Chinese as early as the second century CE. While the entire collection is available in Chinese and Tibetan, only portions of it survive in Sanskrit. The Ratnakutasutra occupies six volumes of the Tibetan canon (BKA' 'GYUR) (with fifty-two separate works in the SDE DGE edition, some with the same title but different content). In Chinese, the best-known recension of the Ratnakutasutra is a massive 120-roll translation made by BODHIRUCI between 703 and 716 during the Tang dynasty; it incorporates in the collection some earlier translations of individual texts by DHARMARAKsA, KUMĀRAJĪVA, sIKsĀNANDA, etc. There are also two shorter renderings of portions of the text, one attributed to AN SHIGAO in the latter half of the second century CE, the second to JNānagupta (523-600) in 595 CE, both in only one roll.
recursion ::: (mathematics, programming) When a function (or procedure) calls itself. Such a function is called recursive. If the call is via one or more other functions then this group of functions are called mutually recursive.If a function will always call itself, however it is called, then it will never terminate. Usually however, it first performs some test on its arguments to check for a base case - a condition under which it can return a value without calling itself.The canonical example of a recursive function is factorial: factorial 0 = 1 factorial n = n * factorial (n-1) Functional programming languages rely heavily on recursion, using it where a procedural language would use iteration.See also recursion, recursive definition, tail recursion.[Jargon File] (1996-05-11)
recursion "mathematics, programming" When a {function} (or {procedure}) calls itself. Such a function is called "recursive". If the call is via one or more other functions then this group of functions are called "mutually recursive". If a function will always call itself, however it is called, then it will never terminate. Usually however, it first performs some test on its arguments to check for a "base case" - a condition under which it can return a value without calling itself. The {canonical} example of a recursive function is {factorial}: factorial 0 = 1 factorial n = n * factorial (n-1) {Functional programming languages} rely heavily on recursion, using it where a {procedural language} would use {iteration}. See also {recursion}, {recursive definition}, {tail recursion}. [{Jargon File}] (1996-05-11)
recursion ::: (mathematics, programming) When a function (or procedure) calls itself. Such a function is called recursive. If the call is via one or more other functions then this group of functions are called mutually recursive.If a function will always call itself, however it is called, then it will never terminate. Usually however, it first performs some test on its arguments to check for a base case - a condition under which it can return a value without calling itself.The canonical example of a recursive function is factorial: factorial 0 = 1factorial n = n * factorial (n-1) Functional programming languages rely heavily on recursion, using it where a procedural language would use iteration.See also recursion, recursive definition, tail recursion.[Jargon File] (1996-05-11)
rehabilitate ::: v. t. --> To invest or clothe again with some right, authority, or dignity; to restore to a former capacity; to reinstate; to qualify again; to restore, as a delinquent, to a former right, rank, or privilege lost or forfeited; -- a term of civil and canon law.
religion of CHI /ki:/ [Case Western Reserve University] Yet another hackish parody religion (see also {Church of the SubGenius}, {Discordianism}). In the mid-70s, the canonical "Introduction to Programming" courses at CWRU were taught in {ALGOL}, and student exercises were punched on cards and run on a Univac 1108 system using a homebrew operating system named CHI. The religion had no doctrines and but one ritual: whenever the worshipper noted that a digital clock read 11:08, he or she would recite the phrase "It is 11:08; ABS, ALPHABETIC, ARCSIN, ARCCOS, ARCTAN." The last five words were the first five functions in the appropriate chapter of the ALGOL manual; note the special pronunciations /obz/ and /ark'sin/ rather than the more common /ahbz/ and /ark'si:n/. Using an alarm clock to warn of 11:08's arrival was {considered harmful}. [{Jargon File}]
religion of CHI ::: /ki:/ [Case Western Reserve University] Yet another hackish parody religion (see also Church of the SubGenius, Discordianism). In the mid-70s, the canonical the more common /ahbz/ and /ark'si:n/. Using an alarm clock to warn of 11:08's arrival was considered harmful.[Jargon File]
rescript ::: v. t. --> The answer of an emperor when formallyconsulted by particular persons on some difficult question; hence, an edict or decree.
The official written answer of the pope upon a question of canon law, or morals.
A counterpart.
residentiary ::: a. --> Having residence; as, a canon residentary; a residentiary guardian. ::: n. --> One who is resident.
An ecclesiastic who keeps a certain residence.
revelation ::: n. --> The act of revealing, disclosing, or discovering to others what was before unknown to them.
That which is revealed.
The act of revealing divine truth.
That which is revealed by God to man; esp., the Bible.
Specifically, the last book of the sacred canon, containing the prophecies of St. John; the Apocalypse.
[Rf Drower, The Canonical Prayerbook of the
[Rf Drower, The Canonical Prayerhook of the
Rgyal tshab Dar ma rin chen. (Gyaltsap Darma Rinchen) (1364-1432). One of the two principal disciples (together with MKHAS GRUB DGE LEGS DPAL BZANG) of the Tibetan Buddhist master TSONG KHA PA. Ordained and educated in the SA SKYA sect, Rgyal tshab (a name he would only receive later in life) studied with some of the great teachers of the day, including Red mda' ba gzhon nu blo gros. Rgyal tshab was already an established scholar, known especially for his expertise in PRAMĀnA, when he first met Tsong kha pa at Rab drong around 1400. According to a well-known story, Rgyal tshab sought to debate Tsong kha pa and asked a nun, "Where is Big Nose?" (impertinently referring to Tsong kha pa's prominent proboscis). The nun rinsed out her mouth and lit a stick of incense before saying that the omniscient master Tsong kha pa was teaching in the temple. Rgyal tshab entered the temple and announced his presence, at which point Tsong kha pa interrupted his teaching and invited the great scholar to join him on the teaching throne. Rgyal tshab arrogantly accepted but as he listened to Tsong kha pa's teaching, he became convinced of his great learning and edged away from the master, eventually descending from the throne and prostrating before Tsong kha pa and taking his place in the assembly. From that point, he would become Tsong kha pa's closest disciple, credited with hearing and remembering everything that Tsong kha pa taught. He assisted Tsong kha pa in the founding of DGA' LDAN monastery and upon Tsong kha pa's death in 1419, Rgyal tshab assumed the golden throne of Dga' ldan, becoming the first DGA' LDAN KHRI PA or "Holder of the Throne of Dga' ldan," a position that would evolve into the head of the DGE LUGS sect. He was also called the "regent" (rgyal tshab) of Tsong kha pa, which became the name by which he is best known. He was a prolific author, known especially for his detailed commentaries on the works of DHARMAKĪRTI, as well as such important Indian texts as the ABHISAMAYĀLAMKĀRA, BODHICARYĀVATĀRA, RATNĀVALĪ, CATUḤsATAKA, and RATNAGOTRAVIBHĀGA. Rgyal tshab figures in the most common image in Dge lugs iconography, the rje yab sras gsum, or "the triumvirate, the lord father, and the sons," showing Tsong kha pa flanked by Rgyal tshab and Mkhas grub (with Rgyal tshab often shown with white hair). The collected works of these three scholars form something of a canon for the Dge lugs sect and are often printed together as the rje yab sras gsung 'bum or the "collected works of the lord father and the [two] sons."
rin chen gter mdzod. (rinchen terdzo). In Tibetan, "treasury of precious treasure teachings"; a collection of root texts, liturgical and ritual works, meditation manuals (SĀDHANA), commentarial, and supplemental literature pertaining to the genre of discovered treasure teachings (GTER MA) of the RNYING MA sect of Tibetan Buddhism. The collection was compiled and edited by the nineteenth-century savant 'JAM MGON KONG SPRUL BLO GROS MTHA' YAS and forms one of his five treasuries (KONG SPRUL MDZOD LNGA). Kong sprul's motivation for this massive project, resulting in sixty-three volumes of literature (over one hundred in modern redactions), was complex. The compilation preserves many systems of instruction that were in danger of being lost or forgotten, but it also forms a canonical collection of authoritative treasure texts-one of the first projects of its kind.
Rngog Blo ldan shes rab. (Ngok Loden Sherap) (1059-1110). A Tibetan scholar and translator, nephew of RNGOG LEGS PA'I SHES RAB. After studying under his uncle and participating in the "Council of THO LING" in GU GE, he left for India at the age of eighteen with a group of companions, including RWA LO TSĀ BA. He spent seventeen years pursuing the study of Buddhist texts, including the SuTRAS, TANTRAS, and Buddhist sciences; his main teacher of PRAMĀnA was the Kashmiri logician Bhavyarāja. At the age of thirty-five, he returned to Tibet to become the second abbot of GSANG PHU NE'U THOG monastery near LHA SA. He translated numerous works still found in the BKA' 'GYUR and BSTAN 'GYUR sections of the Tibetan Buddhist canon. These include the PRAMĀnAVINIsCAYA of DHARMAKĪRTI, the five works of MAITREYA, and the major works of what would be dubbed the YOGĀCĀRA SVĀTANTRIKA school. He also composed a number of works himself, which do not seem to have survived. Along with RIN CHEN BZANG PO, he is often referred to as a "great translator" (lo chen); in later works sometimes simply as bdag nyid chen po (S. mahātma). Because of the influence of his translations and his own substantial writings, he is considered along with SA SKYA PAndITA to be a founding figure of Tibetan Buddhist scholasticism.
Rnying ma'i rgyud 'bum. (Nyingme Gyübum). A compendium of the tantras and tantric exegetical literature of the RNYING MA sect of Tibetan Buddhism; considered apocryphal by the redactors of the Tibetan Buddhist canon (BKA' 'GYUR), the collection thus represents an alternative or supplementary Rnying ma canon of tantric scriptures. Numerous editions are extant, including the SDE DGE edition (twenty-six volumes), the Gting kye (twenty-six volumes), the Skyi rong (thirty-seven volumes), the Tsham brag (forty-six volumes), and the Vairo rgyud 'bum (eight volumes). All but the last divide the tantras into the standard Rnying ma doxographical categories of MAHĀYOGA, ANUYOGA, and ATIYOGA, although within those categories differences emerge (the Vairo rgyud 'bum, for example, includes only atiyoga). Further editions include those recently discovered in Kathmandu and the so-called Waddell edition, a close relative to the Gting kye. All but the Sde dge are manuscripts. Catalogues of Buddhist texts were made as far back as the eighth century, but the roots of the Rnying ma'i rgyud 'bum go back to the second propagation of Buddhism in Tibet (roughly the eleventh to thirteenth centuries). In opposition to the new translation sects (GSAR MA) that developed around newly imported tantras, adherents of the earlier translations coalesced into the Rnying ma, or "ancients," sect. There is evidence that 'Gro mgon Nam mkha' 'phel, the son of one of the earliest proponents of the Rnying ma sect, NYANG RAL NYI MA 'OD ZER, arranged a collection of early tantras in eighty-two volumes, which is no longer extant. The Vairo rgyud 'bum also may date as far back as the twelfth century, although its origins are unclear. When BU STON RIN CHEN GRUB edited the Tibetan Buddhist canon in the fourteenth century, he excluded the tantras found in the Rnying ma'i rgyud 'bum on the basis that he could find no Indic originals with which to authenticate them. Bu ston's position has been shown by Tibetan and Western scholars to have been partisan and inconsistent, and several tantras he excluded, such as the VAJRAKĪLAYA tantras, are accepted by other sects. Some excluded tantras do in fact appear to be early combinations of Indic and Tibetan material, while others, especially later revelatory scriptures (GTER MA) are entirely of Tibetan composition. An early version of the Rnying ma'i rgyud 'bum that may have influenced later editions was that of RATNA GLING PA, no longer extant. The Tshams brag appears to have been commissioned by Tsham brag bla ma Ngag dbang 'brug pa (1682-1748) and was based on a still earlier Bhutanese version. GTER BDAG GLING PA's edition later became the basis for that of 'JIGS MED GLING PA, in twenty-five volumes, which was produced in 1772, and is known as the Padma 'od gling edition. This in turn was the basis for the Sde dge block-print edition, carved between 1794 and 1798 and overseen by Dge rtse pan chen 'Gyur med mchog grub (1761-1829) of KAḤ THOG monastery.
Rnying ma. (Nyingma). In Tibetan, "Ancient," the name of one of the four major sects of Tibetan Buddhism. The name derives from the sect's origins during the "early dissemination" (SNGA DAR) of Buddhism in Tibet and its reliance on translations of TANTRAs made during that period; this is in distinction to the new (GSAR MA) sects of BKA' BRGYUD, SA SKYA, and DGE LUGS, all of which arose during the later dissemination (PHYI DAR) and make use of newer translations. The Rnying ma is thus "ancient" in relation to the new sects and only began to be designated as such after their appearance. The sect traces its origins back to the teachings of the mysterious figure of PADMASAMBHAVA, who visited Tibet during the eighth century and is said to have hidden many texts, called "treasures" (GTER MA), to be discovered in the future. In addition to the Buddhist canon accepted by all sects of Tibetan Buddhism, the Rnying ma adds another collection of tantras (the RNYING MA'I RGYUD 'BUM) as well as the discovered "treasure" (GTER MA) texts to their canonical corpus, works that in many cases the other sects regard as APOCRYPHA, i.e., not of Indian origin. Rnying ma identifies nine vehicles among the corpus of Buddhist teachings, the highest of which is known as ATIYOGA or, more commonly, the "great perfection" (RDZOGS CHEN). These teachings describe the mind as the primordial basis, characterized by qualities such as presence, spontaneity, luminosity, original purity, unobstructed freedom, expanse, clarity, self-liberation, openness, effortlessness, and intrinsic awareness. It is not accessible through conceptual elaboration or logical analysis. Rather, the primordial basis is an eternally pure state free from the dualism of subject and object, infinite and perfect from the beginning, and ever complete. The technique for the discovery of the ubiquitous original purity and self-liberation is to engage in a variety of practices designed to eliminate karmic obstructions, at which point the mind eliminates all thoughts and experiences itself, thereby recognizing its true nature. The rdzogs chen doctrine does not seem to derive directly from any of the Indian philosophical schools; its precise connections to the Indian Buddhist tradition have yet to be established. Some scholars have claimed an historical link and doctrinal affinity between rdzogs chen and the CHAN tradition of Chinese Buddhism, but the precise relationship between the two remains to be fully investigated. It is noteworthy that certain of the earliest extant rdzogs chen texts specifically contrast their own tradition with that of Chan. In comparison to the Dge lugs, Bka' brgyud, and Sa skya, the Rnying ma (with some important exceptions, notably at the time of the fifth DALAI LAMA) remained largely uninvolved in state politics, both within Tibet and in foreign relations. Although they developed great monasteries, such as SMIN GROL GLING, RDZOGS CHEN, and RDO RJE BRAG, the Rnying ma also maintained a strong local presence as lay tantric practitioners (sngags pa) who performed a range of ritual functions for the community. The Rnying ma produced many famous scholars and visionaries, such as KLONG CHEN RAB 'BYAMS, 'JIGS MED GLING PA, and MI PHAM. In the nineteenth century, Rnying ma scholars played a key role in the so-called nonsectarian movement (RIS MED) in eastern Tibet, which produced many important new texts.
Roscelin: (c. 1050-c 1120) born at Compiegne, France, probably studied in Soissons and Rheims. He taught as Canon of Compiene, and at Tours, Loches (where Abelard was his pupil) and Besancon. Noted in philosophy for his extremely nominalistic solution to the problem of universals. Theologically, he was accused of tritheism. No major works are extant and his views are known only through possibly biased accounts in John of Salisbury, (Metalogicus, II, 17, PL 199, 874), St. Anselm, Abailard and Otto of Freising.
saddharma. (P. saddhamma; T. dam pa'i chos; C. zhengfa; J. shobo; K. chongpop 正法). In Sanskrit, "true dharma" or "right dharma" (and often translated as "true law" in the nineteenth century), a term for the teaching of the Buddha. The term appears widely in Buddhist literature, including the Pāli canon. The term DHARMA has many meanings in Indian literature in general and in Indian Buddhism in particular. Scholars speculate that SADDHARMA was coined to indicate specifically that the saddharma was "the teaching of the Buddha," in order to distinguish his doctrine from those of non-Buddhist teachers (whose doctrines were also termed dharma). It may have also been intended to imply a truer, in the sense of a more definitive, teaching within the teachings of the Buddha, as in the title of the "Lotus Sutra," SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, lit., "White Lotus of the True Dharma," where the Buddha explains that his teaching on the one vehicle (EKAYĀNA) supersedes his previous teaching of three vehicles (TRIYĀNA). Saddharma was also used to refer to that period after the PARINIRVĀnA of a particular buddha, when his teaching remained complete and intact and its practice was faithful and virtuous; this period preceded their inevitable decline (see SADDHARMAPRATIRuPAKA and SADDHARMAVIPRALOPA).
Saint George Patron saint of England; the universal allegory of the dragonslayer reappears in Christian ecclesiasticism as the archangel Michael who slays the red dragon, and again as St. George. It is a historical mystery both how this apocryphal legend came to be attached to the name of George of Cappadocia, the ecclesiastic put to death by Diocletian for opposing him in the persecution of the Christians; and that the Roman Catholic Church should have canonized so rabid an Arian. His is another form of the story of Bel and the dragon, Apollo and Python, Osiris and Typhon, etc., which denote the fallen angels or kumaras who, by bringing intellectual life to earth, thereby truly conquer death.
saint ::: n. --> A person sanctified; a holy or godly person; one eminent for piety and virtue; any true Christian, as being redeemed and consecrated to God.
One of the blessed in heaven.
One canonized by the church. ::: v. t.
Saivites (devotees of Siva) recognize 28 agamas as continuing the full doctrine; Saktas list 77 agamas or tantras; Vaishnavas (followers of Vishnu) regard the Pancharatra Agamas as their sacred books; and the Jain agamas as a whole constitute the Jain canon.
sakra. (P. Sakka; T. Brgya byin; C. Di-Shi; J. Taishaku; K. Che-Sok 帝釋). Sanskrit name of a divinity who is often identified with the Vedic god INDRA (with whom he shares many epithets), although it is perhaps more accurate to describe him as a Buddhist (and less bellicose) version of Indra. Typically described in Buddhist texts by his full name and title as "sakra, the king of the gods" (sAKRO DEVĀNĀM INDRAḤ), he is the divinity (DEVA) who appears most regularly in Buddhist texts. sakra is chief of the gods of the heaven of the thirty-three (TRĀYASTRIMsA), located on the summit of Mount SUMERU. As such, he is a god of great power and long life, but is also subject to death and rebirth; the Buddha details in various discourses the specific virtues that result in rebirth as sakra. In both the Pāli canon and the MAHĀYĀNA sutras, sakra is depicted as the most devoted of the divine followers of the Buddha, descending from his heaven to listen to the Buddha's teachings and to ask him questions (and according to some accounts, eventually achieving the state of stream-enterer), and rendering all manner of assistance to the Buddha and his followers. In the case of the Buddha, this assistance was extended prior to his achievement of buddhahood, both in his previous lives (as in the story of Vessantara in the VESSANTARA JĀTAKA) and in his last lifetime as Prince SIDDHĀRTHA; when the prince cuts off his royal locks and throws them into the sky, proclaiming that he will achieve buddhahood if his locks remain there, it is sakra who catches them and installs them in a shrine in the heaven of the thirty-three. When the Buddha later visited the heaven of the thirty-three to teach the ABHIDHARMA to his mother MĀYĀ (who had been reborn there), sakra provided the magnificent ladder for his celebrated descent to JAMBUDVĪPA that took place at SĀMKĀsYA. When the Buddha was sick with dysentery near the end of his life, sakra carried his chamber pot. sakra often descends to earth disguised as a brāhmana in order to test the virtue of the Buddha's disciples, both monastic and lay, offering all manner of miraculous boons to those who pass the test. In the Pāli canon, a section of the SAMYUTTANIKĀYA consists of twenty-five short suttas devoted to him.
sambo sach'al. (三寶寺刹). In Korean, "three-jewel monasteries"; three major Korean monasteries that by tradition represent one of the three jewels (RATNATRAYA) of Buddhism: T'ONGDOSA, the Buddha jewel monastery (Pulbo sach'al), because of its ordination platform and the relics (K. sari; S. sARĪRA) of the Buddha enshrined behind its main shrine hall (TAEUNG CHoN); HAEINSA, the DHARMA-jewel monastery (Poppo sach'al), because it preserves the xylographs of the Korean Buddhist canon (KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG); and SONGGWANGSA, the SAMGHA-jewel monastery (Sŭngbo sach'al), because of the series of state preceptors (K. kuksa; C. GUOSHI) during the Koryo dynasty who practiced at the monastery.
saMgīti. (P. sangīti; T. bka' bsdu; C. jieji; J. ketsuju; K. kyolchip 結集). In Sanskrit, "chant," "recitation," and, by extension, "council." The term is used to refer to both the recitation of scripture and a communal gathering of monks held for the purpose of such recitation; for this reason, the term is often translated as "council," or "synod," such as the first council, second council, etc., following the death of the Buddha. These councils were held to resolve questions of orthodoxy and typically involved the recitation and redaction of the Buddhist canon (TRIPItAKA). At such Buddhist councils, the Buddhist canon was communally rehearsed, agreed upon, and codified; in the Pāli account, the same procedure was followed for redacting the exegetical commentaries, called AttHAKATHĀ. In this same Pāli narrative, a saMgīti was convened at the conclusion of a successful purification of the dispensation (P. sāsanavisodhana) in which false monks and heretics are expelled, schism healed, and the SAMGHA reunified. A saMgīti is conducted by representatives of that newly purified saMgha, who in a public forum unanimously affirm the authority of a common canon. For a detailed description of the major councils, see COUNCIL (s.v.). ¶ The term saMgīti may also be used to refer to the "recitation" of a specific scripture itself. A famous such text is the MANJUsRĪNĀMASAMGĪTI or "Recitation of the Names of MaNjusrī."
saMjNā. (P. saNNā; T. 'du shes; C. xiang; J. so; K. sang 想). In Sanskrit, "perception," "discrimination," or "(conceptual) identification." The term has both positive and negative connotations. As one of the five omnipresent factors (SARVATRAGA) among the listings of mental concomitants (CAITTA, P. CETASIKA) in the VAIBĀsIKA school of SARVĀSTIVĀDA ABHIDHARMA and in the YOGĀCĀRA school, saMjNā might best be translated as "discrimination," referring to the mental function of differentiating and identifying objects through the apprehension of their specific qualities. SaMjNā perceives objects in such a way that when the object is perceived again it can be readily recognized and categorized conceptually. In this perceptual context, there are six varieties of saMjNā, each derived from one of the six sense faculties. Thus we have perception of visual objects (rupasaMjNā), perception of auditory objects (sabdasaMjNā), perception of mental objects (dharmasaMjNā), and so on. As the third of the five aggregates (SKANDHA), saMjNā is used in this sense, particularly as the factor that perceives pleasant or unpleasant sensations as being such, giving rise to attraction, aversion and other afflictions (KLEsA) that motivate action (KARMAN). In the compound "equipoise of nonperception" (ASAMJNĀSAMĀPATTI), saMjNā refers to mental activities that, when temporarily suppressed, bring respite from tension. Some accounts interpret this state positively to mean that the perception aggregate itself is no longer functioning, implying a state of rest with the cessation of all conscious thought. In other accounts, however, asaMjNāsamāpatti is characterized as a nihilistic state of mental dormancy, which some non-Buddhist teachers had mistakenly believed to be the ultimate, permanent quiescence of the mind and to have become attached to this state as if it were final liberation. In Pāli materials, saNNā may also refer to "concepts" or "perceptions" that may be used as objects of meditation. The Pāli canon offers several of these meditative objects, such as the perception of impermanence (aniccasaNNā, see S. ANITYA), the perception of danger (ĀDĪNAVA-saNNā), the perception of repugnance (patighasaNNā, see PRATIGHA), and so on.
sānakavāsin. (T. Sha na'i gos can; C. Shangnahexiu/Shangnuojiafusuo; J. Shonawashu/Shonyakabasha; K. Sangnahwasu/Sangnakkabaksa 商那和修/商諾迦縛娑). In Sanskrit, "Linen Wearer" [alt. sānakavāsa]; the third (or fourth according to SARVĀSTIVĀDA sources) successor to the Buddha in some of the traditional dharma lineages preserved in Nepal, Tibet, and East Asia. His name derives from a legend that, from the moment he was born following a six-year-long period of gestation in his mother's womb, he was always dressed in linen garments. Before becoming a monk, he was a rich merchant in RĀJAGṚHA, who frequently offered alms to the SAMGHA. He entered the religious order on the recommendation of ĀNANDA, and eventually succeeded him. After mastering all the canons, sānakavāsin traveled around India, propagating Buddhism. He converted many people to the religion, including UPAGUPTA, who became his successor. He also played a role in the second Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, SECOND). He is believed to have died in MATHURĀ.
Sangītisutta. (S. SaMgītisutra; C. Zhongji jing; J. Shushukyo; K. Chungjip kyong 衆集經). In Pāli, "Discourse on Communal Recitation," the thirty-third sutta of the DĪGHANIKĀYA (a separate DHARMAGUPTAKA recension appears as the ninth sutra in the Chinese translation of the DĪRGHĀGAMA); preached by Sāriputta (S. sĀRIPUTRA) to a congregation of monks at Pāvā in Malla country. The followers of the JAINA leader Nigantha-Nātaputta (S. NIRGRANTHA-JNĀTĪPUTRA) had begun to quarrel following the death of their master. sāriputra related to the monks at Pāvā that this occurred because JNātīputra was not enlightened and so his teachings were erroneous and not well taught, but the Buddha, by contrast, was enlightened and his teachings were well taught. sāriputra suggested that the dharma be chanted by the congregation in unison as a means of preserving it. He then summarized the dharma under numerical classifications ranging from groups of ones to groups of tens as a device for memorization. This exegetical stratagem provides one of the first canonical recensions of the "matrices" (P. mātikā, S. MĀTṚKĀ) that are thought to mark the incipiency of the ABHIDHARMA, and its style of exposition is closely connected to that employed in the DASUTTARASUTTA (S. Dasottarasutra); several of its exegetical categories are also reproduced in the SAMGĪTIPARYĀYA of the SARVĀSTIVĀDA ABHIDHARMA.
sanmei jing. (S. samādhisutra; J. sanmaikyo; K. sammae kyong 三昧經). In Chinese, "SAMĀDHI scriptures"; a category of MAHĀYĀNA sutras that are primarily or exclusively concerned with the practice or experience of meditation (SAMĀDHI), or whose title contains the term sanmei. The earliest reference to sanmei jing as a scriptural category appears in the oldest extant Chinese scriptural catalogue, CHU SANZANG JIJI ("Compilation of Notices on the Translation of the TRIPItAKA"), compiled by SENGYOU (445-518) around 515; there, Sengyou remarks that Zhu Fahu (DHARMARAKsA) translated several sanmei jings. The Chinese Buddhist canon (DAZANGJING) contains more than fifty sutras that use the term sanmei in their titles. These include sanmei jings whose Sanskrit titles do not use the term samādhi and to which the term sanmei was added when these scriptures were translated into Chinese. There are also other scriptures of uncertain provenance whose titles in earlier Chinese translations did not contain the term sanmei. An examination of successive Chinese Buddhist scriptural catalogues (JINGLU) in fact reveals that there were several sutras that circulated first with one title, and later with a revised title that added sanmei to the original. Furthermore, there are a number of indigenous Chinese Buddhist scriptures (see APOCRYPHA), that were not entered into the canon, which call themselves sanmei jing. This phenomenon began early in the history of Chinese Buddhism. DAO'AN's 374 CE scriptural catalogue (ZONGLI ZHONG-JING MULU), which is no longer extant but portions of which are excerpted in Sengyou's Chu sanzang jiji, lists twenty-six scriptures of dubious authenticity; of these, six are titled sanmei jing. Several sanmei jings, such as the Banzhou sanmeijing (S. PRATYUTPANNABUDDHASAMMUKHĀVASTHITASAMĀDHISuTRA), offer instruction regarding the full range of practices involved in cultivating a specific samādhi technique. The majority of sanmei jings, however, are instead concerned with the various states of mind that the Buddha or BODHISATTVAs attained through samādhi, praising that samādhi, and/or emphasizing the merit gained through keeping and transmitting the text of the sanmei jing. The popularity of the sanmei jing genre in Chinese Buddhism can be at least partially attributed to Chinese Buddhists' faith and interest in the religious practice of copying and reciting scriptures, which most sanmei jings encourage as a means of attaining enlightenment. Higher meditative states like samādhi sometime seem ancillary to the topic of certain sanmei jings: the JINGDU SANMEI JING, for example, offers a detailed account of thirty separate levels of the hells and the incumbent punishments meted out there; in order to avoid the torments of hell, the scripture exhorts laypeople not to meditate, but instead to observe the five precepts (PANCAsĪLA) and perform the "eight-restrictions fast" (BAGUAN ZHAI) on specific Chinese seasonal days.
sāriputra. (P. Sāriputta; T. Shā ri bu; C. Shelifu; J. Sharihotsu; K. Saribul 舍利弗). In Sanskrit, "Son of sārī"; the first of two chief disciples of the Buddha, along with MAHĀMAUDGALYĀYANA. sāriputra's father was a wealthy brāhmana named Tisya (and sāriputra is sometimes called Upatisya, after his father) and his mother was named sārī or sārikā, because she had eyes like a sārika bird. sārī was the most intelligent woman in MAGADHA; she is also known as sāradvatī, so sāriputra is sometimes referred to as sāradvatīputra. sāriputra was born in Nālaka near RĀJAGṚHA. He had three younger brothers and three sisters, all of whom would eventually join the SAMGHA and become ARHATs. sāriputra and Mahāmaudgalyāyana were friends from childhood. Once, while attending a performance, both became overwhelmed with a sense of the vanity of all impermanent things and resolved to renounce the world together. They first became disciples of the agnostic SANJAYA VAIRĀtĪPUTRA, although they later took their leave of him and wandered through India in search of the truth. Finding no solution, they parted company, promising one another that whichever one should succeed in finding the truth would inform the other. It was then that sāriputra met the Buddha's disciple, AsVAJIT, one of the Buddha's first five disciples (PANCAVARGIKA) and already an arhat. sāriputra was impressed with Asvajit's countenance and demeanor and asked whether he was a master or a disciple. When he replied that he was a disciple, sāriputra asked him what his teacher taught. Asvajit said that he was new to the teachings and could only provide a summary, but then uttered one of the most famous statements in the history of Buddhism, "Of those phenomena produced through causes, the TATHĀGATA has proclaimed their causes (HETU) and also their cessation (NIRODHA). Thus has spoken the great renunciant." (See YE DHARMĀ s.v.). Hearing these words, sāriputra immediately became a stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA) and asked where he could find this teacher. In keeping with their earlier compact, he repeated the stanza to his friend Mahāmaudgalyāyana, who also immediately became a streamenterer. The two friends resolved to take ordination as disciples of the Buddha and, together with five hundred disciples of their former teacher SaNjaya, proceeded to the VEnUVANAVIHĀRA, where the Buddha was in residence. The Buddha ordained the entire group with the EHIBHIKsUKĀ ("Come, monks") formula, whereupon all except sāriputra and Mahāmaudgalyāyana became arhats. Mahāmaudgalyāyana was to attain arhatship seven days after his ordination, while sāriputra reached the goal after a fortnight upon hearing the Buddha preach the Vedanāpariggahasutta (the Sanskrit recension is entitled the Dīrghanakhaparivrājakaparipṛcchā). The Buddha declared sāriputra and Mahāmaudgalyāyana his chief disciples the day they were ordained, giving as his reason the fact that both had exerted themselves in religious practice for countless previous lives. sāriputra was declared chief among the Buddha's disciples in wisdom, while Mahāmaudgalyāyana was chief in mastery of supranormal powers (ṚDDHI). sāriputra was recognized as second only to the Buddha in his knowledge of the dharma. The Buddha praised sāriputra as an able teacher, calling him his dharmasenāpati, "dharma general" and often assigned topics for him to preach. Two of his most famous discourses were the DASUTTARASUTTA and the SAnGĪTISUTTA, which the Buddha asked him to preach on his behalf. Sāriputra was meticulous in his observance of the VINAYA, and was quick both to admonish monks in need of guidance and to praise them for their accomplishments. He was sought out by others to explicate points of doctrine and it was he who is said to have revealed the ABHIDHARMA to the human world after the Buddha taught it to his mother, who had been reborn in the TRĀYASTRIMsA heaven; when the Buddha returned to earth each day to collect alms, he would repeat to sāriputra what he had taught to the divinities in heaven. sāriputra died several months before the Buddha. Realizing that he had only seven days to live, he resolved to return to his native village and convert his mother; with this accomplished, he passed away. His body was cremated and his relics were eventually enshrined in a STuPA at NĀLANDĀ. sāriputra appears in many JĀTAKA stories as a companion of the Buddha, sometimes in human form, sometimes in animal form, and sometimes with one of them a human and the other an animal. sāriputra also plays a major role in the MAHĀYĀNA sutras, where he is a common interlocutor of the Buddha and of the chief BODHISATTVAs. Sometimes he is portrayed as a dignified arhat, elsewhere he is made the fool, as in the VIMALAKĪRTINIRDEsA when a goddess turns him into a woman, much to his dismay. In either case, the point is that the wisest of the Buddha's arhat disciples, the master of the abhidharma, does not know the sublime teachings of the Mahāyāna and must have them explained to him. The implication is that the teachings of the Mahāyāna sutras are therefore more profound than anything found in the canons of the MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS. In the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀHṚDAYA ("Heart Sutra"), it is sāriputra who asks AVALOKITEsVARA how to practice the perfection of wisdom, and even then he must be empowered to ask the question by the Buddha. In the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, it is sāriputra's question that prompts the Buddha to set forth the parable of the burning house. The Buddha predicts that in the future, sāriputra will become the buddha Padmaprabha.
Sarvāstivāda. (T. Thams cad yod par smra ba; C. Shuo yiqieyou bu/Sapoduo bu; J. Setsuissaiubu/Satsubatabu; K. Sorilch'eyu pu/Salbada pu 一切有部/薩婆多部). In Sanskrit, "Teaching that All Exists," one of the most influential of all the mainstream (that is, non-Mahāyāna) schools of Indian Buddhism, named after its doctrine that all conditioned factors (DHARMA) continue to exist (sarvam asti) throughout all three time periods (TRIKĀLA) of past, present, and future. The Sarvāstivāda had one of the most elaborate ABHIDHARMA canons (ABHIDHARMAPItAKA) in all of Buddhism and the school was especially known for its distinctive and influential dharma theory. The Sarvāstivāda identified seventy-five dharmas that the school held were substantially existent (dravyasat) and endowed with intrinsic nature (SVABHĀVA): viz., the five sense organs (INDRIYA), the five sense objects, nonmanifest materiality (AVIJNAPTIRuPA), mind (CITTA), forty-six mental concomitants (CAITTA), fourteen conditioned forces dissociated from thought (CITTAVIPRAYUKTASAMSKĀRA), and three unconditioned (ASAMSKṚTA) factors. Although the conditioned dharmas always existed, they still were impermanent and thus still moved between temporal periods because of specific "forces dissociated from thought" (CITTAVIPRAYUKTASAMSKĀRA): the "compounded characteristics" (SAMSKṚTALAKsAnA, CATURLAKsAnA) of origination (JĀTI), continuance (STHITI), "senescence" or decay (JARĀ), and "desinence," viz., extinction (ANITYATĀ). In the Sarvāstivāda treatment of causality, these four characteristics were forces that exerted real power over compounded objects, escorting those objects along the causal path until the force "desinence" finally extinguished them; this rather tortured explanation was necessary in order to explain how factors that the Sarvāstivāda school posited continued to exist in all three time periods yet still appeared to undergo change. Even after enlightenment, those dharmas still continued to exist, although they were then effectively "canceled out" through the force of the "nonanalytical suppressions" (APRATISAMKHYĀNIRODHA), which kept in check the production of all types of dharmas, ensuring that they remained positioned in future mode forever and were never again able to arise in the present. This distinctive dharma theory of the Sarvāstivāda was probably what the MADHYAMAKA philosopher NĀGĀRJUNA was reacting against in his clarion call that all dharmas were devoid of intrinsic existence (NIḤSVABHĀVA) and thus characterized by emptiness (suNYATĀ). The Sarvāstivāda school's elaborate abhidharma was also the inspiration for the still more intricate "Mahāyāna abhidharma" of the YOGĀCĀRA school (see BAIFA), which drew much of its classification scheme and many of its specific dharmas directly from the Sarvāstivāda. In describing the path of the ARHAT, the Sarvāstivāda set forth a five-stage path system (PANCAMĀRGA, of accumulation/equipment, preparation, vision, cultivation, and no further learning) for the ARHAT and asserted that the BODHISATTVA practices six perfections (PĀRAMITĀ) in the course of his training. This five-stage path was also adopted by the Yogācāra in its own theory of the bodhisattva MĀRGA. The Sarvāstivāda developed an elaborate view of the Buddha and the events of his life, as represented in the famous LALITAVISTARA. In its view of death and rebirth, Sarvāstivāda accepted the reality of the "intermediate state" (ANTARĀBHAVA) between rebirths, which in the Sarvāstivāda analysis could range from instantaneous rebirth, to rebirth after a week, indeterminate duration, and as many as forty-nine days; the latter figure seems to have become dominant in later traditions, including Mahāyāna, after it was adopted by the ABHIDHARMAKOsABHĀsYA and the YOGĀCĀRABHuMI. The Sarvāstivāda was one of the main subgroups of the STHAVIRANIKĀYA (School of the Elders), which split with the MAHĀSĀMGHIKA in the first centuries following the Buddha's death. The Sarvāstivāda evolved as one of the three major subdivisions of the Sthaviranikāya, perhaps as early as a century or two following the first schism, but certainly no later than the first century CE. Sarvāstivāda was one of the most enduring and widespread of the mainstream Buddhist schools. It was especially important in northern India in such influential Buddhist regions as KASHMIR and GANDHĀRA and eventually along the SILK ROAD in some of the Indo-European petty kingdoms of the Tarim River basin, such as KUCHA. Its geographical location along the major overland trade routes also led to it becoming the major mainstream school known to East Asian Buddhism. The Sarvāstivāda school includes an important subgroup, the VAIBHĀsIKA ("Followers of the Vibhāsā"), who were the ĀBHIDHARMIKAs associated with the Sarvāstivāda school, especially in Kashmir in northwestern India but also in Gandhāra and even BACTRIA. Because these masters considered their teachings to be elaborations of doctrines found in the encyclopedic Sarvāstivāda abhidharma treatise, the ABHIDHARMAMAHĀVIBHĀsĀ, they typically referred to themselves as Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhāsika or simply Vaibhāsika. This group was later also distinguished from the MuLASARVĀSTIVĀDA ("Root Sarvāstivāda"), a distinction that may have originated in a dispute over VINAYA recensions between the northwestern Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhāsika school in Kashmir and Gandhāra and the Sarvāstivāda school of MATHURĀ in north-central India. The Mulasarvāstivāda is best known for its massive MuLASARVĀSTIVĀDA VINAYA, one of the oldest and by far the largest (by up to a factor of four) of the major monastic codes (see VINAYAPItAKA) of the mainstream Buddhist schools; because of its eclectic content, it functioned almost as a proto-canon. The Mulasarvāstivāda vinaya is the monastic code still followed today in the Tibetan traditions of Buddhism. See also SAUTRĀNTIKA.
sāsanavisodhana. In Pāli, "purification of the Buddha's teaching"; referring specifically to the expulsion of malefactors and heretics from the congregation of Buddhist monks and nuns (P. sangha; S. SAMGHA). It is typically, but not necessarily followed by a communal recitation (SAMGĪTI) of the Buddhist canon (P. tipitaka; S. TRIPItAKA) by the newly purified and reunited sangha. The monastic code (VINAYA) severely limits the ability of the sangha as a body or its leaders to force the secession of false monks, monks guilty of PĀRĀJIKA offenses, schismatics, or heretics. For this reason this authority has been ceded by historical precedent and tradition (but not by vinaya law) to the state, embodied ideally in the person of the pious Buddhist king. In the Pāli tradition, the ultimate paradigm for royal interventionism in sangha affairs is King Dhammāsoka (see AsOKA), who is portrayed in the Pāli chronicles of Sri Lanka and the Pāli commentaries as having purged the sangha of malefactors at the behest of the sangha and under the guidance of the elder MOGGALIPUTTATISSA. After the sangha was purified, Moggaliputtatissa convened the third Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, THIRD) to rehearse and reaffirm the Buddha's true teachings. Cf. SIKKHĀPACCAKKHĀNA; sIKsĀDATTAKA.
*sāstrapitaka. (C. lunzang; J. ronzo; K. nonjang 論藏). In Sanskrit reconstruction, "treatise basket," a more inclusive designation for the ABHIDHARMAPItAKA, the third "basket" of the Buddhist canon (TRIPItAKA), which expands this section of the canon to take in scholastic treatises (sĀSTRA) from the MAHĀYĀNA exegetical schools in addition to the ABHIDHARMA texts of the MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS. The Sanskrit term appears in Western literature on the canon, but seems not to be attested in Indian sources (or in their Tibetan translation) and may be a back-translation from the Chinese locution lunzang. Since virtually the inception of Buddhism in China, the Mahāyāna tradition dominated. This allegiance is apparently why Chinese scriptural catalogues (JINGLU), since at least the time of the definitive KAIYUAN SHIJIAO LU (730), had listed Mahāyāna materials first in their respective rosters of SuTRA and sāstra texts. This same order is subsequently followed in the traditional printed versions of the Chinese Buddhist canon (DAZANGJING; see also KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG). To the Chinese, who proudly identified with the Mahāyāna, it must have seemed anathema to treat as canonical ABHIDHARMA works by the ARHAT-ĀBHIDHARMIKAs (such as KĀTYĀYANĪPUTRA or VASUMITRA) but not the scholastic treatises by the Indian BODHISATTVA-exegetes of Mahāyāna (such as NĀGĀRJUNA and ASUBANDHU) who were much more renowned to the Chinese. In order to give pride of place to the works of these influential Mahāyāna scholiasts, the Chinese listed them before abhidharma texts in the roster of sāstra materials collected in the Chinese Buddhist canon, and referred to this third basket more expansively as a "treatise basket" (lunzang) rather than merely an abhidharmapitaka.
sāstra. (T. bstan bcos; C. lun; J. ron; K. non 論). In Sanskrit, "treatise," a term used to refer to works contained in the various Buddhist canons attributed to various Indian masters. In this sense, the term is distinguished from SuTRA, a discourse regarded as the word of the Buddha or spoken with his sanction. In the basic division of Buddhist scripture in the Tibetan canon, for example, the translations of sāstra (BSTAN 'GYUR) are contrasted with the words of the Buddha (or a buddha) called BKA' 'GYUR. A Buddhist sāstra can be in verse or prose, and of any length, and it includes the different Sanskrit compositional genres (vṛtti, vārttika, bhāsya, tīkā, vyākhyā, paNjikā, and so on) often rendered by the single English word "commentary." In the Buddhist context, the genre is typically a form of composition that explains the words or intention of the Buddha. The word sāstra is found in the actual title of a number of works, for example, the PrajNāpāramitopadesasāstrakārikā, an alternate title of the ABHISAMAYĀLAMKĀRA, and the Mahāyānottaratantrasāstravyākhyā, another name for the RATNAGOTRAVIBHĀGA.
Satipatthānasutta. (S. *Smṛtyupasthānasutra; T. Dran pa nye bar bzhag pa'i mdo; C. Nianchu jing; J. Nenjogyo; K. Yomch'o kyong 念處經). In Pāli, "Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness"; the tenth sutta in the MAJJHIMANIKĀYA (a separate SARVĀSTIVĀDA recension appears as the ninety-eighth SuTRA in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMĀGAMA; there is another unidentified recension in the Chinese translation of the EKOTTARĀGAMA). An expanded version of the same sutta, titled the "Great Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness" (MAHĀSATIPAttHĀNASUTTANTA), which adds extensive discussion on mindfulness of breathing (P. ānāpānasati, S. ĀNĀPĀNASMṚTI), is the twenty-second sutta in the Pāli DĪGHANIKĀYA. This sutta is one of the most widely commented upon texts in the Pāli canon and continues to hold a central place in the modern VIPASSANĀ (S. VIPAsYANĀ) movement. The sutta was preached by the Buddha to a gathering of disciples in the town of Kammāsadhamma in the country of the Kurus. The discourse enumerates twenty-one meditation practices for the cultivation of mindfulness (P. sati, S. SMṚTI), a term that refers to an undistracted watchfulness and attentiveness, or to recollection and thus memory. In the text, the Buddha explains the practice under a fourfold rubric called the four foundations of mindfulness (P. satipatthāna, S. SMṚTYUPASTHĀNA). The four foundations are comprised of "contemplation of the body" (P. kāyānupassanā, S. KĀYĀNUPAsYANĀ); "contemplation of sensations" (P. vedanānupassanā, S. vedanānupasyanā), that is, physical and mental sensations (VEDANĀ) that are pleasurable, painful, or neutral; "contemplation of mind" (P. cittānupassanā, S. cittānupasyanā), in which one observes the broader state of mind (CITTA) as, e.g., shrunken or expanded, while under the influence of various positive and negative emotions; and "contemplation of phenomena" (P. dhammānupassanā, S. dharmānupasyanā), which involves the contemplation of several key doctrinal categories, such as the five aggregates (P. khandha, S. SKANDHA) and the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS. The first of the four, the mindfulness of the body, involves fourteen exercises, beginning with the mindfulness of the inhalation and exhalation of the breath (P. ānāpānasati, S. ĀNĀPĀNASMṚTI). Mindfulness of the breath is followed by mindfulness of the four physical postures (P. iriyāpatha, S. ĪRYĀPATHA) of walking, standing, sitting, and lying down. This is then extended to a full general awareness of all physical activities. Thus, mindfulness is something that is also meant to accompany all of one's actions in the course of the day, and is not restricted to formal meditation sessions. This discussion is followed by mindfulness of the various components of the body, an intentionally revolting list that includes fingernails, bile, spittle, and urine. Next is the mindfulness of the body as composed of the four great elements (MAHĀBHuTA) of earth, water, fire, and air. Next are the "contemplations on the impure" (P. asubhabhāvanā, S. AsUBHABHĀVANĀ), viz., contemplation of a corpse in nine successive stages of decomposition. The practice of the mindfulness of the body is designed to induce the understanding that the body is a collection of impure elements that arise and cease in rapid succession, utterly lacking any kind of permanent self. This insight into the three marks of existence-impermanence, suffering, and no-self-leads in turn to enlightenment. Mindfulness of the body is presented as the core meditative practice, with the other three types of mindfulness applied as the meditator's attention is drawn to those factors. The sutta calls the foundations of mindfulness the ekayānamagga, which in this context might be rendered as "the only path" or "the one way forward," and states that correct practice of the four foundations of mindfulness will lead to the stage of the worthy one (P. arahant, S. ARHAT), or at least the stage of the nonreturner (P. anāgāmi, S. ANĀGĀMIN), in as little as seven days of practice, according to some interpretations. See also ANUPASSANĀ.
Scripture, canonical in Catholic). In The Book of
Scriptures ::: General designation for canonical or biblical writings.
Sengyou. (J. Soyu; K. Sŭngu 僧祐) (445-518). Early Chinese VINAYA teacher and scriptural cataloguer, whose career is indicative of early Chinese Buddhism's concerns to preserve the integrity of the dispensation and to transmit its beliefs and practices accurately. According to his biography in the GAOSENG ZHUAN ("Biographies of Eminent Monks"), Sengyou was born in Jianye (present-day Nanjing, Jiangsu province), the capital of the Liu-Song dynasty (420-479), the first of the four short-lived southern dynasties that formed during the Six Dynasties period. He became a monk at an early age, and studied under vinaya master Faying (416-482). Later, Sengyou himself gained a reputation as a vinaya master; the Gaoseng zhuan says that, whenever he was invited by the prince Wenxuan (406-494) of the Qi dynasty (479-502) to lecture on the vinaya, typically seven or eight hundred people would attend. During the Yongming era (483-493) of the Qi dynasty, Sengyou received an imperial order to travel to the Wu region (in present-day Jiangnan) to lecture on the Shisong lü, the SARVĀSTIVĀDAVINAYA, as well as to explain the methods for receiving the precepts. In addition to his vinaya-related activities, Sengyou also tried to establish an authoritative canon of Buddhist texts by compiling the CHU SANZANG JIJI ("Compilation of Notices on the Translation of the TRIPItAKA"), the earliest extant Buddhist scriptural catalogue (JINGLU). In his catalogue, Sengyou introduced three criteria for distinguishing an apocryphal scripture (see APOCRYPHA) from a genuine one: (1) the meanings and expressions found in a text were "shallow and coarse"; (2) a text did not come from "foreign regions"; (3) a text was not translated by a "Western guest." While the first criterion was a more subjective form of internal evidence, the latter two were important pieces of external evidence that all subsequent cataloguers adopted as objective standards for determining textual authenticity. Sengyou's other extant major works include the Shijia pu ("Genealogy of sĀKYAMUNI"), in five rolls, and the Buddhist apologetic HONGMING JI ("Collection for the Propagation and Clarification [of Buddhism]"), in fourteen rolls.
sext ::: n. --> The office for the sixth canonical hour, being a part of the Breviary.
The sixth book of the decretals, added by Pope Boniface VIII.
sharia ::: the body of Islamic religious canons; injunctions attributed to Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) regarding proper behavior for Muslims
Shin Arahan. An eleventh-century Mon monk credited with bringing THERAVĀDA Buddhism to Burma (Myanmar). According to legend, Shin Arahan (in Pāli, Dhammadassi) was the reincarnation of a NAT, born to a brāhmana virgin wife in the Thaton region in the south of Burma. He attained the state of ARHAT shortly after his ordination. He learned that the dharma was being practiced impurely in the "western regions" (viz., PAGAN [Bagan]) and proceeded there. In Pagan, monks called ari had polluted the dharma, proclaiming that murder was permissible if the proper spells (MANTRA) are recited. They also required that all virgins have intercourse with them before marriage. The newly ordained king ANAWRAHTA (Anuruddha, r. 1044-1077) recognized that these monks were corrupt but was unable to remove them from the order. When Shin Arahan arrived in Pagan, he was discovered by a hunter who had never seen a monk before. Mistaking him for a spirit, he took him to the king. Shin Arahan preached a sermon that impressed the king, who asked him where the Buddha was, how much of the dharma remained, and if there were other disciples of the Buddha. Shin Arahan recounted the history of the Buddha and his relics and described the Pāli canon and the monastic order. The king then adopted Theravāda as the practice of his kingdom and defrocked the ari monks. He asked the Mon king to send a copy of the tipitaka (S. TRIPItAKA) and some relics of the Buddha. When the Mon king refused, Anawrahta invaded Thaton in 1057, taking the Mon king and his family captive. He also took monks and skilled craftsmen, as well as Pāli scriptures, back with him to Pagan.
shoulder surfing "security" Secretly watching someone perform some supposedly secure action; looking over their shoulder. The canonical example is watching what keys someone presses when they enter a password. Other examples include using binoculars to watch someone across the street enter their PIN in a cash machine or simply reading sensitive information off somebody's screen without them realising. (2013-11-06)
shuilu hui. (J. suirikue; K. suryuk hoe 水陸會). In Chinese, "water and land assembly," a Buddhist ritual intended for universal salvation, although it was also sometimes directed only to deceased next of kin; the ceremony was also performed for a variety of this-worldly purposes, such as state protection (see HUGUO FOJIAO) and rain-making. The name "water and land" derives from its intent to save living creatures who inhabit the most painful domains of SAMSĀRA, whether in water or on land. The ceremony, which typically took seven days to complete, was held at two different sites, the inner altar and the outer altar. The main performance was held at the inner altar, which was divided into an upper hall and a lower hall. The enlightened beings-buddhas, BODHISATTVAs, ARHATs, and guardian deities of the three jewels (RATNATRAYA)-were invited and feted with offerings at the upper hall; the unenlightened beings, specifically beings subject to the six rebirth destinies (GATI), were invited and feted at the lower hall. Once summoned to the lower hall at the inner altar, the unenlightened assembly was divested of its afflictions (KLEsA), asked to pay homage to the enlightened assembly, and received offerings of both food and the dharma, which sent them on their way to the PURE LAND. According to the earliest extant records of the ceremony, none of which predate the Song period, the shuilu hui was first performed in 505 by the monk BAOZHI (418-514) at the behest of Emperor Wu (r. 502-549) of the Liang dynasty, with the VINAYA master and scriptural cataloguer SENGYOU (445-518) serving as chief celebrant. The same Song-period sources claim that the ceremony was revived by a monk during the Xianheng era (670-674), after its sudden disappearance following the collapse of the Liang dynasty. It was not until the tenth century, however, that there is independent confirmation in non-Buddhist sources of actual performances of the ceremony and it was not until the eleventh century that it seems to have achieved widespread popularity. According to the monk Zunshi (964-1032), the larger monasteries in the southeast of China maintained separate halls, called either shuilu tang or shuilu yuan, which were devoted entirely to the performance of the ceremony. In the Southern Song period, many of the largest monasteries throughout the realm had a "water and land hall" on their grounds. In Korea, the suryuk hoe was first performed in 971 and became popular during the early Choson dynasty, with the royal family being its main supporter. There are several Chinese and Korean manuals that provide directions for performing the ritual, including the Shuilu yiwen ("Ritual Text for the Water and Land Ceremony") in three rolls, written by a Song-dynasty layman in 1071. The canonical locus classicus for the practice is the story of Jalavāhana in the SUVARnAPRABHĀSOTTAMASuTRA.
Shu-king (Chinese) Also Shoo King, Shu Ching. Popularly known as the Canon, or Book of History; one of the Four Shu Books compiled by Confucius from documents which were ancient in his day. Blavatsky refers to this work as “China’s primitive Bible” compiled from the Book of Dzyan (SD 1:xliii), remarking that it is full of reminiscences about the fourth root-race and the giants of bygone times (SD 2:280-1).
Shwedagon. In Burmese, "Golden Dagon"; monumental golden pagoda (B. JEDI; S. STuPA; P. thupa) that dominates the skyline of Rangoon (Yangon), capital of Burma (Myanmar); named after Dagon, the ancient name of Rangoon. According to Burmese and Mon legend, the pagoda was built during the Buddha's lifetime to house eight hair relics given to TRAPUsA and BHALLIKA, two merchants from Ukkala who are said to have been the first disciples of the Buddha. The original account, which appears in the Pāli canon, places Ukkala in what is most likely modern-day ĀNDHRA, on the eastern coast of India. Mon-Burmese recensions of the story locate Ukkala at Dagon, acknowledgement of which is retained in the names Myauk Okkala-pa (North Ukkala) and Daung Okkala-pa (South Ukkala) given to Rangoon's suburbs. The Shwedagon is situated atop a two hundred-foot high hill, whose summit was leveled to create the four-acre plaza or platform that now surrounds the base of the shrine. The pagoda platform is approached by four covered stairways facing the cardinal directions, at the base of which are ornate entrances flanked by colossal Chinthe lions. The pagoda itself was repeatedly expanded and embellished over the centuries, reaching its current height of 326 feet in the fifteenth century. Constructed of brickwork, it is in the classical Burmese pagoda form of an inverted bell rising from an octagonal pyramidal base. These elements support a graceful spire crowned with a hti, or finial umbrella, that is encrusted with diamonds, rubies, pearls, and other gems of inestimable value. The hti also has many wind chimes, which gently tinkle in the constant breeze. The base of the pagoda is more than a quarter-mile in circumference and the entire structure is covered in gold, the accumulated munificence of generations of royal donors. Sixty-four smaller pagodas surround the main structure at its base, and at the four cardinal directions are shrines containing colossal statues of the four buddhas who have appeared in the world during the present fortunate eon (P. bhaddakappa; S. BHADRAKALPA). (See SAPTATATHĀGATA.) At one corner of the platform is a miniature replica of the main shrine, no more than a hundred feet tall. The smaller pagoda is affectionately known as the Shwedagon's older brother, as it was the model upon which the current main pagoda was based. At each corner of the Shwedagon's octagonal base is an alabaster statue of the Buddha dedicated to one of the eight days of the Burmese week (Wednesday being counted as two days), where it is believed to be especially auspicious for people born on those days to pray. A broad circumambulatory walkway paved in white marble rings the Shwedagon, which in turn is flanked with hundreds of lesser shrines dating mostly from the colonial period. Many types of religious piety are performed individually and in groups on the platform of the pagoda, such as the giving of DĀNA, freeing captured animals, processing candidates for the novitiate (B. shin-pyu), sweeping the plaza, lustrating images, reciting PARITTA texts, taking precepts, silent prayer, and meditation (B. taya a-to; P. BHĀVANĀ).
Siddhanta (Sanskrit) Siddhānta [from siddha accomplished from the verbal root sidh to accomplish, succeed + anta end, completion] An established or canonical textbook or scientific treatise on astronomy and mathematics. One of the best known and most ancient in India is the Surya-Siddhanta, whose age dates even from Atlantean times. The Surya-Siddhanta itself claims to have been written down under solar instruction by the Atlantean astronomer and mathematician Asuramaya, so that it is contemporaneous with the first appearance of the present fifth root-race.
Sishi'er zhang jing. (J. Shijunishogyo; K. Sasibi chang kyong 四十二章經). In Chinese, "Scripture in Forty-two Sections," a short collection of aphorisms and pithy moralistic parables traditionally regarded as the first Indian Buddhist scripture to be translated into Chinese, but now generally presumed to be an indigenous scripture (see APOCRYPHA) that was compiled in either China or Central Asia. Most scholars believe that the "Scripture in Forty-Two Sections" began to circulate during the earliest period of Buddhism in China. According to tradition, the "Scripture in Forty-Two Sections" was translated at the behest of MINGDI of the Han dynasty (r. 58-75 CE). According to the earliest surviving account, Emperor Ming had a dream one evening in which he saw a spirit flying in front of his palace. The spirit had a golden body and the top of his head emitted rays of light. The following day the emperor asked his ministers to identify the spirit. One minister replied that he had heard of a sage in India called "Buddha" who had attained the way (dao) and was able to fly. The emperor presumed that this must have been the spirit he observed in his dream, so he dispatched a group of envoys led by Zhang Qian who journeyed to the Yuezhi region (Indo-Scythia) to search out this sage; he returned with a copy of the "Scripture in Forty-Two Sections." A fifth-century source reports that the envoys also managed to secure the famous image of the UDĀYANA BUDDHA, the first buddha-image. In fifth- and sixth-century materials, there is additionally mention of two Indian monks, KĀsYAPA MĀTAnGA (d. u.) and Dharmaratna (d. u.), who returned with the Chinese envoys. By the medieval period these monks are regularly cited as cotranslators of the scripture. According to a relatively late tradition, the Emperor Ming also built the first Chinese Buddhist temple-BAIMASI in Luoyang-as a residence for the two Indian translators. Early Buddhist catalogues refer to the text simply as "Forty-Two Sections from Buddhist Scriptures," or "The Forty-Two Sections of Emperor Xiao Ming." The text consists largely of snippets culled from longer Buddhist sutras included in the Buddhist canon; parallel sections are found in the ĀGAMAs and NIKĀYAs, as well as the MAHĀVAGGA. The text also bears a number of Chinese stylistic features. The most obvious is the phrase "The Buddha said" which is used to introduce most sections, rather than the more common Buddhist opening "Thus have I heard" (EVAM MAYĀ sRUTAM). This opening is reminiscent of Confucian classics such as the Xiaojing ("Book of Filial Piety") and the Lunyu ("Analects"), where maxims and illustrative anecdotes are often prefaced with the phrase, "The master said." The terminology of the Sishi'er zhang jing borrows heavily from Daoism and the philosophical tradition known as XUANXUE (Dark Learning).
Snar thang. (Nartang). A Tibetan monastery famous as the source for an important printed edition of the Buddhist canon, the BKA' 'GYUR and BSTAN 'GYUR. It was located a short distance west of Gzhis ka rtse (Shigatse). The monastery was founded in 1153 and was originally a BKA' GDAMS center. The edition of the canon produced there appears to derive from a manuscript edition prepared between 1312 and 1320. The engraving of the woodblocks was completed in 1730. The main buildings of the monastery, the woodblock collection, and many of its art treasures were destroyed in 1966 during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
Song gaoseng zhuan. (J. So kosoden; K. Song kosŭng chon 宋高僧傳). In Chinese, "Biographies of Eminent Monks [compiled during the] Song dynasty"; a thirty-roll hagiographical collection compiled by the Buddhist historian and VINAYA master ZANNING (919-1001). The compilation of the text began in 980 by Song-dynasty imperial edict and was entered into the official canon (DAZANGJING) in 988. The text records the lives of monks who primarily were active during the period between the early Tang dynasty and the early Song, or some 340 years after the period covered by DAOXUAN's (596-667) XU GAOSENG ZHUAN ("Continued Biographies of Eminent Monks"). The Song gaoseng zhuan contains 531 major and 124 appended biographies, for a total of 655 biographies. The text offers valuable material on the Buddhist history of the Tang dynasty, including information that is not recorded in the official dynastic history. The collection is organized according to the ten categories of monastic expertise used in Daoxuan's collection: translators (yijing), exegetes (yijie), practitioners of meditation (xichan), specialists in vinaya (minglü), protectors of the DHARMA (hufa), sympathetic resonance (gantong), self-immolators (YISHEN), chanters (dusong), benefactors (xingfu), and miscellaneous (zake). What is noteworthy in comparison to its immediate predecessor is that the number of the monks categorized as exegetes (yijie) was reduced significantly from 246 in Daoxuan's collection to ninety-four in Zanning's. This traditional nonsectarian approach to Buddhist biographical writing was soon supplanted by genealogical collections, such as Daoyuan's (d.u.) 1004 JINGDE CHUANDENG LU, which organized the biographies of Chan monks according to explicit sectarian lineages, and ZHIPAN's (1220-1275) FOZU TONGJI, which did the same for the lineage of the TIANTAI ZONG. The Song gaoseng zhuan is not included in the Korean Buddhist canon (KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG), but does appear in Chinese canons compiled during the Song, Yuan, and Ming periods. Unlike its two predecessor collections, the Song gaoseng zhuan is included in the Qing-dynasty imperial archive, the Siku quanshu ("Complete Library of the Four Repositories"), compiled between 1773 and 1782.
Sonmun ch'waryo. (禪門撮要). In Korean, "Selected Essentials from the Gate of Son"; a Korean anthology of the essential canon of the Korean SoN (CHAN) school, in two rolls. Although the Sonmun ch'waryo is often attributed to the late-Choson-period Son master KYoNGHo SoNGU (1849-1912), its authorship remains a matter of debate. The text uses as its primary source material the Pophae pobol ("Precious Raft on the Ocean of Dharma"), which was compiled in 1883 at Kamnosa. The Sonmun ch'waryo contains texts that are foundational to the Korean Son tradition. The first roll consists of the writings of the Chinese Chan patriarchs and teachers: the Xuemo lun ("Treatise of the Blood Lineage"), the Guanxin lun ("Treatise of Contemplating the Mind," sometimes otherwise attributed to SHENXIU [606?-706]), and the ERRU SIXING LUN ("Treatise on the Two Accesses and Four Practices"), all attributed to the first Chan patriarch, BODHIDHARMA; the Xiuxin yao lun ("Treatise on the Essentials of Cultivating the Mind"), attributed to the fifth patriarch HONGREN (600-674); the Wanleng lu ("Wanleng Record") and the CHUANXIN FAYAO ("Essential Teachings on Transmitting the Mind"), attributed to HUANGBO XIYUN (d. 850); the Mengshan fayu ("Mengshan's Dharma Discourses") composed of eleven dharma-talks by five masters including Mengshan Deyi (1231-1308) and NAONG HYEGŬN (1320-1376); and an excerpt from the Canchan jingyu ("Words of Admonition on Investigating Chan") attributed to Boshan Wuyi (1575-1630). The second roll consists of the writings of eminent Korean Son monks from the Koryo and Choson periods: POJO CHINUL's (1158-1210) SUSIM KYoL ("Secrets on Cultivating the Mind"), Chinsim chiksol ("Straight Talk on the True Mind"), Kwonsu Chonghye kyolsa mun ("Encouragement to Practice: The Compact of the Samādhi and PrajNā Community"), and KANHWA KYoRŬI NON ("Resolving Doubts About Observing the Hwadu"); the SoNMUN POJANG NOK ("Record of the Treasure Trove of the Son Tradition") and the Sonmun kangyo ("Essentials of the Son Gate"), both attributed to CH'oNCH'AEK (b. 1206); and the Son'gyo sok ("Explication of Son and Kyo") attributed to CH'oNGHo HYUJoNG (1520-1604). The first roll of the Sonmun ch'waryo was published in 1907 at the monastery of Unmunsa and the second in 1908 at PoMoSA. Among the 118 total xylographs of the book, the seventy-eighth and 118th xylographs list the names of people involved in the publication of the text, such as proofreaders, transcribers, and engravers, as well the donors, government officials, and landed gentry who contributed to the cost of the publication.
Sonmun yomsong chip. (禪門拈頌集). In Korean, "Collection of Analyses and Verses on [Ancient Precedents] of the Son School," the first and largest indigenous Korean kongan (C. GONG'AN, J. koan; public case) anthology, compiled in thirty rolls by CHIN'GAK HYESIM (1178-1234) in 1226. The collection covers 1,463 kongan, along with annotations (yom), verses (song), and variant explanations, such as responding on behalf of a figure who does not answer during the kongan exchange (tae, lit. on his behalf), responding in a different way from the response given in the kongan exchange (pyol, lit. differently), and inquiring about the exchange (ch'ong, lit. soliciting, or verifying). The first xylographic edition of the collection was destroyed in 1232, just six years after its publication, during the Mongol invasions of the Korean peninsula. The second woodblock edition was carved sometime between 1244 and 1248 as a part of the massive project to remake the entire Koryo Buddhist canon (KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG). The postface to the second edition notes that 347 more kongan was added to the original for a total of 1,472; the current edition, however, includes only 1,463 kongan, a discrepancy that remains unexplained. The collection shows the influence of the Song gong'an literature, especially the Chanzong songgu lianzhu tongji ("Comprehensive Collection of the Chan School's Verses on Ancient [Precedents] That Are a String of Jewels"), compiled in 1179. The ancient cases (viz., the kongan) are arranged in the order of the three jewels (RATNATRAYA), i.e., the Buddha, dharma, and saMgha. The first thirty-seven kongan are attributed to sĀKYAMUNI Buddha himself. The next set of twenty-four is derived from Buddhist sutras, including the AVATAMSAKASuTRA, the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), the *suRAMGAMASuTRA, and the VAJRACCHEDIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA ("Diamond Sutra"). The remaining 1,402 kongan are taken from stories of the Indian and Chinese Son (Chan) patriarchs and teachers, along with a few unknown lay Son masters. The Sonmun yomsong chip was one of the official textbooks used for the monastic examinations (SŬNGKWA) in the Son school during the early Choson dynasty. There are a few important Korean commentaries to the anthology, including the Sonmun yomsong sorhwa ("Tales about the Son School's Analyses and Verses") in thirty rolls, by Hyesim's disciple Kagun (c. thirteenth century), IRYoN's (1206-1289) Sonmun yomsong sawon ("Garden of Affairs on the Son School's Analyses and Verses") in thirty rolls, and PAEKP'A KŬNGSoN's (1767-1852) Sonmun yomsong ki ("Record of the Son School's Analyses and Verses") in five rolls.
spelling. [Rf. Drower, Canonical Prayerbook of
spirit of Delight ::: Sri Aurobindo: " Now, that a conscious Infinite is there in physical Nature, we are assured by every sign, though it is a consciousness not made or limited like ours. All her constructions and motions are those of an illimitable intuitive wisdom too great and spontaneous and mysteriously self-effective to be described as an intelligence, of a Power and Will working for Time in eternity with an inevitable and forecasting movement in each of its steps, even in those steps that in their outward or superficial impetus seem to us inconscient. And as there is in her this greater consciousness and greater power, so too there is an illimitable spirit of harmony and beauty in her constructions that never fails her, though its works are not limited by our aesthetic canons. An infinite hedonism too is there, an illimitable spirit of delight, of which we become aware when we enter into impersonal unity with her; and even as that in her which is terrible is a part of her beauty, that in her which is dangerous, cruel, destructive is a part of her delight, her universal Ananda. Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
sponge ::: A special case of a Unix filter that reads its entire input before writing any output; the canonical example is a sort utility. Unlike most filters, a sponge distinction loses its usefulness, because directing filter output would just write a new version.See also slurp.[Jargon File] (1995-01-18)
sruti. ::: "what is heard"; pitch; vedic text directly revealed in meditation to the vedic seers of Truth, comprising the central canon of hinduism and is one of the three main sources of dharma
Sugi. (守其) (c. mid-thirteenth century). Korean monk during the Koryo dynasty who served as editor-in-chief of the second carving of the Korean Buddhist canon (KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG). To supervise this massive editorial project, Sugi established a main editorial headquarters at Kanghwa Island, off the west-central coast of Korea, and a branch at Namhae in the far south of the Korean peninsula. Sugi gathered an army of scholars, first to collate the various editions of the scriptures and to establish the correct reading, and then to proofread meticulously the finished xylographs to ferret out any misprints. In editing this new canon, Sugi and his editorial team consulted principally three earlier canons: (1) the Chinese canon, carved during the Song-dynasty's Kaibao reign era between 971 and 983, which he called variously the Old Song edition (Ku-Song pon), Song edition (Song pon), etc.; (2) the Khitan Liao canon, printed c. 1031-1055, which he generally referred to as the Khitan edition (Tan pon); and (3) the first Koryo canon of 1011, which he usually called the State edition (Kuk pon). Foremost among these editions was the Liao canon of the Khitans, a complete copy of which Koryo had received in 1064. The xylographs of 1,514 texts in 6,815 rolls were carved between 1236 and 1251 in a total of 81,258 wood blocks-the oldest of the few complete xylographic canons still extant in East Asia. This second Koryo canon continues to be stored today in paired wooden archives at HAEINSA in Kyongsang province, as they have been since 1398. Sugi documented in remarkable detail the process he and his editorial team followed in compiling this new canon in his thirty-roll KORYoGUK SINJO TAEJANG KYOJoNG PYoLLOK ("Supplementary Record of Collation Notes to the New Carving of the Great Canon of the Koryo Kingdom"), which was finished around 1247. In these notes, Sugi collated seventy-six passages from sixty-five different texts. In his textual analysis of a specific scripture, Sugi generally treated major issues of structure, translator attribution, textual lineage, and the like; he did not discuss minor variations in readings of a few Sinographs. In a typical entry for a specific text, Sugi lists the case character in the second Koryo canon where the work appears; the title of the text and the roll (K. kwon; C. quan) in which the disputed point appears; followed by the passage itself, generally indicated by kwon, scroll (p'ok) and line (haeng) numbers. The most common types of textual problems noted by Sugi in earlier canons were transpositions of passages (K. chonhu toch'ak) and dittographies (K. chungsa; chungch'om). After evaluating the discrepancies in the different canonical editions, Sugi then indicated which reading he preferred and this reading was then entered into the second Koryo carving. Sugi also treated issues of textual authenticity in the course of editing his canon, especially in attempting to adjudicate the authenticity of some of the variant Chinese translations of Indic Buddhist scriptures. The information Sugi provides in his "Collation Notes" offers important information on how East Asian Buddhist scholars in the premodern era went about the task of collating and editing multiple recensions of thousands of scriptures into a definitive canonical collection. Sugi's notes also help to document the textual genealogies of the various East Asian canons and provide definitive proof that, in style and format, the second Koryo canon imitated both the Chinese Kaibao and first Koryo canons, but its readings followed more closely those found in the Khitan Liao canon. Sugi's annotations are thus an extremely valuable source for detailing medieval Chinese xylographic lineages. In making editorial decisions, Sugi rejects such discredited techniques as following the reading of the majority of manuscripts-as when he rejects the readings of both the Kaibao and first Koryo canons-or following uncritically the "best" manuscript, as in the cases where he rejects the reading of the Khitan edition. Sugi's reputation for scholarly accuracy was such that Japanese scholars adopted the second Koryo canon as the textus receptus for the modern Taisho printed edition of the canon, the TAISHo SHINSHu DAIZoKYo, compiled in Japan between 1922 and 1934.
Summa (Scholastic): Name of comprehensive treitises, subdivided in tractatus or quaestiones, which in their turn may contain several articles or membra. The classical procedure is that of the quaestio disputata (see quaestio) which developed from the method adopted first by the students of Canon Law (Yves of Chartres, a.o.) and applied to philosophical and theological discussion by Abelard (Sic et Non). The 12th century produced some works entitled Summa but not yet showing the strictly logical and systematical structure of the later works (e.g. Summa sacramentorum, attributed (?) to Hugh of St. Victor). The 13th century gave birth to the classical form. -- R.A.
Sutta ::: A discourse or teaching passed down in various religious and spritual traditions originating on the Indian subcontinent. Most commonly seen in reference to Buddhism as the collected aphorisms and discourses of the Buddha and the various spiritual figureheads of Buddhism. Sometimes this is used to refer solely to the canonical records of the Buddha's teachings: the Pali Canon.
Sutta-pitaka (Pali) Sutta-piṭaka [from sutta (Sanskrit sūtra) dialogue, originally a thread + piṭaka basket] The third section of the Buddhist canon (the Tripitaka or Three Baskets) treating on the dialogs (suttas) of the Buddha and his disciples, especially those in the style of discourses and narratives.
Talmud (Hebrew) Talmūd [from the verbal root lāmad to teach, train in learning, discipline] Study of and instruction in anything (whether by anyone else or by oneself); learning acquired; style, system (as such it is synonymous with Mishnah — oral tradition — in one of its meanings); theory in contradistinction to practice; interpretation of the Mosaic law as is apparent on the surface and not requiring further disquisition; the noncanonical tradition (Barayetha’); the oldest commentary on the canonical tradition (Gemara’); the texts of tradition and commentary combined — this last meaning being the one commonly applied. The Talmud is the body of Rabbinical commentaries on Judaism.
talmud ::: n. --> The body of the Jewish civil and canonical law not comprised in the Pentateuch.
Tanjur (Tibetan) Bstan-hgyur, bstan ’gyur (ten-gyur, ten-jur) Translation of the sastras; the second part of the Tibetan Buddhist canon, the first part being the Kanjur (both words came into Western languages via Mongolian). The Tanjur is divided into three parts: a one-volume collection of hymns or praises to the Buddha, and two voluminous collections of sastras: tantra commentaries and sutra commentaries. Although called commentaries, these also include independent treatises, and the sutra-commentaries section also includes miscellaneous works such as letters, dictionaries, grammars, medical works, etc. The Tanjur is even larger than the Kanjur, containing up to 225 volumes. Four editions are known in the West: Narthang, Peking, Derge, and Cone (cho-ne) — all 18th century blockprints, although the Tanjur is much older as a manuscript collection. The Tanjur contains works assumed to be Tibetan translations of the works of Indian Buddhist masters, other than the Buddha himself. Compositions by Tibetan masters, however authoritative, are not included in the Tanjur.
Tao Teh Ching or Tao Te King (Chinese) [from tao path, way + te virtue + ching book] The canon of tao and virtue, or the Book of Taoistic virtue; the principal work on tao, attributed to Lao Tzu, consisting of 81 short chapters written in a terse, pithy style which makes its translation and explanation most difficult. When Lao Tsu was departing through the pass, it is said that at the request of its keeper, Yin Hsi (a famous Taoist), he wrote a book in regard to his ideas on tao and te running to somewhat over five thousand characters. Its teaching is principally imparted by means of paradoxes, the object being that by startling the mind one may perceive truth without ratiocinations.
testament ::: n. --> A solemn, authentic instrument in writing, by which a person declares his will as to disposal of his estate and effects after his death.
One of the two distinct revelations of God&
That's not a bug, that's a feature! ::: The canonical first parry in a debate about a purported bug. The complainant, if unconvinced, is likely to retort that the bug is then at best a misfeature.See also feature.[Jargon File] (1995-02-02)
That's not a bug, that's a feature! The {canonical} first parry in a debate about a purported {bug}. The complainant, if unconvinced, is likely to retort that the bug is then at best a {misfeature}. See also {feature}. [{Jargon File}] (1995-02-02)
The Angels and Their Mission .] In noncanonical
“The Overmind is essentially a spiritual power. Mind in it surpasses its ordinary self and rises and takes its stand on a spiritual foundation. It embraces beauty and sublimates it; it has an essential aesthesis which is not limited by rules and canons, it sees a universal and an eternal beauty while it takes up and transforms all that is limited and particular. It is besides concerned with things other than beauty or aesthetics. It is concerned especially with truth and knowledge or rather with a wisdom that exceeds what we call knowledge; its truth goes beyond truth of fact and truth of thought, even the higher thought which is the first spiritual range of the thinker. It has the truth of spiritual thought, spiritual feeling, spiritual sense and at its highest the truth that comes by the most intimate spiritual touch or by identity. Ultimately, truth and beauty come together and coincide, but in between there is a difference. Overmind in all its dealings puts truth first; it brings out the essential truth (and truths) in things and also its infinite possibilities; it brings out even the truth that lies behind falsehood and error; it brings out the truth of the Inconscient and the truth of the Superconscient and all that lies in between. When it speaks through poetry, this remains its first essential quality; a limited aesthetical artistic aim is not its purpose.” Letters on Savitri
The second Koryo canon was used as the basis of the modern Japanese TAISHo SHINSHu DAIZoKYo ("New Edition of the Buddhist Canon Compiled during the Taisho Reign Era"), edited by TAKAKUSU JUNJIRo and Watanabe Kaikyoku and published using movable-type printing between 1924 and 1935, which has become the standard reference source for East Asian Buddhist materials. The Taisho canon includes 2,920 texts in eighty-five volumes (each volume is about one thousand pages in length), along with twelve volumes devoted to iconography, and three volumes of bibliography and scriptural catalogues. The Taisho's arrangement is constructed following modern scholarly views regarding the historical development of the Buddhist scriptural tradition, with mainstream Buddhist scriptures opening the canon, followed by Indian Mahāyāna materials, indigenous Chinese writings, and Japanese writings:
This time, for sure! "exclamation" Ritual affirmation frequently uttered during protracted {debugging} sessions involving numerous small obstacles (e.g. attempts to bring up a {UUCP} connection). For the proper effect, this must be uttered in a fruity imitation of Bullwinkle J. Moose. Also heard: "Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!" The {canonical} response is, of course, "But that trick *never* works!" See {hacker humour}. [{Jargon File}] (1995-09-27)
This time, for sure! ::: (exclamation) Ritual affirmation frequently uttered during protracted debugging sessions involving numerous small obstacles (e.g. attempts to bring up a UUCP connection). For the proper effect, this must be uttered in a fruity imitation of Bullwinkle J. Moose.Also heard: Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat! The canonical response is, of course, But that trick *never* works!See hacker humour.[Jargon File] (1995-09-27)
three-letter acronym "jargon" (TLA) The {canonical}, self-describing {acronym} for the name of a species with which computing terminology is infested. Examples include {MCA}, {FTP}, {SNA}, {CPU}, {MMU}, {DMU}, {FPU}, {TLA}. This dictionary contains many {TLAs}. Sometimes used by extension for any confusing acronym. People who like this looser usage argue that not all TLAs have three letters, just as not all four-letter words have four letters. One also hears of "ETLA" (Extended Three-Letter Acronym) being used to describe four-letter acronyms. The term "SFLA" (Stupid Four-Letter Acronym) has also been reported. See also {YABA}. The self-effacing phrase "TDM TLA" (Too Damn Many...) is used to bemoan the plethora of TLAs in use. In 1989, a random of the journalistic persuasion asked hacker Paul Boutin "What do you think will be the biggest problem in computing in the 90s?" Paul's straight-faced response: "There are only 17,000 three-letter acronyms." (To be exact, there are 26^3 = 17,576.) (2014-08-14)
three-letter acronym ::: (TLA) The canonical self-describing abbreviation for the name of a species with which computing terminology is infested. Examples include MCA, FTP, SNA, CPU, MMU, DMU, FPU, TLA. For a complete list of the TLAs in this dictionary, see TLAs.Sometimes used by extension for any confusing acronym. People who like this looser usage argue that not all TLAs have three letters, just as not all Three-Letter Acronym) being used to describe four-letter acronyms. The term SFLA (Stupid Four-Letter Acronym) has also been reported.See also YABA.The self-effacing phrase TDM TLA (Too Damn Many...) is often used to bemoan the plethora of TLAs in use. In 1989, a random of the journalistic persuasion computing in the 90s? Paul's straight-faced response: There are only 17,000 three-letter acronyms. (To be exact, there are 26^3 = 17,576.) (1994-12-14)
thud ::: 1. Yet another metasyntactic variable (see foo). It is reported that at CMU from the mid-1970s the canonical series of these was foo, bar, thud, blat.2. Rare term for the hash character,
thud 1. Yet another {metasyntactic variable} (see {foo}). It is reported that at {CMU} from the mid-1970s the canonical series of these was "foo", "bar", "thud", "blat". 2. Rare term for the hash character, "
to the Hebrew canon, apocryphal in Protestant
toto ::: (programming) /toh-toh'/ The default scratch file name among French-speaking programmers - in other words, a francophone foo. The phonetic mutations titi, tata, and tutu canonically follow toto, analogously to bar, baz and quux in English.[Jargon File] (1995-04-18)
Tripitaka: "The Three Baskets", the Buddhistic Canon as finally adopted by the Council of Sthaviras, or elders, held under the auspices of Emperor Asoka, about 245 B.C., at Pataliputra, consisting of three parts "The basket of discipline", "the basket of (Buddha's) sermons", and "the basket of metaphysics." -- K.F.L.
Tripitaka: “The Three Baskets,” the Buddhistic Canon as finally adopted by the Council of Sthaviras, or elders, held under the auspices of Emperor Asoka, about 245 B.C., at Pataliputra, consisting of three parts: “The basket of discipline” (Vinaya), “the basket of (Buddha’s) sermons” (Sutras), and “the basket of metaphysics” (Abidharma).
UncanonicalJewish Books. See Ferrar.
uncanonize ::: v. t. --> To deprive of canonical authority.
To reduce from the rank of a canonized saint.
vanilla 1. (Default flavour of ice cream in the US) Ordinary {flavour}, standard. When used of food, very often does not mean that the food is flavoured with vanilla extract! For example, "vanilla wonton soup" means ordinary wonton soup, as opposed to hot-and-sour wonton soup. Applied to hardware and software, as in "Vanilla {Version 7} {Unix} can't run on a vanilla {PDP 11}/34." Also used to orthogonalise chip nomenclature; for instance, a 74V00 means what TI calls a 7400, as distinct from a 74LS00, etc. This word differs from {canonical} in that the latter means "default", whereas vanilla simply means "ordinary". For example, when hackers go to a chinese restaurant, hot-and-sour wonton soup is the {canonical} wonton soup to get (because that is what most of them usually order) even though it isn't the vanilla wonton soup. [{Jargon File}] (1994-11-04) 2. {Snobol4} by {Catspaw, Inc.} for {MS-DOS}. {(ftp://cs.arizona.edu/snobol4/vanilla.arc)}. (1992-02-05)
vanilla ::: 1. (Default flavour of ice cream in the US) Ordinary flavour, standard. When used of food, very often does not mean that the food is flavoured with vanilla the canonical wonton soup to get (because that is what most of them usually order) even though it isn't the vanilla wonton soup.[Jargon File] (1994-11-04)2. Snobol4 by Catspaw, Inc. for MS-DOS. . (1992-02-05)
VAXen /vak'sn/ (From "oxen", perhaps influenced by "vixen") The plural canonically used among hackers for the {DEC} {VAX} computers. "Our installation has four PDP-10s and twenty vaxen." See {boxen}. [{Jargon File}] (1995-02-20)
VAXen ::: /vak'sn/ (From oxen, perhaps influenced by vixen) The plural canonically used among hackers for the DEC VAX computers. Our installation has four PDP-10s and twenty vaxen.See boxen.[Jargon File] (1995-02-20)
Vinaya-pitaka (Sanskrit) Vinaya-piṭaka [from vinaya discipline + piṭaka basket] The second section of the Buddhist canon treating of the training and discipline of monks; Tripitaka (three baskets) is the name given to the Buddhist canon.
weblint "hypertext, tool" (After {lint}) A {syntax} checker and style checker for {HTML}. Weblint is a {Perl} script which does for HTML pages what the traditional {lint} picks does for {C} programs. Version: 1.020 (1997-12-07). {(http://cre.canon.co.uk/~neilb/weblint/)}. (1997-12-07)
xyzzy "games" The {canonical} "magic word" from the {ADVENT} adventure game, in which the idea is to explore an underground cave with many rooms and to collect the treasures you find there. If you type "xyzzy" at the appropriate time, you can move instantly between two otherwise distant points. If, therefore, you encounter some bit of {magic}, you might remark on this quite succinctly by saying simply "Xyzzy!" "Ordinarily you can't look at someone else's screen if he has protected it, but if you type quadruple-bucky-clear the system will let you do it anyway." "Xyzzy!" Xyzzy has actually been implemented as an undocumented no-op command on several OSes; in Data General's AOS/VS, for example, it would typically respond "Nothing happens", just as {ADVENT} did if the magic was invoked at the wrong spot or before a player had performed the action that enabled the word. In more recent 32 bit versions, by the way, AOS/VS responds "Twice as much happens". See also {plugh}. [{Jargon File}]
xyzzy ::: (games) The canonical magic word from the ADVENT adventure game, in which the idea is to explore an underground cave with many rooms and to collect word. In more recent 32 bit versions, by the way, AOS/VS responds Twice as much happens. See also plugh.[Jargon File]
You are not expected to understand this ::: [Unix] The canonical comment describing something magic or too complicated to bother explaining properly. From an infamous comment in the context-switching code of the V6 Unix kernel.[Jargon File]
You are not expected to understand this [Unix] The canonical comment describing something {magic} or too complicated to bother explaining properly. From an infamous comment in the context-switching code of the V6 {Unix} {kernel}. [{Jargon File}]
Zeitlin, Solomon. “An Historical Study of the Canoni¬
Zohar, Sepher haz-Zohar (Hebrew) Zohar, Sēfer Hazzohar [from the verbal root zāhar light, to be bright, to shine] Book of the light; the principal work or compendium of the Qabbalists, forming with the Book of Creation (Sepher Yetsirah) the main canon of the Qabbalah. It is written largely in Chaldean interspersed with Hebrew, and is in the main a running commentary on the Pentateuch. Interwoven are a number of highly significant sections or books scattered apparently at random through the volumes: sometimes incorporated as parallel columns to the text, at other times as separate portions.
zorkmid "games" /zork'mid/ The canonical unit of currency in hacker-written games. This originated in {Zork} but has spread to {nethack} and is referred to in several other games. [{Jargon File}] (1998-09-21)
zorkmid ::: (games) /zork'mid/ The canonical unit of currency in hacker-written games. This originated in Zork but has spread to nethack and is referred to in several other games.[Jargon File] (1998-09-21)
KEYS (10k)
2 Buddhist Canons in Pali
1 Pali Canonymous
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
11 Harold Bloom
10 Anonymous
6 Erich Neumann
5 William Shakespeare
5 Norbert Elias
4 Noam Chomsky
4 Milena Canonero
4 Friedrich Nietzsche
3 Sam Harris
3 Chris Matthews
2 Yevgeny Zamyatin
2 Thorstein Veblen
2 Thomas Keneally
2 Stephen Jay Gould
2 Stephen Batchelor
2 Samuel Johnson
2 Peter V Brett
2 Pablo Picasso
2 Lino Rulli
2 Libba Bray
1:That is the supreme felicity of those who have won their victory, it is the perfect and immutable peace, the defeat of Impermanence, a pure and luminous condition, the victory over death. ~ Canon in Pali, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
2:
An Informal Integral Canon: Selected books on Integral Science, Philosophy and the Integral Transformation
Sri Aurobindo - The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo - The Synthesis of Yoga
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - The Phenomenon of Man
Jean Gebser - The Ever-Present Origin
Edward Haskell - Full Circle - The Moral Force of Unified Science
Oliver L. Reiser - Cosmic Humanism and World Unity
Christopher Hills - Nuclear Evolution: Discovery of the Rainbow Body
The Mother - Mother's Agenda
Erich Jantsch - The Self-Organizing Universe - Scientific and Human Implications of the Emerging Paradigm of Evolution
T. R. Thulasiram - Arut Perum Jyothi and Deathless Body
Kees Zoeteman - Gaiasophy
Ken Wilber - Sex Ecology Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution
Don Edward Beck - Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change
Kundan Singh - The Evolution of Integral Yoga: Sri Aurobindo, Sri Ramakrishna, and Swami Vivekananda
Sean Esbjorn-Hargens - Integral Ecology: Uniting Multiple Perspectives on the Natural World
~ M Alan Kazlev, Kheper,#KEYS
3:SECTION 1. Books for Serious Study
Liber CCXX. (Liber AL vel Legis.) The Book of the Law. This book is the foundation of the New Æon, and thus of the whole of our work.
The Equinox. The standard Work of Reference in all occult matters. The Encyclopaedia of Initiation.
Liber ABA (Book 4). A general account in elementary terms of magical and mystical powers. In four parts: (1) Mysticism (2) Magical (Elementary Theory) (3) Magick in Theory and Practice (this book) (4) The Law.
Liber II. The Message of the Master Therion. Explains the essence of the new Law in a very simple manner.
Liber DCCCXXXVIII. The Law of Liberty. A further explanation of The Book of the Law in reference to certain ethical problems.
Collected Works of A. Crowley. These works contain many mystical and magical secrets, both stated clearly in prose, and woven into the Robe of sublimest poesy.
The Yi King. (S. B. E. Series [vol. XVI], Oxford University Press.) The "Classic of Changes"; give the initiated Chinese system of Magick.
The Tao Teh King. (S. B. E. Series [vol. XXXIX].) Gives the initiated Chinese system of Mysticism.
Tannhäuser, by A. Crowley. An allegorical drama concerning the Progress of the Soul; the Tannhäuser story slightly remodelled.
The Upanishads. (S. B. E. Series [vols. I & XV.) The Classical Basis of Vedantism, the best-known form of Hindu Mysticism.
The Bhagavad-gita. A dialogue in which Krishna, the Hindu "Christ", expounds a system of Attainment.
The Voice of the Silence, by H.P. Blavatsky, with an elaborate commentary by Frater O.M. Frater O.M., 7°=48, is the most learned of all the Brethren of the Order; he has given eighteen years to the study of this masterpiece.
Raja-Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda. An excellent elementary study of Hindu mysticism. His Bhakti-Yoga is also good.
The Shiva Samhita. An account of various physical means of assisting the discipline of initiation. A famous Hindu treatise on certain physical practices.
The Hathayoga Pradipika. Similar to the Shiva Samhita.
The Aphorisms of Patanjali. A valuable collection of precepts pertaining to mystical attainment.
The Sword of Song. A study of Christian theology and ethics, with a statement and solution of the deepest philosophical problems. Also contains the best account extant of Buddhism, compared with modern science.
The Book of the Dead. A collection of Egyptian magical rituals.
Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, by Eliphas Levi. The best general textbook of magical theory and practice for beginners. Written in an easy popular style.
The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. The best exoteric account of the Great Work, with careful instructions in procedure. This Book influenced and helped the Master Therion more than any other.
The Goetia. The most intelligible of all the mediæval rituals of Evocation. Contains also the favourite Invocation of the Master Therion.
Erdmann's History of Philosophy. A compendious account of philosophy from the earliest times. Most valuable as a general education of the mind.
The Spiritual Guide of [Miguel de] Molinos. A simple manual of Christian Mysticism.
The Star in the West. (Captain Fuller). An introduction to the study of the Works of Aleister Crowley.
The Dhammapada. (S. B. E. Series [vol. X], Oxford University Press). The best of the Buddhist classics.
The Questions of King Milinda. (S. B. E. Series [vols. XXXV & XXXVI].) Technical points of Buddhist dogma, illustrated bydialogues.
Liber 777 vel Prolegomena Symbolica Ad Systemam Sceptico-Mysticæ Viæ Explicandæ, Fundamentum Hieroglyphicam Sanctissimorum Scientiæ Summæ. A complete Dictionary of the Correspondences of all magical elements, reprinted with extensive additions, making it the only standard comprehensive book of reference ever published. It is to the language of Occultism what Webster or Murray is to the English language.
Varieties of Religious Experience (William James). Valuable as showing the uniformity of mystical attainment.
Kabbala Denudata, von Rosenroth: also The Kabbalah Unveiled, by S.L. Mathers. The text of the Qabalah, with commentary. A good elementary introduction to the subject.
Konx Om Pax [by Aleister Crowley]. Four invaluable treatises and a preface on Mysticism and Magick.
The Pistis Sophia [translated by G.R.S. Mead or Violet McDermot]. An admirable introduction to the study of Gnosticism.
The Oracles of Zoroaster [Chaldæan Oracles]. An invaluable collection of precepts mystical and magical.
The Dream of Scipio, by Cicero. Excellent for its Vision and its Philosophy.
The Golden Verses of Pythagoras, by Fabre d'Olivet. An interesting study of the exoteric doctrines of this Master.
The Divine Pymander, by Hermes Trismegistus. Invaluable as bearing on the Gnostic Philosophy.
The Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians, reprint of Franz Hartmann. An invaluable compendium.
Scrutinium Chymicum [Atalanta Fugiens]¸ by Michael Maier. One of the best treatises on alchemy.
Science and the Infinite, by Sidney Klein. One of the best essays written in recent years.
Two Essays on the Worship of Priapus [A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus &c. &c. &c.], by Richard Payne Knight [and Thomas Wright]. Invaluable to all students.
The Golden Bough, by J.G. Frazer. The textbook of Folk Lore. Invaluable to all students.
The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine. Excellent, though elementary, as a corrective to superstition.
Rivers of Life, by General Forlong. An invaluable textbook of old systems of initiation.
Three Dialogues, by Bishop Berkeley. The Classic of Subjective Idealism.
Essays of David Hume. The Classic of Academic Scepticism.
First Principles by Herbert Spencer. The Classic of Agnosticism.
Prolegomena [to any future Metaphysics], by Immanuel Kant. The best introduction to Metaphysics.
The Canon [by William Stirling]. The best textbook of Applied Qabalah.
The Fourth Dimension, by [Charles] H. Hinton. The best essay on the subject.
The Essays of Thomas Henry Huxley. Masterpieces of philosophy, as of prose.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Appendix I: Literature Recommended to Aspirants#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:The first organization structure in the modern West was laid down in the canon law of the Catholic Church eight hundred years ago. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 2:Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs. ~ pablo-picasso, @wisdomtrove 3:What makes a difference is when we take our mind and put it into the scriptures, when we read the Buddhist Canon, the Pali Canon, when we read the Tibetan books, when we read anything inspiring - somebody else's journey into the world of enlightenment. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 4:On the theory of natural selection we can clearly understand the full meaning of that old canon in natural history, “Natura non facit saltum.” This canon, if we look only to the present inhabitants of the world, is not strictly correct, but if we include all those of past times, it must by my theory be strictly true. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 5:If you know that everything comes from the mind, don't become attached. Once attached, you're unaware. But once you see your own nature, the entire Canon becomes so much prose. It's thousands of sutras and shastras only amount to a clear mind. Understanding comes in midsentence. What good are doctrines? The ultimate Truth is beyond words. Doctrines are words. They're not the Way. The Way is wordless. Words are illusions. . . . Don't cling to appearances, and you'll break through all barriers. . . . ~ bodhidharma, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Pachelbel’s Canon in D major. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
2:My fan fiction is canon. ~ Dwayne McDuffie, #NFDB
3:One breaks into the canon only by aesthetic strength. ~ Harold Bloom, #NFDB
4:I am not a photographer , I am a canon owner !!! ~ Walaa WalkademAgmal, #NFDB
5:Self-love is the most inhibited sin in the canon. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
6:...the Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
7:We have a rule in our franchise that there is no canon. You as a player ~ Casey Hudson, #NFDB
8:A more sensitive man than Canon Prescott might have felt that he was de trop. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
9:You have to have a canon so the next generation can come along and explode it. ~ Henry Louis Gates, #NFDB
10:Canon Campbell told me that most smart-ass Canadians tend to move to the United States. I ~ John Irving, #NFDB
11:The fabric of archetypal canon which used to support the average man has given way... [p. 439] ~ Erich Neumann, #NFDB
12:The Church no more gave us the New Testament canon than Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
13:Canon law itself says for one case of guilt, a priest can be dismissed from the clerical state. One. ~ Roger Mahony, #NFDB
14:I do think that memoirs by women are reviewed differently and considered somewhat outside of the canon. ~ Kate Zambreno, #NFDB
15:Every child had heard the proverb in the Canon that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. ~ Peter V Brett, #NFDB
16:A book doesn’t have to be part of the canon of great literature to make a difference in the reader’s life. ~ Nina Sankovitch, #NFDB
17:Desire is the profoundest root of all evil; it is from desire that there has arisen the world of life and sorrow. ~ Pali Canon, #NFDB
18:ADULTERINE (ADU'LTERINE) n.s.[adulterine, Fr. adulterinus, Lat.]A child born of an adulteress:a term of canon law. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
19:A realization and a dissection of the canon gave rise to the work. But there's also a sneaking suspicion of the canon. ~ Kehinde Wiley, #NFDB
20:A real reader creates her own canon, for it consists precisely of those books that she has used to create herself. ~ William Deresiewicz, #NFDB
21:It's marvelous to know another person's entire literary canon by heart. It's like knowing their secret personal language. ~ Lauren Groff, #NFDB
22:I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children's story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children's story. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
23:Reading poetry and reading the great works of the canon that we were reading in the '60s and the '70s and '80s was mind altering. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
24:The first organization structure in the modern West was laid down in the canon law of the Catholic Church eight hundred years ago. ~ Peter Drucker, #NFDB
25:the Visuddhimagga. This fifth-century text, which means Path to Purification in Pali (the language of Buddhism’s earliest canon), ~ Daniel Goleman, #NFDB
26:It's not illegal to own a revolver."
"Neither is it illegal to own a canon. Not a lot of people lug them into a crowded metropolis. ~ Devon Monk,#NFDB
27:When fatness was an exception, it was part of the canon of beauty. Now that leanness is an exception, its symptoms are canonized. ~ Josip Novakovich, #NFDB
28:I don’t know how I feel about a canon anymore ... The sheer volume of books that exist out there means that a canon is no longer possible. ~ N K Jemisin, #NFDB
29:The idea of formulated 'rights ... comes not from John Locke and Thomas Jefferson ... but from the canon law of the Catholic Church. ~ Thomas E Woods Jr, #NFDB
30:In the history of the prophetic biblical canon that starts with Genesis, the Koran is by far the most tolerant of the views of other religions. ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
31:a local priest, Canon Cohalan of Bandon, preached a famous sermon in which he thundered: ‘The day Michael Collins was killed where was de Valera? ~ Tim Pat Coogan, #NFDB
32:Aspiring writers should read the entire canon of literature that precedes them, back to the Greeks, up to the current issue of The Paris Review. ~ William Kennedy, #NFDB
33:[Doctor Cukrowicz in Suddenly, Last Summer is] is one of the most unpronounceable roles in the modern-day theater day canon, and one of the most boring! ~ Rob Lowe, #NFDB
34:My husband and I have watched a lot of Hitchcock movies in bulk, and there's a lot to be gained from that, from focusing strictly on an artists canon. ~ Claire Danes, #NFDB
35:In accord with the reigning single standard, the major terrorist atrocities—or worse, aggression—are excluded from the canon of international terrorism. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
36:It is not the practice of the Holy See to disclose information on the religious discipline of members of the clergy or religious according to canon law. ~ Gerald Posner, #NFDB
37:But every one of these—the canon of Scripture, the creed, and the institutional structure—emerged in its present form only toward the end of the second century. ~ Elaine Pagels, #NFDB
38:If you couldn't kill your adversaries, or keep them imprisoned for ever, there was surely only one option left in the Colonel Alexander canon: you change their minds. ~ Jon Ronson, #NFDB
39:Oh, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew, Or that the Everlasting had not fixed. His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
40:If we read the Western Canon in order to form our social, political, or personal moral values, I firmly believe we will become monsters of selfishness and exploitation. ~ Harold Bloom, #NFDB
41:ADVOWSON (ADVO'WSON) or ADVO'WZEN.n.s.[In common law.] A right to present to a benefice, and signifies as much as Jus Patronatûs. In the canon law, it is so termed, ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
42:After the war, prompted by the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris, I entered Parliament so that a priest could speak out for the poor, as canon law at that time still permitted. ~ Abbe Pierre, #NFDB
43:I don't really have a favorite camera. I use a Leica and Canon a lot. It depends, especially professionally, on the requirements. But my carry-around camera is a Leica. ~ Elliott Erwitt, #NFDB
44:The key factor is whether the agent is a member of the Association of Authors' Representatives, which screens its members and requires them to uphold a Canon of Ethics. ~ Richard Curtis, #NFDB
45:It is also the fate of leadership to be misunderstood. For historians, academics, writers and journalists to reflect great lives according to their own subjective canon. ~ Nelson Mandela, #NFDB
46:Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs. ~ Pablo Picasso, #NFDB
47:During the engagement I tried to throw a strong force through the canon, but I was obliged to use it elsewhere before it had gotten to the supposed location of the village. ~ George Crook, #NFDB
48:After decades of faithful study, ecologists have begun to fathom hidden likenesses among many interwoven systems. ...a canon of nature's laws, strategies, and principles... ~ Janine Benyus, #NFDB
49:Epson is upbeat about prospects for sales of inkjet printers to businesses, which now rely on laser printers from rivals such as Hewlett-Packard Co., Canon Inc. and Xerox Corp. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
50:We conventionally associate dream inspiration with the creative arts, but the canon of scientific breakthroughs contains many revolutionary ideas that originated in dreams. ~ Steven Johnson, #NFDB
51:Nathaniel Philbrick's 'In the Heart of the Sea' has rightfully taken its place as a classic for its literary merits. It has a special place in the cannibalism canon as well. ~ Mitchell Zuckoff, #NFDB
52:O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God! ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
53:Pachelbel’s Canon filled the sun-drowned room where they learned each other and even then the fear flickered across him like an osprey’s shadow: This is too good to live for long. ~ Thomas Harris, #NFDB
54:there are only two fundamental canons: I. The External Canon: MANUSCRIPTS ARE TO BE WEIGHED AND NOT COUNTED. II. The Internal Canon: THAT READING IS BEST WHICH BEST EXPLAINS THE OTHERS ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
55:I got my interest in Lotte Lenya and the Brecht-Weill canon from my parents. And I love classical music - I got that from my parents. I love Cole Porter - that I got from my dad. ~ Marianne Faithfull, #NFDB
56:In aesthetic theory it might be extremely difficult, if not quite impracticable, to draw a line between the canon of classicism, or regard for the archaic, and the canon of beauty. ~ Thorstein Veblen, #NFDB
57:That is the supreme felicity of those who have won their victory, it is the perfect and immutable peace, the defeat of Impermanence, a pure and luminous condition, the victory over death. ~ Canon in Pali, #NFDB
58:If we take seriously the idea that the stories we want to hear shape the stories we can (and want to, and are allowed to) tell, then the canon emerges as something to examine very carefully. ~ Laura Mullen, #NFDB
59:Conspiracies and all the theories of conspiracy are a part of the canon of fakes. And I'm involved, in all of my writings, the theoretical ones as well as the novels, with the production of fakes. ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
60:The Western musical canon came about not merely by accumulation, but by opposition and subversion, both to the ruling powers on whom composers depended for their livelihoods and to other musics. ~ Brian Ferneyhough, #NFDB
61:When you're walking in, basically like a kid a candy store, to a project where there's an endless canon of material, you have to step back from it as a self-indulgence. You have to look at it neutrally. ~ Josh Groban, #NFDB
62:a passage in the Middle Length Discourses of the Pali Canon where the Buddha says: “Whoever thinks: ‘extinction is mine,’ and rejoices in extinction, such a person, I declare, does not know extinction. ~ Stephen Batchelor, #NFDB
63:. . . people want to establish a canon, because people want to imagine that there are great writers and lesser writers and they want the mythology, they want the narrative for themselves. And it’s embarrassing. ~ Tim Parks, #NFDB
64:To read in the service of any ideology is not to read at all. The mind's dialogue with itself is not primarily a social reality. All that the Western canon can bring one is the proper use of one's own solitude. ~ Harold Bloom, #NFDB
65:Then the bow orchestra began to play an apocalyptically beautiful canon, one of those pieces in which, surely, the composer simply transcribed what was given, and trembled in awe of the hand that was guiding him. ~ Mark Helprin, #NFDB
66:In this regard, typology can be called contextual exegesis within the framework of the canon since it primarily involves the interpretation and elucidation of the meaning of earlier parts of Scripture by later parts. ~ G K Beale, #NFDB
67:Adolescents believe that the world belongs to the living, or more particularly to living people their age, so they feel within their rights if they destroy the canon or rewrite the fairy stories or act like Red Guards. ~ Robert Bly, #NFDB
68:Did anyone think this canon of druggie men were out of control? Only in the most admirable of ways! Out of control like a shaman or a space explorer, like a magician sawing himself in half. Out of control like a poet. ~ Michelle Tea, #NFDB
69:The creativity of consciousness may be jeopardized by religious or political totalitarianism, for any authoritarian fixation of the canon leads to sterility of consciousness. ~ Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness, #NFDB
70:As both a local resident and a parent with a CF-afflicted child, I'm thankful for companies like Canon, Chase and Outback who believe that giving back to the community is critical to their role as corporate citizens. ~ Boomer Esiason, #NFDB
71:Weddings in our society seem designed to reduce the bride and groom to precisely the condition of those who, because they 'lack sufficient use of reason,' are 'incapable of contracting marriage,' according to canon law. ~ Nancy Mairs, #NFDB
72:But there is nothing in Scripture to indicate that the biblical modes of God’s communication with humans have been superseded or abolished by either the presence of the church or the close of the scriptural canon. This ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
73:The support of organizations including the NY Jets, Canon USA, USA Football, and Outback Steakhouse is a great example of how corporate America can make an impact in bettering the communities where employees work and live. ~ Boomer Esiason, #NFDB
74:By the former of these (canon law), the most refined, sublime, extensive, and astonishing constitution of policy that ever was conceived by the mind of man was framed by the Romish clergy for the aggrandizement of their own order. ~ John Adams, #NFDB
75:Luckily, what you trade off in not being part of the comic book canon and not having some literature that you can use to your benefit, in terms of figuring out who you are, you gain in the ability to just be whoever you want to be. ~ Dallas Roberts, #NFDB
76:The libidinal fantasy-stream only becomes significant for other people, i.e. capable of mediation, if it is socialised through fusion with the canon, while at the same time energizing and individualizing the canon or the conscience. ~ Norbert Elias, #NFDB
77:It is a poor sort of man who is content to be spoon-fed knowledge that has been filtered through the canon of religious or political belief, and it is a poor sort of man who will permit others to dictate what he may or may not learn. ~ Louis L Amour, #NFDB
78:Theatre for a New Audience is one of America's most admirable and exciting theatre companites...some of the best acted and directed work to be found on American stages, engaging with the canon of world dramatic literature in a vigorous way. ~ Tony Kushner, #NFDB
79:Numberless have been the systems of iniquity contrived by the great for the gratification of this passion in themselves; but in none of them were they ever more successful than in the invention and establishment of the canon and the feudal law. ~ John Adams, #NFDB
80:Joseph Smith, and this is not always fully appreciated within the tradition he initiated, did not feel that direct communication from God, gifts of seership, and an open, continuously expanding canon in any way obviated the need for theology. ~ Terryl L Givens, #NFDB
81:Do you know that line of Kierkegaard’s, Canon Chambers? “There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys: they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked the sum out for themselves.” ~ James Runcie, #NFDB
82:It's not the side-effects of the cocaine - I'm thinking that it must be love.
It's too late to be grateful,
It's too late to be hateful,
It's too late to be late again,
The European canon is here.
- Station to Station ~ David Bowie,#NFDB
83:you pretend rapturously to read the canon of your law in nature, you want something opposite, you strange actors and self-deceivers! Your pride wants to impose your morality, your ideal, on nature—even on nature—and incorporate them in her; ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
84:Sola scriptura means at least this: that the church's proclamation is always subject to potential correction from the canon. It is for this reason that we resist simply collapsing the text into the tradition of its interpretation and performance. ~ Kevin Vanhoozer, #NFDB
85:Sola scriptura means at least this: that the church's proclamation is always subject to potential correction from the canon. It is for this reason that we resist simply collapsing the text into the tradition of its interpretation and performance. ~ Kevin J Vanhoozer, #NFDB
86:What makes a difference is when we take our mind and put it into the scriptures, when we read the Buddhist Canon, the Pali Canon, when we read the Tibetan books, when we read anything inspiring - somebody else's journey into the world of enlightenment. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
87:Women's studies needed a syllabus and so invented a canon overnight. It puffed up clunky, mundane contemporary women authors into Oz-like, skywriting dirigibles. Our best women students are being force-fed an appalling diet of cant, drivel and malarkey. ~ Camille Paglia, #NFDB
88:One canon reduced to writing by God himself, two testaments, three creeds, four general councils, five centuries, and the series of Fathers in that period – the centuries that is, before Constantine, and two after, determine the boundary of our faith. ~ Lancelot Andrewes, #NFDB
89:so long as culture is “in balance,” the individuals contained in it normally stand in an adequate relationship to the collective unconscious, even if this is only a relationship to the archetypal projections of the cultural canon and to its highest values. ~ Erich Neumann, #NFDB
90:I’d always been taught that a lack of peace meant God was sending an “abort mission” smoke signal. It’s among the most beloved excuses in the church-culture canon. We toss it out, and no one can argue. “I don’t have peace about it.” Boom. End of discussion. ~ Shannan Martin, #NFDB
91:Marcel Proust shut out visitors from his cork-lined room, where he wrote, but he probably expected to be immortalized in the literary canon. Even the most introverted drives and motives are set in a social context and amplified by the potential for achieving fame. ~ Tyler Cowen, #NFDB
92:But whatever anyone’s view of religion’s philosophical underpinnings and practical failures, its tenets include examination of one’s own faults as well as observation of those of others and a desire for reconciliation. Canon R.H.W. Arguile Wells-next-the-Sea, Norfolk ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
93:According to the Persian seer Avicenna, whose 'Canon of Medicine' Marjan often consulted, fenugreek is the first stop to curing winter chills. Combined with the hearty kidney beans and succulent meat of the herb stew, it made for an excellent 'garm', or hot, meal. ~ Marsha Mehran, #NFDB
94:A bifurcation of loyalties that requires religious to put canon law above civil law and moral law puts us in a situation where the keepers of religion may themselves become one of the greatest dangers to the credibility - and the morality - of the church itself. ~ Joan D Chittister, #NFDB
95:War demoralizes those who are trained for it. It brutalizes men of naturally gentle character. It outrages every beautiful canon of morality. Its path of glory is foul with the passions of lust, and red with the blood of murder. This is not the pathway to our goal ~ Rajmohan Gandhi, #NFDB
96:I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they do no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way against holders of power...power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. ~ Lord Acton, #NFDB
97:So before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world. And all of us against the infidel. ~ Leon Uris, #NFDB
98:Carpentry, too, as a sacred process, belongs to this canon. Wood, like milk and wine, was thought to be a life-principle of Horus-Osiris (cf. Blackman, op. cit., p. 30), and cedar oil with its preservative and hardening qualities played an important part in embalming. ~ Erich Neumann, #NFDB
99:Rashid was crushed in his wheelchair when one of Israel’s huge US-supplied bulldozers demolished his home with the family inside. Thanks to prevailing moral standards, such acts are also excluded from the canon of terrorism (or worse, war crimes), by virtue of wrong agency.3 ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
100:The idea of sovereignty current in the English speaking world of the 1760's was scarcely more than a century old. It had first emerged during the English Civil War, in the early 1640's, and had been established as a canon of Whig political thought in the Revolution of 1688. ~ Bernard Bailyn, #NFDB
101:I tried very hard to write something today, but it was like drawing blood from a stone. In spite of promising myself not to be influenced by the decision of the Mercury--and I know from what they publish that their canon is wrong--the rejection of my things has made me rather despond... ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
102:Look at the history of civil laws in our world and the source from which they emerged, and you will see that the vast majority of them arose directly from, or where based in principle on, Roman Canon Law, or the laws of other religious origin. Sharia is another notable example. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
103:be done if we are to make the shift from a belief-based Buddhism (version 1.0) to a praxis-based Buddhism (version 2.0). We have to train ourselves to the point where on hearing or reading a text from the canon our initial response is no longer “Is that true?” but “Does this work? ~ Stephen Batchelor, #NFDB
104:The Catholic Church was derived from three sources. Its sacred history was Jewish, its theology was Greek, its government and canon law were, at least indirectly, Roman. The Reformation rejected the Roman elements, softened the Greek elements, and greatly strengthened the Judaic elements. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
105:It took two years of me telling Canon engineers that a camera is a thing between the human hand and the human eye, so it had to have ergonomics on both sides! They got the message, and we did it, and overnight it was the camera of the world. Everyone - Nikon, Yashica, Sony - all copied Colani. ~ Luigi Colani, #NFDB
106:My mom had a Canon AE1 camera and I read the manual and that's basically how I became a photographer. I was in the Baltimore punk scene. I knew it was a special time, so I went out and documented that whole era. I was the only person to really do it of my friends in real black and white, beautiful portraits. ~ Jeff Vespa, #NFDB
107:Canon: The authoritative list of inspired biblical books. Within a short time after Jesus’ death, the New Testament canon was affirmed by evaluating the Apostolicity, reception, and teachings of books, but ultimately, the canon is self-authenticating, as the voice of Christ is heard in it (John 10:27; WCF 1:5). ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
108:Ce n'est pas la première fois que je veux tuer des mouches avec un canon. C'est la cent millième fois. Cela m'arrive tous les jours et tout le jour. Je prévois toujours le pire et je me démène toujours comme si c'était le pire. Eh ! Prends donc l'habitude de considérer que les choses ordinaires arrivent aussi. ~ Jean Giono, #NFDB
109:It struck me recently, that one should really consider the sequence of a protein molecule about to fold into a precise geometric form as a line of melody written in a canon form & so designed by Nature to fold back into itself, creating harmonic chords of interaction consistent with biological function ~ Christian B Anfinsen, #NFDB
110:The Western Canon does not exist in order to augment preexisting societal elites. It is there to be read by you and by strangers, so that you and those you will never meet can encounter authentic aesthetic power and the authority of what Baudelaire (and Erich Auerbach after him) called “aesthetic dignity.” One ~ Harold Bloom, #NFDB
111:Canon law pertains to Catholics. Jewish law pertains only to Jews. But the sharia dictates every basic aspect of human life, asserts its authority over non-Muslims, unlike Jewish law and unlike canon law, which is why they're slaughtering Christians, they're slaughtering secular Muslims across the Muslim world. ~ Pamela Geller, #NFDB
112:On the theory of natural selection we can clearly understand the full meaning of that old canon in natural history, “Natura non facit saltum.” This canon, if we look only to the present inhabitants of the world, is not strictly correct, but if we include all those of past times, it must by my theory be strictly true. ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
113:Danny pointed to the organist. “While we’re waiting, did you know Pachelbel’s ‘Canon in D’ was composed almost four hundred years ago?” Stevie sighed. “Myself, along with the majority of the other good-looking, upstanding citizens of this country, don’t give a flying steamy turd about Pocket Ball.” “Pachelbel.” “Him too. ~ Rich Amooi, #NFDB
114:Comics have a problem, and that is continuity - the obsession with placing the characters in an existing world, where every event is marked in canon. You're supposed to believe that these weepy star boys of now are the same gung-ho super teens fighting space monsters in the '60s, and they've only aged perhaps five years. ~ John Hodgman, #NFDB
115:In his mind, the book, as much as anything in the world, was responsible for the wretched state of humanity—cowering and weak when they should stand strong; always afraid, never hopeful. But for all that, many of the Canon’s sentiments about brotherhood and the fellowship of men were ones the Warded Man believed in deeply. He ~ Peter V Brett, #NFDB
116:They who say that women do not desire the right of suffrage, that they prefer masculine domination to self-government, falsify every page of history, every fact in human experience. It has taken the whole power of the civil and canon law to hold woman in the subordinate position which it is said she willingly accepts. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton, #NFDB
117:Popular film misquotes. “Play it again, Sam”: Casablanca, allegedly, except neither Bogie nor Bergman ever said it. “He’s alive”: Frankenstein doesn’t gender his monster; cruelly, it’s just “It’s alive.” “Elementary, my dear Watson” does crop up in the first Holmes film of the talkie era, but appears nowhere in the Conan Doyle canon. ~ A J Finn, #NFDB
118:Marcion did not accept Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John as trustworthy, for he saw many corruptions, interpolations, and falsifications in them. And if Marcion was critical of the New Testament, he was downright hostile toward the Old Testament, even suggesting that it should not be included in the canon of the Christian church. ~ Stephan A Hoeller, #NFDB
119:Moore's Law states that the number of transistors you can place on an integrated circuit doubles every two years or so, each time at a reduced cost. And so far this has held true, for more than 50 years. This means the power of everything is exponentially climbing: processing speed, memory capacity, the number of pixels in your Canon. ~ Sean Platt, #NFDB
120:The Gospels are the canon within the canon. The Bible, as Martin Luther said, is the cradle that holds Christ. The point of gravity is the story of Jesus, the Gospel. The closer a text of the Bible is to that story or to the heart of that story’s message, the more authority it has. The farther away it is, the less its authority. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber, #NFDB
121:As for the multiple editions, in the case of a truly great writer - Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Proust, someone with a canon - there is often a "variorum" edition of the work that presents its variants. I think publishing most other writing that way would be impossible, economically, for publishers, and very ill-advised for authors. ~ Judith Thurman, #NFDB
122:Delivered to oblivion...growing and flowering with incense and weeds to the sullen whine of nasty flies...I loved deserts, burned out orchards, faded boutiques...I dragged myself down stinking alleyways...General, if there's an old canon left, aim for the glass of splendid shops, into the living rooms...make the city eat its own dust. ~ Arthur Rimbaud, #NFDB
123:I carry my own film guys with me now. People think that's a huge expense, but with technology like it is these days, it's not. You can film videos and everything with a Canon Mark II, and shoot a movie. They're doing it for next to nothing, by comparison. I can do ten videos for a project for the price of one mainstream video in the past. ~ Ronnie Dunn, #NFDB
124:We all exist in similar systems that mirror and reproduce the same American culture for the most part. What Oscar Wilde said about the lucky author who has a non-literary day job no longer holds, if it ever did. Artists seek validation as much as they seek money. The creation and invention of culture and canon is where most of the trouble lies. ~ Fady Joudah, #NFDB
125:Any content that functions through its emotional dynamisms, such as the paralyzing grip of inertia or an invasion by instinct, belongs to the sphere of the mother, to nature. But all contents capable of conscious realization, a value, an idea, a moral canon, or some other spiritual force, are related to the father-, never to the mother-system. ~ Erich Neumann, #NFDB
126:Think about that: at a time when it was inconceivable to have a woman rabbi or a woman scholar of Christian theology or canon law, the Islamic civilization boasted hundreds of women who were authorities in Islamic law and Islamic theology and that taught some of the most famous male jurists and left behind a remarkable corpus of writings. ~ Khaled Abou El Fadl, #NFDB
127:In giving latitude to his individual fantasy, and especially to his ability to synthesise previously separate elements in a way which breaches the existing canon of taste, he initially reduces his chance of finding resonance in the public. [...] In this respect, too, without realizing it, Mozart had inaugurated another shift in the balance of power. ~ Norbert Elias, #NFDB
128:When did men become the measure? When did we collectively decide writing was more worthy if men embraced it? I suppose it was the “literary establishment” that made this decision when, for too long, men dominated the canon, and it was men whose work was elevated as worthy, who received the majority of the prestigious literary prizes and critical attention. ~ Roxane Gay, #NFDB
129:In other words, the more differentiated, relatively developed societies have cultivated a comparatively high tolerance for highly individualised ways of further developing the existing art canon; this facilitates experimentation and the breaching of stale conventions and can thus help to enrich the artistic pleasures available through seeing and hearing. ~ Norbert Elias, #NFDB
130:ours. By then I’d read Chancellor Williams, J. A. Rogers, and John Jackson—writers central to the canon of our new noble history. From them I knew that Mansa Musa of Mali was black, and Shabaka of Egypt was black, and Yaa Asantewaa of Ashanti was black—and “the black race” was a thing I supposed existed from time immemorial, a thing that was real and mattered. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
131:I am for liberty of conscience in its noblest, broadest, and highest sense. But I cannot give liberty of conscience to the pope and his followers, the papists, so long as they tell me, through all their councils, theologians, and canon laws that their conscience orders them to burn my wife, strangle my children, and cut my throat when they find their opportunity. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
132:Miss Warrender's 'selfish' inner quest was to find a 'purpose in life and give it all I have got'. This instructive, amusing, dramatic and bravely candid account is an answer in itself. She also took the photographs, reproduced in black and white, that adorn an already pleasing book. All together, this is an essential addition to the canon. -John McEwen book critic ~ Alice Warrender, #NFDB
133:The academic teaching on beauty is false. We have been misled, but so completely misled that we can no longer find so much as a shadow of a truth again. The beauties of the Parthenon, the Venuses, the Nymphs, the Narcisusses, are so may lies. Art is not the application of a canon of beauty, but what the instinct and the brain can conceive independently of that canon. ~ Pablo Picasso, #NFDB
134:Van Itallie and Bray deserve a disproportionate share of the responsibility for effectively removing the concept of the fattening carbohydrate from the nutritional canon, and thus the carbohydrate-restricted diet as well. Virtually everything we believe about what constitutes an effective weight-loss diet can be traced back to the 1970s and the efforts of these two men. ~ Gary Taubes, #NFDB
135:The true use of Shakespeare or of Cervantes, of Homer or of Dante, of Chaucer or of Rabelais, is to augment one's own growing inner self. . . . The mind's dialogue with itself is not primarily a social reality. All that the Western Canon can bring one is the proper use of one's own solitude, that solitude whose final form is one's confrontation with one's own mortality. ~ Harold Bloom, #NFDB
136:Now this greatest tent staled out hot raw breaths of earth, confetti that was ancient when the canals of Venice were not yet staked, and wafts of pink cotton candy like tired feather boas. In rushing downfalls, the tent shed skin; grieved, soughed as flesh fell away until at last the tall museum timbers at the spine of the discarded monster dropped with three canon roars. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
137:One can contrive a religious motivation for virtually any choice of action, from commitment to the highest ideals to support for the most horrendous atrocities. In the sacred texts, we can find uplifting calls for peace, justice and mercy, along with the most genocidal passages in the literary canon. Conscience is our guide, whatever trappings we might choose to clothe it in. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
138:Progression through the archetypal phases, the patriarchal orientation of consciousness, the formation of the superego as the representative of collective values within the personality, the existence of a collective value-canon, all these things are necessary conditions of normal, ethical development. If any one of these factors is inhibited, developmental disturbances result. ~ Erich Neumann, #NFDB
139:It has long been a source of wonder to me why the leading criminological writers--men like Edmund Lester Pearson, H. B. Irving, Filson Young, Canon Brookes, William Bolitho, and Harold Eaton--have not devoted more space to the Greene tragedy; for here, surely, is one of the outstanding murder mysteries of modern times--a case practically unique in the annals of latter-day crime. ~ S S Van Dine, #NFDB
140:A canon is a guarded catalogue of that speech, music and art which houses inside us, which is irrevocably familiar to our homecomings. And this will include, if honestly arrived at and declared (even if solely to oneself), all manner of ephemera, trivial, and possibly mendacious matter…No manor woman need justify his personal anthology, his canonic welcomes. Love does not argue its necessities. ~ George Steiner, #NFDB
141:If the reader will turn to the apocryphal Gospel called " Protevangelion" (chapter xiii.), he will there see one of the reasons why it was thought best to leave this Gospel out of the canon of the New Testament. It relates the "Miracles at Mary's labor," similar to the Luke narrator, but in a still more wonderful form. It is probably from this apocryphal Gospel that the Luke narrator copied. ~ Thomas William Doane, #NFDB
142:Since the purpose of reading, of education, is to become good, our most important task is to choose the right books. Our personal set of stories, our canon, shapes our lives. I believe it is a law of the universe that we will not rise above our canon. Our canon is part of us, deeply, subconsciously. And the characters and teachings in our canon shape our characters--good, evil, mediocre, or great. ~ Oliver DeMille, #NFDB
143:Your prim faith in the True Sect’s canon serves naught. The temple preaches a loveless morality that cares not one jot for the plight of our livelihood. The priests are fat parasites, theosophizing on their rumps while folk like us break our backs, milked dry by their tithes and their rote obligations. Where does their doctrine show the least concern for our chance to enjoy the fruits of our happiness? ~ Janny Wurts, #NFDB
144:I shall remain vigilant and unyielding in my pursuit of the enemies of the Coalition.
I will defend and maintain the Order of Life as it was proclaim by the Allfathers of the Coalition in the Octus Canon.
I will forsake the life I had before so I may perform my duty as long as I am needed.
Steadfast, I shall hold my place in the machine and acknowledge my place in the Coalition.
I am a Gear. ~ Karen Traviss,#NFDB
145:Southern food has been riding a long wave of popularity that has elevated cooking in Southern cities. But it has also led to a formulaic culinary canon laden with house-cured pork products, bespoke grits and lots of food served in Mason jars. The cooks who defined the style were mostly men in tourist-heavy towns like Atlanta, Nashville and Charleston, S.C. Chefs who didn’t cook like that risked losing business. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
146:The split in his social existence made itself felt in his personality structure as well. Mozart's entire musical activity, his whole training as a virtuoso performer and composer, were shaped by the music canon of the hegemonic court societies of Europe. [...] At the same time, in his personality structure, especially as far as his social relations were concerned, he remained a man of the petty bourgeois ... ~ Norbert Elias, #NFDB
147:Serious or trivial, his daily behavior has instituted a canon which millions observe this day with conscious memory. No one regarded by any section of the human race as Perfect Man has ever been imitated so minutely.The conduct of the founder of Christianity has not governed the ordinary life of his followers. Moreover, no founder of a religion has left on so solitary an eminence as the Muslim apostle. ~ David George Hogarth, #NFDB
148:I am imbued with the notion that a Muse is necessarily a dead woman, inaccessible or absent; that a poetic structure - like the canon, which is only a hole surrounded by steel - can be based only on what one does not have; and that ultimately one can write only to fill a void or at the least to situate, in relation to the most lucid part of ourselves, the place where this incommensurable abyss yawns within us. ~ Michel Leiris, #NFDB
149:In discussions among the participants at the summit and because of requests to the Draft Committee, there was considerable sentiment for striking the words “sixty-six canonical books” from the early drafts. This was due to some variance within Christendom as to the exact number of books that are to be recognized within the canon. For example, the Ethiopic Church has included more books in the canon than sixty-six. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
150:Mais les vrais voyageurs sont ceux-là seuls qui partent
Pour partir; coeurs légers, semblables aux ballons,
De leur fatalité jamais ils ne s´écartent,
Et, sans savoir pourquoi, disent toujours: Allons!
Ceux-là dont les désirs ont la forme des nues,
Et qui rêvent, ainsi qu´un conscrit le canon,
Des vastes voluptés, changeantes, inconnues,
Et dont l´esprit humain n´a jamais su le nom! ~ Charles Baudelaire,#NFDB
151:The canon and civil law; church and state; priests and legislators; all political parties and religious denominations have alike taught that woman was made after man, of man, and for man, an inferior being, subject to man. Creeds, codes, Scriptures and statutes, are all based on this idea. The fashions, forms, ceremonies and customs of society, church ordinances and discipline all grow out of this idea. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton, #NFDB
152:The generation now below me were born into a world where if you're a kid with raw talent now, you can roll in and land a lead in a Scorsese film. You don't have to have prove yourself by working up the ranks, doing the classics, and getting the canon under your belt in the way the great Sirs and Dames of mom and dad's generation - the [Ben] Kingsleys and [Helen] Mirrens and [Anthony] Hopkinses and people of that ilk. ~ Benedict Cumberbatch, #NFDB
153:The same tantalizing guile and sublime skill....[The series is] reinforced in its claim to be one of the major literary works of this century....Only two other writers that this reviewer can think of have each created an entire, discrete and compelling world, a totally believable entity which one might wish to inhabit, and they are Joyce and Proust. It is not pretentious to place Patrick O'Brian in the first canon of literature. ~ Kevin Myers, #NFDB
154:The canon of the [sharia] and the Church, closely linked with the laws of the bourgeosie, treated women as a commodity, a thing to be bought and sold by the male... Just as the bourgeosie had made the worker into its proletarian, so had the savage ancient canons of the [shariah], the Church, feudalism and the bourgeosie, reduced woman to the proletariat of the man. ~ Enver Hoxha (1986) The Artful Albanian, (Chatto & Windus, London), ISBN 0701129700, #NFDB
155:The Canon AE1 - a fully manual camera. [My mother] had a 50mm, which is a standard lens, and then I got a 28mm. Then I started a little punk magazine, a zine, when I was 14 or 15 years old. I was shooting my friends skateboarding and it was the beginning of the Macintosh. We wouldn't do layouts on the computer; we would pick the font and then type up a paragraph and then print it out and cut it up and put it in a little mock-up and Xerox it. ~ Jeff Vespa, #NFDB
156:This practice of discerning the theological testimony, unity and development of the biblical *canon was a concern of the Reformers, but it began to emerge as an approach distinct from *dogmatic theology in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Having much in common with *covenant theology, Reformed approaches usually emphasize the unity of Scripture as a *redemptive-historical drama, all of which reveals the person and work of Christ. Notable ~ Kelly M Kapic, #NFDB
157:Here is God's purpose - For God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun, proper or improper; is the articulation not the art, objective or subjective; is loving, not the abstraction "love" commanded or entreated; is knowledge dynamic, not legislative code, not proclamation law, not academic dogma, not ecclesiastic canon. Yes, God is a verb, the most active, connoting the vast harmonic reordering of the universe from unleashed chaos of energy. ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #NFDB
158:The canon is an artifact of revelation, not an object of revelation itself. It is known infallibly to God by necessity and to man with a certainty directly related to God's purpose in giving the Word to the church. The canon exists because God has inspired some writings, not all writings. it is known to man in fulfillment of God's purpose in engaging in the action of inspiration so as to give His people a lamp for their feet and a light for their path. ~ James R White, #NFDB
159:A native of America who cannot read and write is as rare an appearance as a Jacobite or a Roman Catholic, that is, as rare as a comet or an earthquake. ~ John Adams, “A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law” Boston Gazette (published in parts, Aug. 12, 19, Sept. 30, Oct. 2, 1765). The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Charles Francis Adams, editor, Vol. III, Boston, Charles C. Little and James Brown (1851), p. 456, #NFDB
160:English is, from my point of view as an Americanist, an ethnicity. And English literature should be studied in Comparative Literature. And American literature should be a discipline, certainly growing from England and France, Germany, Spain, Denmark, and the Native traditions, particularly because those helped form the American canon. Those are our backgrounds. And then we'd be doing it the way it ought to be done. And someday I hope that it will be. ~ Paula Gunn Allen, #NFDB
161:For the Buddha of the Pali Canon, the goal is liberation: the cessation of suffering, the end of the endless hamster-wheel of dependent origination, of mental formations leading to desire leading to clinging leading to suffering and so on. Nibbana, or nirvana, was not originally conceived as some magical heavenly world, or even a permanent altered state of consciousness. It is usually described, in the early texts, negatively: as a candle being snuffed out. ~ Jay Michaelson, #NFDB
162:while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
163:Since attention is generally considered an internally generated state, it seems that neuroscience has tiptoed up to a conclusion that would be right at home in the canon of some of the Eastern philosophies: introspection, willed attention, subjective state—pick your favorite description of an internal mental state—can redraw the contours of the mind, and in so doing can rewire the circuits of the brain, for it is attention that makes neuroplasticity possible. ~ Jeffrey M Schwartz, #NFDB
164:[W]e must add at once that a judgement on Mozart's verbal coprophilia would necessarily miss the mark if it applied present-day standards of civilization, thus implicitly regarding our own canon of sensibility as universal, a canon for the whole mankind, and not as one that has developed. To do justice to Mozart's tendency, we need to have a clear idea of the civilizing process in the course of which the social canon of behavior and feeling changes in a specific way. ~ Norbert Elias, #NFDB
165:Contrary to what some folks would have us believe, it is not tragic, even if undesirable, for a person to leave a liberal arts education not having read major works from this canon. Their lives are not ending. And the exciting dimension of knowledge is that we can learn a work without formally studying it. If a student graduates without reading Shakespeare and then reads or studies this work later, it does not delegitimize whatever formal course of study that was completed. ~ Bell Hooks, #NFDB
166:Contrary to what some folks would have us believe, it is not tragic, even if undesirable, for a person to leave a liberal arts education not having read major works from this canon. Their lives are not ending. And the exciting dimension of knowledge is that we can learn a work without formally studying it. If a student graduates without reading Shakespeare and then reads or studies this work later, it does not delegitimize whatever formal course of study that was completed. ~ bell hooks, #NFDB
167:The canon is finished. Anyone who believes that one can construct a canon from the tidal wave of narrative produced today is guilty of wishful thinking. All we will have is a record of who won the prizes and achieved celebrity status. But, perhaps, the canon was always a fairly heavy-handed tool and little more than a convenience. The only thing is to follow one’s nose and listen carefully to the way others talk about books, learn who’s opinion takes you to interesting places. ~ Tim Parks, #NFDB
168:Believe nothing, O monks, merely because you have been told it … or because it is traditional, or because you yourselves have imagined it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings—that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide. ~ Gautama Buddha (attributed, Original wording, source: Kalama Sutra, Pali Canon)., #NFDB
169:The true use of Shakespeare or of Cervantes, of Homer or of Dante, of Chaucer or of Rabelais, is to augment one’s own growing inner self. Reading deeply in the Canon will not make one a better or a worse person, a more useful or more harmful citizen. The mind’s dialogue with itself is not primarily a social reality. All that the Western Canon can bring one is the proper use of one’s own solitude, that solitude whose final form is one’s confrontation with one’s own mortality. W ~ Harold Bloom, #NFDB
170:It's rare that you get to read, let alone teach, an arbitrary canon of your choosing in a tight time setting, and I tore through a fairly wide range of Indian writers, some contemporary - like Arundhati Roy and Salman Rushdie - and others older, like R.K. Narayan. And I think what happened at that stage was that I was forced to take a position in my own writing style that was more fixed, as opposed to reading a book at a time and defining myself in opposition to or in awe of it. ~ Karan Mahajan, #NFDB
171:O, that this too too solid flesh would melt Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, (135) Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this! But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two: (140) So excellent a king; that was, to this. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
172:That book of [Melancthon], to my mind, deserves not merely to live as long as books are read, but to take its place in the Church canon; whereas your book, by comparison, struck me as so worthless and poor that my heart went out to you for having defiled your lovely, brilliant flow of language with such vile stuff. I thought it outrageous to convey material of so low a quality in the trappings of such rare eloquence; it is like using gold or silver dishes to carry garden rubbish or dung. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
173:El texto más contundente que habla del canon cerrado es las Escrituras a las que nada ha sido añadido por 1.900 años: Yo testifico a todo aquel que oye las palabras de la profecía de este libro: Si alguno añadiere a estas cosas, Dios traerá sobre él las plagas que están escritas en este libro. Y si alguno quitare de las palabras del libro de esta profecía, Dios quitará su parte del libro de la vida, y de la santa ciudad y de las cosas que están escritas en este libro. APOCALIPSIS 22.18, 19 ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
174:If you know that everything comes from the mind, don't become attached. Once attached, you're unaware. But once you see your own nature, the entire Canon becomes so much prose. It's thousands of sutras and shastras only amount to a clear mind. Understanding comes in midsentence. What good are doctrines? The ultimate Truth is beyond words. Doctrines are words. They're not the Way. The Way is wordless. Words are illusions. . . . Don't cling to appearances, and you'll break through all barriers. . . . ~ Bodhidharma, #NFDB
175:These teachings in regard to woman so faithfully reflect the provisions of the canon law that it is fair to infer that their inspiration came from the same source, written by men, translated by men, revised by men. If the Bible is to be placed in the hands of our children, read in our schools, taught in our theological seminaries, proclaimed as God's law in our temples of worship, let us by all means call a council of women in New York, and give it one more revision from the woman's standpoint. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton, #NFDB
176:God directly inspired the writers of the New Testament canon and so the words recorded by them in the autographs are God’s Word absolute, inerrant and infallible in all they affirm. This inspiration extends down to the Greek equivalent of jots and tittles—Jesus was emphatic about that (Matt. 5:18). And if inspiration is applied to the smallest pen strokes, it certainly should also apply to sentences, paragraphs, pericopes, and more. The relevance of the doctrine of inspiration extends into all the corners. ~ Douglas Wilson, #NFDB
177:Over a period of nearly six months, he published twenty-eight glittering essays, strengthening his claim as arguably the foremost political pamphleteer in American history. As with The Federalist Papers, “The Defence” spilled out at a torrid pace, sometimes two or three essays per week. In all, Hamilton poured forth nearly one hundred thousand words even as he kept up a full-time legal practice. This compilation, dashed off in the heat of controversy, was to stand as yet another magnum opus in his canon. Like ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
178:Take any country that has laws against hate crimes, inspiring hatred and genocide and so on. The first thing they would do is ban the Old Testament. There's nothing like it in the literary canon that exalts genocide, to that extent. And it's not a joke either. Like where I live, New England, the people who liberated it from the native scourge were religious fundamentalist lunatics, who came waving the holy book, declaring themselves to be the children of Israel who are killing the Amalekites, like God told them. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
179:They believe the canon of Scripture is closed and that it alone is the final authority for what Christians are to believe and how they are to live as kingdom people. New doctrines cannot be revealed through prophetic words, and no prophetic words of direction, guidance, or edification belong on the same level as Scripture. Paul taught that Christians are not to “despise prophecy,” but neither are they to uncritically accept it. Rather, they are to test it and hold fast to that which is good (1 Thess. 5:20–21). ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
180:O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, (135)
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two: (140)
So excellent a king; that was, to this, ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
181:[Michael] Chabon, who is himself a brash and playful and ebullient genre-bender, writes about how our idea of what constitutes literary fiction is a very narrow idea that, world-historically, evolved over the last sixty or seventy years or so - that until the rise of that kind of third-person-limited, middle-aged-white-guy-experiencing-enlightenment story as in some way the epitome of literary fiction - before that all kinds of crazy things that we would now define as belonging to genre were part of the literary canon. ~ Emily Barton, #NFDB
182:The historical emphasis upon the individual has been at the expense of the associative and symbolic relationship that must in fact uphold the individual’s own sense of integrity. (…) “When the relation between man and God is subjective, interior (as in Luther) or in tímeles acts and logic (as in Calvin) man’s utter dependence upon God is not mediated through the concrete facts of historical life”, writes Canon Demant. And when it is not so mediated, the relation with God becomes tenuous, amorphous, and insupportable. ~ Robert A Nisbet, #NFDB
183:That beautiful sister of mine was an overwhelming and volatile mixture. One had the feeling that she'd been shot from a canon and showered her sparks over an incredulous world with no thought or care where they fell, a carbon copy of father. She was like some silvery comet who streaked through life with daring speed, the wellspring of which was an inner confidence that I deeply admired. At times, particularly in childhood, I was intimidated by her but she dictated from an aura of affection for me that was never threatening. ~ Joan Bennett, #NFDB
184:Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons, a fierce opponent of the Gnostics, attacked them for their spiritual and literary creativity, accusing them of producing a new gospel every day. Implicit in his statements was the view that where such a wealth of diverse imagery, myth, and teaching exists there can be no coherent doctrine equivalent to the dogma and canon of the mainstream Christian church. What critics from Irenaeus to contemporary scholars lose sight of is that Gnostic teaching is the direct result of the experience of gnosis. ~ Stephan A Hoeller, #NFDB
185:For some reason Canon Fenneau made me feel a little uneasy. His voice might be soft, it was also coercive. He had small eyes, a large loose mouth, the lips thick, a somewhat receding chin. The eyes were the main feature. They were unusual eyes, not only almost unnaturally small, but vague, moist, dreamy, the eyes of a medium. His cherubic side, increased by a long slightly uptilted nose, was a little too good to be true, with eyes like that. In the manner in which he gave you all his attention there was a taste for mastery. ~ Anthony Powell, #NFDB
186:We possess the Canon because we are mortal and also rather belated. There is only so much time, and time must have a stop, while there is more to read than there ever was before. From the Yahwist and Homer to Freud, Kafka, and Beckett is a journey of nearly three millennia. Since that voyage goes past harbors as infinite as Dante, Chaucer, Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy, all of whom amply compensate a lifetime's rereadings, we are in the pragmatic dilemma of excluding something else each time we read or reread extensively. ~ Harold Bloom, #NFDB
187:museums are unknown among the Igbo people. They do not even contemplate the idea of having something like a canon with the postulate: “This is how this sculpture should be made, and once it’s made it should be venerated.” No, the Igbo people want to create these things again and again, and every generation has a chance to execute its own model of art. So there’s no undue respect for what the last generation did, because if you do that too much it means that there is no need for me to do anything, because it’s already been done. ~ Chinua Achebe, #NFDB
188:Kant regards the universalizability test for maxims as focused on a very special sort of situation: one where the agent is tempted to make an exception to a recognized duty out of self-preference. The universalizability test is supposed help the agent to see, in a particular case of moral judgment, that self-preference is not a satisfactory reason for exempting yourself from a duty you recognize. Kant thinks, as a matter of human nature, that this situation arises often enough and that we need a canon of judgment to guard against it. ~ Allen W Wood, #NFDB
189:Suppose the gods were to flip a coin on the day of your birth. Heads, you will be a supremely honest and fair person throughout your life, yet everyone around you will believe you’re a scoundrel. Tails, you will cheat and lie whenever it suits your needs, yet everyone around you will believe you’re a paragon of virtue. Which outcome would you prefer? Plato’s Republic—one of the most influential works in the Western canon—is an extended argument that you should pick heads, for your own good. It is better to be than to seem virtuous. ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
190:One of the things I really like about doing work online, and the thing I like about the work I'm doing now, is that I get to meet feminists all the time and I get to read new feminists every day on the blogosphere. And it's really that kind of diversity of thought that informs me more than anything else these days. It's just kind of learning something new all the time. And I kind of love that there's not really a feminist canon; or maybe there is, but it's being changed, that it's a constantly moving canon in the feminist blogosphere. I love that. ~ Jessica Valenti, #NFDB
191:Meanwhile Canon Leigh in his study did not know what on earth he ought to do; and when he remembered that he had four daughters who each of them might have five love affairs, making twenty all told, before he got them safely steered into the harbor of matrimony--though even then there might be upsets in the harbor--he came out in a cold sweat. He spent a bad night and in the cold light of dawn sat down and penned a note to Mistress Flowerdew, asking that he might wait upon her and receive her inestimable advice upon a matter of overwhelming importance. ~ Elizabeth Goudge, #NFDB
192:The Bible represents a fundamental guidepost for millions of people on the planet, in much the same way the Koran, Torah, and Pali Canon offer guidance to people of other religions. If you and I could dig up documentation that contradicted the holy stories of Islamic belief, Judaic belief, Buddhist belief, pagan belief, should we do that? Should we wave a flag and tell the Buddhists that the Buddha did not come from a lotus blossom? Or that Jesus was not born of a literal virgin birth? Those who truly understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical. ~ Dan Brown, #NFDB
193:Trois Quatrains
à Madame M.
Au milieu du sang, au milieu du feu,
Votre âme limpide, ainsi qu’un ciel bleu,
Répand sa rosée en fraîches paroles
Sur nos cœurs troublés, mourantes corolles.
Et nous oublions, à vos clairs regards,
L’incendie et ses rouges étendards
Flottant dans la nuit. Votre voix perlée
Couvre le canon sombre et la mêlée.
Vous nous faites voir, fier ange de paix,
Que l’horreur n’est pas sur terre à jamais,
Et qu’il nous faut croire au bon vent qu’apporte
L’avenir, que la grâce n’est pas morte.
~ Charles Cros,#NFDB
194:We struggle to interpret some difficult passages, not simply because we want to weasel out of the Bible's plain demands, but also because we know that sometimes Scripture corrects Scripture. Within the canon is an ongoing argument with itself over certain subjects. In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus often pronounces, "You have heard it said [in Scripture], but I say to you . . ." Most scholars see the book of Job as an extended argument of the smug equation of good works equaling easy lives that occurs in some of the Wisdom Literature. Scripture interprets Scripture. ~ William H Willimon, #NFDB
195:The tensions between Gotama and the Buddha and between the dharma and Buddhism may have started during Gotama’s lifetime. The discourses themselves provide ample examples of how Gotama was transformed from a human being into a quasi-deity, and the dharma was transformed from a practical ethics into a metaphysical doctrine. The texts that make up the early canon cannot, therefore, be regarded as sharing an equivalent antiquity, but need to be understood as products of the doctrinal and literary evolution of a tradition that took place over at least three centuries. ~ Stephen Batchelor, #NFDB
196:The defense of the Western Canon is in no way a defense of the West or a nationalist enterprise. . . . The greatest enemies of aesthetic and cognitive standards are purported defenders who blather to us about moral and political values in literature. We do not live by the ethics of the Iliad, or by the politics of Plato. Those who teach interpretation have more in common with the Sophists than with Socrates. What can we expect Shakespeare to do for our semiruined society, since the function of Shakespearean drama has so little to do with civic virtue or social justice? ~ Harold Bloom, #NFDB
197:The way of the unconscious is different. Symbols gather round the thing to be explained, understood, interpreted. The act of becoming conscious consists in the concentric grouping of symbols around the object, all circumscribing and describing the unknown from many sides. Each symbol lays bare another essential side of the object to be grasped, points to another facet of meaning. Only the canon of these symbols congregating about the center in question, the coherent symbol group, can lead to an understanding of what the symbols point to and of what they are trying to express. ~ Erich Neumann, #NFDB
198:Gertrude Stein maintained that one wrote for oneself and for strangers, a superb recognition that I would extend into a parallel apothegm: one reads for oneself and for strangers. The Western Canon does not exist in order to augment preexisting societal elites. It is there to be read by you and by strangers, so that you and those you will never meet can encounter authentic aesthetic power and the authority of what Baudelaire (and Erich Auerbach after him) called “aesthetic dignity.” One of the ineluctable stigmata of the canonical is aesthetic dignity, which is not to be hired. ~ Harold Bloom, #NFDB
199:He that hangs himself is a virgin: virginity murders itself, and should be buried in highways, out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate offendress against nature. Virginity breeds mites, much like a cheese, consumes itself to the very paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach. Besides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of self-love, which is the most inhibited sin in the canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but lose by’t! Out with’t! within the year it will make itself two, which is a goodly increase, and the principal itself not much the worse. Away with ’t! ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
200:But unlike Paul, his alternatives present him with a "double avoidance conflict"-neither is acceptable, for to hear the plain sense of both texts means to cancel the basis for heeding either, since scripture is seen not to be free of contradiction. On the other hand, to harmonize them is to admit that one employs some type of "canon-within-the-canon" since one must choose which text's plain sense is to prevail as authoritative. The other text will be harmonized into it, as if some "less obvious" sense, unavailable by exegesis of the text itself, would give a more agreeable reading. ~ Robert M Price, #NFDB
201:Contemporary Christianity, diverse and complex as we find it, actually may show more unanimity than the Christian churches of the first and second centuries. For nearly all Christians since that time, Catholics, Protestants, or Orthodox, have shared three basic premises. First, they accept the canon of the New Testament; second, they confess the apostolic creed; and third, they affirm specific forms of church institution. But every one of these - the canon of Scripture, the creed, and the institutional structure - emerged in its present form only toward the end of the second century. ~ Elaine Pagels, #NFDB
202:For more than half a century I have tried to confront greatness directly, hardly a fashionable stance, but I see no other justification for literary criticism in the shadows of our Evening Land. Over time the strong poets settle these matters for themselves, and precursors remain alive in their progeny. Readers in our flooded landscape use their own perceptiveness. But an advance can be of some help. If you believe that the canon in time will select itself, you still can follow a critical impulse to hasten the process, as I did with the later Stevens, Ashbury, and, more recently, Henri Cole. ~ Harold Bloom, #NFDB
203:But… it was men writing about men—that much was clear at once. Everything we know about war we know with “a man’s voice.” We are all captives of “men’s” notions and “men’s” sense of war. “Men’s” words. Women are silent. No one but me ever questioned my grandmother. My mother. Even those who were at the front say nothing. If they suddenly begin to remember, they don’t talk about the “women’s” war but about the “men’s.” They tune in to the canon. And only at home or waxing tearful among their combat girlfriends do they begin to talk about their war, the war unknown to me. Not only to me, to all of us. ~ Svetlana Alexievich, #NFDB
204:It was merely a white-haired elderly cleric who came in. He stood for a moment looking round him with a slightly puzzled air as of one who fails to understand where he was or how he had come there. Such an experience was no novelty to Canon Pennyfather. It came to him in trains when he did not remember where he had come from, where he was going, or why! It came to him when he was walking along the street, it came to him when he found himself sitting on a committee. It had come to him before now when he was in his cathedral stall, and did not know whether he had already preached his sermon or was about to do so. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
205:Literature is a field a great many men consider theirs by right. Virginia Woolf committed successful competition in that field. She barely escaped the first and most effective punishment--omission from the literary canon after her death. Yet eighty or ninety years later charges of snobbery and invalidism are still used to discredit and diminish her. Marcel Proust's limitations and his neuroticism were at least as notable as hers. But that Proust needed not only a room of his own but a cork-lined one is taken as proof he was a genius. That Woolf heard the birds singing in Greek shows only that she was a sick woman. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
206:Passion is such a strong emotion that it dominates everything. It’s like a strong spice in a meal, or a dominant red in a painting. Your senses are drawn to it at the expense of everything else. Dominic and I were not physical friends, so to speak. But I did love him. We can’t help loving the people we do, can we? But that love doesn’t have to be physical. You can be equally intimate. It doesn’t matter. Do you understand what I mean, Canon Chambers?’ Sidney was thinking over what Ben was saying. Out of the window he could see a pair of swans flying low over the river and into the distance. He wondered where they were going. ~ James Runcie, #NFDB
207:I am here now to tell you that you were wrong. Family is not the only thing that matters. There are other things: Pachelbel’s Canon in D matters, and fresh-picked corn on the cob, and true friends, and the sound of the ocean, and the poems of William Carlos Williams, and the constellations in the sky, and random acts of kindness, and a garden on the day when all its flowers are at their peak. Fluffy pancakes matter and crisp clean sheets and the guitar riff in “Layla,” and the way clouds look when you are above them in an airplane. Preserving the coral reef matters, and the thirty-four paintings of Johannes Vermeer matter, and kissing matters. ~ Elin Hilderbrand, #NFDB
208:...What is it that he was? Was the idea he had for himself of lesser validity or of greater validity than someone else's idea of what he was supposed to be? Can such things even be known? But the concept of life as something whose purpose is concealed, of custom as something that may not allow for thought, of society as dedicated to a picture of itself that may be badly flawed, of an individual as real apart and beyond the social determinants defining him, which may indeed be what to him seem most unreal--in short, every perplexity pumping the human imagination seemed to lie somewhat outside her own unswerving allegiance to a canon of time-honored rules. ~ Philip Roth, #NFDB
209:Before this, the Cherokees had, like Indian tribes in general, done without formal government. As Van Every puts it: The foundation principle of Indian government had always been the rejection of government. The freedom of the individual was regarded by practically all Indians north of Mexico as a canon infinitely more precious than the individual’s duty to his community or nation. This anarchistic attitude ruled all behavior, beginning with the smallest social unit, the family. The Indian parent was constitutionally reluctant to discipline his children. Their every exhibition of self-will was accepted as a favorable indication of the development of maturing character. . . . ~ Howard Zinn, #NFDB
210:Well, you know, it's an evil thing, this attempt to reverse the process of mourning.' The Canon stepped back on to his own territory and became a different being. 'Mourning is not forgetting,' he said gently, his helplessness vanishing and his voice becoming wise. 'It is an undoing. Every minute tie has to be untied and something permanent and valuable recovered and assimilated from the knot. The end is gain, of course. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be made strong, in fact. But the process is like all other human births, painful and long and dangerous. This attempt to reverse it when the thing is practically achieved, that is wicked, an attempt to kill the spirit. The ~ Margery Allingham, #NFDB
211:Melancholy, amorous and barbaric,” these tales exalted adulterous love as the only true kind, while in the real life of the same society adultery was a crime, not to mention a sin. If found out, it dishonored the lady and shamed the husband, a fellow knight. It was understood that he had the right to kill both unfaithful wife and lover. Nothing fits in this canon. The gay, the elevating, the ennobling pursuit is founded upon sin and invites the dishonor it is supposed to avert. Courtly love was a greater tangle of irreconcilables even than usury. It remained artificial, a literary convention, a fantasy (like modern pornography) more for purposes of discussion than for everyday practice. ~ Barbara W Tuchman, #NFDB
212:This poem declares the absence of a Hindu canon.
This poem declares itself the Hindu canon.
This poem follows the monkey.
This poem worships the horse.
This poem supersedes the Vedas and the supreme scriptures.
This poem does not culture the jungle.
This poem jungles the culture.
This poem storms into temples with tanks.
This poem stands corrected: the RSS is BJP’s mother.
This poem is not vulnerable.
This poem is Section 153-A proof.
This poem is also idiot-proof.
This poem quotes Dr.Ambedkar.
This poem considers Ramayana a hetero-normative novel.
This poem breaches Section 295A of the Indian Penile Code.
This poem is pure and total blasphemy. ~ Meena Kandasamy,#NFDB
213:You can’t take a class if taking a class feels like it’s going to kill you. Faking it never works. If you don’t believe me, read Richard Wright. Read Charlotte Brontë. Read Joy Harjo. Read Toni Morrison. Read William Trevor. Read the entire Western canon. Or just close your eyes and remember everything you already know. Let whatever mysterious starlight that guided you this far guide you onward into whatever crazy beauty awaits. Trust that all you learned during your college years was worth learning, no matter what answer you have or do not have about what use it is. Know that all those stories, poems, plays, and novels are a part of you now and that they are bigger than you and they will always be. ~ Cheryl Strayed, #NFDB
214:When modern humans first invented computer ray tracing, they generated thousands if not millions of images of reflective chrome spheres hovering above checkerboard tiles, just to show off how gorgeously ray tracing rendered those reflections. When they invented lens flares in Photoshop, we all had to endure years of lens flares being added to everything, because the artists involved were super excited about a new tool they’d just figured out how to use. The invention of perspective was no different, and since it coincided with the Renaissance going on in Europe at the same time, some of the greatest art in the European canon is dripping with the 1400s CE equivalent of lens flares and hovering chrome spheres. ~ Ryan North, #NFDB
215:And the Church’s views on marriage were nothin’ short of ridiculous. It had to be celebrated in public, and the marriage was permanent, for mercy’s sake. We preferred to do things more clandestinelike, for marriage, after all, is a personal affair. And after a year, if the man was not up to his wife’s standards, she could boot him out the door. Say, “I divorce you!” and he was gone, just like that. Canon law did agree with native law in one respect. It said that a woman could own property. Nice, you say. Sure, so the woman could leave her property to the Church! Hypocrisy, pure and simple. And the feckin’ clergy—they made whores of all women who would lay with a man she lusted after. What sense is there in that? Most ~ Robin Maxwell, #NFDB
216:The number of hands that have been wrung and fingers that have been wagged at girls who dare give voice name to their interior lives suggests that the written history of the world is absolutely awash with the stuff. But the female voice, and the girl’s voice especially, is characterized mostly by the deafening silence it emits from the canon... As brightly as these girls shine, there remain wet blankets around every corner attempting to extinguish the flames in their hearts. They are dismissed as excessively feminine and juvenile, two words that mean the same thing in the hearts and minds of critics who would sooner praise a six-volume gaze at a Norwegian man’s navel than consider the possibility that there are treasures in the hearts of girls. ~ Alana Massey, #NFDB
217:By the time I first encountered Jung, as a teenager in the early 1970s, this was certainly happening. Jung may not have been accepted by mainstream intellectuals—Freud was their psychologist of choice—but he had certainly been adopted by the counterculture. When I first read Memories, Dreams, Reflections—his “so-called autobiography”—Jung was part of a canon of “alternative” thinkers that included Hermann Hesse, Alan Watts, Carlos Castaneda, D. T. Suzuki, R. D. Laing, Aldous Huxley, Jorge Luis Borges, Aleister Crowley, Timothy Leary, Madame Blavatsky, and J. R. R. Tolkien, to name a few. That his face appeared on the cover of the Beatles’ famous Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, in a crowd of other unorthodox characters, was endorsement enough. ~ Gary Lachman, #NFDB
218:The canon, “By thy God,” is the higher, and this canon is the basis of the New World. Formerly one said: “And my spirit rejoiceth in God, my Savior.” Now you will say: “And my spirit rejoiceth in God, thy Savior.” Solemnly do I say that therein is salvation. “Long live thy God!” So you will say to everyone; and, exchanging Gods, you will walk to the One. There where one might otherwise sink one can tread softly, if without negation. There where one could suffocate one can pass, by pronouncing “Thy God.” There where matter is revered one can pass only by elevating the earthly matter into the Cosmos. Essentially, one should not have any attachment to Earth... Thus, find the God of each one and exalt Him. ~ Agni Yoga, Leaves of Morya’s Garden II, Illumination, 211, (1924), #NFDB
219:We can trace the communitarian fantasy that lies at the root of all humanism back to the model of a literary society, in which participation through reading the canon reveals a common love of inspiring messages. At the heart of humanism so understood we discover a cult or club fantasy: the dream of the portentous solidarity of those who have been chosen to be allowed to read. In the ancient world—indeed, until the dawn of the modern nation-states—the power of reading actually did mean something like membership of a secret elite; linguistic knowledge once counted in many places as the provenance of sorcery. In Middle English the word 'glamour' developed out of the word 'grammar'. The person who could read would be thought easily capable of other impossibilities. ~ Peter Sloterdijk, #NFDB
220:The Book of Mormon proposes a new purpose for America: becoming a realm of righteousness rather than an empire of liberty. Against increasing wealth and inequality, the Book of Mormon advocates the cause of the poor. Against the subjection of the Indians, it promises the continent to the native people. Against republican government, it proposes righteous rule by judges and kings under God's law. Against a closed canon Bible and non-miraculous religion, the Book of Mormon stands for ongoing revelation, miracles and revelation to all nations. Against skepticism, it promotes belief; against nationalism, a universal Israel. It foresees disaster for the nation if the love of riches, resistance to revelation, and Gentile civilization prevail over righteousness, revelation and Israel. ~ Richard L Bushman, #NFDB
221:The four gospels that made it into the official canon were chosen, more or less arbitrarily, out of a larger sample of at least a dozen including the Gospels of Thomas, Peter, Nicodemus, Philip, Bartholomew and Mary Magdalen.51 Some of these gospels, the known Apocrypha of the time, were the additional gospels that Thomas Jefferson was referring to in his letter to his nephew: I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists. Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration, as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
222:As to the esoteric character of early Christianity, of which later Christianity was only an exteriorization (i.e., no longer having anything initiatic about it); we have no doubt about that, all the more since the Islamic tradition asserts it explicitly, claiming that Christianity, in its origins, was tariqa [way] and not sharia [law]; and the absence of sharia is in fact evident from the moment that, later, it had to supply it through and adaption of Roman law (whence “canon law” was derived), therefore with the contribution of something that was completely unrelated to Christianity (and it is necessary to note in this regard that the word in Arabic qanun is still used today, in contrast to sharia, to define every law that is not integrated in the tradition).
To Evola - 18 April 1949
Cairo, Egypt ~ Ren Gu non,#NFDB
223:Almost as evil as the stench was the silence. Senex, however poorly he had ended his rule, had always remembered the canonical crows. He sang them, to be sure, in a disoriented manner; but he did sing them, keeping his animals that way, banding them, unifying them.
But Cockatrice never crowed the canon. So under him the day lost its meaning and its direction, and the animals lost any sense of time or purpose. Their land became strange to them. A terrible feeling of danger entered their souls, of things undone, of treasures unprotected. They were tired all the day long, and at night they did not sleep. And it was a most pitiful sight to see, how they all went about with hunched shoulders, heads tucked in, limping here and there as if they were forever walking into an ill wind, and flinching at every sound as if the wind carried arrows. ~ Walter Wangerin Jr,#NFDB
224:Woolf worried about the childlessness from time to time, and suffered from the imposed anxiety that she was not, unlike her friend Vita Sackville-West, a real woman. I do not know what kind of woman one would have to be to stand unflinchingly in front of The Canon, but I would guess, a real one. There is something sadistic in the whip laid on women to prove themselves as mothers and wives at the same time as making their way as artists. The abnormal effort that can be diverted or divided. We all know the story of Coleridge and the Man from Porlock. What of the woman writer and a whole family of Porlocks?
For most of us the dilemma is rhetorical but those women who are driven with consummate energy through a single undeniable channel should be applauded and supported as vigorously as the men who have been setting themselves apart for centuries. ~ Jeanette Winterson,#NFDB
225:As for my faith: I've become my father's son-that is, I've become the kind of believer that Pastor Merrill used to be. Doubt one minute, faith the next-sometimes inspired, sometimes in despair. Canon Campbell taught me to ask myself a question when the latter state settles upon me. Whom do I know who's alive whom I love? Good question-one that can bring you back to life. These days, I love Dan Needham and the Rev. Katherine Keeling; I know I love them because I worry about them-Dan should lose some weight, Katherine should gain some! What I feel for Hester isn't exactly love; I admire her-she's certainly been a more heroic survivor than I've been, and her kind of survival is admirable. And then there are those distant, family ties that pass for love-I'm talking about Noah and Simon, about Aunt Martha and Uncle Alfred. I look forward to seeing them every Christmas. ~ John Irving, #NFDB
226:he pulled me up into the world of advanced literature, where you wrote essays about a line of Dante, where nothing could be made complex enough, where art dealt with the supreme, not in a high-flown sense because it was the modernist canon with which we were engaged, but in the sense of the ungraspable, which was best illustrated by Blanchot’s description of Orpheus’s gaze, the night of the night, the negation of the negation, which of course was in some way above the trivial and in many ways wretched lives we lived, but what I learned was that also our ludicrously inconsequential lives, in which we could not attain anything of what we wanted, nothing, in which everything was beyond our abilities and power, had a part in this world, and thus also in the supreme, for books existed, you only had to read them, no one but myself could exclude me from them. You just had to reach up. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
227:As individuals, we also are apt to use the canon as a cannon. We invoke the stripling warriors of Helaman and the iron rod of Lehi’s vision to ground our own version of unflinching obedience. Or we invoke the lessons of the Liahona to support our more spontaneous and flexible approach to gospel living. In America, some Mormons find Jesus’ ministry to the downtrodden and King Benjamin’s words about withholding judgment but not relief from the beggar to be apt endorsement of their preferred political policies. At the other end of the spectrum, some invoke the war in heaven fought over agency and consider the Mormon ethic of self-reliance to be adequate support for a different political outlook. Or, sometimes individuals even employ the cannon against the canon, citing inconsistencies and imperfections in the record as grounds for nonbelief in the principle of inspiration, one’s faith tradition, or even God. ~ Terryl L Givens, #NFDB
228:You can find things in the traditional religions which are very benign and decent and wonderful and so on, but I mean, the Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon. The God of the Bible - not only did He order His chosen people to carry out literal genocide - I mean, wipe out every Amalekite to the last man, woman, child, and, you know, donkey and so on, because hundreds of years ago they got in your way when you were trying to cross the desert - not only did He do things like that, but, after all, the God of the Bible was ready to destroy every living creature on earth because some humans irritated Him. That's the story of Noah. I mean, that's beyond genocide - you don't know how to describe this creature. Somebody offended Him, and He was going to destroy every living being on earth? And then He was talked into allowing two of each species to stay alive - that's supposed to be gentle and wonderful. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
229:Many [Tudor-era religious radicals] believed then, exactly as Christian fundamentalists do today, that they lived in the 'last days' before Armageddon and, again just as now, saw signs all around in the world that they took as certain proof that the Apocalypse was imminent. Again like fundamentalists today, they looked on the prospect of the violent destruction of mankind without turning a hair. The remarkable similarity between the first Tudor Puritans and the fanatics among today's Christian fundamentalists extends to their selective reading of the Bible, their emphasis on the Book of Revelation, their certainty of their rightness, even to their phraseology. Where the Book of Revelation is concerned, I share the view of Guy, that the early church fathers released something very dangerous on the world when, after much deliberation, they decided to include it in the Christian canon."
[From the author's concluding Historical Note] ~ C J Sansom,#NFDB
230:I too was very busy. Thinking. I had decided to write a novel. It would be a big book, Tolstoyan in scale, Joycean in its ambition, Shakespearean in its lyricism. Twenty years hence, the book would be the subject of graduate seminars and doctoral dissertations. The book would join the Canon of Literature. Students would speak reverentially of the text, my text, in hushed, wondrous tones. Magazine profiles would begin with The reclusive literary giant J. Maarten Troost . . . I had already decided to be enigmatic, a mystery. People would speak of Salinger, Pynchon, and Troost. I wondered if I could arrange my citizenship so that I would win both the Booker and the Pulitzer for the same book. To get in the right state of mind, I read big books—Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, Ulysses by James Joyce (okay, I skimmed parts of that one). I read King Lear. Inexplicably, Sylvia thought I was procrastinating. And ~ J Maarten Troost, #NFDB
231:Les habitants, dans leurs chambres assombries, avaient l’affolement que donnent les cataclysmes, les grands bouleversements meurtriers de la terre, contre lesquels toute sagesse et toute force sont inutiles. Car la même sensation reparaît chaque fois que l’ordre établi des choses est renversé, que la sécurité n’existe plus, que tout ce que protégeaient les lois des hommes ou celles de la nature se trouve à la merci d’une brutalité inconsciente et féroce. Le tremblement de terre écrasant sous les maisons croulantes un peuple entier ; le fleuve débordé qui roule les paysans noyés avec les cadavres des bœufs et les poutres arrachées aux toits, ou l’armée glorieuse massacrant ceux qui se défendent, emmenant les autres prisonniers, pillant au nom du Sabre et remerciant un Dieu au son du canon, sont autant de fléaux effrayants qui déconcertent toute croyance à la Justice Éternelle, toute la confiance qu’on nous enseigne en la protection du Ciel et en la raison de l’Homme. ~ Guy de Maupassant, #NFDB
232:It is now increasingly agreed that the Old Testament in its final form is a product of and response to the Babylonian Exile. This premise needs to be stated more precisely. The Torah (Pentateuch) was likely completed in response to the exile, and the subsequent formation of the prophetic corpus and the “writings” [poetic and wisdom texts] as bodies of religious literature (canon) is to be understood as a product of Second Temple Judaism [postexilic period]. This suggests that by their intention, these materials are . . . an intentional and coherent response to a particular circumstance of crisis. . . . Whatever older materials may have been utilized (and the use of old materials can hardly be doubted), the exilic and/ or postexilic location of the final form of the text suggests that the Old Testament materials, understood normatively, are to be taken [understood] precisely in an acute crisis of displacement, when old certitudes—sociopolitical as well as theological—had failed.[ ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
233:The great difference is that this version relies on the work of W. W. Rockhill. Rockhill was an American diplomat who lived in China in the nineteenth century, a linguistic genius—he must have been the first American to know Tibetan; he also produced a Chinese-English dictionary. And in 1884 he published a life of the Buddha according to the Tibetan canoṇ It draws from material of equivalent antiquity to that of the Pali Canon, from a source called the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya. He went through it in the 1870s and pulled out of it a story that is almost identical to the story that I reconstructed from the Pali materials. Somewhat embarrassingly, I hadn’t actually read Rockhill until quite recently. I didn’t think the Tibetan material would be relevant. But I was wrong. The Tibetan Vinaya, from the Mūlasarvāstivāda school, gives us the same story, with the same characters, and the same relationships. The two versions don’t agree in every detail, but they’re remarkably similar. ~ Stephen Batchelor, #NFDB
234:Certainly, we can no longer look upon the canon of Western art - Greco-Roman as revived, extended, and graced by the Renaissance - as -the- tradition in art, or even any longer as distinctly and uniquely -ours-. That canon is in fact only one tradition among many, and indeed in its strict adherence to representational form is rather the exception in the whole gallery of -human- art. Such an extension of the resources of the past, for the modern artist, implies a different and more comprehensive understanding of the term "human" itself: a Sumerian figure of a fertility goddess is as "human" to us as a Greek Aphrodite. When the sensibility of an age can accommodate the alien "inhuman" forms of primitive art side by side with the classic "human" figures of Greece or the Renaissance, it should be obvious that the attitude toward man that we call classical humanism - which is the intellectual expression of the spirit that informs the classical canon of Western art - has also gone by the boards. ~ William Barrett, #NFDB
235:People who hold the position of outsiders in relation to certain established groups, but who feel equal or even superior to them on grounds of their personal achievements or sometimes even their wealth, may bitterly resist the humiliations to which they are exposed; they may also be fully aware of the human frailties of the established group. But as long as the power of the establishment remains intact it and its canon of behavior and feeling and exert a strong attraction on outsiders. It is often the latters' greatest wish to be recognised as equals by those who treat them so openly as their inferiors. The curious fixation of the wishes of people in outsider positions on recognition and acceptance by their establishment causes this goal to become the focus of all their acts and desires, their source of meaning. No other esteem, no other success carries so much weight for them as the esteem of one circle in which they are regarded as inferior outsiders, as success in their local establishment. ~ Norbert Elias, #NFDB
236:Mais les vrais voyageurs sont ceux-là seuls qui partent
Pour partir; coeurs légers, semblables aux ballons,
De leur fatalité jamais ils ne s'écartent,
Et, sans savoir pourquoi, disent toujours: Allons!
Ceux-là dont les désirs ont la forme des nues,
Et qui rêvent, ainsi qu'un conscrit le canon,
De vastes voluptés, changeantes, inconnues,
Et dont l'esprit humain n'a jamais su le nom!"
[...]
"Amer savoir, celui qu'on tire du voyage!
Le monde, monotone et petit, aujourd'hui,
Hier, demain, toujours, nous fait voir notre image:
Une oasis d'horreur dans un désert d'ennui!
Faut-il partir? rester? Si tu peux rester, reste;
Pars, s'il le faut. L'un court, et l'autre se tapit
Pour tromper l'ennemi vigilant et funeste,
Le Temps! Il est, hélas! des coureurs sans répit,
Comme le Juif errant et comme les apôtres,
À qui rien ne suffit, ni wagon ni vaisseau,
Pour fuir ce rétiaire infâme; il en est d'autres
Qui savent le tuer sans quitter leur berceau. ~ Charles Baudelaire,#NFDB
237:Like most Christians, I have my own canon, in which I hear God speaking most directly to me, but I also like the parts in which God sounds like an alien, since those parts remind me that God does not belong to me. I do not pretend to read the Bible any more objectively than those who wrote it for me. To read it literally strikes me as a terrible refusal of their literary gifts.
I will keep the Bible, which remains the Word of God for me, but always the Word as heard by generations of human beings as flawed as I. As beautifully as these witnesses write, their divine inspiration can never be separated from their ardent desires; their genuine wish to serve God cannot be divorced from their self-interest. That God should use such blemished creatures to communicate God's reality so well makes the Bible its own kind of miracle, but I hope never to put the book ahead of the people whom the book calls me to love and serve.
I will keep the Bible as a field guide, which was never intended to be a substitute for the field. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor,#NFDB
238:Moreover, the change hinted at in this statement does not concern merely the social position of the artist. With it, the canon of artistic creation, or expressed differently, the structure of art, also changed. But such connections do not emerge very clearly if the transition from art production for a personally known employer or patron to art production for a paying public, from patronage to the free, more or less anonymous market, is considered merely as an economic event. To take this view is to overlook an essential point: that this was a structural change in the relation of people to each other, which can be precisely defined. In particular, it involved a power-gain by the artist in relation to his public. This human change, this change in the balance of power — not simply between individuals as such but between them as representatives of different social functions and positions, between people in their capacity as artists and as public — remains incomprehensible as long as the pattern of our thinking aims solely at spinning out dehumanised abstractions. ~ Norbert Elias, #NFDB
239:Le Boucher, the early Claude Chabrol that Hitch, according to lore, wished he’d directed. Dark Passage, with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall—a San Francisco valentine, all velveteen with fog, and antecedent to any movie in which a character goes under the knife to disguise himself. Niagara, starring Marilyn Monroe; Charade, starring Audrey Hepburn; Sudden Fear!, starring Joan Crawford’s eyebrows. Wait Until Dark: Hepburn again, a blind woman stranded in her basement apartment. I’d go berserk in a basement apartment. Now, movies that postdate Hitch: The Vanishing, with its sucker-punch finale. Frantic, Polanski’s ode to the master. Side Effects, which begins as a Big Pharma screed before slithering like an eel into another genre altogether. Okay. Popular film misquotes. “Play it again, Sam”: Casablanca, allegedly, except neither Bogie nor Bergman ever said it. “He’s alive”: Frankenstein doesn’t gender his monster; cruelly, it’s just “It’s alive.” “Elementary, my dear Watson” does crop up in the first Holmes film of the talkie era, but appears nowhere in the Conan Doyle canon. ~ A J Finn, #NFDB
240:There was always a little difficulty as to who should decorate what, all the ladies having the lowest opinion of each other's decorative powers. There was especial difficulty over the side chapel vases . . . If there is one thing in the world that every woman is quite sure no other woman but herself can do it is vases. . . The vases on the high altar were of course, as always, the duty of the wife or daughter of the Canon in residence (though goodness knew that poor Nell Roderick could no more make dahlia stick upright than fly), but the side chapel vases were only filled on benefactors' day and there was no real precedence as to who did them. Mrs Elphinstone, as wife of the Senior Canon, naturally thought she should, and Miss Roderick thought she should because she was doing the high altar vases and might as well do the lot together, and Mrs Allenby thought she should because she had once been to the Scilly Isles and therefore must know more about flowers than anyone else, and no one knew why Mrs Phillips, who was only the organists's wife, thought she should . . . The Archdeacon had no female dependents. ~ Elizabeth Goudge, #NFDB
241:
An Informal Integral Canon: Selected books on Integral Science, Philosophy and the Integral Transformation
Sri Aurobindo - The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo - The Synthesis of Yoga
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - The Phenomenon of Man
Jean Gebser - The Ever-Present Origin
Edward Haskell - Full Circle - The Moral Force of Unified Science
Oliver L. Reiser - Cosmic Humanism and World Unity
Christopher Hills - Nuclear Evolution: Discovery of the Rainbow Body
The Mother - Mother's Agenda
Erich Jantsch - The Self-Organizing Universe - Scientific and Human Implications of the Emerging Paradigm of Evolution
T. R. Thulasiram - Arut Perum Jyothi and Deathless Body
Kees Zoeteman - Gaiasophy
Ken Wilber - Sex Ecology Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution
Don Edward Beck - Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change
Kundan Singh - The Evolution of Integral Yoga: Sri Aurobindo, Sri Ramakrishna, and Swami Vivekananda
Sean Esbjorn-Hargens - Integral Ecology: Uniting Multiple Perspectives on the Natural World
~ M Alan Kazlev, Kheper, #reading list,#NFDB
242:There are no marks in these books which would attest a divine origin. . . . both Judith and Tobit contain historical, chronological and geographical errors. The books justify falsehood and deception and make salvation to depend upon works of merit. . . . Ecclesiasticus and the Wisdom of Solomon inculcate a morality based upon expediency. Wisdom teaches the creation of the world out of pre-existent matter (11:17). Ecclesiasticus teaches that the giving of alms makes atonement for sin (3:30). In Baruch it is said that God hears the prayers of the dead (3:4), and in I Maccabees there are historical and geographical errors.17 It was not until 1546, at the Council of Trent, that the Roman Catholic Church officially declared the Apocrypha to be part of the canon (with the exception of 1 and 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh). It is significant that the Council of Trent was the response of the Roman Catholic Church to the teachings of Martin Luther and the rapidly spreading Protestant Reformation, and the books of the Apocrypha contain support for the Catholic teaching of prayers for the dead and justification by faith plus works, not by faith alone ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
243:Always something in the nature of a Boil upon the face of society, Mr. Honeythunder expanded into an inflammatory Wen in Minor Canon Corner. Though it was not literally true, as was facetiously charged against him by public unbelievers, that he called aloud to his fellow-creatures: ‘Curse your souls and bodies, come here and be blessed!’ still his philanthropy was of that gunpowderous sort that the difference between it and animosity was hard to determine. You were to abolish military force, but you were first to bring all commanding officers who had done their duty, to trial by court-martial for that offence, and shoot them. You were to abolish war, but were to make converts by making war upon them, and charging them with loving war as the apple of their eye. You were to have no capital punishment, but were first to sweep off the face of the earth all legislators, jurists, and judges, who were of the contrary opinion. You were to have universal concord, and were to get it by eliminating all the people who wouldn’t, or conscientiously couldn’t, be concordant. You were to love your brother as yourself, but after an indefinite interval of maligning him (very much as if you hated him), and calling him all manner of names. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
244:Such invocations of fin-de-siècle manliness are so ubiquitous in the correspondence and memoranda of these years that it is difficult to localize their impact. Yet they surely reflect a very particular moment in the history of European masculinity. Historians of gender have suggested that around the last decades of the nineteenth and the first of the twentieth century, a relatively expansive form of patriarchal identity centred on the satisfaction of appetites (food, sex, commodities) made way for something slimmer, harder and more abstinent. At the same time, competition from subordinate and marginalized masculinities – proletarian and non-white, for example – accentuated the expression of ‘true masculinity’ within the elites. Among specifically military leadership groups, stamina, toughness, duty and unstinting service gradually displaced an older emphasis on elevated social origin, now perceived as effeminate.160 ‘To be masculine [. . .] as masculine as possible [. . .] is the true distinction in [men’s] eyes,’ wrote the Viennese feminist and freethinker Rosa Mayreder in 1905. ‘They are insensitive to the brutality of defeat or the sheer wrongness of an act if it only coincides with the traditional canon of masculinity. ~ Christopher Clark, #NFDB
245:The Gospels are the canon within the canon. The Bible, as martin Luther said, is the cradle that holds Christ. The point of gravity is the story of Jesus, the Gospel. The closer a text of the Bible is to that story or to the heart of that story's message, the more authority it has. The father away it is, the less its authority.
It's a story of how the God who spoke through prophets and poets was the same God who showed up later in a human body and walked around like he didn't understand the rules. Jesus said God's would is like a father running into the road to meet his no-good child as if the child's no-goodness was no matter.
Jesus' stories seemed like nonsense, but then they also seemed like absolute truth at the same time. He just kept saying that the things we think are so important rarely are: things like holding grudges and making judgments and hoarding wealth and being first. Then one night, this Jesus got all weird at dinner and said a loaf of bread was his body and a cup of wine was his blood, and all of it is for forgiveness. All of it means our no-goodness is no matter. Then he went and got himself killed in a totally preventable way. Three days later he blew his friends' minds by showing back up and being all like, "You guys have any snacks? I'm starving. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber,#NFDB
246:From this state of bewildered scepticism the student may take a leap of faith. And the leap is never backwards into the old curriculum, the old canon, the old belief in objective standards and settled ways of life. It is always a leap forward, into the world of free choice and free opinion, in which nothing has authority and nothing is objectively right or wrong. In this postmodern world there is no such things as adverse judgement – unless it be judgement of the adverse judge. It is a playground world, in which all are equally entitled tot their culture, their lifestyle and their opinions.
And that is why, paradoxically, the postmodern curriculum is so censorious – in just the way that liberalism is censorious. When everything is permitted, it is vital to forbid the forbidder. All serious cultures are founded on the distinctions between right and wrong, true and false, good and bad taste, knowledge and ignorance. It was to the perpetuation of those distinctions that the humanities, in the past were devoted. Hence the assault on the curriculum, and the attempt to impose a standard of 'political correctness' – which means, in effect, a standard of non-exclusion and non-judgement – is also designed to authorise a vehement kind of judgement, against all those authorities that question the orthodoxy of the left. ~ Roger Scruton,#NFDB
247:Is Twee the right word for it, for the strangely persistent modern sensibility that fructifies in the props departments of Wes Anderson movies, tapers into the waxed mustache-ends of young Brooklynites on bicycles, and detonates in a yeasty whiff every time someone pops open a microbrewed beer? Well, it is now. An across-the-board examination of this thing is long overdue, and the former Spin writer Marc Spitz is to be congratulated on having risen to the challenge. With Twee: The Gentle Revolution in Music, Books, Television, Fashion, and Film , he’s given it a name, and he’s given it a canon. (The canon is crucial, as we shall see.) And if his book is a little all over the place—well, so is Twee. Spitz hails it as “the most powerful youth movement since Punk and Hip-Hop.” He doesn’t even put an arguably in there, bless him. You’re Twee if you like artisanal hot sauce. You’re Twee if you hate bullies. Indeed, it’s Spitz’s contention that we’re all a bit Twee: the culture has turned. Twee’s core values include “a healthy suspicion of adulthood”; “a steadfast focus on our essential goodness”; “the cultivation of a passion project” (T-shirt company, organic food truck); and “the utter dispensing with of ‘cool’ as it’s conventionally known, often in favor of a kind of fetishization of the nerd, the geek, the dork, the virgin. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
248:To most people today, the name Snow White evokes visions of dwarfs whistling as they work, and a wide–eyed, fluttery princess singing, "Some day my prince will come." (A friend of mine claims this song is responsible for the problems of a whole generation of American women.) Yet the Snow White theme is one of the darkest and strangest to be found in the fairy tale canon — a chilling tale of murderous rivalry, adolescent sexual ripening, poisoned gifts, blood on snow, witchcraft, and ritual cannibalism. . .in short, not a tale originally intended for children's tender ears. Disney's well–known film version of the story, released in 1937, was ostensibly based on the German tale popularized by the Brothers Grimm. Originally titled "Snow–drop" and published in Kinder–und Hausmarchen in 1812, the Grimms' "Snow White" is a darker, chillier story than the musical Disney cartoon, yet it too had been cleaned up for publication, edited to emphasize the good Protestant values held by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. (...) Variants of Snow White were popular around the world long before the Grimms claimed it for Germany, but their version of the story (along with Walt Disney's) is the one that most people know today. Elements from the story can be traced back to the oldest oral tales of antiquity, but the earliest known written version was published in Italy in 1634. ~ Terri Windling, #NFDB
249:School of Resentment is a term coined by critic Harold Bloom to describe related schools of literary criticism which have gained prominence in academia since the 1970s and which Bloom contends are preoccupied with political and social activism at the expense of aesthetic values.[1]
Broadly, Bloom terms "Schools of Resentment" approaches associated with Marxist critical theory, including African American studies, Marxist literary criticism, New Historicist criticism, feminist criticism, and poststructuralism—specifically as promoted by Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. The School of Resentment is usually defined as all scholars who wish to enlarge the Western canon by adding to it more works by authors from minority groups without regard to aesthetic merit and/or influence over time, or those who argue that some works commonly thought canonical promote sexist, racist or otherwise biased values and should therefore be removed from the canon. Bloom contends that the School of Resentment threatens the nature of the canon itself and may lead to its eventual demise. Philosopher Richard Rorty[2] agreed that Bloom is at least partly accurate in describing the School of Resentment, writing that those identified by Bloom do in fact routinely use "subversive, oppositional discourse" to attack the canon specifically and Western culture in general. ~ Harold Bloom,#NFDB
250:O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on: and yet, within a month--
Let me not think on't--Frailty, thy name is woman!--
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears:--why she, even she--
O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: within a month:
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not nor it cannot come to good:
But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue. ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
251:I wasn't an Irishman, but I knew how it felt to have someone standing over you, controlling your life and wanting to call it something else. From the people at Christian Fellowship to First Academy to my parents to Confucius to thousands of years of ass-backwards Chinese thinking, I knew how it felt. Everything my parents did to me and their parents did to them was justified under the banner of Tradition, Family, and Culture. And when it wasn't them it was someone impressing Christianity on me and when it wasn't Christianity it was whiteness.
Those other kids had more vocabs than me and more knowledge of the American canon. At that age, I didn't know what Citizen Kane, Gone with the Wind, or even A Christmas Story was. There were so many gaps in my American cultural understanding because we just didn't get it at home. It always hurt me writing or debating because I didn't share their references, but that summer I was determined that it wouldn't stop me. I wouldn't try to talk about things they knew anymore. I would use the references that made sense to me and make them catch up. Before I ever read a marketing book in college, I understood what "pull marketing" was. Unlike the other kids, I wasn't memorizing words or events. I was speaking from experience. For the first time, I wasn't arguing just to argue. I wasn't wildin' out' couse Iw as bored. I finally found another mind I fucked with and it was just my luck he was dead-ass Irishman. (123-124) ~ Eddie Huang,#NFDB
252:But now it seems clear that literary criticism was inherently doomed. Explicitly or otherwise it had based itself on a structure of echelons and hierarchies; it was about the talent elite. And the structure atomized as soon as the forces of democratization gave their next concerted push.
Those forces – incomparably the most potent in our culture – have gone on pushing. And they are now running up against a natural barrier. Some citadels, true, have proved stormable. You can become rich without having any talent (via the scratchcard and the rollover jackpot). You can become famous without having any talent (by abasing yourself on some TV nerdathon; a clear improvement on the older method of simply killing a celebrity and inheriting the aura). But you cannot become talented without having any talent. Therefore, talent must go.
Literary criticism, now almost entirely confined to the universities, thus moves against talent by moving against the canon. Academic preferment will not come from a respectful study of Wordsworth’s poetics; it will come from a challenging study of his politics – his attitude toward the poor, say, or his unconscious ‘valorization’ of Napoleon; and it will come still faster if you ignore Wordsworth and elevate some (justly) neglected contemporary, by which process the canon may be quietly and steadily sapped. A brief consultation of the Internet will show that meanwhile, everyone has become a literary critic – or at least, a book-reviewer. ~ Martin Amis,#NFDB
253:The main practical difficulty, with some at least of the Peace-makers, is how to carry themselves toward the undoers of peace, the disuniters of souls. Perhaps the most potent of these are not those powers of the church visible who care for canon and dogma more than for truth, and for the church more than for Christ; who take uniformity for unity; who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, nor knowing what spirit they are of; such men, I say, are perhaps neither the most active nor the most potent force working for the disintegration of the body of Christ.
I imagine also that neither are the party-liars of politics the worst foes to divine unity, ungenerous, and often knowingly falseas they are t their opponents, to whom they seem to have no desire to be honest and fair.
I think rather, they must be the babbling lairs of the social circle, and the faithless brothers and unloving sisters of disunited human families.
But why inquire?
Every self-assertion, every form of self-seeking however small or poor, world-noble or grotesque, is a separating and scattering force. And these forces are multitudinous, these points of radial repulsion are innumerable, because of the prevailing passion of mean souls to seem great, and feel important.
…the partisan of self will sometimes gnaw asunder the most precious of bonds, poisen whole broods of infant loves.
Such real schismatics go about, where not inventing evil, yet rejoicing in iniquity; mishearing; misrepresenting; paralyzing affection; separating hearts. ~ George MacDonald,#NFDB
254:The main practical difficulty, with some at least of the Peace-makers, is how to carry themselves toward the undoers of peace, the disuniters of souls. Perhaps the most potent of these are not those powers of the church visible who care for canon and dogma more than for truth, and for the church more than for Christ; who take uniformity for unity; who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, nor knowing what spirit they are of; such men, I say, are perhaps neither the most active nor the most potent force working for the disintegration of the body of Christ.
I imagine also that neither are the party-liars of politics the worst foes to divine unity, ungenerous, and often knowingly false, as they are to their opponents, to whom they seem to have no desire to be honest and fair.
I think rather, they must be the babbling lairs of the social circle, and the faithless brothers and unloving sisters of disunited human families.
But why inquire?
Every self-assertion, every form of self-seeking however small or poor, world-noble or grotesque, is a separating and scattering force. And these forces are multitudinous, these points of radial repulsion are innumerable, because of the prevailing passion of mean souls to seem great, and feel important.
…the partisan of self will sometimes gnaw asunder the most precious of bonds, poison whole broods of infant loves.
Such real schismatics go about, where not inventing evil, yet rejoicing in iniquity; mishearing; misrepresenting; paralyzing affection; separating hearts. ~ George MacDonald,#NFDB
255:Todd Billings has articulated the dynamics of theological interpretation in a way that resonates with my account of Derrida’s emphasis on context and communal criteria for what constitutes a “good” interpretation. As Billings winsomely puts it, the ecclesial and theological interpretation of Scripture invites us into “the spacious and yet specified place of wrestling with, chewing on, and performing Scripture.”[422] The generous boundaries (spacious yet specified) of ecclesial interpretation constitute a context for interpreting well, and for knowing what counts as “good” interpretation. Billings captures this dynamic well: Christian readers occupy a spacious territory when they come to know the inexhaustible power of the Spirit’s word through Scripture, a word that is both strangely close to us and yet always meeting us anew as a stranger. Our imaginations need rejuvenation so that we can perceive the wide, expansive drama of salvation into which God incorporates us as readers of Scripture. Yet, as Christians, we also interpret Scripture from a specified location. We are not simply modern individuals looking at an ancient text, or members of a social club looking to an instruction manual on how to make the church run more effectively. We are people who interpret Scripture “in Christ,” as those united to the living Christ by the Holy Spirit’s mediation and power.[423] Such a stipulation of the church (and the canon) as the context for “good” scriptural interpretation is completely consistent with Derrida’s account of iterability and decontextualization. ~ James K A Smith, #NFDB
256:«El estudio de la literatura, por mucho que alguien lo dirija, no salvara a nadie ni mejorará a la sociedad. Shakespeare no nos hará mejores, tampoco nos hará peores, pero puede que nos enseñe a oírnos cuando hablamos con nosotros mismos. Por consiguiente, puede que nos enseñe a aceptar el cambio, en nosotros y en los demás, y quizá la forma definitiva de ese cambio: para nosotros, Hamlet es el embajador de la muerte, quizá uno de los pocos embajadores jamás enviados por la muerte que no nos miente acerca de nuestra inevitable relación con ese país ignoto. La relación es del todo solitaria, a pesar de todos los obscenos intentos de la tradición por socializarla.» «Si leemos el canon occidental con la finalidad de conformar nuestros valores sociales, políticos, personales o morales, creo firmemente que nos convertiremos en monstruos entregados al egoísmo y la explotación. Leer al servicio de cualquier ideología, a mi juicio, es lo mismo que no leer nada. La recepción de la fuerza estética nos permite aprender a hablar de nosotros mismos y a soportarnos. La verdadera utilidad de Shakespeare, de Cervantes, de Homero o de Dante, de Chaucer o de Rabelais, consiste en contribuir al crecimiento de nuestro yo interior. Leer a fondo el canon no nos hará mejores o peores personas, ciudadanos mas útiles o dañinos. El diálogo de la mente consigo misma no es primordialmente una realidad social. Lo único que el canon occidental puede provocar es que utilicemos adecuadamente nuestra soledad, esa soledad que, en su forma última, no es sino la confrontación con nuestra propia mortalidad.» ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
257:The term satipaṭṭhāna can be explained as a compound of sati, "mindfulness" or "awareness", and upaṭṭhāna, with the u of the latter term dropped by vowel elision. The Pāli term upaṭṭhāna literally means "placing near", and in the present context refers to a particular way of "being present" and "attending" to something with mindfulness. In the discourses [of the Buddha], the corresponding verb upaṭṭhahati often denotes various nuances of "being present", or else "attending". Understood in this way, "satipaṭṭhāna" means that sati "stands by", in the sense of being present; sati is "ready at hand", in the sense of attending to the current situation. Satipaṭṭhāna can then be translated as "presence of mindfulness" or as "attending with mindfulness."
The commentaries, however, derive satipaṭṭhāna from the word "foundation" or "cause" (paṭṭhāna). This seems unlikely, since in the discourses contained in the Pāli canon the corresponding verb paṭṭhahati never occurs together with sati. Moreover, the noun paṭṭhāna is not found at all in the early discourses, but comes into use only in the historically later Abhidhamma and the commentaries. In contrast, the discourses frequently relate sati to the verb upaṭṭhahati, indicating that "presence" (upaṭṭhāna) is the etymologically correct derivation. In fact, the equivalent Sanskrit term is smṛtyupasthāna, which shows that upasthāna, or its Pāli equivalent upaṭṭhāna, is the correct choice for the compound. ~ An layo,#NFDB
258:We bring this lamentable recital to a close. There can be no doubt that John's remarkable vision had come to pass: A city on seven hills sated with wealth, which claimed a special relationship to God and Christ, literally ruled over the kings of the earth. As with the other identifying criteria John provides, there is only one city in history (and only one today) which passes this test. Peter de Rosa reminds us of what must have shocked John: Jesus renounced possessions. He constantly taught: "Go, sell all thou hast and give to the poor, then come and follow me." He preached doom to the rich and powerful. . . . Christ's Vicar lives surrounded by treasures, some of pagan origin. Any suggestion that the pope should sell all he has and give to the poor is greeted with derision as impractical. The rich young man in the gospel reacted in the same way. Throughout his life, Jesus lived simply; he died naked, offering the sacrifice of his life on the cross. When the pope renews that sacrifice at pontifical high mass, no greater contrast could be imagined. Without any sense of irony, Christ's Vicar is clad in gold and the costliest silks. . . . the pope has a dozen glorious titles, including State Sovereign. The pope's aides also have titles somewhat unexpected in the light of the Sermon on the Mount: Excellency, Eminence, Your Grace, My Lord, Illustrious One, Most Reverend, and so on. . . . Peter, always penniless, would be intrigued to know that according to canon 1518. . .his successor is "the supreme administrator and manager of all church properties." Also that the Vatican has its own bank. . . .30 ~ Dave Hunt, #NFDB
259:These autonomous, self-regulating properties of holons within the growing embryo are a vital safeguard; they ensure that whatever accidental hazards arise during development, the end-product will be according to norm. In view of the millions and millions of cells which divide, differentiate, and move about in the constantly changing environment of fluids and neighbouring tissues-Waddington called it 'the epigenetic landscape'-it must be assumed that no two embryos, not even identical twins, are formed in exactly the same way. The self-regulating mechanisms which correct deviations from the norm and guarantee, so to speak, the end-result, have been compared to the homeostatic feedback devices in the adult organism-so biologists speak of 'developmental homeostasis'. The future individual is potentially predetermined in the chromosomes of the fertilised egg; but to translate this blueprint into the finished product, billions of specialized cells have to be fabricated and moulded into an integrated structure. The mind boggles at the idea that the genes of that one fertilised egg should contain built-in provisions for each and every particular contingency which every single one of its fifty-six generations of daughter cells might encounter in the process. However, the problem becomes a little less baffling if we replace the concept of the 'genetic blueprint', which implies a plan to be rigidly copied, by the concept of a genetic canon of rules which are fixed, but leave room for alternative choices, i.e., flexible strategies guided by feedbacks and pointers from the environment. But how can this formula be applied to the development of the embryo? ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
260:Yet this unlearning is precisely what needs to be done if we are to make the shift from a belief-based Buddhism (version 1.0) to a praxis-based Buddhism (version 2.0). We have to train ourselves to the point where on hearing or reading a text from the canon our initial response is no longer “Is that true?” but “Does this work?” At the same time, we also need to undertake a critical analysis of the texts themselves in order to uncover, as best we can at this distance in time, the core terms and narrative strategies that inform a particular passage or discourse. If we subtract the words “noble truth” from the phrase “four noble truths,” we are simply left with “four.” And the most economic formulation of the Four, to be found throughout Buddhist traditions, is this: Suffering (dukkha) Arising (samudaya) Ceasing (nirodha) Path (magga) Once deprived of the epithet “noble truth” and no longer phrased in propositional language, we arrive at the four keystones on which both Buddhism 1.0 and Buddhism 2.0 are erected. Just as there are four nucleobases (cytosine, guanine, adenine, and thymine) that make up DNA, the nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions for all living organisms, one might say that suffering, arising, ceasing, and path are the four nucleobases that make up the dharma, the body of instructive ideas, values, and practices that give rise to all forms of Buddhism. ( 9 ) Craving is repetitive, it wallows in attachment and greed, obsessively indulging in this and that: the craving of sensory desire, craving for being, craving for non-being. —THE FIRST DISCOURSE Following Carol S. Anderson (1999), I translate samudaya as “arising” rather than the more familiar “origiṇ” I also ~ Stephen Batchelor, #NFDB
261:And I *know* I wrote in the above that I hate biographies and reviews that focus on the psychological, surface detail, especially when they pertain to women writers, because I think it’s really about the cult of the personality, which is essentially problematic, and I think simplistically psychologizing which biographies are so wont to do is really problematic, and dangerous, especially when dealing with complicated women who just by being writers at a certain time and age were labelled as nonconformist, or worse, hysterical or ill or crazy, and I think branding these women as femme fatales is all so often done. And I know in a way I’m contributing to this by posting their bad-ass photos, except hopefully I am humanizing them and thinking of them as complicated selves and intellects AND CELEBRATING THEM AS WRITERS as opposed to straight-up objectifying. One particular review long ago in Poetry that really got my goat was when Brian Phillips used Gertrude Stein’s line about Djuna Barnes having nice ankles as an opener in a review of her poetry, and to my mind it was meant to be entirely dismissive, as of course, Stein was being as well. Stein was many important revolutionary things to literature, but a champion of her fellow women writers she was not. They published my letter, but then let the guy write a reply and scurry to the library and actually read Nightwood, one of my all-time, all-times, and Francis Bacon’s too, there’s another anecdote. And it’s burned in my brain his response, which was as dismissive and bourgeois as the review. I don’t remember the exact wordage, but he concluded by summing up that Djuna Barnes was a minor writer. Well, fuck a duck, as Henry Miller would say. And that is how the canon gets made. ~ Kate Zambreno, #NFDB
262:You’re right: if there’s sentient life behind the border, it probably won’t share my goals. Unlike the people in this room, who all want exactly the same things in life as I do, and have precisely the same tastes in food, art, music, and sex. Unlike the people of Schur, and Cartan, and Zapata — who I came here in the hope of protecting, after losing my own home — who doubtless celebrate all the same festivals, delight in the same songs and stories, and gather every fortieth night to watch actors perform the same plays, in the same language, from the same undisputed canon, as the people I left behind.
“If there’s sentient life behind the border, of course we couldn’t empathize with it. These creatures are unlikely to possess cute mammalian neonate faces, or anything else we might mistake for human features. None of us could have the imagination to get over such insurmountable barriers, or the wit to apply such difficult abstractions as the General Intelligence theorem — though since every twelve-year-old on my home world was required to master that result, it must be universally known on this side of the border.
“You’re right: we should give up responsibility for making any difficult moral judgments, and surrender to the dictates of natural selection. Evolution cares so much about our happiness that no one who’s obeyed an inherited urge has ever suffered a moment’s regret for it. History is full of joyful case studies of people who followed their natural instincts at every opportunity — fucking whoever they could, stealing whatever they could, destroying anything that stood in their way — and the verdict is unanimous: any behavior that ever helped someone disseminate their genes is a recipe for unalloyed contentment, both for the practitioners, and for everyone around them. ~ Greg Egan,#NFDB
263:Litany
This is a litany of lost things,
a canon of possessions dispossessed,
a photograph, an old address, a key.
It is a list of words to memorize
or to forget–of amo, amas, amat,
the conjugations of a dead tongue
in which the final sentence has been spoken.
This is the liturgy of rain,
falling on mountain, field, and ocean–
indifferent, anonymous, complete–
of water infinitesimally slow,
sifting through rock, pooling in darkness,
gathering in springs, then rising without our agency,
only to dissolve in mist or cloud or dew.
This is a prayer to unbelief,
to candles guttering and darkness undivided,
to incense drifting into emptiness.
It is the smile of a stone Madonna
and the silent fury of the consecrated wine,
a benediction on the death of a young god,
brave and beautiful, rotting on a tree.
This is a litany to earth and ashes,
to the dust of roads and vacant rooms,
to the fine silt circling in a shaft of sun,
settling indifferently on books and beds.
This is a prayer to praise what we become,
'Dust thou art, to dust thou shalt return.'
Savor its taste–the bitterness of earth and ashes.
This is a prayer, inchoate and unfinished,
for you, my love, my loss, my lesion,
a rosary of words to count out time's
illusions, all the minutes, hours, days
the calendar compounds as if the past
existed somewhere–like an inheritance
still waiting to be claimed.
10
Until at last it is our litany, mon vieux,
my reader, my voyeur, as if the mist
steaming from the gorge, this pure paradox,
the shattered river rising as it falls–
splintering the light, swirling it skyward,
neither transparent nor opaque but luminous,
even as it vanishes–were not our life.
~ Dana Gioia,#NFDB
264:Virginity being blown down man will quicklier be blown up; marry, in blowing him down again, with the breach yourselves made you lose your city. It is not politic in the commonwealth of nature to preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational increase, and there was never virgin got till virginity was first lost. That you were made of is mettel to make virgins. Virginity, by being once lost may be ten times found; by being ever kept it is ever lost. ‘Tis too cold a companion. Away with ‘t!
There’s little can be said in’t; ’tis against the rule of nature. To speak on the part of virginity, is to accuse your mothers; which is most infallible disobedience. He that hangs himself is a virgin; virginity murthers itself, and should be buried in highways out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate offendress against nature. Virginity breeds mites, much like a cheese; consumes itself to the very paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach. Besides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of self-love which is the most inhibited sin in the canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but loose by’t. Out with ‘t! Within the year it will make itself two, which is a goodly increase, and the principal itself not much the worse. Away with ‘t! Tis a commodity that will lose the gloss with lying; the longer kept, the less worth: off with ’t, while ’tis vendible; answer the time of request. Virginity, like an old courtier, wears her cap out of fashion; richly suited, but unsuitable: just like the brooch and the toothpick, which wear not now. Your date is better in your pie and your porridge than in your cheek; and your virginity, your old virginity, is like one of our French withered pears: it looks ill, it eats drily. Marry, 'tis a withered pear; it was formerly better; marry, yet 'tis a withered pear! Will you anything with it? ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
265:Family is not the only thing that matters. There are other things: Pachelbel’s Canon in D matters, and fresh-picked corn on the cob, and true friends, and the sound of the ocean, and the poems of William Carlos Williams, and the constellations in the sky, and random acts of kindness, and a garden on the day when all its flowers are at their peak. Fluffy pancakes matter and crisp clean sheets and the guitar riff in “Layla,” and the way clouds look when you are above them in an airplane. Preserving the coral reef matters, and the thirty-four paintings of Johannes Vermeer matter, and kissing matters. Whether or not you register for china, crystal, and silver does not matter. Whether or not you have a full set of Tiffany dessert forks on Thanksgiving does not matter. If you want to register for these things, by all means, go ahead. My Waterford pattern is Lismore, one of the oldest. I do remember one time when I had a harrowing day at the hospital, and Nick had a Rube Goldberg project due and needed my help, and Kevin was playing Quiet Riot at top decibel in his bedroom, and Margot was tying up the house phone, and you had been plunked by the babysitter in front of the TV for five hours, and I came home and took one of my Lismore goblets out of the cabinet. I wanted to smash it against the wall. But instead I filled it with cold white wine and for ten or so minutes I sat in the quiet of the formal living room all by myself and I drank the cold wine out of that beautiful glass crafted by some lovely Irishman, and I felt better. It was probably the wine, not the glass, but you get my meaning. I will remember the impressive heft of the glass in my hand, and the way the cut of the crystal caught the day’s last rays of sunlight, but I will not miss that glass the way I will miss the sound of the ocean, or the taste of fresh-picked corn. ~ Elin Hilderbrand, #NFDB
266:Jesus and Women As we look at Jesus and how He interacted with women, we see Him dignifying, validating, and championing them—all in contrast to a misogynist culture. In addition, women played a prominent role in Jesus’ earthly ministry. As John Bunyan put it, “They were women that wept when he was going to the cross, and women that followed him from the cross, and that sat by his sepulcher when he was buried. They were women that was [sic] first with him at his resurrection morn, and women that brought tidings first to his disciples that he was risen from the dead.”2 In an ancient world, where many disregarded the testimony of women, Jesus’ high regard for them bordered on the scandalous. The fact that all these accounts are included in the Canon of Scripture actually verify the resurrection accounts of Christ. Remember, God saw fit that the first eyes to behold the risen Jesus were those of a woman—all during an era where a woman’s testimony had no credibility in a court of law. Women, therefore, were the first evangelists. The only way a man can discover how to treat a woman is by looking at how Jesus interacted with them. Your Lord was the defender of women. He stepped in to save a broken, scandalized woman from the murderous plot of a group of self-righteous men. He lifted the weight of her shame, writing a new destiny for her in the dirt. He saw value in an “unclean” Samaritan woman who was disregarded, despised, and viewed as damaged goods. He honored a prostitute in the house of a Pharisee. He healed a pariah woman whose flow of blood excommunicated her. He exalted a woman who anointed Him for burial by commissioning her story to be rehearsed wherever the gospel message was heard. He never talked down to a woman, but made them heroes in His parables. And that for which Jesus came to die was a woman . . . His woman, the very bride of Christ. Put simply, your Lord is in the business of loving, honoring, and defending women.3 And God chose the womb of a woman to enter this world. ~ Frank Viola, #NFDB
267:Why would God have inspired the words of the Bible if he chose not to preserve these words for posterity? Put differently, what should make me think he had inspired the words in the first place if I knew for certain (as I did) that he had not preserved them? This became a major problem for me in trying to figure out which Bible I thought was inspired. Another big problem is one that I don’t deal with in Misquoting Jesus. If God inspired certain books in the decades after Jesus died, how do I know that the later church fathers chose the right books to be included in the Bible? I could accept it on faith—surely God would not allow noninspired books in the canon of Scripture. But as I engaged in more historical study of the early Christian movement, I began to realize that there were lots of Christians in lots of places who fully believed that other books were to be accepted as Scripture; conversely, some of the books that eventually made it into the canon were rejected by church leaders in different parts of the church, sometimes for centuries. In some parts of the church, the Apocalypse of John (the book of Revelation) was flat out rejected as containing false teaching, whereas the Apocalypse of Peter, which eventually did not make it in, was accepted. There were some Christians who accepted the Gospel of Peter and some who rejected the Gospel of John. There were some Christians who accepted a truncated version of the Gospel of Luke (without its first two chapters), and others who accepted the now noncanonical Gospel of Thomas. Some Christians rejected the three Pastoral Epistles of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, which eventually made it in, and others accepted the Epistle of Barnabas, which did not. If God was making sure that his church would have the inspired books of Scripture, and only those books, why were there such heated debates and disagreements that took place over three hundred years? Why didn’t God just make sure that these debates lasted weeks, with assured results, rather than centuries?1 ~ Bart D Ehrman, #NFDB
268:You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power—how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live—is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"—how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise—and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves—Stoicism is self-tyranny—Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature?... But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
269:You desire to live "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves indifference as a power—how could you live in accordance with such indifference? To live—is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"—how could you do differently? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature falsely, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise—and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that because you are able to tyrannize over yourselves—Stoicism is self-tyranny—Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature?... But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima. 10. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
270:The church's theology bought into this ahistoricism in different ways: along a more liberal, post-Kantian trajectory, the historical particularities of Christian faith were reduced to atemporal moral teachings that were universal and unconditioned. Thus it turned out that what Jesus taught was something like Kant's categorical imperative - a universal ethics based on reason rather than a set of concrete practices related to a specific community. Liberal Christianity fostered ahistoricism by reducing Christianity to a universal, rational kernel of moral teaching. Along a more conservative, evangelical trajectory (and the Reformation is not wholly innocent here), it was recognized that Christians could not simply jettison the historical particularities of the Christian event: the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. However, there was still a quasi-Platonic, quasi-gnostic rejection of material history such that evangelicalism, while not devolving to a pure ahistoricism, become dominated by a modified ahistoricism we can call primitivism. Primitivism retains the most minimal commitment to God's action in history (in the life of Christ and usually in the first century of apostolic activity) and seeks to make only this first-century 'New Testament church' normative for contemporary practice. This is usually articulated by a rigid distinction between Scripture and tradition (the latter then usually castigated as 'the traditions of men' as opposed to the 'God-give' realities of Scripture). Such primitivism is thus anticreedal and anticatholic, rejecting any sense that what was unfolded by the church between the first and the twenty-first centuries is at all normative for current faith and practice (the question of the canon's formation being an interesting exception here). Ecumenical creeds and confessions - such as the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene Creed - that unite the church across time and around the globe are not 'live' in primitivist worship practices, which enforce a sense of autonomy or even isolation, while at the same time claiming a direct connection to first-century apostolic practices. ~ James K A Smith, #NFDB
271:As the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, the monarch is the defender of the faith—the official religion of the country, established by law and respected by sentiment. Yet when the Queen travels to Scotland, she becomes a member of the Church of Scotland, which governs itself and tolerates no supervision by the state. She doesn’t abandon the Anglican faith when she crosses the border, but rather doubles up, although no Anglican bishop ever comes to preach at Balmoral. Elizabeth II has always embraced what former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey called the “sacramental manner in which she views her own office.” She regards her faith as a duty, “not in the sense of a burden, but of glad service” to her subjects. Her faith is also part of the rhythm of her daily life. “She has a comfortable relationship with God,” said Carey. “She’s got a capacity because of her faith to take anything the world throws at her. Her faith comes from a theology of life that everything is ordered.” She worships unfailingly each Sunday, whether in a tiny chapel in the Laurentian mountains of Quebec or a wooden hut on Essequibo in Guyana after a two-hour boat ride. But “she doesn’t parade her faith,” said Canon John Andrew, who saw her frequently during the 1960s when he worked for Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey. On holidays she attends services at the parish church in Sandringham, and at Crathie outside the Balmoral gates. Her habit is to take Communion three or four times a year—at Christmas, Easter, Whitsunday, and the occasional special service—“an old-fashioned way of being an Anglican, something she was brought up to do,” said John Andrew. She enjoys plain, traditional hymns and short, straightforward sermons. George Carey regards her as “middle of the road. She treasures Anglicanism. She loves the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which is always used at Sandringham. She would disapprove of modern services, but wouldn’t make that view known. The Bible she prefers is the old King James version. She has a great love of the English language and enjoys the beauty of words. The scriptures are soaked into her.” The Queen has called the King James Bible “a masterpiece of English prose. ~ Sally Bedell Smith, #NFDB
272:¿Queréis vivir «según la naturaleza»? ¡Oh nobles estoicos, qué embuste de palabras! Imaginaos un ser como la naturaleza, que es derrochadora sin medida, indiferente sin medida, que carece de intenciones y miramientos, de piedad y justicia, que es feraz y estéril e incierta al mismo tiempo, imaginaos la indiferencia misma como poder — ¿cómo podríais vivir vosotros según esa indiferencia? Vivir — ¿no es cabalmente un querer—ser—distinto de esa naturaleza? ¿Vivir no es evaluar, preferir, ser injusto, ser limitado, querer—serdiferente? Y suponiendo que vuestro imperativo «vivir según la naturaleza» signifique en el fondo lo mismo que «vivir según la vida» — ¿cómo podríais no vivir así? ¿Para qué convertir en un principio aquello que vosotros mismos sois y tenéis que ser? — En verdad, las cosas son completamente distintas: ¡mientras simuláis leer embelesados el canon de vuestra ley en la naturaleza, lo que queréis es algo opuesto, vosotros extraños comediantes y engañadores de vosotros mismos! Vuestro orgullo quiere prescribir e incorporar a la naturaleza, incluso a la naturaleza, vuestra moral, vuestro ideal, vosotros exigís que ella sea naturaleza «según la Estoa» y quisierais hacer que toda existencia existiese tan sólo a imagen vuestra — ¡cual una gigantesca y eterna glorificación y generalización del estoicismo! Pese a todo vuestro amor a la verdad, os coaccionáis a vosotros mismos, sin embargo, durante tanto tiempo, tan obstinadamente, con tal fijeza hipnótica, a ver la naturaleza de un modo falso, es decir, de un modo estoico, que ya no sois capaces de verla de otro modo, — y cierta soberbia abismal acaba infundiéndoos incluso la insensata esperanza de que, porque vosotros sepáis tiranizaros a vosotros mismos — estoicismo es tiranía de sí mismo —, también la naturaleza se deja tiranizar; ¿no es, en efecto, el estoico un fragmento de la naturaleza?... Pero ésta es una historia vieja, eterna: lo que en aquel tiempo ocurrió con los estoicos sigue ocurriendo hoy tan pronto como una filosofía comienza a creer en sí misma. Siempre crea el mundo a su imagen, no puede actuar de otro modo; la filosofía es ese instinto tiránico mismo, la más espiritual voluntad de poder, de «crear el mundo», de ser causa prima [causa primera]. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
273:1 Each one shall sit at table with his own cup and spoon, and with his own repentance. Each one's own business shall be his most important affair, and provide his own remedies. They have neglected bowl and plate. Have you a wooden fork? Yes, each monk has a wooden fork as well as a potato. 2 Each one shall wipe away tears with his own saint, when three bells hold in store a hot afternoon. Each one is supposed to mind his own heart, with its conscience, night and morning. Another turn on the wheel: ho hum! And observe the Abbot! Time to go to bed in a straw blanket. 3 Plenty of bread for everyone between prayers and the psalter: will you recite another? Merci, and Miserere. Always mind both the clock and the Abbot until eternity. Miserere. 4 Details of the Rule are all liquid and solid. What canon was the first to announce regimentation before us? Mind the step on the way down! Yes, I dare say you are right, Father. I believe you; I believe you. I believe it is easier when they have ice water and even a lemon. Each one can sit at table with his own lemon, and mind his own conscience. 5 Can we agree that the part about the lemon is regular? In any case, it is better to have sheep than peacocks, and cows rather than a chained leopard says Modest, in one of his proverbs. The monastery, being owner of a communal rowboat, is the antechamber of heaven. Surely that ought to be enough. 6 Each one can have some rain after Vespers on a hot afternoon, but ne quid nimis, or the purpose of the Order will be forgotten. We shall send you hyacinths and a sweet millennium. Everything the monastery provides is very pleasant to see and to sell for nothing. What is baked smells fine. There is a sign of God on every leaf that nobody sees in the garden. The fruit trees are there on purpose, even when no one is looking. Just put the apples in the basket. In Kentucky there is also room for a little cheese. Each one shall fold his own napkin, and neglect the others. 7 Rain is always very silent in the night, under such gentle cathedrals. Yes, I have taken care of the lamp, Miserere. Have you a patron saint, and an angel? Thank you. Even though the nights are never dangerous, I have one of everything. [1499.jpg] -- from Selected Poems of Thomas Merton, by Thomas Merton
~ Thomas Merton, A Practical Program for Monks
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274:Mrs. Crisparkle had need of her own share of philanthropy when she beheld this very large and very loud excrescence on the little party. Always something in the nature of a Boil upon the face of society, Mr. Honeythunder expanded into an inflammatory Wen in Minor Canon Corner. Though it was not literally true, as was facetiously charged against him by public unbelievers, that he called aloud to his fellow-creatures: ‘Curse your souls and bodies, come here and be blessed!’ still his philanthropy was of that gunpowderous sort that the difference between it and animosity was hard to determine. You were to abolish military force, but you were first to bring all commanding officers who had done their duty, to trial by court-martial for that offence, and shoot them. You were to abolish war, but were to make converts by making war upon them, and charging them with loving war as the apple of their eye. You were to have no capital punishment, but were first to sweep off the face of the earth all legislators, jurists, and judges, who were of the contrary opinion. You were to have universal concord, and were to get it by eliminating all the people who wouldn’t, or conscientiously couldn’t, be concordant. You were to love your brother as yourself, but after an indefinite interval of maligning him (very much as if you hated him), and calling him all manner of names. Above all things, you were to do nothing in private, or on your own account. You were to go to the offices of the Haven of Philanthropy, and put your name down as a Member and a Professing Philanthropist. Then, you were to pay up your subscription, get your card of membership and your riband and medal, and were evermore to live upon a platform, and evermore to say what Mr. Honeythunder said, and what the Treasurer said, and what the sub-Treasurer said, and what the Committee said, and what the sub-Committee said, and what the Secretary said, and what the Vice-Secretary said. And this was usually said in the unanimously-carried resolution under hand and seal, to the effect: ‘That this assembled Body of Professing Philanthropists views, with indignant scorn and contempt, not unmixed with utter detestation and loathing abhorrence’—in short, the baseness of all those who do not belong to it, and pledges itself to make as many obnoxious statements as possible about them, without being at all particular as to facts. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
275:In my study, next to my desk, is a locked bookcase that contains a collection of volumes I value more than any of the hundreds of other books that fill a multitude of shelves in our home. Of these precious publications, the most prized and well-guarded is a slim first edition of 104 pages, simply titled Jungle Stories by Jim Corbett. The cover is of plain brown paper, with no illustrations or colouring. This thin little book was privately printed by Corbett, for family and friends, at the London Press in Nainital in 1935. Only a hundred copies were produced, of which very few remain. My copy came to me through my parents. They were given it by friends, who had once been Corbett’s neighbours in Nainital. By the time I received it, the book had been covered with a protective sleeve of clear plastic. The title page is signed by Jim Corbett, in a neat, fastidious hand. Several years after Jungle Stories was published, Lord Linlithgow, Viceroy of India from 1936-43, requested a copy. He had met Corbett, who assisted in organizing viceregal shoots in the terai and was already regarded as a legendary shikari and raconteur. After reading the book, Linlithgow recommended that it be published by the Oxford University Press in Bombay. Jungle Stories is, essentially, the first draft of Man-eaters of Kumaon. Several of the chapters are identical, including stories of ‘The Pipal Pani Tiger’ and ‘The Chowgarh Tigers’, as well as an angling interlude, ‘The Fish of My Dreams.’ Corbett expanded this book into its present form by adding six more tales, including an account of the first man-eater he killed in 1907, near Champawat. This tigress was responsible for the deaths of 436 victims and her destruction helped cement Corbett’s reputation as a hunter. In recognition of his success, Sir J. P. Hewett, Lieutenant Governor of the United Provinces, presented him with a .275 Rigby-Mauser rifle. An engraved citation on a silver plaque was fixed to the stock. Corbett later bequeathed this weapon to the Oxford University Press, who sent it to their head offices in England. Eventually, the gun was confiscated by the police in Oxford because the publishers didn’t have a licence. For a number of years, John Rigby & Co., gunsmiths, displayed the rifle at their showroom in London, along with a copy of Jungle Stories. In February 2016, Corbett’s rifle was purchased at auction by an American hunter for $250,000. Following this, the rifle was brought to India for a week and briefly displayed at Corbett Tiger Reserve, as part of a promotional event. The editor at OUP, who shepherded Man-eaters of Kumaon to publication, was R. E. ‘Hawk’ Hawkins, himself a legend, who contributed greatly to India’s canon of nature writing. In his introduction to a collection of Corbett’s stories, Hawkins describes how this book came into his hands: ~ Jim Corbett, #NFDB
276:Astonishment: these women’s military professions—medical assistant, sniper, machine gunner, commander of an antiaircraft gun, sapper—and now they are accountants, lab technicians, museum guides, teachers…Discrepancy of the roles—here and there. Their memories are as if not about themselves, but some other girls. Now they are surprised at themselves. Before my eyes history “humanizes” itself, becomes like ordinary life. Acquires a different lighting. I’ve happened upon extraordinary storytellers. There are pages in their lives that can rival the best pages of the classics. The person sees herself so clearly from above—from heaven, and from below—from the ground. Before her is the whole path—up and down—from angel to beast. Remembering is not a passionate or dispassionate retelling of a reality that is no more, but a new birth of the past, when time goes in reverse. Above all it is creativity. As they narrate, people create, they “write” their life. Sometimes they also “write up” or “rewrite.” Here you have to be vigilant. On your guard. At the same time pain melts and destroys any falsehood. The temperature is too high! Simple people—nurses, cooks, laundresses—behave more sincerely, I became convinced of that…They, how shall I put it exactly, draw the words out of themselves and not from newspapers and books they have read—not from others. But only from their own sufferings and experiences. The feelings and language of educated people, strange as it may be, are often more subject to the working of time. Its general encrypting. They are infected by secondary knowledge. By myths. Often I have to go for a long time, by various roundabout ways, in order to hear a story of a “woman’s,” not a “man’s” war: not about how we retreated, how we advanced, at which sector of the front…It takes not one meeting, but many sessions. Like a persistent portrait painter. I sit for a long time, sometimes a whole day, in an unknown house or apartment. We drink tea, try on the recently bought blouses, discuss hairstyles and recipes. Look at photos of the grandchildren together. And then…After a certain time, you never know when or why, suddenly comes this long-awaited moment, when the person departs from the canon—plaster and reinforced concrete, like our monuments—and goes on to herself. Into herself. Begins to remember not the war but her youth. A piece of her life…I must seize that moment. Not miss it! But often, after a long day, filled with words, facts, tears, only one phrase remains in my memory (but what a phrase!): “I was so young when I left for the front, I even grew during the war.” I keep it in my notebook, although I have dozens of yards of tape in my tape recorder. Four or five cassettes… What helps me? That we are used to living together. Communally. We are communal people. With us everything is in common—both happiness and tears. We know how to suffer and how to tell about our suffering. Suffering justifies our hard and ungainly life. ~ Svetlana Alexievich, #NFDB
277:What can I do to drive away
Remembrance from my eyes? for they have seen,
Aye, an hour ago, my brilliant Queen!
Touch has a memory. O say, love, say,
What can I do to kill it and be free
In my old liberty?
When every fair one that I saw was fair
Enough to catch me in but half a snare,
Not keep me there:
When, howe'er poor or particolour'd things,
My muse had wings,
And ever ready was to take her course
Whither I bent her force,
Unintellectual, yet divine to me;--
Divine, I say! -- What sea-bird o'er the sea
Is a philosopher the while he goes
Winging along where the great water throes?
How shall I do
To get anew
Those moulted feathers, and so mount once more
Above, above
The reach of fluttering Love,
And make him cower lowly while I soar?
Shall I gulp wine? No, that is vulgarism,
A heresy and schism,
Foisted into the canon law of love;--
No,-- wine is only sweet to happy men;
More dismal cares
Seize on me unawares,--
Where shall I learn to get my peace again?
To banish thoughts of that most hateful land,
Dungeoner of my friends, that wicked strand
Where they were wreck'd and live a wrecked life;
That monstrous region, whose dull rivers pour
Ever from their sordid urns unto the shore,
Unown'd of any weedy-haired gods;
Whose winds, all zephyrless, hold scourging rods,
Iced in the great lakes, to afflict mankind;
Whose rank-grown forests, frosted, black, and blind,
Would fright a Dryad; whose harsh herbag'd meads
Make lean and lank the starv'd ox while he feeds;
There flowers have no scent, birds no sweet song,
And great unerring Nature once seems wrong.
O, for some sunny spell
To dissipate the shadows of this hell!
Say they are gone,-- with the new dawning light
Steps forth my lady bright!
O, let me once more rest
My soul upon that dazzling breast!
Let once again these aching arms be plac'd,
The tender gaolers of thy waist!
And let me feel that warm breath here and there
To spread a rapture in my very hair,--
O, the sweetness of the pain!
Give me those lips again!
Enough! Enough! it is enough for me
To dream of thee!
'These lines, first given in the Life, Letters &c., were there dated October 1819; and I should be disposed to assign them to the 12th of that month, the day before that on which Keats posted a letter at Westminster to Miss Brawne, saying 'inter alia' that he has set himself to copy some verses out fair, and adding "I cannot proceed with any degree of content. I must write you a line or two and see if that will assist in dismissing you from my Mind for ever so short a time." The text appears to me to need revision in certain points; but I know of no authority for change. Thus, in line 3, the word 'and' or 'but' has probably dropped out after 'Aye.'
~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895. by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ John Keats, Lines To Fanny
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278:It will be seen how there can be the idea of a special science, the *critique of pure reason* as it may be called. For reason is the faculty which supplies the *principles* of *a priori* knowledge. Pure reason therefore is that which contains the principles of knowing something entirely *a priori*. An *organon* of pure reason would be the sum total of the principles by which all pure *a priori* knowledge can be acquired and actually established. Exhaustive application of such an organon would give us a system of pure reason. But as this would be a difficult task, and as at present it is still doubtful whether indeed an expansion of our knowledge is possible here at all, we may regard a science that merely judges pure reason, its sources and limits, as the *propaedeutic* to the system of pure reason. In general, it would have to be called only a *critique*, not a *doctrine* of pure reason. Its utility, in regard to speculation, would only be negative, for it would serve only to purge rather than to expand our reason, and, which after all is a considerable gain, would guard reason against errors. I call all knowledge *transcendental* which deals not so much with objects as with our manner of knowing objects insofar as this manner is to be possible *a priori*. A system of such concepts would be called *transcendental philosophy*. But this is still, as a beginning, too great an undertaking. For since such a science must contain completely both analytic and synthetic *a priori* knowledge, it is, as far as our present purpose is concerned, much too comprehensive. We will be satisfied to carry the analysis only so far as is indispensably necessary in order to understand in their whole range the principles of *a priori* synthesis, with which alone we are concerned. This investigation, which properly speaking should be called only a transcendental critique but not a doctrine, is all we are dealing with at present. It is not meant to expand our knowledge but only to correct it, and to become the touchstone of the value, or lack of value, of all *a priori* knowledge. Such a critique is therefore the preparation, as far as possible, for a new organon, or, if this should turn out not to be possible, for a canon at least, according to which, thereafter, the complete system of a philosophy of pure reason, whether it serve as an expansion or merely as a limitation of its knowledge, may be carried out both analytically and synthetically. That such a system is possible, indeed that it need not be so comprehensive as to cut us off from the hope of completing it, may already be gathered from the fact that it would have to deal not with the nature of things, which is inexhaustible, but with the understanding which makes judgments about the nature of things, and with this understanding again only as far as its *a priori* knowledge is concerned. The supply of this *a priori* knowledge cannot be hidden from us, as we need not look for it outside the understanding, and we may suppose this supply to prove sufficiently small for us to record completely, judge as to its value or lack of value and appraise correctly. Still less ought we to expect here a critique of books and systems of pure reason, but only the critique of the faculty of pure reason itself. Only once we are in possession of this critique do we have a reliable touchstone for estimating the philosophical value of old and new works on this subject. Otherwise, an unqualified historian and judge does nothing but pass judgments upon the groundless assertions of others by means of his own, which are equally groundless. ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
279:Canon 21. « Si quelqu’un dit que le juste ait le pouvoir de persévérer sans un secours spécial de Dieu, ou qu’il ne le puisse avec ce secours : qu’il soit anathème. » Canon 25. « Si quelqu’un dit que le juste pèche en toute bonne œuvre véniellement, ou, ce qui est plus insupportable, mortellement, et qu’il mérite la peine éternelle, mais qu’il n’est pas damné, par cette seule raison que Dieu ne lui impute pas ses œuvres à damnation : qu’il soit anathème. » Par où l’on voit, non-seulement que ces paroles, que « les commandemens ne sont pas impossibles aux justes, » sont restreintes à cette condition, quand ils sont secourus par la grâce ; mais qu’elles n’ont que la même force que celles-ci, que « les justes ne pèchent pas en toutes leurs actions ; » et enfin tant s’en faut que le pouvoir prochain soit étendu à tous les justes, qu’il est défendu de l’attribuer à ceux qui ne sont pas secourus de ce secours spécial, qui n’est pas commun à tous, comme il a été expliqué. Concluons donc que tous les Pères ne tiennent pas un autre langage. Saint Augustin et les Pères qui l’ont suivi, n’ont jamais parlé des commandemens, qu’en disant qu’ils ne sont pas impossibles à la charité, et qu’ils ne nous sont faits que pour nous faire sentir le besoin que nous avons de la charité, qui seule les accomplit. « Dieu, juste et bon, n’a pu commander des choses impossibles ; ce qui nous avertit de faire ce qui est facile, et de demander ce qui est difficile. » (Aug., De nat. et grat., cap. LXIX.) « Car toutes choses sont faciles à la charité. » (De perfect. justit., cap. x.) Et ailleurs : « Qui ne sait que ce qui se fait par amour n’est pas difficile? Ceux-là ressentent de la peine à accomplir les préceptes, qui s’efforcent de les observer par la crainte ; mais la parfaite charité chasse la crainte, et rend le joug du précepte doux ; et, bien loin d’accabler par son poids, elle soulève comme si elle nous donnoit des ailes. » Cette charité ne vient pas de notre libre arbitre (si la grâce de Jésus-Christ ne nous secourt), parce qu’elle est infuse et mise dans nos cœurs, non par nous-mêmes, mais par le Saint-Esprit. Et l’Écriture nous avertit que les préceptes ne sont pas difficiles, par cette seule raison, qui est que l’âme qui les ressent pesans, entende qu’elle n’a pas encore reçu les forces par lesquelles ils lui sont doux et légers. « Quand il nous est commandé de vouloir, notre devoir nous est marqué ; mais parce que nous ne pouvons pas l’avoir de nous-mêmes, nous sommes avertis à qui nous devons le demander ; mais toutefois nous ne pouvons pas faire cette demande, si Dieu n’opère en nous de le vouloir. » (Fulg., lib. II, De verit. praedest., cap. iv.) « Les préceptes ne nous sont donnés que par cette seule raison, qui est de nous faire rechercher le secours de celui qui nous commande, » etc. (Prosper, Epist. ad Demetriad.) « Les pélagiens s’imaginent dire quelque chose d’important, quand ils disent que Dieu ne commanderoit pas ce qu’il saurait que l’homme ne pourroit faire. Qui ne sait cela? Mais il commande des choses que nous ne pouvons pas, afin que nous connoissions à qui nous devons le demander. » (Aug., De nat. et grat., cap. xv et xvi.) « O homme! reconnois dans le précepte ce que tu dois ; dans la correction, que c’est par ton vice que tu ne le fais pas ; et dans la prière, d’où tu peux en avoir le pouvoir! (Aug., De corrept., cap. ni.) Car la loi commande, afin que l’homme, sentant qu’il manque de force pour l’accomplir, ne s’enfle pas de superbe, mais étant fatigué, recoure à la grâce, et qu’ainsi la loi l’épouvantant le mène à l’amour de Jésus-Christ » (Aug., De perfect. respons. et ratiocin. xj., cap. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
280:Oh! did you observe the Black Canon pass,
And did you observe his frown?
He goeth to say the midnight mass,
In holy St. Edmond's town.
He goeth to sing the burial chaunt,
And to lay the wandering sprite,
Whose shadowy, restless form doth haunt,
The Abbey's drear aisle this night.
It saith it will not its wailing cease,
'Till that holy man come near,
'Till he pour oer its grave the prayer of peace,
And sprinkle the hallowed tear.
The Canon's horse is stout and strong
The road is plain and fair,
But the Canon slowly wends along,
And his brow is gloomed with care.
Who is it thus late at the Abbey-gate?
Sullen echoes the portal bell,
It sounds like the whispering voice of fate,
It sounds like a funeral knell.
The Canon his faltering knee thrice bowed,
And his frame was convulsed with fear,
When a voice was heard distinct and loud,
'Prepare! for thy hour is near.'
He crosses his breast, he mutters a prayer,
To Heaven he lifts his eye,
He heeds not the Abbot's gazing stare,
Nor the dark Monks who murmured by.
Bare-headed he worships the sculptured saints
That frown on the sacred walls,
His face it grows pale,--he trembles, he faints,
At the Abbots feet he falls.
And straight the fathers robe he kissed,
Who cried, 'Grace dwells with thee,
The spirit will fade like the morning mist,
At your benedicite.
'Now haste within! the board is spread,
Keen blows the air, and cold,
The spectre sleeps in its earthy bed,
'Till St. Edmonds bell hath tolled,--
'Yet rest your wearied limbs to-night,
Youve journeyed many a mile,
To-morrow lay the wailing sprite,
That shrieks in the moonlight aisle.
'Oh! faint are my limbs and my bosom is cold,
Yet to-night must the sprite be laid,
Yet to-night when the hour of horror's told,
Must I meet the wandering shade.
'Nor food, nor rest may now delay,--
For hark! the echoing pile,
A bell loud shakes!Oh haste away,
O lead to the haunted aisle.'
The torches slowly move before,
The cross is raised on high,
A smile of peace the Canon wore,
But horror dimmed his eye--
And now they climb the footworn stair,
The chapel gates unclose,
Now each breathed low a fervent prayer,
And fear each bosom froze--
Now paused awhile the doubtful band
And viewed the solemn scene,--
Full dark the clustered columns stand,
The moon gleams pale between--
'Say father, say, what cloisters' gloom
Conceals the unquiet shade,
Within what dark unhallowed tomb,
The corse unblessed was laid.'
'Through yonder drear aisle alone it walks,
And murmurs a mournful plaint,
Of thee! Black Canon, it wildly talks,
And call on thy patron saint--
The pilgrim this night with wondering eyes,
As he prayed at St. Edmond's shrine,
From a black marble tomb hath seen it rise,
And under yon arch recline.'--
Oh! say upon that black marble tomb,
What memorial sad appears.'--
Undistinguished it lies in the chancel's gloom,
No memorial sad it bears'--
The Canon his paternoster reads,
His rosary hung by his side,
Now swift to the chancel doors he leads,
And untouched they open wide,
Resistless, strange sounds his steps impel,
To approach to the black marble tomb,
'Oh! enter, Black Canon,' a whisper fell,
'Oh! enter, thy hour is come.'
He paused, told his beads, and the threshold passed.
Oh! horror, the chancel doors close,
A loud yell was borne on the rising blast,
And a deep, dying groan arose.
The Monks in amazement shuddering stand,
They burst through the chancel's gloom,
From St. Edmonds shrine, lo! a skeletons hand,
Points to the black marble tomb.
Lo! deeply engraved, an inscription blood red,
In characters fresh and clear--
'The guilty Black Canon of Elmham's dead,
And his wife lies buried here!'
In Elmhams tower he wedded a Nun,
To St. Edmonds his bride he bore,
On this eve her noviciate here was begun,
And a Monks gray weeds she wore;--
O! deep was her conscience dyed with guilt,
Remorse she full oft revealed,
Her blood by the ruthless Black Canon was spilt,
And in death her lips he sealed;
Her spirit to penance this night was doomed,
'Till the Canon atoned the deed,
Here together they now shall rest entombed,
'Till their bodies from dust are freed--
Hark! a loud peal of thunder shakes the roof,
Round the altar bright lightnings play,
Speechless with horror the Monks stand aloof,
And the storm dies sudden away--
The inscription was gone! a cross on the ground,
And a rosary shone through the gloom,
But never again was the Canon there found,
Or the Ghost on the black marble tomb.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Saint Edmonds Eve
,#NFDB
281:were some of the most famous and important female poets of the Tamil canon.
Abithana Chintamani states that there were three female poets titled ~ Avvaiyar
.
Among them, ~ Avvaiyar
I lived during the Sangam period (c. 1st and 2nd century
CE) and had cordial relation with the Tamil chieftains Paari and Athiyaman. She
wrote 59 poems in the Pu?ana?u?u.
~ Avvaiyar
II lived during the period of Kambar and Ottakoothar during the reign of
the Chola dynasty in the 13th century. She is often imagined as an old and
intelligent lady by Tamil people. She wrote many of the poems that remain very
popular even now and are inculcated in school textbooks in Tamil Nadu. These
books include a list of dos and don'ts, useful for daily life, arranged in simple and
short sentences.
There is a very famous legend that is associated with Auvaiyar (also Auvayar)
(Tamil: ???????), a prominent female poets/ethicist/political activist of Sangam
period (Tamil literature), and Naaval Pazham (Jambu) in Tamil Nadu. Auvaiyar,
believing to have achieved everything that is to be achieved, is said to have been
pondering her retirement from Tamil literary work while resting under Naaval
Pazham tree. But she is met with and was wittily jousted by a disguised Lord
Murugan (regarded as one of the guardian deities of Tamil language), who later
revealed himself and made her realize that there was still a lot more to be done
and learnt. Following this awakening, Auvaiyar is believed to have undertaken a
fresh set of literary works, targeted at children. These works, even after a
millennium, are often among the very first literature that children are exposed to
in Tamil Nadu schools.
Name Etymology
The name ~ Avvaiyar
is a combination of Tamil word avvai with honorific suffix ar.
Avvai refers to respectable elderly woman as the word ammai which means good
woman in general term for a woman of any age. Thus the name ~ Avvaiyar
means
a respectable good woman hence a generic title rather than a specific name of a
person.
Sangam age ~ Avvaiyar
The ~ Avvaiyar
who lived during the Sangam period is considered to be
contemporary to poets Paranar, Kabilar and Thiruvalluvar. She is attributed as
the author of 7 verses in Na??i?ai, 15 in Ku?untokai, 4 in Akana?u?u and 33 in
Pu?ana?u?u. Legend states that she was a court poet of the rulers of the Tamil
country. She travelled from one part of the country to another and from one
village to another, sharing the gruel of the poor farmers and composing songs for
their enjoyment. Most of her songs were about a small-time chieftain Vallal
Athiyamaan Nedumaan Anji and his family. The chieftain had also used her as his
ambassador to avert war with another neighbouring chieftain Tontaiman. The
rest of her songs related to the various aspects of state governance. Although
traditions claim that she was a sister of Kabilar, Thiruvalluvar and Athiyamaan, V.
R. Ramachandra Dikshitar refutes this claim based on his studies that all four of
them were most likely of different walks of life, thus from different caste
backgrounds and hence impossible to be siblings.
Chola age ~ Avvaiyar
The medievaal period ~ Avvaiyar
was the court poet of the Chola monarch and was
the contemporary of Kambar and Ottakkuttar. She found great happiness in the
life of small children. Her works, Aathichoodi and Konraiventhan written for
young children, are even now generally read and enjoyed by them.
Her two other works, Mooturai and Nalvali were written for older children. All the
four works are didactic in character — they explain the basic wisdom that should
govern mundane life.
Shrine
In Muppandal, a small village in the Kanyakumari District of Tamil Nadu. there is
an image of ~ Avvaiyar
. By tradition, this is stated to be the spot where the great
poetess left the mortal world.
Avvai Vizha
Annual Avvai Vizha is organized & conducted by Government of Tamil Nadu to
commemorate ~ Avvaiyar
's contribution to Tamil literature. This festival is
celebrated every year in the month of Panguni on Sadhayam star day. Avvai
Vizha has been started by local community long time back and still continuing
willingly. Now Govt of Tamil Nadu is continuing this function and adding more
values. Local community, Tamil scholars and scholars from various fields
participating with passion on this occasion and deliver their speech. Avvai Vizha
is conducted in the temple Avvayar situated at Thulasiyappattinam village,
Vedaranyam, Nagappatinam District, in the temple premises of Arulmigu
Visvanathaswamy Thirukovil. Also this place is referred to famous interaction
between Lord Muruga & ~ Avvaiyar
"Suttapazham Venduma Sudatha Pazham
Venduma". This temple is under the control of the Hindu Religious and Charitable
Endowments Department.
Legend
Legend has it that once the great king Athiyaman gave an eternal amla Nellikani
(gooseberry) fruit to ~ Avvaiyar
, this is a special and powerful fruit, whoever eats it
will have a healthy and long life. Athiyaman wanted ~ Avvaiyar
to eat the eternal
fruit as she was the right person who could serve the Tamil community. If she
could live forever, so would the Tamil heritage and language.
Publication in the U.S.
In 2009, Red Hen Press published a selection of ~ Avvaiyar
's poetry from the 12th
century, entitled Give, Eat, and Live: Poems by Avviyar. The poems were
selected and translated into English by Thomas Pruiksma, a poet and translator
who discovered Avviyar's work while on a Fulbright scholarship at The American
College in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India.
Atthi Chudi
~ Avvaiyar,#NFDB
282:SECTION 1. Books for Serious Study
Liber CCXX. (Liber AL vel Legis.) The Book of the Law. This book is the foundation of the New Æon, and thus of the whole of our work.
The Equinox. The standard Work of Reference in all occult matters. The Encyclopaedia of Initiation.
Liber ABA (Book 4). A general account in elementary terms of magical and mystical powers. In four parts: (1) Mysticism (2) Magical (Elementary Theory) (3) Magick in Theory and Practice (this book) (4) The Law.
Liber II. The Message of the Master Therion. Explains the essence of the new Law in a very simple manner.
Liber DCCCXXXVIII. The Law of Liberty. A further explanation of The Book of the Law in reference to certain ethical problems.
Collected Works of A. Crowley. These works contain many mystical and magical secrets, both stated clearly in prose, and woven into the Robe of sublimest poesy.
The Yi King. (S. B. E. Series [vol. XVI], Oxford University Press.) The "Classic of Changes"; give the initiated Chinese system of Magick.
The Tao Teh King. (S. B. E. Series [vol. XXXIX].) Gives the initiated Chinese system of Mysticism.
Tannhäuser, by A. Crowley. An allegorical drama concerning the Progress of the Soul; the Tannhäuser story slightly remodelled.
The Upanishads. (S. B. E. Series [vols. I & XV.) The Classical Basis of Vedantism, the best-known form of Hindu Mysticism.
The Bhagavad-gita. A dialogue in which Krishna, the Hindu "Christ", expounds a system of Attainment.
The Voice of the Silence, by H.P. Blavatsky, with an elaborate commentary by Frater O.M. Frater O.M., 7°=48, is the most learned of all the Brethren of the Order; he has given eighteen years to the study of this masterpiece.
Raja-Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda. An excellent elementary study of Hindu mysticism. His Bhakti-Yoga is also good.
The Shiva Samhita. An account of various physical means of assisting the discipline of initiation. A famous Hindu treatise on certain physical practices.
The Hathayoga Pradipika. Similar to the Shiva Samhita.
The Aphorisms of Patanjali. A valuable collection of precepts pertaining to mystical attainment.
The Sword of Song. A study of Christian theology and ethics, with a statement and solution of the deepest philosophical problems. Also contains the best account extant of Buddhism, compared with modern science.
The Book of the Dead. A collection of Egyptian magical rituals.
Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, by Eliphas Levi. The best general textbook of magical theory and practice for beginners. Written in an easy popular style.
The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. The best exoteric account of the Great Work, with careful instructions in procedure. This Book influenced and helped the Master Therion more than any other.
The Goetia. The most intelligible of all the mediæval rituals of Evocation. Contains also the favourite Invocation of the Master Therion.
Erdmann's History of Philosophy. A compendious account of philosophy from the earliest times. Most valuable as a general education of the mind.
The Spiritual Guide of [Miguel de] Molinos. A simple manual of Christian Mysticism.
The Star in the West. (Captain Fuller). An introduction to the study of the Works of Aleister Crowley.
The Dhammapada. (S. B. E. Series [vol. X], Oxford University Press). The best of the Buddhist classics.
The Questions of King Milinda. (S. B. E. Series [vols. XXXV & XXXVI].) Technical points of Buddhist dogma, illustrated bydialogues.
Liber 777 vel Prolegomena Symbolica Ad Systemam Sceptico-Mysticæ Viæ Explicandæ, Fundamentum Hieroglyphicam Sanctissimorum Scientiæ Summæ. A complete Dictionary of the Correspondences of all magical elements, reprinted with extensive additions, making it the only standard comprehensive book of reference ever published. It is to the language of Occultism what Webster or Murray is to the English language.
Varieties of Religious Experience (William James). Valuable as showing the uniformity of mystical attainment.
Kabbala Denudata, von Rosenroth: also The Kabbalah Unveiled, by S.L. Mathers. The text of the Qabalah, with commentary. A good elementary introduction to the subject.
Konx Om Pax [by Aleister Crowley]. Four invaluable treatises and a preface on Mysticism and Magick.
The Pistis Sophia [translated by G.R.S. Mead or Violet McDermot]. An admirable introduction to the study of Gnosticism.
The Oracles of Zoroaster [Chaldæan Oracles]. An invaluable collection of precepts mystical and magical.
The Dream of Scipio, by Cicero. Excellent for its Vision and its Philosophy.
The Golden Verses of Pythagoras, by Fabre d'Olivet. An interesting study of the exoteric doctrines of this Master.
The Divine Pymander, by Hermes Trismegistus. Invaluable as bearing on the Gnostic Philosophy.
The Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians, reprint of Franz Hartmann. An invaluable compendium.
Scrutinium Chymicum [Atalanta Fugiens]¸ by Michael Maier. One of the best treatises on alchemy.
Science and the Infinite, by Sidney Klein. One of the best essays written in recent years.
Two Essays on the Worship of Priapus [A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus &c. &c. &c.], by Richard Payne Knight [and Thomas Wright]. Invaluable to all students.
The Golden Bough, by J.G. Frazer. The textbook of Folk Lore. Invaluable to all students.
The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine. Excellent, though elementary, as a corrective to superstition.
Rivers of Life, by General Forlong. An invaluable textbook of old systems of initiation.
Three Dialogues, by Bishop Berkeley. The Classic of Subjective Idealism.
Essays of David Hume. The Classic of Academic Scepticism.
First Principles by Herbert Spencer. The Classic of Agnosticism.
Prolegomena [to any future Metaphysics], by Immanuel Kant. The best introduction to Metaphysics.
The Canon [by William Stirling]. The best textbook of Applied Qabalah.
The Fourth Dimension, by [Charles] H. Hinton. The best essay on the subject.
The Essays of Thomas Henry Huxley. Masterpieces of philosophy, as of prose.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Appendix I: Literature Recommended to Aspirants #reading list,#NFDB
283:Le Forgeron (The Blacksmith)
Le bras sur un marteau gigantesque, effrayant
D'ivresse et de grandeur, le front large, riant
Comme un clairon d'airain, avec toute sa bouche,
Et prenant ce gros-là dans son regard farouche,
Le Forgeron parlait à Louis Seize, un jour
Que le Peuple était là, se tordant tout autour,
Et sur les lambris d'or traînait sa veste sale.
Or le bon roi, debout sur son ventre, était pâle
Pâle comme un vaincu qu'on prend pour le gibet,
Et, soumis comme un chien, jamais ne regimbait,
Car ce maraud de forge aux énormes épaules
Lui disait de vieux mots et des choses si drôles,
Que cela l'empoignait au front, comme cela !
'Donc, Sire, tu sais bien, nous chantions tra la la
Et nous piquions les boeufs vers les sillons des autres :
Le Chanoine au soleil disait ses patenôtres
Sur des chapelets clairs grenés de pièces d'or.
Le Seigneur, à cheval, passait, sonnant du cor,
Et l'un avec la hart, l'autre avec la cravache,
Nous fouaillaient ; Hébétés comme des yeux de vache,
Nos yeux ne pleuraient pas : nous allions ! nous allions !
Et quand nous avions mis le pays en sillons,
Quand nous avions laissé dans cette terre noire
Un peu de notre chair... nous avions un pourboire :
- Nous venions voir flamber nos taudis dans la nuit ;
Nos enfants y faisaient un gâteau fort bien cuit !...
'Oh ! je ne me plains pas. Je te dis mes bêtises :
- C'est entre nous. J'admets que tu me contredises...
Or, n'est-ce pas joyeux de voir, au mois de juin
Dans les granges entrer des voitures de foin
Enormes ? De sentir l'odeur de ce qui pousse,
Des vergers quand il pleut un peu, de l'herbe rousse ?
De voir les champs de blé, les épis pleins de grain,
De penser que cela prépare bien du pain ?...
- Oui, l'on pourrait, plus fort, au fourneau qui s'allume,
Chanter joyeusement en martelant l'enclume,
Si l'on était certain qu'on pourrait prendre un peu,
71
Étant homme, à la fin !, de ce que donne Dieu !...
- Mais voilà, c'est toujours la même vieille histoire !
'... Oh ! je sais, maintenant ! Moi, je ne peux plus croire,
Quand j'ai deux bonnes mains, mon front et mon marteau,
Qu'un homme vienne là, dague sous le manteau
Et me dise : Maraud, ensemence ma terre ;
Que l'on arrive encor, quand ce serait la guerre,
Me prendre mon garçon comme cela, chez moi !...
- Moi, je serais un homme, et toi tu serais roi,
Tu me dirais : Je veux ! - Tu vois bien, c'est stupide !...
Tu crois que j'aime à voir ta baraque splendide,
Tes officiers dorés, tes mille chenapans,
Tes palsembleu bâtards tournant comme des paons ?
Ils ont rempli ton nid de l'odeur de nos filles,
Et de petits billets pour nous mettre aux Bastilles,
Et nous dirions : C'est bien : les pauvres à genoux !...
Nous dorerions ton Louvre en donnant nos gros sous,
Et tu te soûlerais, tu ferais belle fête,
Et tes Messieurs riraient, les reins sur notre tête !...
'Non ! Ces saletés-là datent de nos papas !
Oh ! Le Peuple n'est plus une putain ! Trois pas,
Et, tous, nous avons mis ta Bastille en poussière !
Cette bête suait du sang à chaque pierre...
Et c'était dégoûtant, la Bastille debout
Avec ses murs lépreux qui nous rappelaient tout
Et, toujours, nous tenaient enfermés dans leur ombre !
- Citoyen ! citoyen ! c'était le passé sombre
Qui croulait, qui râlait, quand nous prîmes la tour !
Nous avions quelque chose au coeur comme l'amour :
Nous avions embrassé nos fils sur nos poitrines,
Et, comme des chevaux, en soufflant des narines,
Nous marchions, nous chantions, et ça nous battait là,
Nous allions au soleil, front haut, comme cela,
Dans Paris accourant devant nos vestes sales !...
Enfin ! Nous nous sentions hommes ! Nous étions pâles,
Sire ; nous étions soûls de terribles espoirs,
Et quand nous fûmes là, devant les donjons noirs,
Agitant nos clairons et nos feuilles de chêne,
Les piques à la main ; nous n'eûmes pas de haine :
- Nous nous sentions si forts ! nous voulions être doux !
72
'Et depuis ce jour-là, nous sommes comme fous...
Le flot des ouvriers a monté dans la rue
Et ces maudits s'en vont, foule toujours accrue,
Comme des revenants, aux portes des richards !...
Moi, je cours avec eux assommer les mouchards,
Et je vais dans Paris le marteau sur l'épaule,
Farouche, à chaque coin balayant quelque drôle,
Et, si tu me riais au nez, je te tuerais !...
- Puis, tu dois y compter, tu te feras des frais
Avec tes avocats, qui prennent nos requêtes
Pour se les renvoyer comme sur des raquettes,
Et, tout bas, les malins ! Nous traitant de gros sots !
Pour mitonner des lois, ranger des de petits pots
Pleins de menus décrets, de méchantes droguailles,
S'amuser à couper proprement quelques tailles,
Puis se boucher le nez quand nous passons près d'eux,
- Ces chers avocassiers qui nous trouvent crasseux ! Pour débiter là-bas des milliers de sornettes
Et ne rien redouter sinon les baïonnettes,
Nous en avons assez, de tous ces cerveaux plats !
Ils embêtent le peuple !... Ah ! ce sont là les plats
Que tu nous sers, bourgeois, quand nous sommes féroces,
Quand nous cassons déjà les sceptres et les crosses !...'
Puis il le prend au bras, arrache le velours
Des rideaux, et lui montre, en bas, les larges cours
Où fourmille, où fourmille, où se lève la foule,
La foule épouvantable avec des bruits de houle,
Hurlant comme une chienne, hurlant comme une mer,
Avec ses bâtons forts et ses piques de fer,
Ses clameurs, ses grands cris de halles et de bouges,
Tas sombre de haillons taché de bonnets rouges !
L'Homme, par la fenêtre ouverte, montre tout
Au Roi pâle, suant qui chancelle debout,
Malade à regarder cela !...
spacespacespacespacespacespacespacespace'C'est la Crapule,
Sire ! ça bave aux murs, ça roule, ça pullule...
- Puisqu'ils ne mangent pas, Sire, ce sont les gueux !
- Je suis un forgeron : ma femme est avec eux :
Folle ! Elle vient chercher du pain aux Tuileries :
- On ne veut pas de nous dans les boulangeries !...
73
J'ai trois petits ; -Je suis crapule ! - Je connais
Des vieilles qui s'en vont pleurant sous leurs bonnets,
Parce qu'on leur a pris leur garçon ou leur fille :
- C'est la crapule. - Un homme était à la bastille,
D'autres étaient forçats ; c'étaient des citoyens
Honnêtes ; Libérés, ils sont comme des chiens ;
On les insulte ! Alors, ils ont là quelque chose
Qui leur fait mal, allez ! C'est terrible, et c'est cause
Que, se sentant brisés, que, se sentant damnés,
Ils viennent maintenant hurler sous votre nez !...
- Crapules : - Là-dedans sont des filles, infâmes
Parce que -, sachant bien que c'est faible, les femmes,
Messeigneurs de la cour, que ça veut toujours bien, Vous leur avez sali leur âme, comme rien !
Vos belles, aujourd'hui, sont là : - C'est la Crapule...
'Oh ! tous les Malheureux, tout ceux dont le dos brûle
Sous le soleil féroce, et qui vont, et qui vont,
Et dans ce travail-là sentent crever leur front,
Chapeau bas, mes bourgeois ! Oh ! ceux-là sont les hommes !
- Nous sommes Ouvriers ! Sire, Ouvriers ! - nous sommes
Pour les grands temps nouveaux où l'on voudra savoir,
Où l'homme forgera du matin jusqu'au soir,
Où, lentement vainqueur, il chassera les choses
Poursuivant les grands buts, cherchant les grandes causes,
Et montera sur Tout comme sur un cheval !
Oh ! nous sommes contents, nous aurons bien du mal !
- Tout ce qu'on ne sait pas, c'est peut-être terrible.
Nous pendrons nos marteaux, nous passerons au crible
Tout ce que nous savons, puis, Frères, en avant !...
- Nous faisons quelquefois ce grand rêve émouvant
De vivre simplement, ardemment, sans rien dire
De mauvais, travaillant sous l'auguste sourire
D'une femme qu'on aime avec un noble amour !
Et l'on travaillerait fièrement tout le jour,
Ecoutant le devoir comme un clairon qui sonne :
Et l'on se trouverait fort heureux, et personne,
Oh ! personne ! surtout, ne vous ferait plier !...
On aurait un fusil au-dessus du foyer....
'Oh ! mais ! l'air est tout plein d'une odeur de bataille !
Que te disais-je donc ? Je suis de la canaille !'
74
_____________________________________________________
Translation by A. S. Kline
His hand on a gigantic hammer, terrifying
In size and drunkenness, vast-browed, laughing
Like a bronze trumpet, his whole mouth displayed,
Devouring the fat man, now, with his wild gaze,
The Blacksmith spoke with Louis, with the king,
The People there, all around him, cavorting,
Trailing their dirty coats down gilded panels.
But the dear king, belly upright, was pallid,
Pale as the victim led to the guillotine,
Submissive like a dog, cowed by the scene,
Since that wide-shouldered forge-black soul
Spoke of things past and other things so droll,
He had him by the short hairs, just like that!
‘Now, Sir, you know how we’d sing tra-la-la,
And drive the ox down other people’s furrows:
The Canon spun paternosters in the shadows
On rosaries bright with golden coins adorned,
Some Lord, astride, passed blowing on his horn,
One with the noose, another with whip-blows
Lashed us on. – Dazed like the eyes of cows,
Our eyes no longer wept; on and on we went,
And when we’d ploughed a whole continent,
When we had left behind in that black soil
A little of our own flesh…to reward our toil:
They’d set alight our hovels in the night;
Our little ones made burnt cakes alright.
…Oh, I’m not complaining! All my follies,
They’re between us. I’ll let you contradict.
But, isn’t it fine to see, in the month of June,
The enormous hay-wains entering the barns?
To smell the odour of burgeoning things,
The orchards in fine rain, the oats reddening?
To see wheat, wheat, ears filled with grain,
To think it promises us good bread again?...
Oh! You’d go to the forge, be more cheerful,
Sing and hammer joyfully at the anvil,
75
If you were sure to gain a little in the end –
Being, in fact, a man – of what God intends!
– But there it is, always the same old story!...
But now I know! I don’t credit it any more,
Owning two strong hands, a head, a hammer,
That a man in a cloak, wearing a dagger
Can say: go and sow my land, there, fellow;
Or that another, if maybe war should follow,
Can take my son like that, from where I’m living!
– Suppose I were a man, and you a king,
You’d say: I will it!... – What stupidity.
You think your splendid barn pleases me,
Your gilded servants, your thousand rogues,
Your fancy bastards, peacocks in a row:
Filling your nest with our daughters’ odour,
Warrants to the Bastille for us, moreover
That we should say: fine: make the poor poorer!
We’ll give you our last sous to gild the Louvre!
While you get drunk and enjoy the feast,
– And they all laugh, riding our backs beneath!
No. Those puerilities were our fathers!
The People is no one’s whore now, three steps further
And then, we razed your Bastille to the ground.
That monster sweated blood from every mound,
Was an abomination, that Bastille standing,
With leprous walls its every story yielding,
And, we forever held fast in its shadow!
– Citizen! That was the past, its sorrow,
That broke, and died, when we stormed the tower!
We had something in our hearts like true ardour.
We had clutched our children to our breast.
And like chargers, snorting at the contest,
We went, proud and strong, beating here inside…
We marched in the sun – like this – heads high
Into Paris! They greeted us in our ragged clothes.
At last! We felt ourselves Men! We were sallow,
Sire, drunk, and pallid with terrifying hopes:
And there, in front of those black prison slopes,
Waving our bugles and our sprigs of oak,
Pikes in our fists; did we feel hatred, no!
76
– We felt such strength we wanted to be gentle! ...
And since that day, we have proved elementals!
A mass of workers sprang up in the street,
And, cursed, are gone, a swelling crowd replete
With ghostly shades, to haunt the rich man’s gate.
I, I run with them, and set informers straight:
I scour Paris, dark-faced, wild, hammer on shoulder,
Sweeping something droll out of every corner,
And, if you smile at me, then I’ll do for you!
– Well, count on it: all this is going to cost you
And your men in black, culling our requests
To bat them about on their racquets all in jest,
And whisper, the rascals, softly: “Oh, what sots!”
To cook up laws, and stick up little pots,
Filled with cute pink decrees, and sugar pills,
Cutting us down to size, to amuse themselves,
Then they hold their noses when we pass by,
– Our kind representatives who hate the sty! –
Fearful of nothing, nothing, but bayonets….
That’s fine. Enough of snuff and lorgnettes!
We’ve had our fill, here, of those dull heads
And bellies of gods. Ah! That’s the bread
You serve us, bourgeoisie, while we rage here,
While we shatter the sceptre and the crozier!...’
He takes his arm, tears back the velvet curtain
And shows the vast courtyards beneath them,
Where the mob swarms, and seethes, where rise,
Out of the frightful mob those storm-filled cries,
Howling as bitches howl, or like the sea,
With their knotted stakes, their pikes of steel,
With the clamour of their market-halls and slums,
A ragged mass of blood-stained caps, and drums:
The Man, through the open window, shows all
To the pale sweating king, reeling, about to fall,
Sick at the sight of it!
‘Those are the Scum, Sire.
Licking the walls, seething, rising higher:
– But then they’ve not eaten, Sire, these beggars!
I’m a blacksmith: my wife, madwoman, is there!
She thinks she’ll get bread at the Tuileries!
77
– They’ll have none of us in the bakeries.
I’ve three youngsters. I’m scum, too – I know
Old women weeping under their bonnets so
Because they’ve taken a daughter or a son:
One man was in the Bastille – oh, they’re scum –
Another the galleys: both honest citizens.
Freed, they’re treated like dogs, these men:
Insulted! Then, they have something here
That hurts them, see! It’s terrible, it’s clear
They feel broken, feel themselves damned,
There, screaming beneath you where you stand!
Scum. – Down there girls, infamous, shriek,
Because – well, you knew girls were weak –
Gentlemen of the court – gave all you sought –
You’d spit on their souls, as if they were naught!
Now, your pretty ones are there. They’re scum.
Oh, all the Wretched, whose backs, in the fierce sun
Burn, and yet they still work on and on,
Feeling their heads burst with their exertion,
Hats off, you bourgeoisie! Those are Men.
We are the Workers, Sire! Workers! And then
We’re for the great new age, of knowledge, light,
When Man will forge from morning to night,
Pursuing great effects, chasing great causes,
When he will tame things, slowly victorious,
And like a horse, mount the mighty All!
Oh! Splendour of the forges! And no more
Evil, then! – What’s unknown, its terror maybe
We’ll know! – Hammer in hand, let’s sieve freely
All that we know: then, Brothers, we’ll go on!
Sometimes we dream that dream’s vast emotion
Of the simple ardent life, where you revile
All evil, working beneath the august smile,
Of a woman you love with love’s nobility:
And all day long you labour on proudly,
Hearing the clarion call of duty sounding!
And you feel so happy; and nothing, nothing,
Oh, above all, no-one makes you kneel!
Over the fireplace, there, you’d have a rifle…
Oh! But the air is filled with the scent of battle.
78
What did I say? I too am one of the rascals!
And there are still sharks and informers.
But we are free! With our moments of terror
When we feel we are great, so great! Just now
I was talking of peaceful work, of how…
Look at that sky! – Too small for us, you see,
If we feared the heat, we’d live on our knees!
Look at that sky! – I’ll return to the crowd,
To the vast fearful mob who cry aloud
And roll your cannon through the cobbles’ sty;
– Oh! We will wash them clean when we die!
– And if, against our cries and our vengeance,
The claws of old gilded kings, all over France,
Urge on their regiments in full battle-dress,
Well then, you lot? Shit to those dogs, no less!’
– He shoulders his hammer once more.
The crowd
Feels soul-drunk close to that man, and now
Through the great courtyard, all those rooms,
Where Paris pants and the voices boom,
A shudder shakes the immense populace.
Then, with his broad hand, its grimy grace
Gilded, while the pot-bellied king sweats,
The Blacksmith set his red cap on that head!
~ Arthur Rimbaud,#NFDB
284:The Dunciad: Book Iv
Yet, yet a moment, one dim ray of light
Indulge, dread Chaos, and eternal Night!
Of darkness visible so much be lent,
As half to show, half veil, the deep intent.
Ye pow'rs! whose mysteries restor'd I sing,
To whom time bears me on his rapid wing,
Suspend a while your force inertly strong,
Then take at once the poet and the song.
Now flam'd the Dog Star's unpropitious ray,
Smote ev'ry brain, and wither'd every bay;
Sick was the sun, the owl forsook his bow'r.
The moon-struck prophet felt the madding hour:
Then rose the seed of Chaos, and of Night,
To blot out order, and extinguish light,
Of dull and venal a new world to mould,
And bring Saturnian days of lead and gold.
She mounts the throne: her head a cloud conceal'd,
In broad effulgence all below reveal'd;
('Tis thus aspiring Dulness ever shines)
Soft on her lap her laureate son reclines.
Beneath her footstool, Science groans in chains,
And Wit dreads exile, penalties, and pains.
There foam'd rebellious Logic , gagg'd and bound,
There, stripp'd, fair Rhet'ric languish'd on the ground;
His blunted arms by Sophistry are borne,
And shameless Billingsgate her robes adorn.
Morality , by her false guardians drawn,
Chicane in furs, and Casuistry in lawn,
Gasps, as they straighten at each end the cord,
And dies, when Dulness gives her page the word.
Mad Mathesis alone was unconfin'd,
Too mad for mere material chains to bind,
Now to pure space lifts her ecstatic stare,
Now running round the circle finds it square.
But held in tenfold bonds the Muses lie,
Watch'd both by Envy's and by Flatt'ry's eye:
191
There to her heart sad Tragedy addres'd
The dagger wont to pierce the tyrant's breast;
But sober History restrain'd her rage,
And promised vengeance on a barb'rous age.
There sunk Thalia, nerveless, cold, and dead,
Had not her sister Satire held her head:
Nor couldst thou, Chesterfield! a tear refuse,
Thou weptst, and with thee wept each gentle Muse.
When lo! a harlot form soft sliding by,
With mincing step, small voice, and languid eye;
Foreign her air, her robe's discordant pride
In patchwork flutt'ring, and her head aside:
By singing peers upheld on either hand,
She tripp'd and laugh'd, too pretty much to stand;
Cast on the prostrate Nine a scornful look,
Then thus in quaint recitativo spoke.
'O
Cara! Cara!
silence all that train:
Joy to great Chaos! let Division reign:
Chromatic tortures soon shall drive them hence,
Break all their nerves, and fritter all their sense:
One trill shall harmonize joy, grief, and rage,
Wake the dull Church, and lull the ranting Stage;
To the same notes thy sons shall hum, or snore,
And all thy yawning daughters cry,
encore
Another Phoebus, thy own Phoebus, reigns,
Joys in my jigs, and dances in my chains.
But soon, ah soon, Rebellion will commence,
If Music meanly borrows aid from Sense.
Strong in new arms, lo! Giant Handel stands,
Like bold Briarerus, with a hundred hands;
To stir, to rouse, to shake the soul he comes,
And Jove's own thunders follow Mars's drums.
Arrest him, Empress, or you sleep no more-'
She heard, and drove him to th' Hibernian shore.
And now had Fame's posterior trumpet blown,
192
And all the nations summoned to the throne.
The young, the old, who feel her inward sway,
One instinct seizes, and transports away.
None need a guide, by sure attraction led,
And strong impulsive gravity of head:
None want a place, for all their centre found
Hung to the Goddess, and coher'd around.
Not closer, orb in orb, conglob'd are seen
The buzzing bees about their dusky Queen.
The gath'ring number, as it moves along,
Involves a vast involuntary throng,
Who gently drawn, and struggling less and less,
Roll in her Vortex, and her pow'r confess.
Not those alone who passive own her laws,
But who, weak rebels, more advance her cause.
Whate'er of dunce in college or in town
Sneers at another, in toupee or gown;
Whate'er of mongrel no one class admits,
A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.
Nor absent they, no members of her state,
Who pay her homage in her sons, the Great;
Who false to Phoebus bow the knee to Baal;
Or, impious, preach his Word without a call.
Patrons, who sneak from living worth to dead,
Withhold the pension, and set up the head;
Or vest dull Flattery in the sacred gown;
Or give from fool to fool the laurel crown.
And (last and worst) with all the cant of wit,
Without the soul, the Muse's hypocrite.
There march'd the bard and blockhead, side by side,
Who rhym'd for hire, and patroniz'd for pride.
Narcissus, prais'd with all a Parson's pow'r,
Look'd a white lily sunk beneath a show'r.
There mov'd Montalto with superior air;
His stretch'd-out arm display'd a volume fair;
Courtiers and Patriots in two ranks divide,
Through both he pass'd, and bow'd from side to side:
But as in graceful act, with awful eye
Compos'd he stood, bold Benson thrust him by:
193
On two unequal crutches propp'd he came,
Milton's on this, on that one Johnston's name.
The decent knight retir'd with sober rage,
Withdrew his hand, and closed the pompous page.
But (happy for him as the times went then)
Appear'd Apollo's mayor and aldermen,
On whom three hundred gold-capp'd youths await,
To lug the pond'rous volume off in state.
When Dulness, smiling-'Thus revive the Wits!
But murder first, and mince them all to bits;
As erst Medea (cruel, so to save!)
A new edition of old Aeson gave;
Let standard authors, thus, like trophies born,
Appear more glorious as more hack'd and torn,
And you, my Critics! in the chequer'd shade,
Admire new light through holes yourselves have made.
Leave not a foot of verse, a foot of stone,
A page, a grave, that they can call their own;
But spread, my sons, your glory thin or thick,
On passive paper, or on solid brick.
So by each bard an Alderman shall sit,
A heavy lord shall hang at ev'ry wit,
And while on Fame's triumphal Car they ride,
Some Slave of mine be pinion'd to their side.'
Now crowds on crowds around the Goddess press,
Each eager to present their first address.
Dunce scorning dunce beholds the next advance,
But fop shows fop superior complaisance,
When lo! a spector rose, whose index hand
Held forth the virtue of the dreadful wand;
His beaver'd brow a birchen garland wears,
Dropping with infant's blood, and mother's tears.
O'er every vein a shud'ring horror runs;
Eton and Winton shake through all their sons.
All flesh is humbl'd, Westminster's bold race
Shrink, and confess the Genius of the place:
The pale boy senator yet tingling stands,
And holds his breeches close with both his hands.
194
Then thus. 'Since man from beast by words is known,
Words are man's province, words we teach alone.
When reason doubtful, like the Samian letter,
Points him two ways, the narrower is the better.
Plac'd at the door of learning, youth to guide,
We never suffer it to stand too wide.
To ask, to guess, to know, as they commence,
As fancy opens the quick springs of sense,
We ply the memory, we load the brain,
Bind rebel Wit, and double chain on chain,
Confine the thought, to exercise the breath;
And keep them in the pale of words till death.
Whate'er the talents, or howe'er design'd,
We hang one jingling padlock on the mind:
A Poet the first day, he dips his quill;
And what the last? A very Poet still.
Pity! the charm works only in our wall,
Lost, lost too soon in yonder house or hall.
There truant Wyndham every Muse gave o'er,
There Talbot sunk, and was a wit no more!
How sweet an Ovid, Murray was our boast!
How many Martials were in Pult'ney lost!
Else sure some bard, to our eternal praise,
In twice ten thousand rhyming nights and days,
Had reach'd the work, and All that mortal can;
And South beheld that Masterpiece of Man.'
'Oh' (cried the Goddess) 'for some pedant Reign!
Some gentle James, to bless the land again;
To stick the Doctor's chair into the throne,
Give law to words, or war with words alone,
Senates and courts with Greek and Latin rule,
And turn the council to a grammar school!
For sure, if Dulness sees a grateful day,
'Tis in the shade of arbitrary sway.
O! if my sons may learn one earthly thing,
Teach but that one, sufficient for a king;
That which my priests, and mine alone, maintain,
Which as it dies, or lives, we fall, or reign:
May you, may Cam and Isis, preach it long!
'The Right Divine of Kings to govern wrong'.'
195
Prompt at the call, around the Goddess roll
Broad hats, and hoods, and caps, a sable shoal:
Thick and more thick the black blockade extends,
A hundred head of Aristotle's friends.
Nor wert thou, Isis! wanting to the day,
Though Christ Church long kept prudishly away.
Each staunch polemic, stubborn as a rock,
Each fierce logician, still expelling Locke,
Came whip and spur, and dash'd through thin and thick
On German Crousaz, and Dutch Burgersdyck.
As many quit the streams that murm'ring fall
To lull the sons of Marg'ret and Clare Hall,
Where Bentley late tempestuous wont to sport
In troubled waters, but now sleeps in Port.
Before them march'd that awful Aristarch;
Plow'd was his front with many a deep remark:
His hat, which never vail'd to human pride,
Walker with rev'rence took, and laid aside.
Low bowed the rest: He, kingly, did but nod;
So upright Quakers please both man and God.
'Mistress! dismiss that rabble from your throne:
Avaunt-is Aristarchus yet unknown?
Thy mighty scholiast, whose unwearied pains
Made Horace dull, and humbl'd Milton's strains.
Turn what they will to verse, their toil is vain,
Critics like me shall make it prose again.
Roman and Greek grammarians! know your better:
Author of something yet more great than letter;
While tow'ring o'er your alphabet, like Saul,
Stands our Digamma, and o'ertops them all.
'Tis true, on words is still our whole debate,
Disputes of
Me
or
Te
, of
aut
or
at
To sound or sink in
196
cano
, O or A,
Or give up Cicero to C or K.
Let Freind affect to speak as Terence spoke,
And Alsop never but like Horace joke:
For me, what Virgil, Pliny may deny,
Manilius or Solinus shall supply:
For Attic Phrase in Plato let them seek,
I poach in Suidas for unlicens'd Greek.
In ancient sense if any needs will deal,
Be sure I give them fragments, not a meal;
What Gellius or Stobaeus hash'd before,
Or chew'd by blind old Scholiasts o'er and o'er.
The critic eye, that microscope of wit,
Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit:
How parts relate to parts, or they to whole,
The body's harmony, the beaming soul,
Are things which Kuster, Burman, Wasse shall see,
When man's whole frame is obvious to a
Flea
'Ah, think not, Mistress! more true dulness lies
In Folly's cap, than Wisdom's grave disguise.
Like buoys, that never sink into the flood,
On learning's surface we but lie and nod.
Thine is the genuine head of many a house,
And much Divinity without a Nous.
Nor could a Barrow work on every block,
Nor has one Atterbury spoil'd the flock.
See! still thy own, the heavy canon roll,
And metaphysic smokes involve the pole.
For thee we dim the eyes, and stuff the head
With all such reading as was never read:
For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it,
And write about it, Goddess, and about it:
So spins the silkworm small its slender store,
And labours till it clouds itself all o'er.
'What tho' we let some better sort of fool
Thrid ev'ry science, run through ev'ry school?
Never by tumbler through the hoops was shown
197
Such skill in passing all, and touching none.
He may indeed (if sober all this time)
Plague with dispute, or persecute with rhyme.
We only furnish what he cannot use,
Or wed to what he must divorce, a Muse:
Full in the midst of Euclid dip at once,
And petrify a Genius to a Dunce:
Or set on metaphysic ground to prance,
Show all his paces, not a step advance.
With the same cement ever sure to bind,
We bring to one dead level ev'ry mind.
Then take him to develop, if you can,
And hew the block off, and get out the man.
But wherefore waste I words? I see advance
Whore, pupil, and lac'd governor from France.
Walker! our hat' -nor more he deign'd to say,
But, stern as Ajax' spectre, strode away.
In flow'd at once a gay embroider'd race,
And titt'ring push'd the Pedants off the place;
Some would have spoken, but the voice was drown'd
By the French horn, or by the op'ning hound.
The first came forwards, with as easy mien,
As if he saw St. James's and the Queen.
When thus th' attendant Orator begun,
Receive, great Empress! thy accomplish'd Son:
Thine from the birth, and sacred from the rod,
A dauntless infant! never scar'd with God.
The Sire saw, one by one, his Virtues wake:
The Mother begg'd the blessing of a Rake.
Thou gav'st that Ripeness, which so soon began,
And ceas'd so soon, he ne'er was Boy, nor Man,
Thro' School and College, thy kind cloud o'ercast,
Safe and unseen the young AEneas past:
Thence bursting glorious, all at once let down,
Stunn'd with his giddy Larum half the town.
Intrepid then, o'er seas and lands he flew:
Europe he saw, and Europe saw him too.
There all thy gifts and graces we display,
Thou, only thou, directing all our way!
To where the Seine, obsequious as she runs,
Pours at great Bourbon's feet her silken sons;
198
Or Tyber, now no longer Roman, rolls,
Vain of Italian Arts, Italian Souls:
To happy Convents, bosom'd deep in vines,
Where slumber Abbots, purple as their wines:
To Isles of fragrance, lilly-silver'd vales,
Diffusing languor in the panting gales:
To lands of singing, or of dancing slaves,
Love-whisp'ring woods, and lute-resounding waves.
But chief her shrine where naked Venus keeps,
And Cupids ride the Lyon of the Deeps;
Where, eas'd of Fleets, the Adriatic main
Wafts the smooth Eunuch and enamour'd swain.
Led by my hand, he saunter'd Europe round,
And gather'd ev'ry Vice on Christian ground;
Saw ev'ry Court, hear'd ev'ry King declare
His royal Sense, of Op'ra's or the Fair;
The Stews and Palace equally explor'd,
Intrigu'd with glory, and with spirit whor'd;
Try'd all hors-d' uvres, all Liqueurs defin'd,
Judicious drank, and greatly-daring din'd;
Dropt the dull lumber of the Latin store,
Spoil'd his own Language, and acquir'd no more;
All Classic learning lost on Classic ground;
And last turn'd Air, the Eccho of a Sound!
See now, half-cur'd, and perfectly well-bred,
With nothing but a Solo in his head;
As much Estate, and Principle, and Wit,
As Jansen, Fleetwood, Cibber shall think fit;
Stol'n from a Duel, follow'd by a Nun,
And, if a Borough chuse him, not undone;
See, to my country happy I restore
This glorious Youth, and add one Venus more.
Her too receive (for her my soul adores)
So may the sons of sons of sons of whores,
Prop thine, O Empress! like each neighbour Throne,
And make a long Posterity thy own.
Pleas'd, she accepts the Hero, and the Dame,
Wraps in her Veil, and frees from sense of Shame.
Then look'd, and saw a lazy, lolling sort,
Unseen at Church, at Senate, or at Court,
Of ever-listless Loit'rers, that attend
No Cause, no Trust, no Duty, and no Friend.
199
Thee too, my Paridel! she mark'd thee there,
Stretch'd on the rack of a too easy chair,
And heard thy everlasting yawn confess
The Pains and Penalties of Idleness.
She pity'd! but her Pity only shed
Benigner influence on thy nodding head.
But Annius, crafty Seer, with ebon wand,
And well-dissembl'd Em'rald on his hand,
False as his Gems and canker'd as his Coins,
Came, cramm'd with Capon, from where Pollio dines.
Soft, as the wily Fox is seen to creep,
Where bask on sunny banks the simple sheep,
Walk round and round, now prying here, now there;
So he; but pious, whisper'd first his pray'r.
Grant, gracious Goddess! grant me still to cheat,
O may thy cloud still cover the deceit!
Thy choicer mists on this assembly shed,
But pour them thickest on the noble head.
So shall each youth, assisted by our eyes,
See other C‘sars, other Homers rise;
Thro' twilight ages hunt th'Athenian fowl,
Which Chalcis Gods, and mortals call an Owl,
Now see an Attys, now a Cecrops clear,
Nay, Mahomet! the Pigeon at thine ear;
Be rich in ancient brass, tho' not in gold,
And keep his Lares, tho' his house be sold;
To headless Ph be his fair bride postpone,
Honour a Syrian Prince above his own;
Lord of an Otho, if I vouch it true;
Blest in one Niger, till he knows of two.
Mummius o'erheard him; Mummius, Fool-renown'd,
Who like his Cheops stinks above the ground,
Fierce as a startled Adder, swell'd, and said,
Rattling an ancient Sistrum at his head.
Speak'st thou of Syrian Princes? Traitor base!
Mine, Goddess! mine is all the horned race.
True, he had wit, to make their value rise;
From foolish Greeks to steal them, was as wise;
More glorious yet, from barb'rous hands to keep,
When Sallee Rovers chac'd him on the deep.
Then taught by Hermes, and divinely bold,
Down his own throat he risqu'd the Grecian gold;
200
Receiv'd each Demi-God, with pious care,
Deep in his Entrails — I rever'd them there,
I bought them, shrouded in that living shrine,
And, at their second birth, they issue mine.
Witness great Ammon! by whose horns I swore,
(Reply'd soft Annius) this our paunch before
Still bears them, faithful; and that thus I eat,
Is to refund the Medals with the meat.
To prove me, Goddess! clear of all design,
Bid me with Pollio sup, as well as dine:
There all the Learn'd shall at the labour stand,
And Douglas lend his soft, obstetric hand.
The Goddess smiling seem'd to give consent;
So back to Pollio, hand in hand, they went.
Then thick as Locusts black'ning all the ground,
A tribe, with weeds and shells fantastic crown'd,
Each with some wond'rous gift approach'd the Pow'r,
A Nest, a Toad, a Fungus, or a Flow'r.
But far the foremost, two, with earnest zeal,
And aspect ardent to the Throne appeal.
The first thus open'd: Hear thy suppliant's call,
Great Queen, and common Mother of us all!
Fair from its humble bed I rear'd this Flow'r,
Suckled, and chear'd, with air, and sun, and show'r,
Soft on the paper ruff its leaves I spread,
Bright with the gilded button tipt its head,
Then thron'd in glass, and nam'd it Caroline:
Each Maid cry'd, charming! and each Youth, divine!
Did Nature's pencil ever blend such rays,
Such vary'd light in one promiscuous blaze?
Now prostrate! dead! behold that Caroline:
No Maid cries, charming! and no Youth, divine!
And lo the wretch! whose vile, whose insect lust
Lay'd this gay daughter of the Spring in dust.
Oh punish him, or to th' Elysian shades
Dismiss my soul, where no Carnation fades.
He ceas'd, and wept. With innocence of mien,
Th'Accus'd stood forth, and thus address'd the Queen.
Of all th'enamel'd race, whose silv'ry wing
Waves to the tepid Zephyrs of the spring,
Or swims along the fluid atmosphere,
Once brightest shin'd this child of Heat and Air.
201
I saw, and started from its vernal bow'r
The rising game, and chac'd from flow'r to flow'r.
It fled, I follow'd; now in hope, now pain;
It stopt, I stopt; it mov'd, I mov'd again.
At last it fix'd, 'twas on what plant it pleas'd,
And where it fix'd, the beauteous bird I seiz'd:
Rose or Carnation was below my care;
I meddle, Goddess! only in my sphere.
I tell the naked fact without disguise,
And, to excuse it, need but shew the prize;
Whose spoils this paper offers to your eye,
Fair ev'n in death! this peerless Butterfly.
My sons! (she answer'd) both have done your parts:
Live happy both, and long promote our arts.
But hear a Mother, when she recommends
To your fraternal care, our sleeping friends.
The common Soul, of Heav'n's more frugal make,
Serves but to keep fools pert, and knaves awake:
A drowzy Watchman, that just gives a knock,
And breaks our rest, to tell us what's a clock.
Yet by some object ev'ry brain is stirr'd;
The dull may waken to a Humming-bird;
The most recluse, discreetly open'd, find
Congenial matter in the Cockle-kind;
The mind, in Metaphysics at a loss,
May wander in a wilderness of Moss;
The head that turns at super-lunar things,
Poiz'd with a tail, may steer on Wilkins' wings.
'O! would the sons of men once think their eyes
And reason given them but to study flies !
See Nature in some partial narrow shape,
And let the Author of the Whole escape:
Learn but to trifle; or, who most observe,
To wonder at their Maker, not to serve.'
'Be that my task' (replies a gloomy clerk,
Sworn foe to Myst'ry, yet divinely dark;
Whose pious hope aspires to see the day
When Moral Evidence shall quite decay,
And damns implicit faith, and holy lies,
Prompt to impose, and fond to dogmatize):
'Let others creep by timid steps, and slow,
On plain experience lay foundations low,
202
By common sense to common knowledge bred,
And last, to Nature's Cause through Nature led.
All-seeing in thy mists, we want no guide,
Mother of Arrogance, and Source of Pride!
We nobly take the high Priori Road,
And reason downward, till we doubt of God:
Make Nature still encroach upon his plan;
And shove him off as far as e'er we can:
Thrust some Mechanic Cause into his place;
Or bind in matter, or diffuse in space.
Or, at one bound o'erleaping all his laws,
Make God man's image, man the final Cause,
Find virtue local, all relation scorn
See all in self , and but for self be born:
Of naught so certain as our reason still,
Of naught so doubtful as of soul and will .
Oh hide the God still more! and make us see
Such as Lucretius drew, a god like thee:
Wrapp'd up in self, a god without a thought,
Regardless of our merit or default.
Or that bright image to our fancy draw,
Which Theocles in raptur'd vision saw,
While through poetic scenes the Genius roves,
Or wanders wild in academic groves;
That Nature our society adores,
Where Tindal dictates, and Silenus snores.'
Rous'd at his name up rose the bousy Sire,
And shook from out his pipe the seeds of fire;
Then snapp'd his box, and strok'd his belly down:
Rosy and rev'rend, though without a gown.
Bland and familiar to the throne he came,
Led up the youth, and call'd the Goddess Dame .
Then thus, 'From priestcraft happily set free,
Lo! ev'ry finished Son returns to thee:
First slave to words, then vassal to a name,
Then dupe to party; child and man the same;
Bounded by Nature, narrow'd still by art,
A trifling head, and a contracted heart.
Thus bred, thus taught, how many have I seen,
Smiling on all, and smil'd on by a queen.
Marked out for honours, honour'd for their birth,
203
To thee the most rebellious things on earth:
Now to thy gentle shadow all are shrunk,
All melted down, in pension, or in punk!
So K-- so B-- sneak'd into the grave,
A monarch's half, and half a harlot's slave.
Poor W-- nipp'd in Folly's broadest bloom,
Who praises now? his chaplain on his tomb.
Then take them all, oh take them to thy breast!
Thy Magus , Goddess! shall perform the rest.'
With that, a Wizard old his Cup extends;
Which whoso tastes, forgets his former friends,
Sire, ancestors, himself. One casts his eyes
Up to a Star , and like Endymion dies:
A Feather , shooting from another's head,
Extracts his brain, and principle is fled,
Lost is his God, his country, ev'rything;
And nothing left but homage to a king!
The vulgar herd turn off to roll with hogs,
To run with horses, or to hunt with dogs;
But, sad example! never to escape
Their infamy, still keep the human shape.
But she, good Goddess, sent to ev'ry child
Firm impudence, or stupefaction mild;
And straight succeeded, leaving shame no room,
Cibberian forehead, or Cimmerian gloom.
Kind self-conceit to somewhere glass applies,
Which no one looks in with another's eyes:
But as the flatt'rer or dependant paint,
Beholds himself a patriot, chief, or saint.
On others Int'rest her gay liv'ry flings,
Int'rest that waves on party-colour'd wings:
Turn'd to the sun, she casts a thousand dyes,
And, as she turns, the colours fall or rise.
Others the siren sisters warble round,
And empty heads console with empty sound.
No more, Alas! the voice of Fame they hear,
The balm of Dulness trickling in their ear.
Great C--, H--, P--, R--, K--,
Why all your toils? your Sons have learn'd to sing.
How quick ambition hastes to ridicule!
The sire is made a peer, the son a fool.
204
On some, a Priest succinct in amice white
Attends; all flesh is nothing in his sight!
Beeves, at his touch, at once to jelly turn,
And the huge boar is shrunk into an urn:
The board with specious miracles he loads,
Turns hares to larks, and pigeons into toads.
Another (for in all what one can shine?)
Explains the
Seve
and
Verdeur
of the vine.
What cannot copious sacrifice atone?
Thy truffles, Perigord! thy hams, Bayonne!
With French libation, and Italian strain,
Wash Bladen white, and expiate Hays's stain.
Knight lifts the head, for what are crowds undone.
To three essential partridges in one?
Gone ev'ry blush, and silent all reproach,
Contending princes mount them in their coach.
Next, bidding all draw near on bended knees,
The Queen confers her Titles and Degrees .
Her children first of more distinguish'd sort,
Who study Shakespeare at the Inns of Court,
Impale a glowworm, or vertú profess,
Shine in the dignity of F.R.S.
Some, deep Freemasons, join the silent race
Worthy to fill Pythagoras's place:
Some botanists, or florists at the least,
Or issue members of an annual feast.
Nor pass'd the meanest unregarded, one
Rose a Gregorian, one a Gormogon.
The last, not least in honour or applause,
Isis and Cam made Doctors of her Laws.
Then, blessing all, 'Go, Children of my care!
To practice now from theory repair.
All my commands are easy, short, and full:
My sons! be proud, be selfish, and be dull.
Guard my prerogative, assert my throne:
This nod confirms each privilege your own.
The cap and switch be sacred to his Grace;
205
With staff and pumps the Marquis lead the race;
From stage to stage the licens'd Earl may run,
Pair'd with his fellow charioteer the sun;
The learned Baron butterflies design,
Or draw to silk Arachne's subtle line;
The Judge to dance his brother Sergeant call;
The Senator at cricket urge the ball;
The Bishop stow (pontific luxury!)
An hundred souls of turkeys in a pie;
The sturdy Squire to Gallic masters stoop,
And drown his lands and manors in a soupe .
Others import yet nobler arts from France,
Teach kings to fiddle, and make senates dance.
Perhaps more high some daring son may soar,
Proud to my list to add one monarch more;
And nobly conscious, princes are but things
Born for first ministers, as slaves for kings,
Tyrant supreme! shall three Estates command,
And make one mighty Dunciad of the Land!
More she had spoke, but yawn'd-All Nature nods:
What mortal can resist the yawn of gods?
Churches and Chapels instantly it reach'd;
(St. James's first, for leaden Gilbert preach'd)
Then catch'd the schools; the Hall scarce kept awake;
The Convocation gap'd, but could not speak:
Lost was the nation's sense, nor could be found,
While the long solemn unison went round:
Wide, and more wide, it spread o'er all the realm;
Even Palinurus nodded at the helm:
The vapour mild o'er each committee crept;
Unfinish'd treaties in each office slept;
And chiefless armies doz'd out the campaign;
And navies yawn'd for orders on the main.
O Muse! relate (for you can tell alone,
Wits have short memories, and Dunces none),
Relate, who first, who last resign'd to rest;
Whose heads she partly, whose completely blest;
What charms could faction, what ambition lull,
The venal quiet, and entrance the dull;
Till drown'd was sense, and shame, and right, and wrongO sing, and hush the nations with thy song!
206
In vain, in vain-the all-composing hour
Resistless falls: The Muse obeys the Pow'r.
She comes! she comes! the sable throne behold
Of Night primeval, and of Chaos old!
Before her, Fancy's gilded clouds decay,
And all its varying rainbows die away.
Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,
The meteor drops, and in a flash expires.
As one by one, at dread Medea's strain,
The sick'ning stars fade off th' ethereal plain;
As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand oppress'd,
Clos'd one by one to everlasting rest;
Thus at her felt approach, and secret might,
Art after Art goes out, and all is Night.
See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,
Mountains of Casuistry heap'd o'er her head!
Philosophy, that lean'd on Heav'n before,
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.
Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,
And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense !
See Mystery to Mathematics fly!
In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
And unawares Morality expires.
Nor public Flame, nor private , dares to shine;
Nor human Spark is left, nor Glimpse divine !
Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restor'd;
Light dies before thy uncreating word:
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
And universal Darkness buries All.
~ Alexander Pope,#NFDB
285:The thought of Eglamor's least like a thought,
And yet a false one, was, "Man shrinks to nought
"If matched with symbols of immensity;
"Must quail, forsooth, before a quiet sky
"Or sea, too little for their quietude:"
And, truly, somewhat in Sordello's mood
Confirmed its speciousness, while eve slow sank
Down the near terrace to the farther bank,
And only one spot left from out the night
Glimmered upon the river opposite
A breadth of watery heaven like a bay,
A sky-like space of water, ray for ray,
And star for star, one richness where they mixed
As this and that wing of an angel, fixed,
Tumultuary splendours folded in
To die. Nor turned he till Ferrara's din
(Say, the monotonous speech from a man's lip
Who lets some first and eager purpose slip
In a new fancy's birththe speech keeps on
Though elsewhere its informing soul be gone)
Aroused him, surely offered succour. Fate
Paused with this eve; ere she precipitate
Herself,best put off new strange thoughts awhile,
That voice, those large hands, that portentous smile,
What help to pierce the future as the past
Lay in the plaining city?
And at last
The main discovery and prime concern,
All that just now imported him to learn,
Truth's self, like yonder slow moon to complete
Heaven, rose again, and, naked at his feet,
Lighted his old life's every shift and change,
Effort with counter-effort; nor the range
Of each looked wrong except wherein it checked,
Some otherwhich of these could he suspect,
Prying into them by the sudden blaze?
The real way seemed made up of all the ways
Mood after mood of the one mind in him;
Tokens of the existence, bright or dim,
Of a transcendent all-embracing sense
Demanding only outward influence,
A soul, in Palma's phrase, above his soul,
Power to uplift his power,such moon's control
Over such sea-depths,and their mass had swept
Onward from the beginning and still kept
Its course: but years and years the sky above
Held none, and so, untasked of any love,
His sensitiveness idled, now amort,
Alive now, and, to sullenness or sport
Given wholly up, disposed itself anew
At every passing instigation, grew
And dwindled at caprice, in foam-showers spilt,
Wedge-like insisting, quivered now a gilt
Shield in the sunshine, now a blinding race
Of whitest ripples o'er the reeffound place
For much display; not gathered up and, hurled
Right from its heart, encompassing the world.
So had Sordello been, by consequence,
Without a function: others made pretence
To strength not half his own, yet had some core
Within, submitted to some moon, before
Them still, superior still whate'er their force,
Were able therefore to fulfil a course,
Nor missed life's crown, authentic attribute.
To each who lives must be a certain fruit
Of having lived in his degree,a stage,
Earlier or later in men's pilgrimage,
To stop at; and to this the spirits tend
Who, still discovering beauty without end,
Amass the scintillations, make one star
Something unlike them, self-sustained, afar,
And meanwhile nurse the dream of being blest
By winning it to notice and invest
Their souls with alien glory, some one day
Whene'er the nucleus, gathering shape alway,
Round to the perfect circlesoon or late,
According as themselves are formed to wait;
Whether mere human beauty will suffice
The yellow hair and the luxurious eyes,
Or human intellect seem best, or each
Combine in some ideal form past reach
On earth, or else some shade of these, some aim,
Some love, hate even, take their place, the same,
So to be servedall this they do not lose,
Waiting for death to live, nor idly choose
What must be Hella progress thus pursued
Through all existence, still above the food
That 's offered them, still fain to reach beyond
The widened range, in virtue of their bond
Of sovereignty. Not that a Palma's Love,
A Salinguerra's Hate, would equal prove
To swaying all Sordello: but why doubt
Some love meet for such strength, some moon without
Would match his sea?or fear, Good manifest,
Only the Best breaks faith?Ah but the Best
Somehow eludes us ever, still might be
And is not! Crave we gems? No penury
Of their material round us! Pliant earth
And plastic flamewhat balks the mage his birth
Jacinth in balls or lodestone by the block?
Flinders enrich the strand, veins swell the rock;
Nought more! Seek creatures? Life 's i' the tempest, thought
Clothes the keen hill-top, mid-day woods are fraught
With fervours: human forms are well enough!
But we had hoped, encouraged by the stuff
Profuse at nature's pleasure, men beyond
These actual men!and thus are over-fond
In arguing, from Goodthe Best, from force
Dividedforce combined, an ocean's course
From this our sea whose mere intestine pants
Might seem at times sufficient to our wants.
External power! If none be adequate,
And he stand forth ordained (a prouder fate)
Himself a law to his own sphere? "Remove
"All incompleteness!" for that law, that love?
Nay, if all other laws be feints,truth veiled
Helpfully to weak vision that had failed
To grasp aught but its special want,for lure,
Embodied? Stronger vision could endure
The unbodied want: no partthe whole of truth!
The People were himself; nor, by the ruth
At their condition, was he less impelled
To alter the discrepancy beheld,
Than if, from the sound whole, a sickly part
Subtracted were transformed, decked out with art,
Then palmed on him as alien woethe Guelf
To succour, proud that he forsook himself.
All is himself; all service, therefore, rates
Alike, nor serving one part, immolates
The rest: but all in time! "That lance of yours
"Makes havoc soon with Malek and his Moors,
"That buckler 's lined with many a giant's beard
"Ere long, our champion, be the lance upreared,
"The buckler wielded handsomely as now!
"But view your escort, bear in mind your vow,
"Count the pale tracts of sand to pass ere that,
"And, if you hope we struggle through the flat,
"Put lance and buckler by! Next half-month lacks
"Mere sturdy exercise of mace and axe
"To cleave this dismal brake of prickly-pear
"Which bristling holds Cydippe by the hair,
"Lames barefoot Agathon: this felled, we 'll try
"The picturesque achievements by and by
"Next life!"
Ay, rally, mock, O People, urge
Your claims!for thus he ventured, to the verge,
Push a vain mummery which perchance distrust
Of his fast-slipping resolution thrust
Likewise: accordingly the Crowd(as yet
He had unconsciously contrived forget
I' the whole, to dwell o' the points . . . one might assuage
The signal horrors easier than engage
With a dim vulgar vast unobvious grief
Not to be fancied off, nor gained relief
In brilliant fits, cured by a happy quirk,
But by dim vulgar vast unobvious work
To correspond . . .) this Crowd then, forth they stood.
"And now content thy stronger vision, brood
"On thy bare want; uncovered, turf by turf,
"Study the corpse-face thro' the taint-worms' scurf!"
Down sank the People's Then; uprose their Now.
These sad ones render service to! And how
Piteously little must that service prove
Had surely proved in any case! for, move
Each other obstacle away, let youth
Become aware it had surprised a truth
'T were service to impartcan truth be seized,
Settled forthwith, and, of the captive eased,
Its captor find fresh prey, since this alit
So happily, no gesture luring it,
The earnest of a flock to follow? Vain,
Most vain! a life to spend ere this he chain
To the poor crowd's complacence: ere the crowd
Pronounce it captured, he descries a cloud
Its kin of twice the plume; which he, in turn,
If he shall live as many lives, may learn
How to secure: not else. Then Mantua called
Back to his mind how certain bards were thralled
Buds blasted, but of breath more like perfume
Than Naddo's staring nosegay's carrion bloom;
Some insane rose that burnt heart out in sweets,
A spendthrift in the spring, no summer greets;
Some Dularete, drunk with truths and wine,
Grown bestial, dreaming how become divine.
Yet to surmount this obstacle, commence
With the commencement, merits crowning! Hence
Must truth be casual truth, elicited
In sparks so mean, at intervals dispread
So rarely, that 't is like at no one time
Of the world's story has not truth, the prime
Of truth, the very truth which, loosed, had hurled
The world's course right, been really in the world
Content the while with some mean spark by dint
Of some chance-blow, the solitary hint
Of buried fire, which, rip earth's breast, would stream
Sky-ward!
Sordello's miserable gleam
Was looked for at the moment: he would dash
This badge. and all it brought, to earth,abash
Taurello thus, perhaps persuade him wrest
The Kaiser from his purpose,would attest
His own belief, in any case. Before
He dashes it however, think once more!
For, were that little, truly service? "Ay,
"I' the end, no doubt; but meantime? Plain you spy
"Its ultimate effect, but many flaws
"Of vision blur each intervening cause.
"Were the day's fraction clear as the life's sum
"Of service, Now as filled as teems To-come
"With evidence of goodnor too minute
"A share to vie with evil! No dispute,
"'T were fitliest maintain the Guelfs in rule:
"That makes your life's work: but you have to school
"Your day's work on these natures circumstanced
"Thus variously, which yet, as each advanced
"Or might impede the Guelf rule, must be moved
"Now, for the Then's sake,hating what you loved,
"Loving old hatreds! Nor if one man bore
"Brand upon temples while his fellow wore
"The aureole, would it task you to decide:
"But, portioned duly out, the future vied
"Never with the unparcelled present! Smite
"Or spare so much on warrant all so slight?
"The present's complete sympathies to break,
"Aversions bear with, for a future's sake
"So feeble? Tito ruined through one speck,
"The Legate saved by his sole lightish fleck?
"This were work, true, but work performed at cost
"Of other work; aught gained here, elsewhere lost.
"For a new segment spoil an orb half-done?
"Rise with the People one step, and sinkone?
"Were it but one step, less than the whole face
"Of things, your novel duty bids erase!
"Harms to abolish! What, the prophet saith,
"The minstrel singeth vainly then? Old faith,
"Old courage, only born because of harms,
"Were not, from highest to the lowest, charms?
"Flame may persist; but is not glare as staunch?
"Where the salt marshes stagnate, crystals branch;
"Blood dries to crimson; Evil 's beautified
"In every shape. Thrust Beauty then aside
"And banish Evil! Wherefore? After all,
"Is Evil a result less natural
"Than Good? For overlook the seasons' strife
"With tree and flower,the hideous animal life,
"(Of which who seeks shall find a grinning taunt
"For his solution, and endure the vaunt
"Of nature's angel, as a child that knows
"Himself befooled, unable to propose
"Aught better than the fooling)and but care
"For men, for the mere People then and there,
"In these, could you but see that Good and Ill
"Claimed you alike! Whence rose their claim but still
"From Ill, as fruit of Ill? What else could knit
"You theirs but Sorrow? Any free from it
"Were also free from you! Whose happiness
"Could be distinguished in this morning's press
"Of miseries?the fool's who passed a gibe
"'On thee,' jeered he, `so wedded to thy tribe,
"`Thou carriest green and yellow tokens in
"'Thy very face that thou art Ghibellin!'
"Much hold on you that fool obtained! Nay mount
"Yet higherand upon men's own account
"Must Evil stay: for, what is joy?to heave
"Up one obstruction more, and common leave
"What was peculiar, by such act destroy
"Itself; a partial death is every joy;
"The sensible escape, enfranchisement
"Of a sphere's essence: once the vexedcontent,
"The crampedat large, the growing circleround,
"All 's to begin againsome novel bound
"To break, some new enlargement to entreat;
"The sphere though larger is not more complete.
"Now for Mankind's experience: who alone
"Might style the unobstructed world his own?
"Whom palled Goito with its perfect things?
"Sordello's self: whereas for Mankind springs
"Salvation by each hindrance interposed.
"They climb; life's view is not at once disclosed
"To creatures caught up, on the summit left,
"Heaven plain above them, yet of wings bereft:
"But lower laid, as at the mountain's foot.
"So, range on range, the girdling forests shoot
"'Twixt your plain prospect and the throngs who scale
"Height after height, and pierce mists, veil by veil,
"Heartened with each discovery; in their soul,
"The Whole they seek by Partsbut, found that Whole,
"Could they revert, enjoy past gains? The space
"Of time you judge so meagre to embrace
"The Parts were more than plenty, once attained
"The Whole, to quite exhaust it: nought were gained
"But leave to looknot leave to do: Beneath
"Soon sates the lookerlook Above, and Death
"Tempts ere a tithe of Life be tasted. Live
"First, and die soon enough, Sordello! Give
"Body and spirit the first right they claim,
"And pasture soul on a voluptuous shame
"That you, a pageant-city's denizen,
"Are neither vilely lodged midst Lombard men
"Can force joy out of sorrow, seem to truck
"Bright attributes away for sordid muck,
"Yet manage from that very muck educe
"Gold; then subject nor scruple, to your cruce
"The world's discardings! Though real ingots pay
"Your pains, the clods that yielded them are clay
"To all beside,would clay remain, though quenched
"Your purging-fire; who 's robbed then? Had you wrenched
"An ampler treasure forth!As 't is, they crave
"A share that ruins you and will not save
"Them. Why should sympathy command you quit
"The course that makes your joy, nor will remit
"Their woe? Would all arrive at joy? Reverse
"The order (time instructs you) nor coerce
"Each unit till, some predetermined mode,
"The total be emancipate; men's road
"Is one, men's times of travel many; thwart
"No enterprising soul's precocious start
"Before the general march! If slow or fast
"All straggle up to the same point at last,
"Why grudge your having gained, a month ago,
"The brakes at balm-shed, asphodels in blow,
"While they were landlocked? Speed their Then, but how
"This badge would suffer you improve your Now!"
His time of action for, against, or with
Our world (I labour to extract the pith
Of this his problem) grew, that even-tide,
Gigantic with its power of joy, beside
The world's eternity of impotence
To profit though at his whole joy's expense.
"Make nothing of my day because so brief?
"Rather make more: instead of joy, use grief
"Before its novelty have time subside!
"Wait not for the late savour, leave untried
"Virtue, the creaming honey-wine, quick squeeze
"Vice like a biting spirit from the lees
"Of life! Together let wrath, hatred, lust,
"All tyrannies in every shape, be thrust
"Upon this Now, which time may reason out
"As mischiefs, far from benefits, no doubt;
"But long ere then Sordello will have slipt
"Away; you teach him at Goito's crypt,
"There 's a blank issue to that fiery thrill.
"Stirring, the few cope with the many, still:
"So much of sand as, quiet, makes a mass
"Unable to produce three tufts of grass,
"Shall, troubled by the whirlwind, render void
"The whole calm glebe's endeavour: be employed!
"And e'en though somewhat smart the Crowd for this,
"Contribute each his pang to make your bliss,
"'T is but one pangone blood-drop to the bowl
"Which brimful tempts the sluggish asp uncowl
"At last, stains ruddily the dull red cape,
"And, kindling orbs grey as the unripe grape
"Before, avails forthwith to disentrance
"The portent, soon to lead a mystic dance
"Among you! For, who sits alone in Rome?
"Have those great hands indeed hewn out a home,
"And set me there to live? Oh life, life-breath,
"Life-blood,ere sleep, come travail, life ere death!
"This life stream on my soul, direct, oblique,
"But always streaming! Hindrances? They pique:
"Helps? such . . . but why repeat, my soul o'ertops
"Each height, then every depth profoundlier drops?
"Enough that I can live, and would live! Wait
"For some transcendent life reserved by Fate
"To follow this? Oh, never! Fate, I trust
"The same, my soul to; for, as who flings dust,
"Perchance (so facile was the deed) she chequed
"The void with these materials to affect
"My soul diversely: these consigned anew
"To nought by death, what marvel if she threw
"A second and superber spectacle
"Before me? What may serve for sun, what still
"Wander a moon above me? What else wind
"About me like the pleasures left behind,
"And how shall some new flesh that is not flesh
"Cling to me? What 's new laughter? Soothes the fresh
"Sleep like sleep? Fate 's exhaustless for my sake
"In brave resource: but whether bids she slake
"My thirst at this first rivulet, or count
"No draught worth lip save from some rocky fount
"Above i' the clouds, while here she 's provident
"Of pure loquacious pearl, the soft tree-tent
"Guards, with its face of reate and sedge, nor fail
"The silver globules and gold-sparkling grail
"At bottom? Oh, 't were too absurd to slight
"For the hereafter the to-day's delight!
"Quench thirst at this, then seek next well-spring: wear
"Home-lilies ere strange lotus in my hair!
"Here is the Crowd, whom I with freest heart
"Offer to serve, contented for my part
"To give life up in service,only grant
"That I do serve; if otherwise, why want
"Aught further of me? If men cannot choose
"But set aside life, why should I refuse
"The gift? I take itI, for one, engage
"Never to falter through my pilgrimage
"Nor end it howling that the stock or stone
"Were enviable, truly: I, for one,
"Will praise the world, you style mere anteroom
"To palacebe it so! shall I assume
"My foot the courtly gait, my tongue the trope,
"My mouth the smirk, before the doors fly ope
"One moment? What? with guarders row on row,
"Gay swarms of varletry that come and go,
"Pages to dice with, waiting-girls unlace
"The plackets of, pert claimants help displace,
"Heart-heavy suitors get a rank for,laugh
"At yon sleek parasite, break his own staff
"'Cross Beetle-brows the Usher's shoulder,why
"Admitted to the presence by and by,
"Should thought of having lost these make me grieve
"Among new joys I reach, for joys I leave?
"Cool citrine-crystals, fierce pyropus-stone,
"Are floor-work there! But do I let alone
"That black-eyed peasant in the vestibule
"Once and for ever?Floor-work? No such fool!
"Rather, were heaven to forestall earth, I 'd say
"I, is it, must be blest? Then, my own way
"Bless me! Giver firmer arm and fleeter foot,
"I 'll thank you: but to no mad wings transmute
"These limbs of mineour greensward was so soft!
"Nor camp I on the thunder-cloud aloft:
"We feel the bliss distinctlier, having thus
"Engines subservient, not mixed up with us.
"Better move palpably through heaven: nor, freed
"Of flesh, forsooth, from space to space proceed
"'Mid flying synods of worlds! No: in heaven's marge
"Show Titan still, recumbent o'er his targe
"Solid with starsthe Centaur at his game,
"Made tremulously out in hoary flame!
"Life! Yet the very cup whose extreme dull
"Dregs, even, I would quaff, was dashed, at full,
"Aside so oft; the death I fly, revealed
"So oft a better life this life concealed,
"And which sage, champion, martyr, through each path
"Have hunted fearlesslythe horrid bath,
"The crippling-irons and the fiery chair.
"'T was well for them; let me become aware
"As they, and I relinquish life, too! Let
"What masters life disclose itself! Forget
"Vain ordinances, I have one appeal
"I feel, am what I feel, know what I feel;
"So much is truth to me. What Is, then? Since
"One object, viewed diversely, may evince
"Beauty and uglinessthis way attract,
"That way repel,why gloze upon the fact?
"Why must a single of the sides be right?
"What bids choose this and leave the opposite?
"Where 's abstract Right for me?in youth endued
"With Right still present, still to be pursued,
"Thro' all the interchange of circles, rife
"Each with its proper law and mode of life,
"Each to be dwelt at ease in: where, to sway
"Absolute with the Kaiser, or obey
"Implicit with his serf of fluttering heart,
"Or, like a sudden thought of God's, to start
"Up, Brutus in the presence, then go shout
"That some should pick the unstrung jewels out
"Each, well!"
And, as in moments when the past
Gave partially enfranchisement, he cast
Himself quite through mere secondary states
Of his soul's essence, little loves and hates,
Into the mid deep yearnings overlaid
By these; as who should pierce hill, plain, grove, glade,
And on into the very nucleus probe
That first determined there exist a globe.
As that were easiest, half the globe dissolved,
So seemed Sordello's closing-truth evolved
By his flesh-half's break-up; the sudden swell
Of his expanding soul showed Ill and Well,
Sorrow and Joy, Beauty and Ugliness,
Virtue and Vice, the Larger and the Less,
All qualities, in fine, recorded here,
Might be but modes of Time and this one sphere,
Urgent on these, but not of force to bind
Eternity, as Timeas MatterMind,
If Mind, Eternity, should choose assert
Their attributes within a Life: thus girt
With circumstance, next change beholds them cinct
Quite otherwisewith Good and Ill distinct,
Joys, sorrows, tending to a like result
Contrived to render easy, difficult,
This or the other course of . . . what new bond
In place of flesh may stop their flight beyond
Its new sphere, as that course does harm or good
To its arrangements. Once this understood,
As suddenly he felt himself alone,
Quite out of Time and this world: all was known.
What made the secret of his past despair?
Most imminent when he seemed most aware
Of his own self-sufficiency: made mad
By craving to expand the power he had,
And not new power to be expanded?just
This made it; Soul on Matter being thrust,
Joy comes when so much Soul is wreaked in Time
On Matter: let the Soul's attempt sublime
Matter beyond the scheme and so prevent
By more or less that deed's accomplishment,
And Sorrow follows: Sorrow how avoid?
Let the employer match the thing employed,
Fit to the finite his infinity,
And thus proceed for ever, in degree
Changed but in kind the same, still limited
To the appointed circumstance and dead
To all beyond. A sphere is but a sphere;
Small, Great, are merely terms we bandy here;
Since to the spirit's absoluteness all
Are like. Now, of the present sphere we call
Life, are conditions; take but this among
Many; the body was to be so long
Youthful, no longer: but, since no control
Tied to that body's purposes his soul,
She chose to understand the body's trade
More than the body's selfhad fain conveyed
Her boundless to the body's bounded lot.
Hence, the soul permanent, the body not,
Scarcely its minute for enjoying here,
The soul must needs instruct her weak compeer,
Run o'er its capabilities and wring
A joy thence, she held worth experiencing:
Which, far from half discovered even,lo,
The minute gone, the body's power let go
Apportioned to that joy's acquirement! Broke
Morning o'er earth, he yearned for all it woke
From the volcano's vapour-flag, winds hoist
Black o'er the spread of sea,down to the moist
Dale's silken barley-spikes sullied with rain,
Swayed earthwards, heavily to rise again
The Small, a sphere as perfect as the Great
To the soul's absoluteness. Meditate
Too long on such a morning's cluster-chord
And the whole music it was framed afford,
The chord's might half discovered, what should pluck
One string, his finger, was found palsy-struck.
And then no marvel if the spirit, shown
A saddest sightthe body lost alone
Through her officious proffered help, deprived
Of this and that enjoyment Fate contrived,
Virtue, Good, Beauty, each allowed slip hence,
Vain-gloriously were fain, for recompense,
To stem the ruin even yet, protract
The body's term, supply the power it lacked
From her infinity, compel it learn
These qualities were only Time's concern,
And body may, with spirit helping, barred
Advance the same, vanquishedobtain reward,
Reap joy where sorrow was intended grow,
Of Wrong make Right, and turn Ill Good below.
And the result is, the poor body soon
Sinks under what was meant a wondrous boon,
Leaving its bright accomplice all aghast.
So much was plain then, proper in the past;
To be complete for, satisfy the whole
Series of spheresEternity, his soul
Needs must exceed, prove incomplete for, each
Single sphereTime. But does our knowledge reach
No farther? Is the cloud of hindrance broke
But by the failing of the fleshly yoke,
Its loves and hates, as now when death lets soar
Sordello, self-sufficient as before,
Though during the mere space that shall elapse
'Twixt his enthralment in new bonds perhaps?
Must life be ever just escaped, which should
Have been enjoyed?nay, might have been and would,
Each purpose ordered rightthe soul 's no whit
Beyond the body's purpose under it.
Like yonder breadth of watery heaven, a bay,
And that sky-space of water, ray for ray
And star for star, one richness where they mixed
As this and that wing of an angel, fixed,
Tumultuary splendours folded in
To diewould soul, proportioned thus, begin
Exciting discontent, or surelier quell
The body if, aspiring, it rebel?
But how so order life? Still brutalize
The soul, the sad world's way, with muffled eyes
To all that was before, all that shall be
After this sphereall and each quality
Save some sole and immutable Great, Good
And Beauteous whither fate has loosed its hood
To follow? Never may some soul see All
The Great Before and After, and the Small
Now, yet be saved by this the simplest lore,
And take the single course prescribed before,
As the king-bird with ages on his plumes
Travels to die in his ancestral glooms?
But where descry the Love that shall select
That course? Here is a soul whom, to affect,
Nature has plied with all her means, from trees
And flowers e'en to the Multitude!and these,
Decides he save or no? One word to end!
Ah my Sordello, I this once befriend
And speak for you. Of a Power above you still
Which, utterly incomprehensible,
Is out of rivalry, which thus you can
Love, tho' unloving all conceived by man
What need! And ofnone the minutest duct
To that out-nature, nought that would instruct
And so let rivalry begin to live
But of a Power its representative
Who, being for authority the same,
Communication different, should claim
A course, the first chose but this last revealed
This Human clear, as that Divine concealed
What utter need!
What has Sordello found?
Or can his spirit go the mighty round,
End where poor Eglamor begun? So, says
Old fable, the two eagles went two ways
About the world: where, in the midst, they met,
Though on a shifting waste of sand, men set
Jove's temple. Quick, what has Sordello found?
For they approachapproachthat foot's rebound
Palma? No, Salinguerra though in mail;
They mount, have reached the threshold, dash the veil
Asideand you divine who sat there dead,
Under his foot the badge: still, Palma said,
A triumph lingering in the wide eyes,
Wider than some spent swimmer's if he spies
Help from above in his extreme despair,
And, head far back on shoulder thrust, turns there
With short quick passionate cry: as Palma pressed
In one great kiss, her lips upon his breast,
It beat.
By this, the hermit-bee has stopped
His day's toil at Goito: the new-cropped
Dead vine-leaf answers, now 't is eve, he bit,
Twirled so, and filed all day: the mansion 's fit,
God counselled for. As easy guess the word
That passed betwixt them, and become the third
To the soft small unfrighted bee, as tax
Him with one faultso, no remembrance racks
Of the stone maidens and the font of stone
He, creeping through the crevice, leaves alone.
Alas, my friend, alas Sordello, whom
Anon they laid within that old font-tomb,
And, yet again, alas!
And now is 't worth
Our while bring back to mind, much less set forth
How Salinguerra extricates himself
Without Sordello? Ghibellin and Guelf
May fight their fiercest out? If Richard sulked
In durance or the Marquis paid his mulct,
Who cares, Sordello gone? The upshot, sure,
Was peace; our chief made some frank overture
That prospered; compliment fell thick and fast
On its disposer, and Taurello passed
With foe and friend for an outstripping soul,
Nine days at least. Then,fairly reached the goal,
He, by one effort, blotted the great hope
Out of his mind, nor further tried to cope
With Este, that mad evening's style, but sent
Away the Legate and the League, content
No blame at least the brothers had incurred,
Dispatched a message to the Monk, he heard
Patiently first to last, scarce shivered at,
Then curled his limbs up on his wolfskin mat
And ne'er spoke more,informed the Ferrarese
He but retained their rule so long as these
Lingered in pupilage,and last, no mode
Apparent else of keeping safe the road
From Germany direct to Lombardy
For Friedrich,none, that is, to guarantee
The faith and promptitude of who should next
Obtain Sofia's dowry,sore perplexed
(Sofia being youngest of the tribe
Of daughters, Ecelin was wont to bribe
The envious magnates withnor, since he sent
Henry of Egna this fair child, had Trent
Once failed the Kaiser's purposes"we lost
"Egna last year, and who takes Egna's post
"Opens the Lombard gate if Friedrich knock?")
Himself espoused the Lady of the Rock
In pure necessity, and, so destroyed
His slender last of chances, quite made void
Old prophecy, and spite of all the schemes
Overt and covert, youth's deeds, age's dreams,
Was sucked into Romano. And so hushed
He up this evening's work that, when 't was brushed
Somehow against by a blind chronicle
Which, chronicling whatever woe befell
Ferrara, noted this the obscure woe
Of "Salinguerra's sole son Giacomo
"Deceased, fatuous and doting, ere his sire,"
The townsfolk rubbed their eyes, could but admire
Which of Sofia's five was meant.
The chaps
Of earth's dead hope were tardy to collapse,
Obliterated not the beautiful
Distinctive features at a crash: but dull
And duller these, next year, as Guelfs withdrew
Each to his stronghold. Then (securely too
Ecelin at Campese slept; close by,
Who likes may see him in Solagna lie,
With cushioned head and gloved hand to denote
The cavalier he was)then his heart smote
Young Ecelin at last; long since adult.
And, save Vicenza's business, what result
In blood and blaze? (So hard to intercept
Sordello till his plain withdrawal!) Stepped
Then its new lord on Lombardy. I' the nick
Of time when Ecelin and Alberic
Closed with Taurello, come precisely news
That in Verona half the souls refuse
Allegiance to the Marquis and the Count
Have cast them from a throne they bid him mount,
Their Podest, thro' his ancestral worth.
Ecelin flew there, and the town henceforth
Was wholly hisTaurello sinking back
From temporary station to a track
That suited. News received of this acquist,
Friedrich did come to Lombardy: who missed
Taurello then? Another year: they took
Vicenza, left the Marquis scarce a nook
For refuge, and, when hundreds two or three
Of Guelfs conspired to call themselves "The Free,"
Opposing Alberic,vile Bassanese,
(Without Sordello!)Ecelin at ease
Slaughtered them so observably, that oft
A little Salinguerra looked with soft
Blue eyes up, asked his sire the proper age
To get appointed his proud uncle's page.
More years passed, and that sire had dwindled down
To a mere showy turbulent soldier, grown
Better through age, his parts still in repute,
Subtlehow else?but hardly so astute
As his contemporaneous friends professed;
Undoubtedly a brawler: for the rest,
Known by each neighbour, and allowed for, let
Keep his incorrigible ways, nor fret
Men who would miss their boyhood's bugbear: "trap
"The ostrich, suffer our bald osprey flap
"A battered pinion!"was the word. In fine,
One flap too much and Venice's marine
Was meddled with; no overlooking that!
She captured him in his Ferrara, fat
And florid at a banquet, more by fraud
Than force, to speak the truth; there 's slender laud
Ascribed you for assisting eighty years
To pull his death on such a man; fate shears
The life-cord prompt enough whose last fine threads
You fritter: so, presiding his board-head,
The old smile, your assurance all went well
With Friedrich (as if he were like to tell!)
In rushed (a plan contrived before) our friends,
Made some pretence at fighting, some amends
For the shame done his eighty years(apart
The principle, none found it in his heart
To be much angry with Taurello)gained
Their galleys with the prize, and what remained
But carry him to Venice for a show?
Set him, as 't were, down gentlyfree to go
His gait, inspect our square, pretend observe
The swallows soaring their eternal curve
'Twixt Theodore and Mark, if citizens
Gathered importunately, fives and tens,
To point their children the Magnifico,
All but a monarch once in firm-land, go
His gait among them now"it took, indeed,
"Fully this Ecelin to supersede
"That man," remarked the seniors. Singular!
Sordello's inability to bar
Rivals the stage, that evening, mainly brought
About by his strange disbelief that aught
Was ever to be done,this thrust the Twain
Under Taurello's tutelage,whom, brain
And heart and hand, he forthwith in one rod
Indissolubly bound to baffle God
Who loves the worldand thus allowed the thin
Grey wizened dwarfish devil Ecelin,
And massy-muscled big-boned Alberic
(Mere man, alas!) to put his problem quick
To demonstrationprove wherever's will
To do, there's plenty to be done, or ill
Or good. Anointed, then, to rend and rip
Kings of the gag and flesh-hook, screw and whip,
They plagued the world: a touch of Hildebrand
(So far from obsolete!) made Lombards band
Together, cross their coats as for Christ's cause,
And saving Milan win the world's applause.
Ecelin perished: and I think grass grew
Never so pleasant as in Valley R
By San Zenon where Alberic in turn
Saw his exasperated captors burn
Seven children and their mother; then, regaled
So far, tied on to a wild horse, was trailed
To death through raunce and bramble-bush. I take
God's part and testify that 'mid the brake
Wild o'er his castle on the pleasant knoll,
You hear its one tower left, a belfry, toll
The earthquake spared it last year, laying flat
The modern church beneath,no harm in that!
Chirrups the contumacious grasshopper,
Rustles the lizard and the cushats chirre
Above the ravage: there, at deep of day
A week since, heard I the old Canon say
He saw with his own eyes a barrow burst
And Alberic's huge skeleton unhearsed
Only five years ago. He added, "June 's
"The month for carding off our first cocoons
"The silkworms fabricate"a double news,
Nor he nor I could tell the worthier. Choose!
And Naddo gone, all's gone; not Eglamor!
Believe, I knew the face I waited for,
A guest my spirit of the golden courts!
Oh strange to see how, despite ill-reports,
Disuse, some wear of years, that face retained
Its joyous look of love! Suns waxed and waned,
And still my spirit held an upward flight,
Spiral on spiral, gyres of life and light
More and more gorgeousever that face there
The last admitted! crossed, too, with some care
As perfect triumph were not sure for all,
But, on a few, enduring damp must fall,
A transient struggle, haply a painful sense
Of the inferior nature's clingingwhence
Slight starting tears easily wiped away,
Fine jealousies soon stifled in the play
Of irrepressible admirationnot
Aspiring, all considered, to their lot
Who ever, just as they prepare ascend
Spiral on spiral, wish thee well, impend
Thy frank delight at their exclusive track,
That upturned fervid face and hair put back!
Is there no more to say? He of the rhymes
Many a tale, of this retreat betimes,
Was born: Sordello die at once for men?
The Chroniclers of Mantua tired their pen
Telling how Sordello Prince Visconti saved
Mantua, and elsewhere notably behaved
Who thus, by fortune ordering events,
Passed with posterity, to all intents,
For just the god he never could become.
As Knight, Bard, Gallant, men were never dumb
In praise of him: while what he should have been,
Could be, and was notthe one step too mean
For him to take,we suffer at this day
Because of: Ecelin had pushed away
Its chance ere Dante could arrive and take
That step Sordello spurned, for the world's sake:
He did muchbut Sordello's chance was gone.
Thus, had Sordello dared that step alone,
Apollo had been compassed: 't was a fit
He wished should go to him, not he to it
As one content to merely be supposed
Singing or fighting elsewhere, while he dozed
Really at homeone who was chiefly glad
To have achieved the few real deeds he had,
Because that way assured they were not worth
Doing, so spared from doing them henceforth
A tree that covets fruitage and yet tastes
Never itself, itself. Had he embraced
Their cause then, men had plucked Hesperian fruit
And, praising that, just thrown him in to boot
All he was anxious to appear, but scarce
Solicitous to be. A sorry farce
Such life is, after all! Cannot I say
He lived for some one better thing? this way.
Lo, on a heathy brown and nameless hill
By sparkling Asolo, in mist and chill,
Morning just up, higher and higher runs
A child barefoot and rosy. See! the sun's
On the square castle's inner-court's low wall
Like the chine of some extinct animal
Half turned to earth and flowers; and through the haze
(Save where some slender patches of grey maize
Are to be overleaped) that boy has crossed
The whole hill-side of dew and powder-frost
Matting the balm and mountain camomile.
Up and up goes he, singing all the while
Some unintelligible words to beat
The lark, God's poet, swooning at his feet,
So worsted is he at "the few fine locks
"Stained like pale honey oozed from topmost rocks
"Sun-blanched the livelong summer,"all that's left
Of the Goito lay! And thus bereft,
Sleep and forget, Sordello! In effect
He sleeps, the feverish poetI suspect
Not utterly companionless; but, friends,
Wake up! The ghost's gone, and the story ends
I'd fain hope, sweetly; seeing, peri or ghoul,
That spirits are conjectured fair or foul,
Evil or good, judicious authors think,
According as they vanish in a stink
Or in a perfume. Friends, be frank! ye snuff
Civet, I warrant. Really? Like enough!
Merely the savour's rareness; any nose
May ravage with impunity a rose:
Rifle a musk-pod and 't will ache like yours!
I'd tell you that same pungency ensures
An after-gust, but that were overbold.
Who would has heard Sordello's story told.
~ Robert Browning, Sordello - Book the Sixth
,#NFDB
286:I.
You're my friend:
I was the man the Duke spoke to;
I helped the Duchess to cast off his yoke, too;
So here's the tale from beginning to end,
My friend!
II.
Ours is a great wild country:
If you climb to our castle's top,
I don't see where your eye can stop;
For when you've passed the cornfield country,
Where vineyards leave off, flocks are packed,
And sheep-range leads to cattle-tract,
And cattle-tract to open-chase,
And open-chase to the very base
Of the mountain where, at a funeral pace,
Round about, solemn and slow,
One by one, row after row,
Up and up the pine-trees go,
So, like black priests up, and so
Down the other side again
To another greater, wilder country,
That's one vast red drear burnt-up plain,
Branched through and through with many a vein
Whence iron's dug, and copper's dealt;
Look right, look left, look straight before,-
Beneath they mine, above they smelt,
Copper-ore and iron-ore,
And forge and furnace mould and melt,
And so on, more and ever more,
Till at the last, for a bounding belt,
Comes the salt sand hoar of the great sea-shore,
-And the whole is our Duke's country.
III.
I was born the day this present Duke was-
(And O, says the song, ere I was old!)
In the castle where the other Duke was-
(When I was happy and young, not old!)
I in the kennel, he in the bower:
We are of like age to an hour.
My father was huntsman in that day;
Who has not heard my father say
That, when a boar was brought to bay,
Three times, four times out of five,
With his huntspear he'd contrive
To get the killing-place transfixed,
And pin him true, both eyes betwixt?
And that's why the old Duke would rather
He lost a salt-pit than my father,
And loved to have him ever in call;
That's why my father stood in the hall
When the old Duke brought his infant out
To show the people, and while they passed
The wondrous bantling round about,
Was first to start at the outside blast
As the Kaiser's courier blew his horn
Just a month after the babe was born.
``And,'' quoth the Kaiser's courier, ``since
``The Duke has got an heir, our Prince
``Needs the Duke's self at his side: ''
The Duke looked down and seemed to wince,
But he thought of wars o'er the world wide,
Castles a-fire, men on their march,
The toppling tower, the crashing arch;
And up he looked, and awhile he eyed
The row of crests and shields and banners
Of all achievements after all manners,
And ``ay,'' said the Duke with a surly pride.
The more was his comfort when he died
At next year's end, in a velvet suit,
With a gilt glove on his hand, his foot
In a silken shoe for a leather boot,
Petticoated like a herald,
In a chamher next to an ante-room,
Where he breathed the breath of page and groom,
What he called stink, and they, perfume:
-They should have set him on red Berold
Mad with pride, like fire to manage!
They should have got his cheek fresh tannage
Such a day as to-day in the merry sunshine!
Had they stuck on his fist a rough-foot merlin!
(Hark, the wind's on the heath at its game!
Oh for a noble falcon-lanner
To flap each broad wing like a banner,
And turn in the wind, and dance like flame!)
Had they broached a white-beer cask from Berlin
-Or if you incline to prescribe mere wine
Put to his lips, when they saw him pine,
A cup of our own Moldavia fine,
Cotnar for instance, green as May sorrel
And ropy with sweet,-we shall not quarrel.
IV.
So, at home, the sick tall yellow Duchess
Was left with the infant in her clutches,
She being the daughter of God knows who:
And now was the time to revisit her tribe.
Abroad and afar they went, the two,
And let our people rail and gibe
At the empty hall and extinguished fire,
As loud as we liked, but ever in vain,
Till after long years we had our desire,
And back came the Duke and his mother again.
V.
And he came back the pertest little ape
That ever affronted human shape;
Full of his travel, struck at himself.
You'd say, he despised our bluff old ways?
-Not he! For in Paris they told the elf
Our rough North land was the Land of Lays,
The one good thing left in evil days;
Since the Mid-Age was the Heroic Time,
And only in wild nooks like ours
Could you taste of it yet as in its prime,
And see true castles, with proper towers,
Young-hearted women, old-minded men,
And manners now as manners were then.
So, all that the old Dukes had been, without knowing it,
This Duke would fain know he was, without being it;
'Twas not for the joy's self, but the joy of his showing it,
Nor for the pride's self, but the pride of our seeing it,
He revived all usages thoroughly worn-out,
The souls of them fumed-forth, the hearts of them torn-out:
And chief in the chase his neck he perilled
On a lathy horse, all legs and length,
With blood for bone, all speed, no strength;
-They should have set him on red Berold
With the red eye slow consuming in fire,
And the thin stiff ear like an abbey-spire!
VI.
Well, such as he was, he must marry, we heard:
And out of a convent, at the word,
Came the lady, in time of spring.
-Oh, old thoughts they cling, they cling!
That day, I know, with a dozen oaths
I clad myself in thick hunting-clothes
Fit for the chase of urochs or buffle
In winter-time when you need to muffle.
But the Duke had a mind we should cut a figure,
And so we saw the lady arrive:
My friend, I have seen a white crane bigger!
She was the smallest lady alive,
Made in a piece of nature's madness,
Too small, almost, for the life and gladness
That over-filled her, as some hive
Out of the bears' reach on the high trees
Is crowded with its safe merry bees:
In truth, she was not hard to please!
Up she looked, down she looked, round at the mead,
Straight at the castle, that's best indeed
To look at from outside the walls:
As for us, styled the ``serfs and thralls,''
She as much thanked me as if she had said it,
(With her eyes, do you understand?)
Because I patted her horse while I led it;
And Max, who rode on her other hand,
Said, no bird flew past but she inquired
What its true name was, nor ever seemed tired-
If that was an eagle she saw hover,
And the green and grey bird on the field was the plover.
When suddenly appeared the Duke:
And as down she sprung, the small foot pointed
On to my hand,-as with a rebuke,
And as if his backbone were not jointed,
The Duke stepped rather aside than forward,
And welcomed her with his grandest smile;
And, mind you, his mother all the while
Chilled in the rear, like a wind to Nor'ward;
And up, like a weary yawn, with its pullies
Went, in a shriek, the rusty portcullis;
And, like a glad sky the north-wind sullies,
The lady's face stopped its play,
As if her first hair had grown grey;
For such things must begin some one day.
VII.
In a day or two she was well again;
As who should say, ``You labour in vain!
``This is all a jest against God, who meant
``I should ever be, as I am, content
`` And glad in his sight; therefore, glad I will be.''
So, smiling as at first went she.
VIII.
She was active, stirring, all fire-
Could not rest, could not tire-
To a stone she might have given life!
(I myself loved once, in my day)
-For a shepherd's, miner's, huntsman's wife,
(I had a wife, I know what I say)
Never in all the world such an one!
And here was plenty to be done,
And she that could do it, great or small,
She was to do nothing at all.
There was already this man in his post,
This in his station, and that in his office,
And the Duke's plan admitted a wife, at most,
To meet his eye, with the other trophies,
Now outside the hall, now in it,
To sit thus, stand thus, see and be seen,
At the proper place in the proper minute,
And die away the life between.
And it was amusing enough, each infraction
Of rule-(but for after-sadness that came)
To hear the consummate self-satisfaction
With which the young Duke and the old dame
Would let her advise, and criticise,
And, being a fool, instruct the wise,
And, child-like, parcel out praise or blame:
They bore it all in complacent guise,
As though an artificer, after contriving
A wheel-work image as if it were living,
Should find with delight it could motion to strike him!
So found the Duke, and his mother like him:
The lady hardly got a rebuff-
That had not been contemptuous enough,
With his cursed smirk, as he nodded applause,
And kept off the old mother-cat's claws.
IX.
So, the little lady grew silent and thin,
Paling and ever paling,
As the way is with a hid chagrin;
And the Duke perceived that she was ailing,
And said in his heart, ``'Tis done to spite me,
``But I shall find in my power to right me!''
Don't swear, friend! The old one, many a year,
Is in hell, and the Duke's self . . . you shall hear.
X.
Well, early in autumn, at first winter-warning,
When the stag had to break with his foot, of a morning,
A drinking-hole out of the fresh tender ice
That covered the pond till the sun, in a trice,
Loosening it, let out a ripple of gold,
And another and another, and faster and faster,
Till, dimpling to blindness, the wide water rolled:
Then it so chanced that the Duke our master
Asked himself what were the pleasures in season,
And found, since the calendar bade him be hearty,
He should do the Middle Age no treason
In resolving on a hunting-party.
Always provided, old books showed the way of it!
What meant old poets by their strictures?
And when old poets had said their say of it,
How taught old painters in their pictures?
We must revert to the proper channels,
Workings in tapestry, paintings on panels,
And gather up woodcraft's authentic traditions:
Here was food for our various ambitions,
As on each case, exactly stated-
To encourage your dog, now, the properest chirrup,
Or best prayer to Saint Hubert on mounting your stirrup-
We of the house hold took thought and debated.
Blessed was he whose back ached with the jerkin
His sire was wont to do forest-work in;
Blesseder he who nobly sunk ``ohs''
And ``ahs'' while he tugged on his grand-sire's trunk-hose;
What signified hats if they had no rims on,
Each slouching before and behind like the scallop,
And able to serve at sea for a shallop,
Loaded with lacquer and looped with crimson?
So that the deer now, to make a short rhyme on't,
What with our Venerers, Prickers and Yerderers,
Might hope for real hunters at length and not murderers,
And oh the Duke's tailor, he had a hot time on't!
XI.
Now you must know that when the first dizziness
Of flap-hats and buff-coats and jack-boots subsided,
The Duke put this question, ``The Duke's part provided,
``Had not the Duchess some share in the business?''
For out of the mouth of two or three witnesses
Did he establish all fit-or-unfitnesses:
And, after much laying of heads together,
Somebody's cap got a notable feather
By the announcement with proper unction
That he had discovered the lady's function;
Since ancient authors gave this tenet,
``When horns wind a mort and the deer is at siege,
``Let the dame of the castle prick forth on her jennet,
``And, with water to wash the hands of her liege
``In a clean ewer with a fair toweling,
`` Let her preside at the disemboweling.''
Now, my friend, if you had so little religion
As to catch a hawk, some falcon-lanner,
And thrust her broad wings like a banner
Into a coop for a vulgar pigeon;
And if day by day and week by week
You cut her claws, and sealed her eyes,
And clipped her wings, and tied her beak,
Would it cause you any great surprise
If, when you decided to give her an airing,
You found she needed a little preparing?
-I say, should you be such a curmudgeon,
If she clung to the perch, as to take it in dudgeon?
Yet when the Duke to his lady signified,
Just a day before, as he judged most dignified,
In what a pleasure she was to participate,-
And, instead of leaping wide in flashes,
Her eyes just lifted their long lashes,
As if pressed by fatigue even he could not dissipate,
And duly acknowledged the Duke's forethought,
But spoke of her health, if her health were worth aught,
Of the weight by day and the watch by night,
And much wrong now that used to be right,
So, thanking him, declined the hunting,-
Was conduct ever more affronting?
With all the ceremony settled-
With the towel ready, and the sewer
Polishing up his oldest ewer,
And the jennet pitched upon, a piebald,
Black-barred, cream-coated and pink eye-balled,-
No wonder if the Duke was nettled
And when she persisted nevertheless,-
Well, I suppose here's the time to confess
That there ran half round our lady's chamber
A balcony none of the hardest to clamber;
And that Jacynth the tire-woman, ready in waiting,
Stayed in call outside, what need of relating?
And since Jacynth was like a June rose, why, a fervent
Adorer of Jacynth of course was your servant;
And if she had the habit to peep through the casement,
How could I keep at any vast distance?
And so, as I say, on the lady's persistence,
The Duke, dumb-stricken with amazement,
Stood for a while in a sultry smother,
And then, with a smile that partook of the awful,
Turned her over to his yellow mother
To learn what was held decorous and lawful;
And the mother smelt blood with a cat-like instinct,
As her cheek quick whitened thro' all its quince-tinct.
Oh, but the lady heard the whole truth at once!
What meant she?Who was she?-Her duty and station,
The wisdom of age and the folly of youth, at once,
Its decent regard and its fitting relation-
In brief, my friend, set all the devils in hell free
And turn them out to carouse in a belfry
And treat the priests to a fifty-part canon,
And then you may guess how that tongue of hers ran on!
Well, somehow or other it ended at last
And, licking her whiskers, out she passed;
And after her,-making (he hoped) a face
Like Emperor Nero or Sultan Saladin,
Stalked the Duke's self with the austere grace
Of ancient hero or modern paladin,
From door to staircase-oh such a solemn
Unbending of the vertebral column!
XII.
However, at sunrise our company mustered;
And here was the huntsman bidding unkennel,
And there 'neath his bonnet the pricker blustered,
With feather dank as a bough of wet fennel;
For the court-yard walls were filled with fog
You might have cut as an axe chops a log-
Like so much wool for colour and bulkiness;
And out rode the Duke in a perfect sulkiness,
Since, before breakfast, a man feels but queasily,
And a sinking at the lower abdomen
Begins the day with indifferent omen.
And lo, as he looked around uneasily,
The sun ploughed the fog up and drove it asunder
This way and that from the valley under;
And, looking through the court-yard arch,
Down in the valley, what should meet him
But a troop of Gipsies on their march?
No doubt with the annual gifts to greet him.
XIII.
Now, in your land, Gipsies reach you, only
After reaching all lands beside;
North they go, South they go, trooping or lonely,
And still, as they travel far and wide,
Catch they and keep now a trace here, trace there,
That puts you in mind of a place here, a place there.
But with us, I believe they rise out of the ground,
And nowhere else, I take it, are found
With the earth-tint yet so freshly embrowned:
Born, no doubt, like insects which breed on
The very fruit they are meant to feed on.
For the earth-not a use to which they don't turn it,
The ore that grows in the mountain's womb,
Or the sand in the pits like a honeycomb,
They sift and soften it, bake it and burn it-
Whether they weld you, for instance, a snaffle
With side-bars never a brute can baffle;
Or a lock that's a puzzle of wards within wards;
Or, if your colt's fore-foot inclines to curve inwards,
Horseshoes they hammer which turn on a swivel
And won't allow the hoof to shrivel.
Then they cast bells like the shell of the winkle
That keep a stout heart in the ram with their tinkle;
But the sand-they pinch and pound it like otters;
Commend me to Gipsy glass-makers and potters!
Glasses they'll blow you, crystal-clear,
Where just a faint cloud of rose shall appear,
As if in pure water you dropped and let die
A bruised black-blooded mulberry;
And that other sort, their crowning pride,
With long white threads distinct inside,
Like the lake-flower's fibrous roots which dangle
Loose such a length and never tangle,
Where the bold sword-lily cuts the clear waters,
And the cup-lily couches with all the white daughters:
Such are the works they put their hand to,
The uses they turn and twist iron and sand to.
And these made the troop, which our Duke saw sally
Toward his castle from out of the valley,
Men and women, like new-hatched spiders,
Come out with the morning to greet our riders.
And up they wound till they reached the ditch,
Whereat all stopped save one, a witch
That I knew, as she hobbled from the group,
By her gait directly and her stoop,
I, whom Jacynth was used to importune
To let that same witch tell us our fortune.
The oldest Gipsy then above ground;
And, sure as the autumn season came round,
She paid us a visit for profit or pastime,
And every time, as she swore, for the last time.
And presently she was seen to sidle
Up to the Duke till she touched his bridle,
So that the horse of a sudden reared up
As under its nose the old witch peered up
With her worn-out eyes, or rather eye-holes
Of no use now but to gather brine,
And began a kind of level whine
Such as they used to sing to their viols
When their ditties they go grinding
Up and down with nobody minding:
And then, as of old, at the end of the humming
Her usual presents were forthcoming
-A dog-whistle blowing the fiercest of trebles,
(Just a sea-shore stone holding a dozen fine pebbles,)
Or a porcelain mouth-piece to screw on a pipe-end,-
And so she awaited her annual stipend.
But this time, the Duke would scarcely vouchsafe
A word in reply; and in vain she felt
With twitching fingers at her belt
For the purse of sleek pine-martin pelt,
Ready to ptlt what he gave in her pouch safe,-
Till, either to quicken his apprehension,
Or possibly with an after-intention,
She was come, she said, to pay her duty
To the new Duchess, the youthful beauty.
No sooner had she named his lady,
Than a shine lit up the face so shady,
And its smirk returned with a novel meaning-
For it struck him, the babe just wanted weaning;
If one gave her a taste of what life was and sorrow,
She, foolish to-day, would be wiser tomorrow;
And who so fit a teacher of trouble
As this sordid crone bent well-nigh double?
So, glancing at her wolf-skin vesture,
(If such it was, for they grow so hirsute
That their own fleece serves for natural fur-suit)
He was contrasting, 'twas plain from his gesture,
The life of the lady so flower-like and delicate
With the loathsome squalor of this helicat.
I, in brief, was the man the Duke beckoned
From out of the throng, and while I drew near
He told the crone-as I since have reckoned
By the way he bent and spoke into her ear
With circumspection and mystery-
The main of the lady's history,
Her frowardness and ingratitude:
And for all the crone's submissive attitude
I could see round her mouth the loose plaits tightening,
And her brow with assenting intelligence brightening,
As though she engaged with hearty good-will
Whatever he now might enjoin to fulfil,
And promised the lady a thorough frightening.
And so, just giving her a glimpse
Of a purse, with the air of a man who imps
The wing of the hawk that shall fetch the hernshaw,
He bade me take the Gipsy mother
And set her telling some story or other
Of hill or dale, oak-wood or fernshaw,
To wile away a weary hour
For the lady left alone in her bower,
Whose mind and body craved exertion
And yet shrank from all better diversion.
XIV.
Then clapping heel to his horse, the mere curveter,
Out rode the Duke, and after his hollo
Horses and hounds swept, huntsman and servitor,
And back I turned and bade the crone follow.
And what makes me confident what's to be told you
Had all along been of this crone's devising,
Is, that, on looking round sharply, behold you,
There was a novelty quick as surprising:
For first, she had shot up a full head in stature,
And her step kept pace with mine nor faltered,
As if age had foregone its usurpature,
And the ignoble mien was wholly altered,
And the face looked quite of another nature,
And the change reached too, whatever the change meant,
Her shaggy wolf-skin cloak's arrangement:
For where its tatters hung loose like sedges,
Gold coins were glittering on the edges,
Like the band-roll strung with tomans
Which proves the veil a Persian woman's.
And under her brow, like a snail's horns newly
Come out as after the rain he paces,
Two unmistakeable eye-points duly
Live and aware looked out of their places.
So, we went and found Jacynth at the entry
Of the lady's chamber standing sentry;
I told the command and produced my companion,
And Jacynth rejoiced to admit any one,
For since last night, by the same token,
Not a single word had the lady spoken:
They went in both to the presence together,
While I in the balcony watched the weather.
XV.
And now, what took place at the very first of all,
I cannot tell, as I never could learn it:
Jacynth constantly wished a curse to fall
On that little head of hers and burn it
If she knew how she came to drop so soundly
Asleep of a sudden and there continue
The whole time sleeping as profoundly
As one of the boars my father would pin you
'Twixt the eyes where life holds garrison,
-Jacynth forgive me the comparison!
But where I begin asy own narration
Is a little after I took my station
To breathe the fresh air from the balcony,
And, having in those days a falcon eye,
To follow the hunt thro' the open country,
From where the bushes thinlier crested
The hillocks, to a plain where's not one tree.
When, in a moment, my ear was arrested
By-was it singing, or was it saying,
Or a strange musical instrument playing
In the chamber?-and to be certain
I pushed the lattice, pulled the curtain,
And there lay Jacynth asleep,
Yet as if a watch she tried to keep,
In a rosy sleep along the floor
With her head against the door;
While in the midst, on the seat of state,
Was a queen-the Gipsy woman late,
With head and face downbent
On the lady's head and face intent:
For, coiled at her feet like a child at ease,
The lady sat between her knees
And o'er them the lady's clasped hands met,
And on those hands her chin was set,
And her upturned face met the face of the crone
Wherein the eyes had grown and grown
As if she could double and quadruple
At pleasure the play of either pupil
-Very like, by her hands' slow fanning,
As up and down like a gor-crow's flappers
They moved to measure, or bell-clappers.
I said ``Is it blessing, is it banning,
``Do they applaud you or burlesque you-
``Those hands and fingers with no flesh on?''
But, just as I thought to spring in to the rescue,
At once I was stopped by the lady's expression:
For it was life her eyes were drinking
From the crone's wide pair above unwinking,
-Life's pure fire received without shrinking,
Into the heart and breast whose heaving
Told you no single drop they were leaving,
-Life, that filling her, passed redundant
Into her very hair, back swerving
Over each shoulder, loose and abundant,
As her head thrown back showed the white throat curving;
And the very tresses shared in the pleasure,
Moving to the mystic measure,
Bounding as the bosom bounded.
I stopped short, more and more confounded,
As still her cheeks burned and eyes glistened,
As she listened and she listened:
When all at once a hand detained me,
The selfsame contagion gained me,
And I kept time to the wondrous chime,
Making out words and prose and rhyme,
Till it seemed that the music furled
Its wings like a task fulfilled, and dropped
From under the words it first had propped,
And left them midway in the world:
Word took word as hand takes hand,
I could hear at last, and understand,
And when I held the unbroken thread,
The Gipsy said:-
``And so at last we find my tribe.
``And so I set thee in the midst,
``And to one and all of them describe
``What thou saidst and what thou didst,
``Our long and terrible journey through,
``And all thou art ready to say and do
``In the trials that remain:
``I trace them the vein and the other vein
``That meet on thy brow and part again,
``Making our rapid mystic mark;
``And I bid my people prove and probe
``Each eye's profound and glorious globe
``Till they detect the kindred spark
``In those depths so dear and dark,
``Like the spots that snap and burst and flee,
``Circling over the midnight sea.
``And on that round young cheek of thine
``I make them recognize the tinge,
``As when of the costly scarlet wine
``They drip so much as will impinge
``And spread in a thinnest scale afloat
``One thick gold drop from the olive's coat
``Over a silver plate whose sheen
``Still thro' the mixture shall be seen.
``For so I prove thee, to one and all,
``Fit, when my people ope their breast,
``To see the sign, and hear the call,
``And take the vow, and stand the test
``Which adds one more child to the rest-
``When the breast is bare and the arms are wide,
``And the world is left outside.
``For there is probation to decree,
``And many and long must the trials be
``Thou shalt victoriously endure,
``If that brow is true and those eyes are sure;
``Like a jewel-finder's fierce assay
``Of the prize he dug from its mountain-tomb-
``Let once the vindicating ray
``Leap out amid the anxious gloom,
``And steel and fire have done their part
``And the prize falls on its finder's heart;
`'So, trial after trial past,
``Wilt thou fall at the very last
``Breathless, half in trance
``With the thrill of the great deliverance,
``Into our arms for evermore;
``And thou shalt know, those arms once curled
``About thee, what we knew before,
``How love is the only good in the world.
``Henceforth be loved as heart can love,
``Or brain devise, or hand approve!
``Stand up, look below,
``It is our life at thy feet we throw
``To step with into light and joy;
``Not a power of life but we employ
``To satisfy thy nature's want;
``Art thou the tree that props the plant,
``Or the climbing plant that seeks the tree-
``Canst thou help us, must we help thee?
``If any two creatures grew into one,
``They would do more than the world has done.
``Though each apart were never so weak,
``Ye vainly through the world should seek
``For the knowledge and the might
``Which in such union grew their right:
``So, to approach at least that end,
``And blend,-as much as may be, blend
``Thee with us or us with thee,-
``As climbing plant or propping tree,
``Shall some one deck thee, over and down,
``Up and about, with blossoms and leaves?
``Fix his heart's fruit for thy garland crown,
``Cling with his soul as the gourd-vine cleaves,
``Die on thy boughs and disappear
``While not a leaf of thine is sere?
``Or is the other fate in store,
``And art thou fitted to adore,
``To give thy wondrous self away,
``And take a stronger nature's sway?
``I foresee and could foretell
``Thy future portion, sure and well:
``But those passionate eyes speak true, speak true,
``Let them say what thou shalt do!
``Only be sure thy daily life,
``In its peace or in its strife,
``Never shall be unobserved:
``We pursue thy whole career,
``And hope for it, or doubt, or fear,-
``Lo, hast thou kept thy path or swerved,
``We are beside thee in all thy ways,
``With our blame, with our praise,
``Our shame to feel, our pride to show,
``Glad, angry-but indifferent, no!
``Whether it be thy lot to go,
``For the good of us all, where the haters meet
``In the crowded city's horrible street;
``Or thou step alone through the morass
``Where never sound yet was
``Save the dry quick clap of the stork's bill,
``For the air is still, and the water still,
``When the blue breast of the dipping coot
``Dives under, and all is mute.
``So, at the last shall come old age,
``Decrepit as befits that stage;
``How else wouldst thou retire apart
``With the hoarded memories of thy heart,
``And gather all to the very least
``Of the fragments of life's earlier feast,
``Let fall through eagerness to find
``The crowning dainties yet behind?
``Ponder on the entire past
``Laid together thus at last,
``When the twilight helps to fuse
``The first fresh with the faded hues,
``And the outline of the whole,
``As round eve's shades their framework roll,
``Grandly fronts for once thy soul.
``And then as, 'mid the dark, a glean
``Of yet another morning breaks,
``And like the hand which ends a dream,
``Death, with the might of his sunbeam,
``Touches the flesh and the soul awakes,
``Then''
Ay, then indeed something would happen!
But what? For here her voice changed like a bird's;
There grew more of the music and less of the words;
Had Jacynth only been by me to clap pen
To paper and put you down every syllable
With those clever clerkly fingers,
All I've forgotten as well as what lingers
In this old brain of mine that's but ill able
To give you even this poor version
Of the speech I spoil, as it were, with stammering
-More fault of those who had the hammering
Of prosody into me and syntax,
And did it, not with hobnails but tintacks!
But to return from this excursion,-
Just, do you mark, when the song was sweetest,
The peace most deep and the charm completest,
There came, shall I say, a snap-
And the charm vanished!
And my sense returned, so strangely banished,
And, starting as from a nap,
I knew the crone was bewitching my lady,
With Jacynth asleep; and but one spring made I
Down from the casement, round to the portal,
Another minute and I had entered,-
When the door opened, and more than mortal
Stood, with a face where to my mind centred
All beauties I ever saw or shall see,
The Duchess: I stopped as if struck by palsy.
She was so different, happy and beautiful,
I felt at once that all was best,
And that I had nothing to do, for the rest,
But wait her commands, obey and be dutiful.
Not that, in fact, there was any commanding;
I saw the glory of her eye,
And the brow's height and the breast's expanding,
And I was hers to live or to die.
As for finding what she wanted,
You know God Almighty granted
Such little signs should serve wild creatures
To tell one another all their desires,
So that each knows what his friend requires,
And does its bidding without teachers.
I preceded her; the crone
Followed silent and alone;
I spoke to her, but she merely jabbered
In the old style; both her eyes had slunk
Back to their pits; her stature shrunk;
In short, the soul in its body sunk
Like a blade sent home to its scabbard.
We descended, I preceding;
Crossed the court with nobody heeding,
All the world was at the chase,
The courtyard like a desert-place,
The stable emptied of its small fry;
I saddled myself the very palfrey
I remember patting while it carried her,
The day she arrived and the Duke married her.
And, do you know, though it's easy deceiving
Oneself in such matters, I can't help believing
The lady had not forgotten it either,
And knew the poor devil so much beneath her
Would have been only too glad for her service
To dance on hot ploughshares like a Turk dervise,
But, unable to pay proper duty where owing it,
Was reduced to that pitiful method of showing it:
For though the moment I began setting
His saddle on my own nag of Berold's begetting,
(Not that I meant to be obtrusive)
She stopped me, while his rug was shifting,
By a single rapid finger's lifting,
And, with a gesture kind but conclusive,
And a little shake of the head, refused me,-
I say, although she never used me,
Yet when she was mounted, the Gipsy behind her,
And I ventured to remind her,
I suppose with a voice of less steadiness
Than usual, for my feeling exceeded me,
-Something to the effect that I was in readiness
Whenever God should please she needed me,-
Then, do you know, her face looked down on me
With a look that placed a crown on me,
And she felt in her bosom,-mark, her bosom-
And, as a flower-tree drops its blossom,
Dropped me . . . ah, had it been a purse
Of silver, my friend, or gold that's worse,
Why, you see, as soon as I found myself
So understood,-that a true heart so may gain
Such a reward,-I should have gone home again,
Kissed Jacynth, and soberly drowned myself!
It was a little plait of hair
Such as friends in a convent make
To wear, each for the other's sake,-
This, see, which at my breast I wear,
Ever did (rather to Jacynth's grudgment),
And ever shall, till the Day of Judgment.
And then,-and then,-to cut short,-this is idle,
These are feelings it is not good to foster,-
I pushed the gate wide, she shook the bridle,
And the palfrey bounded,-and so we lost her.
XVI.
When the liquor's out why clink the cannikin?
I did think to describe you the panic in
The redoubtable breast of our master the mannikin,
And what was the pitch of his mother's yellowness,
How she turned as a shark to snap the spare-rib
Clean off, sailors say, from a pearl-diving Carib,
When she heard, what she called the flight of the feloness
-But it seems such child's play,
What they said and did with the lady away!
And to dance on, when we've lost the music,
Always made me-and no doubt makes you-sick.
Nay, to my mind, the world's face looked so stern
As that sweet form disappeared through the postern,
She that kept it in constant good humour,
It ought to have stopped; there seemed nothing to do more.
But the world thought otherwise and went on,
And my head's one that its spite was spent on:
Thirty years are fled since that morning,
And with them all my head's adorning.
Nor did the old Duchess die outright,
As you expect, of suppressed spite,
The natural end of every adder
Not suffered to empty its poison-bladder:
But she and her son agreed, I take it,
That no one should touch on the story to wake it,
For the wound in the Duke's pride rankled fiery,
So, they made no search and small inquiry-
And when fresh Gipsies have paid us a visit, I've
Noticed the couple were never inquisitive,
But told them they're folks the Duke don't want here,
And bade them make haste and cross the frontier.
Brief, the Duchess was gone and the Duke was glad of it,
And the old one was in the young one's stead,
And took, in her place, the household's head,
And a blessed time the household had of it!
And were I not, as a man may say, cautious
How I trench, more than needs, on the nauseous,
I could favour you with sundry touches
Of the paint-smutches with which the Duchess
Heightened the mellowness of her cheek's yellowness
(To get on faster) until at last her
Cheek grew to be one master-plaster
Of mucus and focus from mere use of ceruse:
In short, she grew from scalp to udder
Just the object to make you shudder.
XVII.
You're my friend-
What a thing friendship is, world without end!
How it gives the heart and soul a stir-up
As if somebody broached you a glorious runlet,
And poured out, all lovelily, sparklingly, sunlit,
Our green Moldavia, the streaky syrup,
Cotnar as old as the time of the Druids-
Friendship may match with that monarch of fluids;
Each supples a dry brain, fills you its ins-and-outs,
Gives your life's hour-glass a shake when the thin sand doubts
Whether to run on or stop short, and guarantees
Age is not all made of stark sloth and arrant ease.
I have seen my little lady once more,
Jacynth, the Gipsy, Berold, and the rest of it,
For to me spoke the Duke, as I told you before;
I always wanted to make a clean breast of it:
And now it is made-why, my heart's blood, that went trickle,
Trickle, but anon, in such muddy driblets,
Is pumped up brisk now, through the main ventricle,
And genially floats me about the giblets.
I'll tell you what I intend to do:
I must see this fellow his sad life through-
He is our Duke, after all,
And I, as he says, but a serf and thrall.
My father was born here, and I inherit
His fame, a chain he bound his son with;
Could I pay in a lump I should prefer it,
But there's no mine to blow up and get done with:
So, I must stay till the end of the chapter.
For, as to our middle-age-manners-adapter,
Be it a thing to be glad on or sorry on,
Some day or other, his head in a morion
And breast in a hauberk, his heels he'll kick up,
Slain by an onslaught fierce of hiccup.
And then, when red doth the sword of our Duke rust,
And its leathern sheath lie o'ergrown with a blue crust,
Then I shall scrape together my earnings;
For, you see, in the churchyard Jacynth reposes,
And our children all went the way of the roses:
It's a long lane that knows no turnings.
One needs but little tackle to travel in;
So, just one stout cloak shall I indue:
And for a stall, what beats the javelin
With which his boars my father pinned you?
And then, for a purpose you shall hear presently,
Taking some Cotnar, a tight plump skinful,
I shall go journeying, who but I, pleasantly!
Sorrow is vain and despondency sinful.
What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all;
Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold.
When we mind labour, then only, we're too old-
What age had Methusalem when he begat Saul?
And at last, as its haven some buffeted ship sees,
(Come all the way from the north-parts with sperm oil)
I hope to get safely out of the turmoil
And arrive one day at the land of the Gipsies,
And find my lady, or hear the last news of her
From some old thief and son of Lucifer,
His forehead chapleted green with wreathy hop,
Sunburned all over like an thiop.
And when my Cotnar begins to operate
And the tongue of the rogue to run at a proper rate,
And our wine-skin, tight once, shows each flaccid dent,
I shall drop in with-as if by accident-
``You never knew, then, how it all ended,
``What fortune good or bad attended
``The little lady your Queen befriended?''
-And when that's told me, what's remaining?
This world's too hard for my explaining.
The same wise judge of matters equine
Who still preferred some slim four-year-old
To the big-boned stock of mighty Berold,
And, fur strong Cotnar, drank French weak wine,
He also umst be such a lady's scorner!
Smooth Jacob still rubs homely Esau:
Now up, now down, the world's one see-saw.
-So, I shall find out some snug corner
Under a hedge, like Orson the wood-knight,
Turn myself round and bid the world good night;
And sleep a sound sleep till the trumpet's blowing
Wakes me (unless priests cheat us laymen)
To a world where will be no furtiner throwing
Pearls befare swine that Can't value them. Amen!
~ Robert Browning, The Flight Of The Duchess
,#NFDB
21 Integral Yoga
19 Occultism
12 Psychology
11 Christianity
7 Poetry
7 Philosophy
4 Fiction
3 Yoga
2 Cybernetics
2 Buddhism
1 Mythology
1 Education
1 Alchemy
16 Sri Aurobindo
10 Saint Augustine of Hippo
10 Aleister Crowley
9 Nolini Kanta Gupta
9 Carl Jung
4 The Mother
4 Aldous Huxley
3 Satprem
3 Jorge Luis Borges
3 Jordan Peterson
3 Friedrich Nietzsche
2 Robert Browning
2 Percy Bysshe Shelley
2 Norbert Wiener
2 Jorge Luis Borges
2 H P Lovecraft
2 Bokar Rinpoche
10 City of God
9 Liber ABA
5 Labyrinths
4 The Secret Doctrine
4 The Perennial Philosophy
4 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
4 Mysterium Coniunctionis
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
3 Twilight of the Idols
3 Maps of Meaning
3 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
2 The Synthesis Of Yoga
2 The Human Cycle
2 The Blue Cliff Records
2 Tara - The Feminine Divine
2 Shelley - Poems
2 Selected Fictions
2 Magick Without Tears
2 Lovecraft - Poems
2 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
2 Cybernetics
2 Browning - Poems
2 Agenda Vol 10
00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A certain rationalistic critic divides the Upanishadic symbols into three categoriesthose that are rational and can be easily understood by the mind; those that are not understood by the mind and yet do not go against reason, having nothing inherently irrational in them and may be simply called non-rational; those that seem to be quite irrational, for they go frankly against all canons of logic and common sense. As an example of the last, the irrational type, the critic cites a story from the Chhndogya, which may be rendered thus:
There was an aspirant, a student who was seeking after knowledge. One day there appeared to him a white dog. Soon, other dogs followed and addressed their predecessor: "O Lord, sing to our Food, for we desire to eat." The white dog answered, "Come to me at dawn here in this very place." The aspirant waited. The dogs, like singer-priests, circled round in a ring. Then they sat and cried aloud; they cried out," Om We eat and Om we drink, may the gods bring here our food."
01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed, it would be interesting to compare and contrast the Eastern and Western approach to Divine Love, the Christian and the Vaishnava, for example. Indian spirituality, whatever its outer form or credal formulation, has always a background of utter unity. This unity, again, is threefold or triune and is expressed in those great Upanishadic phrases,mahvkyas,(1) the transcendental unity: the One alone exists, there is nothing else than theOneekamevdvityam; (2) the cosmic unity: all existence is one, whatever exists is that One, thereare no separate existences:sarvam khalvidam brahma neha nnsti kincaa; (3) That One is I, you too are that One:so' ham, tattvamasi; this may be called the individual unity. As I have said, all spiritual experiences in India, of whatever school or line, take for granted or are fundamentally based upon this sense of absolute unity or identity. Schools of dualism or pluralism, who do not apparently admit in their tenets this extreme monism, are still permeated in many ways with that sense and in some form or other take cognizance of the truth of it. The Christian doctrine too says indeed, 'I and my Father in Heaven are one', but this is not identity, but union; besides, the human soul is not admitted into this identity, nor the world soul. The world, we have seen, according to the Christian discipline has to be altogether abandoned, negatived, as we go inward and upward towards our spiritual status reflecting the divine image in the divine company. It is a complete rejection, a cutting off and casting away of world and life. One extreme Vedantic path seems to follow a similar line, but there it is not really rejection, but a resolution, not the rejection of what is totally foreign and extraneous, but a resolution of the external into its inner and inmost substance, of the effect into its original cause. Brahman is in the world, Brahman is the world: the world has unrolled itself out of the Brahmansi, pravttiit has to be rolled back into its, cause and substance if it is to regain its pure nature (that is the process of nivitti). Likewise, the individual being in the world, "I", is the transcendent being itself and when it withdraws, it withdraws itself and the whole world with it and merges into the Absolute. Even the Maya of the Mayavadin, although it is viewed as something not inherent in Brahman but superimposed upon Brahman, still, has been accepted as a peculiar power of Brahman itself. The Christian doctrine keeps the individual being separate practically, as an associate or at the most as an image of God. The love for one's neighbour, charity, which the Christian discipline enjoins is one's love for one's kind, because of affinity of nature and quality: it does not dissolve the two into an integral unity and absolute identity, where we love because we are one, because we are the One. The highest culmination of love, the very basis of love, according to the Indian conception, is a transcendence of love, love trans-muted into Bliss. The Upanishad says, where one has become the utter unity, who loves whom? To explain further our point, we take two examples referred to in the book we are considering. The true Christian, it is said, loves the sinner too, he is permitted to dislike sin, for he has to reject it, but he must separate from sin the sinner and love him. Why? Because the sinner too can change and become his brother in spirit, one loves the sinner because there is the possibility of his changing and becoming a true Christian. It is why the orthodox Christian, even such an enlightened and holy person as this mediaeval canon, considers the non-Christian, the non-baptised as impure and potentially and fundamentally sinners. That is also why the Church, the physical organisation, is worshipped as Christ's very body and outside the Church lies the pagan world which has neither religion nor true spirituality nor salvation. Of course, all this may be symbolic and it is symbolic in a sense. If Christianity is taken to mean true spirituality, and the Church is equated with the collective embodiment of that spirituality, all that is claimed on their behalf stands justified. But that is an ideal, a hypothetical standpoint and can hardly be borne out by facts. However, to come back to our subject, let us ow take the second example. Of Christ himself, it is said, he not only did not dislike or had any aversion for Judas, but that he positively loved the traitor with a true and sincere love. He knew that the man would betray him and even when he was betraying and had betrayed, the Son of Man continued to love him. It was no make-believe or sham or pretence. It was genuine, as genuine as anything can be. Now, why did he love his enemy? Because, it is said, the enemy is suffered by God to do the misdeed: he has been allowed to test the faith of the faithful, he too has his utility, he too is God's servant. And who knows even a Judas would not change in the end? Many who come to scoff do remain to pray. But it can be asked, 'Does God love Satan too in the same way?' The Indian conception which is basically Vedantic is different. There is only one reality, one truth which is viewed differently. Whether a thing is considered good or evil or neutral, essentially and truly, it is that One and nothing else. God's own self is everywhere and the sage makes no difference between the Brahmin and the cow and the elephant. It is his own self he finds in every person and every objectsarvabhtsthitam yo mm bhajati ekatvamsthitah"he has taken his stand upon oneness and loves Me in all beings."2
This will elucidate another point of difference between the Christian's and the Vaishnava's love of God, for both are characterised by an extreme intensity and sweetness and exquisiteness of that divine feeling. This Christian's, however, is the union of the soul in its absolute purity and simplicity and "privacy" with her lord and master; the soul is shred here of all earthly vesture and goes innocent and naked into the embrace of her Beloved. The Vaishnava feeling is richer and seems to possess more amplitude; it is more concrete and less ethereal. The Vaishnava in his passionate yearning seeks to carry as it were the whole world with him to his Lord: for he sees and feels Him not only in the inmost chamber of his soul, but meets Him also in and I through his senses and in and through the world and its objects around. In psychological terms one can say that the Christian realisation, at its very source, is that of the inmost soul, what we call the "psychic being" pure and simple, referred to in the book we are considering; as: "His sweet privy voice... stirreth thine heart full stilly." Whereas the Vaishnava reaches out to his Lord with his outer heart too aflame with passion; not only his inmost being but his vital being also seeks the Divine. This bears upon the occult story of man's spiritual evolution upon earth. The Divine Grace descends from the highest into the deepest and from the deepest to the outer ranges of human nature, so that the whole of it may be illumined and transformed and one day man can embody in his earthly life the integral manifestation of God, the perfect Epiphany. Each religion, each line of spiritual discipline takes up one limb of manone level or mode of his being and consciousness purifies it and suffuses it with the spiritual and divine consciousness, so that in the end the whole of man, in his integral living, is recast and remoulded: each discipline is in charge of one thread as it were, all together weave the warp and woof in the evolution of the perfect pattern of a spiritualised and divinised humanity.
0 1961-08-08, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He has tried very hard to understand. But his spiritual conception has remained like this: one canone MUSTmaster life, and in life, to some extent, a certain adaptation to the higher forces can be achieved; but there is no question of transformation: the physical world remains the physical world. It can be a little better organized, more harmonious, but there is no question of something else, of divinizationno question at all.
And this is probably why there are things he cant make out in his contact with me, because he simply doesnt understand. For example, these physical disorders baffle him, they seem incompatible with my realization. As long as the question of transformation does not come into play, the realization I had was sufficient to establish a kind of very stable orderreaction against the transformative will is what causes these disorders. And this he does not understandto him something seems not to be functioning properly. He must feel a contradiction between certain things he perceives in my consciousness and my contact with the material world. This being this, he thinks, that ought to be like that; so why? He doesnt understand.1
0 1969-09-13, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This is not always the case, as Satprem learned afterwards. Thus in the thirteenth century, Celestine V was chosen from among mendicant monks, but five months later he abdicated, probably in disgust. He was jailed by his successor (and later canonized!). In fact, although no rule demands that the cardinals should elect the Pope from among themselves, it is always the case in practice.
***
0 1969-09-17, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And five months after he was nominated, he abdicatedcausing a scandal unique in the history of the Church and his successor had him imprisoned straight away. Later on, by the way, he was canonized. But in actual fact, since then the cardinals have always elected the Pope from among themselves.
Theyre too scared!
03.09 - Buddhism and Hinduism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Buddhism saw and accepted a world of misery; therefore it knew how to touch the human heart, open up the doors in human consciousness to sympathy and compassion and love. Life it envisaged as an unreal persistence and therefore awakened and installed there the fiery urge towards withdrawal, ascension and transcendence. It was Buddhism that canonised the way of asceticism, laid out the path of the Everlasting Nayalthough called (somewhat euphemistically perhaps) the Middle Path being tempered by an attitude of sweet reasonableness in the inner heart.
The original and primeval Indianism was built upon the Vedic realisation of the Everlasting Yes. That luminous body of an integral realisation, which means the Veda, came to be covered over by a more strenuous demand of immediate necessity, by an over-emphasis on one side or aspect or line of growth of the human consciousness; a negative approach was needed for man to rise out of its too earthly a tenement to glimpse his divine possibility beyond, before he could hope to build it here below. The long reign of Siva was a necessary preparation for the advent of Vishnu.
03.11 - Modernist Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In general, however, and as we come down to more and more recent times we find we have missed the track. As in the material field today, we seek to create and achieve by science and organisation, by a Teutonic regimentation, as in the moral life we try to save our souls by attending to rules and regulations, codes and codicils of conduct, even so a like habit and practice we have brought over into our sthetic world. But we must remember that Napoleon became the invincible military genius he was, not because he followed the art of war in accordance with laws and canons set down by military experts; neither did Buddha become the Enlightened because of his scrupulous adherence to the edicts which Asoka engraved centuries later on rocks and pillars, nor was Jesus the Christ because of his being an exemplar of the Sermon on the Mount.
The truth of the matter is that the spirit bloweth where it listeth. It is the soul's realisation and dynamic perception that expresses itself inevitably in a living and au thentic manner in all that the soul creates. Let the modernist possess a soul, let it find out its own inmost being and he will have all the newness and novelty that he needs and seeks. If the soul-consciousness is burdened with a special and unique vision, it will find its play in the most categorically imperative manner.
10.06 - Beyond the Dualities, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is true that mind in its natural state seeks the truth, seeks to know the fact, know what is what. But the difficulty is, it has its own criterion of truth, it has a mould and whatever does not fit into that mould is brushed aside or doubted as untruth. The most simple and the most categorical of its canons is that a thing is always itself and cannot be anything else (it is the famous logical law of identity and law of contradiction). One is always one and cannot be two. So by extension the mind affirms if the reality is one it cannot be also many. If the Brahman is there, the world cannot be, and if the world is there, Brahman cannot be. There begins also the unending theological dispute that either God has a form or He is formless. He cannot be both at the same time.
What the mind forgets or ignores is that the law of self-contradiction belongs exclusively to the finite. It does not hold good in infinity. The Infinite is infinite because it has transcended the laws and categories of the finite, even as Eternity has transcended the temporal. In the transcendental consciousness the reality is single and multiple at the same time, simultaneously (although the conception of time is not there at all); also God is both with form and without form at the same time. The mind may not be able to conceive it but the fact is that, for one can rise above the mind and see and experience the reality.
1.00b - INTRODUCTION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
degree than many of the writings now included in the Biblical canon.
In recent years a number of attempts have been made to work out a system of
1.01 - Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
has recently been canonized. Probably his most important re-
13 Cf. my "Brother Klaus."
1.01 - Foreward, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
sacred canon.
This tradition persevered in the Brahmanas and continued
1.01 - The Highest Meaning of the Holy Truths, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
Kuang T'ung and the canonical master Bodhiruci. The Master
Bodhidharma eliminated formalism and pointed to mind; be
1.01 - To Watanabe Sukefusa, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen
12). Hakuin's ideas on the subject may be summed up fairly well in the calligraphic works he prepared and distributed in large numbers to people. These works consisted of one large character, filiality or parent, followed by the inscription, "There is no more valuable act of filiality than to save one's father and mother from the sad fate of an unfortunate rebirth in the next life"-exactly the sentiments Hakuin had expressed to Sukefusa as a young monk. a It was considered extremely unfilial to injure or disfigure the body of one's (male) children. This was especially heinous in the case of an eldest son, who, according to the canons of filial piety, is venerated because of his superior birth, age, and gender. b Although not all of these references can be traced, most of them are found in Tales of the TwentyFour Paragons of Filial Virtue (Ehr-shih-ssu hsiao), a popular Confucian text of the Yuan dynasty that was reprinted and widely read in Edo Japan. c A legendary sage ruler of ancient China. According to Mencius, when ministers came to him with good advice, Yu always received it with deep gratitude.
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
dogmatics and canonical writings, an electrical engineer on the principles of the energetics of the
future, and a Leningrad economist on how the effort to create principles of Soviet economics had
1.03 - Bloodstream Sermon, #The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, #Bodhidharma, #Buddhism
Twelvefold canon,21 he can't escape the Wheel of Birth and Death.22
He suffers in the three realms without hope of release.
--
fold canon is nothing but the preaching of devils. Their allegiance
is to Mara, not to the Buddha. Unable to distinguish white from
--
found in words or anywhere in the Twelvefold canon.
The Way is basically perfect. It doesn't require perfecting. The
--
your own nature, the entire canon becomes so much prose. Its
thousands of sutras and shastras only amount to a dear mind.
1.03 - Concerning the Archetypes, with Special Reference to the Anima Concept, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
vision of the recently canonized Nicholas of Flue, a Swiss mystic
of the fifteenth century, of whose visions we possess reports by
1.03 - Master Ma is Unwell, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
he wouldn't let it be included in the (Buddhist) canon.
First Hsueh Tou quotes: "Sun Face Buddha, Moon Face
1.03 - The Coming of the Subjective Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The art, music and literature of the world, always a sure index of the vital tendencies of the age, have also undergone a profound revolution in the direction of an ever-deepening sub jectivism. The great objective art and literature of the past no longer commands the mind of the new age. The first tendency was, as in thought so in literature, an increasing psychological vitalism which sought to represent penetratingly the most subtle psychological impulses and tendencies of man as they started to the surface in his emotional, aesthetic and vitalistic cravings and activities. Composed with great skill and subtlety but without any real insight into the law of mans being, these creations seldom got behind the reverse side of our surface emotions, sensations and actions which they minutely analysed in their details but without any wide or profound light of knowledge; they were perhaps more immediately interesting but ordinarily inferior as art to the old literature which at least seized firmly and with a large and powerful mastery on its province. Often they described the malady of Life rather than its health and power, or the riot and revolt of its cravings, vehement and therefore impotent and unsatisfied, rather than its dynamis of self-expression and self-possession. But to this movement which reached its highest creative power in Russia, there succeeded a turn towards a more truly psychological art, music and literature, mental, intuitional, psychic rather than vitalistic, departing in fact from a superficial vitalism as much as its predecessors departed from the objective mind of the past. This new movement aimed like the new philo sophic Intuitionalism at a real rending of the veil, the seizure by the human mind of that which does not overtly express itself, the touch and penetration into the hidden soul of things. Much of it was still infirm, unsubstantial in its grasp on what it pursued, rudimentary in its forms, but it initiated a decisive departure of the human mind from its old moorings and pointed the direction in which it is being piloted on a momentous voyage of discovery, the discovery of a new world within which must eventually bring about the creation of a new world without in life and society. Art and literature seem definitely to have taken a turn towards a subjective search into what may be called the hidden inside of things and away from the rational and objective canon or motive.
Already in the practical dealing with life there are advanced progressive tendencies which take their inspiration from this profounder subjectivism. Nothing indeed has yet been firmly accomplished, all is as yet tentative initiation and the first feeling out towards a material shape for this new spirit. The dominant activities of the world, the great recent events such as the enormous clash of nations in Europe and the stirrings and changes within the nations which preceded and followed it, were rather the result of a confused half struggle half effort at accommodation between the old intellectual and materialistic and the new still superficial subjective and vitalistic impulses in the West. The latter unenlightened by a true inner growth of the soul were necessarily impelled to seize upon the former and utilise them for their unbridled demand upon life; the world was moving towards a monstrously perfect organisation of the Will-to-live and the Will-to-power and it was this that threw itself out in the clash of War and has now found or is finding new forms of life for itself which show better its governing idea and motive. The Asuric or even Rakshasic character of the recent world-collision was due to this formidable combination of a falsely enlightened vitalistic motive-power with a great force of servile intelligence and reasoning contrivance subjected to it as instrument and the genius of an accomplished materialistic Science as its Djinn, its giant worker of huge, gross and soulless miracles. The War was the bursting of the explosive force so created and, even though it strewed the world with ruins, its after results may well have prepared the collapse, as they have certainly produced a disintegrating chaos or at least poignant disorder, of the monstrous combination which produced it, and by that salutary ruin are emptying the field of human life of the principal obstacles to a truer development towards a higher goal.
1.03 - Time Series, Information, and Communication, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
a canonical form, and this is most important for the concrete
formal application of the theories of prediction and of the mea-
1.04 - GOD IN THE WORLD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
That Nirvana and Samsara are one is a fact about the nature of the universe; but it is a fact which cannot be fully realized or directly experienced, except by souls far advanced in spirituality. For ordinary, nice, unregenerate people to accept this truth by hearsay, and to act upon it in practice, is merely to court disaster. All the dismal story of antinomianism is there to warn us of what happens when men and women make practical applications of a merely intellectual and unrealized theory that all is God and God is all. And hardly less depressing than the spectacle of antinomianism is that of the earnestly respectable well-rounded life of good citizens who do their best to live sacramentally, but dont in fact have any direct acquaintance with that for which the sacramental activity really stands. Dr. Oman, in his The Natural and the Supernatural, writes at length on the theme that reconciliation to the evanescent is revelation of the eternal; and in a recent volume, Science, Religion and the Future, canon Raven applauds Dr. Oman for having stated the principles of a theology, in which there could be no ultimate antithesis between nature and grace, science and religion, in which, indeed, the worlds of the scientist and the theologian are seen to be one and the same. All this is in full accord with Taoism and Zen Buddhism and with such Christian teachings as St. Augustines Ama et fac quod vis and Father Lallemants advice to theocentric contemplatives to go out and act in the world, since their actions are the only ones capable of doing any real good to the world. But what neither Dr. Oman nor canon Raven makes sufficiently clear is that nature and grace, Samsara and Nirvana, perpetual perishing and eternity, are really and experientially one only to persons who have fulfilled certain conditions. Fac quod vis in the temporal world but only when you have learnt the infinitely difficult art of loving God with all your mind and heart and your neighbor as yourself. If you havent learnt this lesson, you will either be an antinomian eccentric or criminal or else a respectable well-rounded-lifer, who has left himself no time to understand either nature or grace. The Gospels are perfectly clear about the process by which, and by which alone, a man may gain the right to live in the world as though he were at home in it: he must make a total denial of selfhood, submit to a complete and absolute mortification. At one period of his career, Jesus himself seems to have undertaken austerities, not merely of the mind, but of the body. There is the record of his forty days fast and his statement, evidently drawn from personal experience, that some demons cannot be cast out except by those who have fasted much as well as prayed. (The Cur dArs, whose knowledge of miracles and corporal penance was based on personal experience, insists on the close correlation between severe bodily austerities and the power to get petitionary prayer answered in ways that are sometimes supernormal.) The Pharisees reproached Jesus because he came eating and drinking, and associated with publicans and sinners; they ignored, or were unaware of, the fact that this apparently worldly prophet had at one time rivalled the physical austerities of John the Baptist and was practising the spiritual mortifications which he consistently preached. The pattern of Jesus life is essentially similar to that of the ideal sage, whose career is traced in the Oxherding Pictures, so popular among Zen Buddhists. The wild ox, symbolizing the unregenerate self, is caught, made to change its direction, then tamed and gradually transformed from black to white. Regeneration goes so far that for a time the ox is completely lost, so that nothing remains to be pictured but the full-orbed moon, symbolizing Mind, Suchness, the Ground. But this is not the final stage. In the end, the herdsman comes back to the world of men, riding on the back of his ox. Because he now loves, loves to the extent of being identified with the divine object of his love, he can do what he likes; for what he likes is what the Nature of Things likes. He is found in company with wine-bibbers and butchers; he and they are all converted into Buddhas. For him, there is complete reconciliation to the evanescent and, through that reconciliation, revelation of the eternal. But for nice ordinary unregenerate people the only reconciliation to the evanescent is that of indulged passions, of distractions submitted to and enjoyed. To tell such persons that evanescence and eternity are the same, and not immediately to qualify the statement, is positively fatalfor, in practice, they are not the same except to the saint; and there is no record that anybody ever came to sanctity, who did not, at the outset of his or her career, behave as if evanescence and eternity, nature and grace, were profoundly different and in many respects incompatible. As always, the path of spirituality is a knife-edge between abysses. On one side is the danger of mere rejection and escape, on the other the danger of mere acceptance and the enjoyment of things which should only be used as instruments or symbols. The versified caption which accompanies the last of the Oxherding Pictures runs as follows.
Even beyond the ultimate limits there extends a passageway,
1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
historical canon (that established axiomatically-predicated hierarchy of values and assumptions) he takes
inspired action and transcends his culturally-determined limitations. Instead of denying the existence of the
1.04 - The Praise, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
of canonical texts ga the ring the words of the Buddha.
Many commentaries have been writte n to elucidate
1.05 - Buddhism and Women, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
integrated in the canon of the Shangpa order.
- 132 -
1.05 - Computing Machines and the Nervous System, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
states and sequences of thought do not conform to the canons172
Chapter V
1.05 - MORALITY AS THE ENEMY OF NATURE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
the laws of life is fulfilled by the definite canon "thou shalt,"
"thou shalt not," and any sort of obstacle or hostile element in the
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
continued expansion of conscious awareness. Even socialized identification with the cultural canon cannot
provide final protection. Unshielded personal contact with tragedy is inextricably linked with emergence
--
aggression, in those cases where identification with the cultural canon is deemed possible, or (2)
degeneration of personality, and decadent breakdown where the costs of cultural identity are regarded as
--
Denial of the heroic promotes fascism, absolute identification with the cultural canon. Everything that is
known, is known within a particular historically-determined framework, predicated upon mythologicallyexpressed assumptions. Denial or avoidance of the unknown therefore concomitantly necessitates
--
grows up within a structured canon of principles implicitly and explicitly posited and held as absolute by
the majority of individuals within his or her civilization. In return for this legacy, which is in fact the sum
--
In normal times, when culture is stable and the paternal canon remains in force for generations, the
father-son relationship consists in handing down these values to the son and impressing them upon him,
--
picture current in his cultural canon.572
What principle is rule of spirit, rather than law, predicated upon? Respect for the innately heroic nature
--
that the alchemist placed himself outside the protection of his cultural canon, in the psychological sense,
and at the mercy of the ecclesiastical authorities in the practical world. Investigation of matter and its
--
unknown. Admission of personal ignorance presents a challenge to the cultural canon (to the degree that the
ignorant one is identified with that canon) and sets the stage for moral transformation, which manifests
itself in symbolic form. The alchemist was searching for comprehension of the nature of material
--
Identification with the pre-existent cultural canon or pretence of such identification provides protection
against the unknown, and context for knowledge, but promotes tyranny. The final cost of this identification
1.06 - Magicians as Kings, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
their produce. A canon attri buted to St. Patrick enumerates among
the blessings that attend the reign of a just king "fine weather,
1.06 - MORTIFICATION, NON-ATTACHMENT, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
OUR kingdom go is the necessary and unavoidable corollary of Thy kingdom come. For the more there is of self, the less there is of God. The divine eternal fulness of life can be gained only by those who have deliberately lost the partial, separative life of craving and self-interest, of egocentric thinking, feeling, wishing and acting. Mortification or deliberate dying to self is inculcated with an uncompromising firmness in the canonical writings of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and most of the other major and minor religions of the world, and by every theocentric saint and spiritual reformer who has ever lived out and expounded the principles of the Perennial Philosophy. But this self-naughting is never (at least by anyone who knows what he is talking about) regarded as an end in itself. It possesses merely an instrumental value, as the indispensable means to something else. In the words of one whom we have often had occasion to cite in earlier sections, it is necessary for all of us to learn the true nature and worth of all self-denials and mortifications.
As to their nature, considered in themselves, they have nothing of goodness or holiness, nor are any real part of our sanctification, they are not the true food or nourishment of the Divine Life in our souls, they have no quickening, sanctifying power in them; their only worth consists in this, that they remove the impediments of holiness, break down that which stands between God and us, and make way for the quickening, sanctifying spirit of God to operate on our souls, which operation of God is the one only thing that can raise the Divine Life in the soul, or help it to the smallest degree of real holiness or spiritual life. Hence we may learn the reason why many people not only lose the benefit, but are even the worse for all their mortifications. It is because they mistake the whole nature and worth of them. They practice them for their own sakes, as things good in themselves; they think them to be real parts of holiness, and so rest in them and look no further, but grow full of self-esteem and self-admiration for their own progress in them. This makes them self-sufficient, morose, severe judges of all those that fall short of their mortifications. And thus their self-denials do only that for them which indulgences do for other people: they withstand and hinder the operation of God upon their souls, and instead of being really self-denials, they streng then and keep up the kingdom of self.
1.06 - Raja Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
7. Niyama is observance of five canons, viz., Saucha (internal and external purity), Santosha (contentment), Tapas (austerity), Svadhyaya (study of religious books and repetitions of Mantras), and Ishvarapranidhana (self-surrender to God, and His worship).
8. Ahimsa is perfect harmlessness and positive love also. This removes the brutal nature in man and streng thens the will.
1.06 - THE FOUR GREAT ERRORS, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
part of the world it has even been canonised; and it bears the name of
"Religion" and "Morality." Every postulate formulated by religion and
1.075 - Self-Control, Study and Devotion to God, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
These three methods tapas, svadhyaya and Ishvara pranidhana are really the training of the will, the intellect and the emotion. It requires tremendous will to practise tapas, great understanding or intellectual capacity to probe into the meaning of the scriptures, and emotional purity to love God. These three are emphasised in the canons of tapas, svadhyaya and Ishvara pranidhana. By svadhyaya there is ishtadevata samprayogah,says the sutra; there is union of oneself with the deity of ones worship and adoration by a daily brooding over its characters.
Whatever we think in our mind, that we will become, and that we will get. But, this thinking should not be a shallow thinking; it should be a very deep absorption of oneself in what one expects. The whole of us should be saturated with our longing for the ideal which is in our mind. There should be no other thought except of the qualities, characters and nature of the ideal which is in our mind. Anything and everything can be obtained in this world if only there is a will behind it. If the force of thought is intense enough, there is nothing which is impossible. This is the point made out in this sutra.
1.07 - Bridge across the Afterlife, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
rines and canon needed to stem the invasion of the Allies
who, from the east and the west, were squeezing Germany
1.09 - SKIRMISHES IN A WAY WITH THE AGE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
descending line of life. When this is decided, a canon is obtained
by means of which the value of his selfishness may be determined.
1.10 - The Scolex School, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
All this about Gautama Buddha having renounced Nirvana is apparently all a pure invention of Mme. Blavatsky, and has no authority in the Buddhist canon. The Buddha is referred to, again and again, as having 'passed away by that kind of passing away which leaves nothing whatever behind.' The account of his doing this is given in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta; and it was the contention of the Toshophists that this 'great, sublime Nibbana story' was something peculiar to Gautama Buddha. They began to talk about Parinibbana, super-Nibbana, as if there were some way of subtracting one from one which would leave a higher, superior kind of a nothing, or as if there were some way of blowing out a candle which would leave Moses in a much more Egyptian darkness than we ever supposed when we were children.
This is not science. This is not business. This is American Sunday journalism. The Hindu and the American are very much alike in this innocence, this 'naivet' which demands fairy stories with ever bigger giants. They cannot bear the idea of anything being complete and done with. So, they are always talking in superlatives, and are hard put to it when the facts catch up with them, and they have to invent new superlatives. Instead of saying that there are bricks of various sizes, and specifying those sizes, they have a brick and a super-brick, and 'one' brick, and 'some' brick; and when they have got to the end they chase through the dictionary for some other epithet to brick, which shall excite the sense of wonder at the magnificent progress and super-progress I present the American public with this word which is supposed to have been made. Probably the whole thing is a bluff without a single fact behind it. Almost the whole of the Hindu psychology is an example of this kind of journalism. They are not content with the supreme God. The other man wishes to show off by having a supremer God than that, and when a third man comes along and finds them disputing, it is up to him to invent a supremest super-God.
1.13 - Conclusion - He is here, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
Let us see now what have been the effects, direct and indirect, of that withdrawal. First of all, by virtue of this tremendous sacrifice the Supramental Light which had been descending into the most outward physical since 1938 but could not be fixed there, was at last fixed in the earth-consciousness. This massive descent into his own body and extending through it into all Matter was a crowning achievement of his Yoga at the expense of his body's sacrifice and an act of unparalleled self-effacement for the sake of the earth-transformation. The next step that was to follow was the great Manifestation which took place in 1956. The Mother is reported to have said after it, "Now my work is done." This means that essentially what she and Sri Aurobindo had been wanting to do was achieved, but the details had to be consciously worked out and a concentrated yoga is required to hasten the evolution. There is no doubt that the Manifestation, so soon in the wake of his departure, was the direct result of Sri Aurobindo's sacrifice. One might argue that it should have been possible without his leaving the body. Quite true, but it was getting delayed, as Sri Aurobindo complained more than once in his letters. Various internal and external circumstances were always hindering it. We have noted in the chapter on Savitri Sri Aurobindo's complaint about his real work being hampered by these factors and yet he could not ignore them. They did not leave him sufficient time for concentration which, he said, was his real work. A drastic measure to deal with all obstruction at its very root seemed called for. This measure would also create the right conditions by which the subtle sheath, free from its physical counterparts, gets its full scope and can work more dynamically from above and behind. Sri Aurobindo could now make the path clear for the Manifestation in 1956. The Mother has said in the Bulletin of Physical Education that we have no idea of the tremendous work Sri Aurobindo has done in the occult worlds as a result of which all the crucial changes are taking place in her body. It will be, therefore, not an error of perception to call his passing away a strategic retreat, nor an emotional hyperbole to call it a sacrifice, a martyrdom. The phenomenon itself that we witnessed was something stupendous, beyond all canons of Science. Whoever has heard of a dead body changing its colour overnight, becoming charged with a gold-crimson radiance and remaining intact for five days?
The second effect whose purport will not be evident to those who are unfamiliar with Sri Aurobindo's Yoga was, to quote the Mother, "As soon as Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his body, what he had called the Mind of Light got realised here. The Supermind had descended long ago very long ago in the mind and even in the vital: it was working in the physical also, but indirectly through those intermediaries. The question now was about the direct action of the Supermind in the physical. Sri Aurobindo said it could be possible only if the physical mind received the supramental light: the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. This physical mind receiving the supramental light Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light."[1] It is because the Mother as his supreme collaborator was there to receive the Light and continue his work that Sri Aurobindo could make that holocaust of himself. The holocaust has also had one effect which cannot but be regarded as being eminently in accord with Sri Aurobindo's own vision. It is clear that the Ashram "instead of dwindling after the Master's self-withdrawal has leaped gloriously forward under the Mother's leadership". Earlier Sri Aurobindo's towering personality, though in seclusion, dominated the scene. Now the picture, as I said, is entirely different. We can see that all the world is coming to the Mother and accepting her as the Divine Mother, the Shakti who rules, guides and saves. This is what Sri Aurobindo had wanted and laid down since the Mother took charge of the Ashram, as the prime desideratum of his Supramental Yoga. It has been rendered possible and quickly effective by his unprecedented sacrifice. It is also in keeping with his nature. He had admitted that temperamentally he was always prone to act from behind the veil, the way of the Supreme to move men and forces without their knowledge. His political life, except for a short period, and life in Pondicherry, bear testimony to its truth. So the final retirement was consistent with that disposition and is its highest culmination. This culmination has carried the Mother even more to the forefront. There she stands now and plays the role of Shakti and, as she has said, is doing Sri Aurobindo's work and giving his final dream, of which he has spoken in his Independence Day message, a concrete shape on this earth. Sri Aurobindo constantly helps her from behind. The Mother has said in the Bulletin, as I have stated before, what a vast amount of work Sri Aurobindo has done in the occult field in consequence of which the work of transformation of the physical has become easier. Similarly, can we have any idea of his world-action, particularly in the political field, for example his occult contribution to the liberation of Bangladesh? Let us remember Sri Aurobindo's prophetic voice, "Division must go." His Force has not ceased to act in that direction. On the contrary it is moving powerfully towards the realisation of this prophecy. These are his works on a cosmic scale that we are aware of. In our individual cases too his Presence and his dynamic action have been testified to by devotees and disciples all over India and in the West We hear his voice, get his touch, protection, active intervention. The Mother told me more than once that she always saw Sri Aurobindo working on me. I had a personal proof of his surprisingly direct intervention, saving me from a critical situation that could have otherwise put my sadhana in peril. I have mentioned another occult phenomenon in the preface of my Talks with Sri Aurobindo, Vol. I to illustrate his subtle help. A third small instance will suffice: when the Ashram was passing through a financial difficulty, the Mother reported the matter to Sri Aurobindo. He replied, "Ask Prodyot." And it is well known that Prodyot brings a lot of money for the Ashram.
1.13 - Gnostic Symbols of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
closing of the canon. Jesus is still in the making." Roberts, "Jesus or Christ?-
A Reply," p. 124.
1.14 - The Suprarational Beauty, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But again this is true only in restricted bounds or, if anywhere entirely true, then only on a middle plane of our aesthetic seeking and activity. Where the greatest and most powerful creation of beauty is accomplished and its appreciation and enjoyment rise to the highest pitch, the rational is always surpassed and left behind. The creation of beauty in poetry and art does not fall within the sovereignty or even within the sphere of the reason. The intellect is not the poet, the artist, the creator within us; creation comes by a suprarational influx of light and power which must work always, if it is to do its best, by vision and inspiration. It may use the intellect for certain of its operations, but in proportion as it subjects itself to the intellect, it loses in power and force of vision and diminishes the splendour and truth of the beauty it creates. The intellect may take hold of the influx, moderate and repress the divine enthusiasm of creation and force it to obey the prudence of its dictates, but in doing so it brings down the work to its own inferior level, and the lowering is in proportion to the intellectual interference. For by itself the intelligence can only achieve talent, though it may be a high and even, if sufficiently helped from above, a surpassing talent. Genius, the true creator, is always suprarational in its nature and its instrumentation even when it seems to be doing the work of the reason; it is most itself, most exalted in its work, most sustained in the power, depth, height and beauty of its achievement when it is least touched by, least mixed with any control of the mere intellectuality and least often drops from its heights of vision and inspiration into reliance upon the always mechanical process of intellectual construction. Art-creation which accepts the canons of the reason and works within the limits laid down by it, may be great, beautiful and powerful; for genius can preserve its power even when it labours in shackles and refuses to put forth all its resources: but when it proceeds by means of the intellect, it constructs, but does not create. It may construct well and with a good and faultless workmanship, but its success is formal and not of the spirit, a success of technique and not the embodiment of the imperishable truth of beauty seized in its inner reality, its divine delight, its appeal to a supreme source of ecstasy, Ananda.
There have been periods of artistic creation, ages of reason, in which the rational and intellectual tendency has prevailed in poetry and art; there have even been nations which in their great formative periods of art and literature have set up reason and a meticulous taste as the sovereign powers of their aesthetic activity. At their best these periods have achieved work of a certain greatness, but predominantly of an intellectual greatness and perfection of technique rather than achievements of a supreme inspired and revealing beauty; indeed their very aim has been not the discovery of the deeper truth of beauty, but truth of ideas and truth of reason, a critical rather than a true creative aim. Their leading object has been an intellectual criticism of life and nature elevated by a consummate poetical rhythm and diction rather than a revelation of God and man and life and nature in inspired forms of artistic beauty. But great art is not satisfied with representing the intellectual truth of things, which is always their superficial or exterior truth; it seeks for a deeper and original truth which escapes the eye of the mere sense or the mere reason, the soul in them, the unseen reality which is not that of their form and process but of their spirit. This it seizes and expresses by form and idea, but a significant form, which is not merely a faithful and just or a harmonious reproduction of outward Nature, and a revelatory idea, not the idea which is merely correct, elegantly right or fully satisfying to the reason and taste. Always the truth it seeks is first and foremost the truth of beauty,not, again, the formal beauty alone or the beauty of proportion and right process which is what the sense and the reason seek, but the soul of beauty which is hidden from the ordinary eye and the ordinary mind and revealed in its fullness only to the unsealed vision of the poet and artist in man who can seize the secret significances of the universal poet and artist, the divine creator who dwells as their soul and spirit in the forms he has created.
The art-creation which lays a supreme stress on reason and taste and on perfection and purity of a technique constructed in obedience to the canons of reason and taste, claimed for itself the name of classical art; but the claim, like the too trenchant distinction on which it rests, is of doubtful validity. The spirit of the real, the great classical art and poetry is to bring out what is universal and subordinate individual expression to universal truth and beauty, just as the spirit of romantic art and poetry is to bring out what is striking and individual and this it often does so powerfully or with so vivid an emphasis as to throw into the background of its creation the universal, on which yet all true art romantic or classical builds and fills in its forms. In truth, all great art has carried in it both a classical and a romantic as well as a realistic element,understanding realism in the sense of the prominent bringing out of the external truth of things, not the perverse inverted romanticism of the real which brings into exaggerated prominence the ugly, common or morbid and puts that forward as the whole truth of life. The type of art to which a great creative work belongs is determined by the prominence it gives to one element and the subdual of the others into subordination to its reigning spirit. But classical art also works by a large vision and inspiration, not by the process of the intellect. The lower kind of classical art and literature,if classical it be and not rather, as it often is, pseudo-classical, intellectually imitative of the external form and process of the classical,may achieve work of considerable, though a much lesser power, but of an essentially inferior scope and nature; for to that inferiority it is self-condemned by its principle of intellectual construction. Almost always it speedily degenerates into the formal or academic, empty of real beauty, void of life and power, imprisoned in its slavery to form and imagining that when a certain form has been followed, certain canons of construction satisfied, certain rhetorical rules or technical principles obeyed, all has been achieved. It ceases to be art and becomes a cold and mechanical workmanship.
This predominance given to reason and taste first and foremost, sometimes even almost alone, in the creation and appreciation of beauty arises from a temper of mind which is critical rather than creative; and in regard to creation its theory falls into a capital error. All artistic work in order to be perfect must indeed have in the very act of creation the guidance of an inner power of discrimination constantly selecting and rejecting in accordance with a principle of truth and beauty which remains always faithful to a harmony, a proportion, an intimate relation of the form to the idea; there is at the same time an exact fidelity of the idea to the spirit, nature and inner body of the thing of beauty which has been revealed to the soul and the mind, its svarpa and svabhva. Therefore this discriminating inner sense rejects all that is foreign, superfluous, otiose, all that is a mere diversion distractive and deformative, excessive or defective, while it selects and finds sovereignly all that can bring out the full truth, the utter beauty, the inmost power. But this discrimination is not that of the critical intellect, nor is the harmony, proportion, relation it observes that which can be fixed by any set law of the critical reason; it exists in the very nature and truth of the thing itself, the creation itself, in its secret inner law of beauty and harmony which can be seized by vision, not by intellectual analysis. The discrimination which works in the creator is therefore not an intellectual self-criticism or an obedience to rules imposed on him from outside by any intellectual canons, but itself creative, intuitive, a part of the vision, involved in and inseparable from the act of creation. It comes as part of that influx of power and light from above which by its divine enthusiasm lifts the faculties into their intense suprarational working. When it fails, when it is betrayed by the lower executive instruments rational or infrarational, and this happens when these cease to be passive and insist on obtruding their own demands or vagaries,the work is flawed and a subsequent act of self-criticism becomes necessary. But in correcting his work the artist who attempts to do it by rule and intellectual process, uses a false or at any rate an inferior method and cannot do his best. He ought rather to call to his aid the intuitive critical vision and embody it in a fresh act of inspired creation or recreation after bringing himself back by its means into harmony with the light and law of his original creative initiation. The critical intellect has no direct or independent part in the means of the inspired creator of beauty.
In the appreciation of beauty it has a part, but it is not even there the supreme judge or law-giver. The business of the intellect is to analyse the elements, parts, external processes, apparent principles of that which it studies and explain their relations and workings; in doing this it instructs and enlightens the lower mentality which has, if left to itself, the habit of doing things or seeing what is done and taking all for granted without proper observation and fruitful understanding. But as with truth of religion, so with the highest and deepest truth of beauty, the intellectual reason cannot seize its inner sense and reality, not even the inner truth of its apparent principles and processes, unless it is aided by a higher insight not its own. As it cannot give a method, process or rule by which beauty can or ought to be created, so also it cannot give to the appreciation of beauty that deeper insight which it needs; it can only help to remove the dullness and vagueness of the habitual perceptions and conceptions of the lower mind which prevent it from seeing beauty or which give it false and crude aesthetic habits: it does this by giving to the mind an external idea and rule of the elements of the thing it has to perceive and appreciate. What is farther needed is the awakening of a certain vision, an insight and an intuitive response in the soul. Reason which studies always from outside, cannot give this inner and more intimate contact; it has to aid itself by a more direct insight springing from the soul itself and to call at every step on the intuitive mind to fill up the gap of its own deficiencies.
We see this in the history of the development of literary and artistic criticism. In its earliest stages the appreciation of beauty is instinctive, natural, inborn, a response of the aesthetic sensitiveness of the soul which does not attempt to give any account of itself to the thinking intelligence. When the rational intelligence applies itself to this task, it is not satisfied with recording faithfully the nature of the response and the thing it has felt, but it attempts to analyse, to lay down what is necessary in order to create a just aesthetic gratification, it prepares a grammar of technique, an artistic law and canon of construction, a sort of mechanical rule of process for the creation of beauty, a fixed code or Shastra. This brings in the long reign of academic criticism superficial, technical, artificial, governed by the false idea that technique, of which alone critical reason can give an entirely adequate account, is the most important part of creation and that to every art there can correspond an exhaustive science which will tell us how the thing is done and give us the whole secret and process of its doing. A time comes when the creator of beauty revolts and declares the charter of his own freedom, generally in the shape of a new law or principle of creation, and this freedom once vindicated begins to widen itself and to carry with it the critical reason out of all its familiar bounds. A more developed appreciation emerges which begins to seek for new principles of criticism, to search for the soul of the work itself and explain the form in relation to the soul or to study the creator himself or the spirit, nature and ideas of the age he lived in and so to arrive at a right understanding of his work. The intellect has begun to see that its highest business is not to lay down laws for the creator of beauty, but to help us to understand himself and his work, not only its form and elements but the mind from which it sprang and the impressions its effects create in the mind that receives. Here criticism is on its right road, but on a road to a consummation in which the rational understanding is overpassed and a higher faculty opens, suprarational in its origin and nature.
For the conscious appreciation of beauty reaches its height of enlightenment and enjoyment not by analysis of the beauty enjoyed or even by a right and intelligent understanding of it,these things are only a preliminary clarifying of our first unenlightened sense of the beautiful,but by an exaltation of the soul in which it opens itself entirely to the light and power and joy of the creation. The soul of beauty in us identifies itself with the soul of beauty in the thing created and feels in appreciation the same divine intoxication and uplifting which the artist felt in creation. Criticism reaches its highest point when it becomes the record, account, right description of this response; it must become itself inspired, intuitive, revealing. In other words, the action of the intuitive mind must complete the action of the rational intelligence and it may even wholly replace it and do more powerfully the peculiar and proper work of the intellect itself; it may explain more intimately to us the secret of the form, the strands of the process, the inner cause, essence, mechanism of the defects and limitations of the work as well as of its qualities. For the intuitive intelligence when it has been sufficiently trained and developed, can take up always the work of the intellect and do it with a power and light and insight greater and surer than the power and light of the intellectual judgment in its widest scope. There is an intuitive discrimination which is more keen and precise in its sight than the reasoning intelligence.
1.25 - SPIRITUAL EXERCISES, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
In the Orient the systematization of mental prayer was carried out at some unknown but certainly very early date. Both in India and China spiritual exercises (accompanied or preceded by more or less elaborate physical exercises, especially breathing exercises) are known to have been used several centuries before the birth of Christ. In the West, the monks of the Thebaid spent a good part of each day in meditatioq as a means to contemplation or the unitive knowledge of God; and at all periods of Christian history, more or less methodical mental prayer has been largely used to supplement the vocal praying of public and private worship. But the systematization of mental prayer into elaborate spiritual exercises was not undertaken, it would seem, until near the end of the Middle Ages, when reformers within the Church popularized this new form of spirituality in an effort to revivify a decaying monasticism and to reinforce the religious life of a laity that had been bewildered by the Great Schism and profoundly shocked by the corruption of the clergy. Among these early systematizers the most effective and influential were the canons of Windesheim, who were in close touch with the Brethren of the Common Life. During the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries spiritual exercises became, one might almost say, positively fashionable. The early Jesuits had shown what extraordinary transformations of character, what intensities of will and devotion, could be achieved by men systematically trained on the intellectual and imaginative exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, and as the prestige of the Jesuits stood very high, at this time, in Catholic Europe, the prestige of spiritual exercises also stood high. Throughout the first century of the Counter-Reformation numerous systems of mental prayer (many of them, unlike the Ignatian exercises, specifically mystical) were composed, published and eagerly bought. After the Quietist controversy mysticism fell into disrepute and, along with mysticism, many of the once popular systems, which their authors had designed to assist the soul on the path towards contemplation. For more detailed information on this interesting and important subject the reader should consult Pourrats Christian Spirituality, Bede Frosts The Art of Mental Prayer, Edward Leens Progress through Mental Prayer and Aelfrida Tillyards Spiritual Exercises. Here it is only possible to give a few characteristic specimens from the various religious traditions.
Know that when you learn to lose yourself, you will reach the Beloved. There is no other secret to be learnt, and more than this is not known to me.
1.48 - Morals of AL - Hard to Accept, and Why nevertheless we Must Concur, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
There is only one logical conclusion of these premises. We know (a) the Book means more than it appears to mean, (b) this inner meaning may modify, or even reverse, the outer meaning, (c) what we do understand convinces us that the Author of the Book is indeed what he claims to be; and, therefore, we must accept the Book as the canon of Truth, seeking patiently for further enlightenment.
This last point is of especial virtue: see AL III, 63-68. The value to you of the Book varies directly with the degree of your own initiation.
1f.lovecraft - Ibid, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
occasion of canonchets raid of March 30, 1676, during King Philips
War; and the astute sachem, recognising it at once as a thing of
1f.lovecraft - The Dunwich Horror, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
down. The scenery, judged by any ordinary aesthetic canon, is more than
commonly beautiful; yet there is no influx of artists or summer
1.jk - Lines To Fanny, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
Foisted into the canon law of love;--
No,-- wine is only sweet to happy men;
1.pbs - Charles The First, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
Refuse to obey her canons, and deny
The apostolic power with which the Spirit
1.pbs - Saint Edmonds Eve, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
Oh! did you observe the Black canon pass,
And did you observe his frown?
--
The canon's horse is stout and strong
The road is plain and fair,
But the canon slowly wends along,
And his brow is gloomed with care.
--
The canon his faltering knee thrice bowed,
And his frame was convulsed with fear,
--
A smile of peace the canon wore,
But horror dimmed his eye--
--
Of thee! Black canon, it wildly talks,
And call on thy patron saint--
--
The canon his paternoster reads,
His rosary hung by his side,
--
'Oh! enter, Black canon,' a whisper fell,
'Oh! enter, thy hour is come.'
--
'The guilty Black canon of Elmham's dead,
And his wife lies buried here!'
--
Her blood by the ruthless Black canon was spilt,
And in death her lips he sealed;
--
'Till the canon atoned the deed,
Here together they now shall rest entombed,
--
But never again was the canon there found,
Or the Ghost on the black marble tomb.
1.rb - Sordello - Book the Sixth, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
A week since, heard I the old canon say
He saw with his own eyes a barrow burst
1.rb - The Flight Of The Duchess, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
And treat the priests to a fifty-part canon,
And then you may guess how that tongue of hers ran on!
1.tm - A Practical Program for Monks, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Original Language English 1 Each one shall sit at table with his own cup and spoon, and with his own repentance. Each one's own business shall be his most important affair, and provide his own remedies. They have neglected bowl and plate. Have you a wooden fork? Yes, each monk has a wooden fork as well as a potato. 2 Each one shall wipe away tears with his own saint, when three bells hold in store a hot afternoon. Each one is supposed to mind his own heart, with its conscience, night and morning. Another turn on the wheel: ho hum! And observe the Abbot! Time to go to bed in a straw blanket. 3 Plenty of bread for everyone between prayers and the psalter: will you recite another? Merci, and Miserere. Always mind both the clock and the Abbot until eternity. Miserere. 4 Details of the Rule are all liquid and solid. What canon was the first to announce regimentation before us? Mind the step on the way down! Yes, I dare say you are right, Father. I believe you; I believe you. I believe it is easier when they have ice water and even a lemon. Each one can sit at table with his own lemon, and mind his own conscience. 5 Can we agree that the part about the lemon is regular? In any case, it is better to have sheep than peacocks, and cows rather than a chained leopard says Modest, in one of his proverbs. The monastery, being owner of a communal rowboat, is the antechamber of heaven. Surely that ought to be enough. 6 Each one can have some rain after Vespers on a hot afternoon, but ne quid nimis, or the purpose of the Order will be forgotten. We shall send you hyacinths and a sweet millennium. Everything the monastery provides is very pleasant to see and to sell for nothing. What is baked smells fine. There is a sign of God on every leaf that nobody sees in the garden. The fruit trees are there on purpose, even when no one is looking. Just put the apples in the basket. In Kentucky there is also room for a little cheese. Each one shall fold his own napkin, and neglect the others. 7 Rain is always very silent in the night, under such gentle cathedrals. Yes, I have taken care of the lamp, Miserere. Have you a patron saint, and an angel? Thank you. Even though the nights are never dangerous, I have one of everything. [1499.jpg] -- from Selected Poems of Thomas Merton, by Thomas Merton <
1.whitman - From Far Dakotas Canons, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
object:1.whitman - From Far Dakotas canons
author class:Walt Whitman
2.02 - Meeting With the Goddess, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
orthodox sages, canonical instructions for domestic ceremonials, and certain
works of secular and religious law; (3) Purana, which are the Hindu mytho
2.03 - Karmayogin A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
reflects a divinely-ordained canon of absolute right and wrong
must be also rejected. If morality is a growth, the moral sense is
2.03 - On Medicine, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: Good Lord! (Then, bursting into laughter) X ought to be canonized Saint X! One can generalise the statement that all men are liars. Such is public life. When Y died, D and others who were life-long against him, did the same thing.
Later the talk turned to homeopathy, its dosage, its difference from allopathy etc.
2.03 - The Altar, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
3:The Altar is a double cube, which is a rough way of symbolizing the Great Work; for the doubling of the cube, like the squaring of the circle, was one of the great problems of antiquity. The surface of this Altar is composed of ten squares. The top is Kether, and the bottom Malkuth. The height of the Altar is equal to the height above the ground of the navel of the Magician. The Altar is connected with the Ark of the Covenant, Noah's Ark, the nave (navis, a ship) of the Church, and many other symbols of antiquity, whose symbolism has been well worked out in an anonymous book called "The canon," (Elkin Matthews), which should be studied carefully before constructing the Altar.
4:For this Altar must embody the Magician's knowledge of the laws of Nature, which are the laws through which he works.
2.06 - Reality and the Cosmic Illusion, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
All turns round the question "What is Reality?" Our cognitive consciousness is limited, ignorant, finite; our conceptions of reality depend on our way of contact with existence in this limited consciousness and may be very different from the way in which an original and ultimate Consciousness sees it. It is necessary to distinguish between the essential Reality, the phenomenal reality dependent upon it and arising out of it, and the restricted and often misleading experience or notion of either that is created by our sense-experience and our reason. To our sense the earth is flat and, for most immediate practical purposes, within a limit, we have to follow the sense reality and deal with the flatness as if it were a fact; but in true phenomenal reality the flatness of the earth is unreal, and Science seeking for the truth of the phenomenal reality in things has to treat it as approximately round. In a host of details Science contradicts the evidence of the senses as to the real truth of phenomena; but, still, we have to accept the cadre provided by our senses because the practical relations with things which they impose on us have validity as an effect of reality and cannot be disregarded. Our reason, relying on the senses and exceeding them, constructs its own canons or notions of the real and unreal, but these canons vary according to the standpoint taken by the reasoning observer. The physical scientist probing into phenomena erects formulas and standards based on the objective and phenomenal reality and its processes: to his view mind may appear as a subjective result of
Matter and self and spirit as unreal; at any rate he has to act as if matter and energy alone existed and mind were only an observer of an independent physical reality which is unaffected
--
- any reason for maintaining them in continuous or recurrent existence through all Time: if it so maintains them, it is because they are based on the realities of the spirit. But, necessarily, when thus integrally seen, the phenomenal reality would take on another appearance than when it is viewed by the reason and sense of the finite being; it would have another and deeper reality, another and greater significance, another and more subtle and complex process of its movements of existence. The canons of reality and all the forms of thought created by the finite reason and sense would appear to the greater consciousness as partial constructions with an element of truth in them and an element of error; these constructions might therefore be described as at once real and unreal, but the phenomenal world itself would not become either unreal or unreal-real by that fact: it would put on another reality of a spiritual character; the finite would reveal itself as a power, a movement, a process of the Infinite.
An original and ultimate consciousness would be a consciousness of the Infinite and necessarily unitarian in its view of diversity, integral, all-accepting, all-embracing, all-discriminating because all-determining, an indivisible whole-vision. It would see the essence of things and regard all forms and movements as phenomenon and consequence of the essential Reality, motions and formations of its power of being. It is held by the reason that truth must be empty of any conflict of contradictions: if so, since the phenomenal universe is or seems to be the contrary of the essential Brahman it must be unreal; since individual being is the contrary of both transcendence and universality, it must be unreal. But what appear as contradictions to a reason based on the finite may not be contradictions to a vision or a larger reason based on the infinite. What our mind sees as contraries may be to the infinite consciousness not contraries but complementaries: essence and phenomenon of the essence are complementary to each other, not contradictory, - the phenomenon manifests the essence; the finite is a circumstance and not a contradiction of the infinite; the individual is a self-expression of the universal and the transcendent, - it is not a contradiction or something quite other than it, it is the universal concentrated and selective, it is
2.08 - The Sword, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
ism. But since to admit that it was this would never do for a canonical book, they had to pretend that it was symbolical.
They tried to refine away the grossness of the expressions, but even their hardihood proved unequal to the task.
--
The early scholars simply could not understand that the Buddhist canon denies the soul, regards the ego as a delusion caused by a special faculty of the diseased mind, could not understand that the goal of the
Buddhist, Nibbana, was in any way different from their own goal,
2.1.5.4 - Arts, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Concerning the words of two Christian canons, Halleluia and Dona Nobis Pacem, inscribed on a programme of vocal music)
It is all right on condition that it is not exclusive and that other religions are also represented.
2.1.7.08 - Comments on Specific Lines and Passages of the Poem, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Do not forget that the Savitri is an experiment in mystic poetry, spiritual poetry cast into a symbolic figure. Done on this scale, it is really a new attempt and cannot be hampered by old ideas of technique except when they are assimilable. Least of all by standards proper to a mere intellectual and abstract poetry which makes reason and taste the supreme arbiters, aims at a harmonised poetic-intellectual balanced expression of the sense, elegance in language, a sober and subtle use of imaginative decoration, a restrained emotive element etc. The attempt at mystic spiritual poetry of the kind I am at demands above all a spiritual objectivity, an intense psycho-physical concreteness. I do not know what you mean exactly here by obvious and subtle. According to certain canons epithets should be used sparingly, free use of them is rhetorical, an obvious device, a crowding of images is bad taste, there should be a subtlety of art not displayed but severely concealedsumma ars est celare artem. Very good for a certain standard of poetry, not so good or not good at all for others. Shakespeare kicks over these traces at every step, Aeschylus freely and frequently, Milton whenever he chooses. Such lines as
In hideous ruin and combustion down
2.21 - IN THE COMPANY OF DEVOTEES AT SYAMPUKUR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Dr. Sarkar and M. entered the drawing-room. There were shelves all around filled with books. The doctor rested a little. M. looked at the books. He picked up canon Farrar's Life of Jesus and read a few pages. Dr. Sarkar told M. how the first homeopathic hospital was started in the teeth of great opposition. He asked M. to read the letters relating to it, which had been published in the "Calcutta Journal of Medicine" in 1876. Dr. Sarkar was much devoted to homeopathy.
M. picked up another book, Munger's New Theology. Dr. Sarkar noticed it.
2.21 - Towards the Supreme Secret, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
THE TEACHER has completed all else that he needed to say, he has worked out all the central principles and the supporting suggestions and implications of his message and elucidated the principal doubts and questions that might rise around it, and now all that rests for him to do is to put into decisive phrase and penetrating formula the one last word, the heart itself of the message, the very core of his gospel. And we find that this decisive, last and crowning word is not merely the essence of what has been already said on the matter, not merely a concentrated description of the needed self-discipline, the Sadhana, and of that greater spiritual consciousness which is to be the result of all its effort and askesis; it sweeps out, as it were, yet farther, breaks down every limit and rule, canon and formula and opens into a wide and illimitable spiritual truth with an infinite potentiality of significance. And that is a sign of the profundity, the wide reach, the greatness of spirit of the Gita's teaching. An ordinary religious teaching or philosophical doctrine is well enough satisfied to seize on certain great and vital aspects of truth and turn them into utilisable dogma and instruction, method and practice for the guidance of man in his inner life and the law and form of his action; it does not go farther, it does not open doors out of the circle of its own system, does not lead us out into some widest freedom and unimprisoned largeness. This limitation is useful and indeed for a time indispensable. Man bounded by his mind and will has need of a law and rule, a fixed system, a definite practice selective of his thought and action; he asks for the single unmistakable hewn path hedged, fixed and secure to the tread, for the limited horizons, for the enclosed resting-places. It is only the strong and few who can move through freedom to freedom. And yet in the end the free soul ought to have an issue out of the forms and systems in which the mind finds its account and takes its limited pleasure. To exceed our ladder of ascent, not to stop short even on the topmost stair but move untrammelled and at large in the wideness of the spirit is a release important for our perfection; the spirit's absolute liberty is our perfect status. And this is how the Gita leads us: it lays down a firm and sure but very large way of ascent, a great Dharma, and then it takes us out beyond all that is laid down, beyond all dharmas, into infinitely open spaces, divulges to us the hope, lets us into the secret of an absolute perfection founded in an absolute spiritual liberty, and that secret, guhyatamam, is the substance of what it calls its supreme word, that the hidden thing, the inmost knowledge.
Gita, XVIII. 49-56.
30.03 - Spirituality in Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is not that art has no value from the standpoint of the spiritual discipline also. But the artist and the sadhu do not tread the same path. The way of the sadhu is "Not this, not this" and that of the artist "Here it is, here it is." The sadhu wants to control and get rid of the senses in order to reach the Transcendent or to confine himself within the boundary of a particular way of the use of the senses. The artist wants to feel the Transcendent in the plenitude of wealth of the senses. The sadhu wants to form a religious life through canon and conduct. The artist does not subscribe to any hard and fast rule. He considers himself free from the very beginning. If he can hold on to this principle for all time then he can attain to liberation and fulfilment in the entirety of his life. The sadhu and the pious measure the value of their achievements by the attraction and repulsion they have for the objects of the senses and sit down to analyse their real nature. But the artist pays no attention to discriminating the object he deals with. He knows that essentially there is no flaw in the object. His concern is with his inner attitude. He reveals the true and the beautiful form from whatever he undertakes in his spontaneous urge of the truth within him. The sadhu wants to have access to spirituality through conduct, example, discipline and interpretations of the scriptures. But the artist wants to attain his goal through the feeling of his art. You may depict the picture of a Madonna or that of a harlot; there is nothing inherent in the subject of your delineation to make you choose the one or the other. The question is whether you have been able to get at the truth of the thing.
Subtle is the penetrating influence of art. We, who live in the physical nature, are unable to feel it readily. We require a massive influence. If it is not clearly pointed out to us we fail to grasp it; we need a baton-charge to be aroused from our slumber. That is why religious scriptures and moral codes have come into existence. We want to introduce moral doctrines in the realm of art as well. Moral doctrines may serve a useful purpose in changing the physical part of our nature. But the subtle inner nature and the spiritual being of man will never be awakened by the canons of morality. Art is but revelation. This revelation enables us to hold a direct communion with the innermost truth of our heart. Many a time we become identified with the spirit of things through art. This union is nothing but a union of delight. In religious terminology we may call it divine Grace. One who is endowed with this Grace has no need to observe the rules of conduct or spiritual practice. By the help of this divine Grace the artist can continue his enjoyment of sense-appreciation, yet become flooded with spirituality and get purified without undergoing any hardship or austerity.
In fact, there is no gulf between art and spirituality, provided that by the word spirituality we mean genuine spirituality and not merely moral conduct or religious ceremonies. If the aim of spirituality is to know the Self, then the aim of art too is the same. If the seer of the spiritual truth can see the Spirit everywhere without excluding the body or any part of it, then why should the artist not be able to manifest the glory of the Spirit through colour, sound, word and stone and thus play the role of a truly spiritual man?
3.00 - Introduction, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
playing him traitor. It is as if a man were told that tailors fashionplates were the canon of human beauty, so that he tried to make
himself formless and featureless like them, and shuddered with
3.05 - SAL, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[327] This is not altogether surprising, for how do wisdom and revelation square with one another? As certain books of the Old Testament canon show, there is, besides the wisdom of God which expresses itself in revelation, a human wisdom which cannot be had unless one works for it. Mark 9 : 50 therefore exhorts us to make sure that we always have enough salt in us, and he is certainly not referring to divine revelation, for this is something no man can produce on his own resources. But at least he can cultivate and increase his own human wisdom. That Mark should offer this warning, and that Paul should express himself in a very similar way, is in accord with the traditional Judeo-Hellenism of the Jewish communities at that time. An authoritarian Church, however, leaves very little room for the salt of human wisdom. Hence it is not surprising that the sal sapientiae plays an incomparably greater role outside the Church. Irenaeus, reporting the views of the Gnostics, says: The spiritual, they say, [is] sent forth to this end, that, being united here below with the psychic, it may take form, and be instructed simultaneously by intercourse with it. And this they declare to be the salt and the light of the world.646 The union of the spiritual, masculine principle with the feminine, psychic principle is far from being just a fantasy of the Gnostics: it has found an echo in the Assumption of the Virgin, in the union of Tifereth and Malchuth, and in Goethes the Eternal Feminine leads us upward and on. Hippolytus mentions this same view as that of the Sethians. He says:
But when this wave is raised from the water by the wind and made pregnant in its nature, and has received within itself the reproductive power of the feminine, it retains the light scattered from on high together with the fragrance of the spirit [
3.05 - The Formula of I.A.O., #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
number is 93, this number should be the canon of a corresponding
Mass. Accordingly, He has expanded IAO by treating the O as an
3.08 - Of Equilibrium, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Experience goes yet deeper, and destroys the canon of the Law of Contradiction.
There is an immense amount of work by the Master Therion on this subject; it
3.09 - Of Silence and Secrecy, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Gnostic Catholic canon Miss [also Appendix VI, p. 317 of this book]. The
Revival meetings here in question were deliberate exploitations of religious
31.06 - Jagadish Chandra Bose, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
About science and scientists this is no doubt the prevailing canon. But in actual practice we find something else. What distinguishes Jagadish Chandra Bose is that he is a scientist, yet, while being a scientist in the true sense of the term, he is also a kavi,a poet; and this, his poetic part, is not something different from his scientific self. It not only is not separate but is the very spring and mystery, the hidden power of his scientific genius. The poet does not mean a weaver of words; the poet is one who has a divine vision and who creates by the force of that vision. By virtue of this power Jagadish Chandra often appears more like a miracle-maker than a scientist. This is not to say that Jagadish Chandra is unique and matchless in this respect. In all creative spirits even in the realm of science we find in a more or less degree an evidence of this power; for at the root of all creation this power is bound to exist. In the' brain of all discoverers from Galileo to Einstein has played the high light of a supersensuous, supra-intellectual vision. All their achievements, at any rate all the achievements of Jagadish Chandra, show how this vision has been brought down into the framework of the mind and the senses, proved and objectified.
What is it that we call a divine vision? It means an identity of feeling; we get at the truth of a thing by identifying ourselves with it. In other words, it is direct knowledge. Orthodox scientists, that is to say, those who do not create, who deal with finished articles, those who are only, or for the most part, commentators or organisers, look askance at this faculty. As already stated, they have no faith in it because they have no mastery over it, no possession of it. Theirs is the easy familiar path of sense-knowledge. They move from a particular to a general conclusion; from the effect to the cause; from the material to the less material; from sense-proof to suprasensuous proof; or, as in mathematics, to inference. Diametrically opposite is the course of direct knowledge. Here the knower does not separate the subject from himself and place it before him, does not break up its physical form for an analysis of and research into its properties and actions; at the very outset, the knower gets unified with the object to be known, his consciousness infuses itself into its being; in a sense, he becomes the object itself, just as Sri Radha felt that through constant remembrance of Sri Krishna she had become Sri Krishna himself. In this state the truth, the mystery, the properties and functions of the object transmit themselves to the consciousness of the knower and become clear to it as daylight. This direct knowledge of an object from inside, through no external medium of proof, if correctly attained, is infallible and above doubt, and has the rhythm of its unity and completeness.
31.09 - The Cause of Indias Decline, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The upshot amounts to this that even while we remained in active life, our zeal for action slowed down and diminished. We became overwhelmed with a pensive mood - a collective sense of the vanity of vanities brooded on our life. The active life was, no doubt; retained, but restricted within a narrow compass, and it was unavoidable. The way of life in the end became confined solely to the physical plane. Only the animal propensities were attended to. We missed all high ideals of action. In the social life we were deprived of all collective enterprises. Our only aim was somehow to satisfy our personal needs and those of our family members. And this is called praktana-kaya, - "exhausting the consequences of past actions". We paid no heed to the high or large enterprises of the life-energy, and these became altogether meaningless to us. All our energies were diverted to and hemmed in the channels of envy, jealousy and ill-feeling; "eat, drink and be merry" - as much as your depleted life-energy allows - became the motto of our life From outside, new shackles were imposed on the life-energy that was already diminishing and dying out from within. The religious codes of Manu and others prescribed the routine of life in all its details. The canons enjoined on us taught how to regulate our life, what to do and not to do. The march of our life followed the rut of the rules laid down by the law-givers for the regulation of our daily life and the duties on special occasions. We could not deviate from the rules in the least for fear of censure and tyranny of the society. The customs that were in the beginning merely a spontaneous discipline changed into an inexorable chain and bondage. It is true that the living current of life does not and cannot adhere to all these injunctions of fixed laws. Life has a rhythm of its own. It creates its own law. The rules that do not take into account this rhythm and law become a hindrance to the natural progress of life. The urge of life, being hampered at every step, is bound to become weakened and crippled. The hard and fast rules that the mentors of our society had introduced even for inessential and trifling matters of life deprived the life-energy of its natural zest and zeal, made it move like .a machine. Consequently our vitality waned and life became nothing more than a bundle of rules. Perhaps the original intention was not to allow the vital energy to run amuck or break the bounds of discipline. Anyhow we missed the art of maintaining freedom in the midst of bondage.2
The Caste-system is the third cause. The differentiation of castes and sub-castes has practically split India into innumerable divisions. We Indians are bloated with pride and assert that we belong to the Aryan race. But do we know how many different strains of blood went to form this Indian nation? If there be any Aryan spirit in India, it is not in the blood of the Indians, but in their education and culture. And this education and culture too has mingled with those of other civilisations. When the Indian nation was living and powerful, it had considerably added to its life and power by absorbing new blood and new life-energy. But as the frame of the Caste-system grew more and more rigid, new sub-castes began to make their appearance. Social intercourse and matrimonial alliances ceased to take place. And, as a result, the power of unity yielded to the infirmity of division. No doubt, the maintenance of the purity .of blood of a clan may be at times necessary. When a small group acquires some speciality in education and culture, in order to perpetuate this virtue it is obviously needed that it should keep aloof from the other groups. This speciality may last for long, but not for ever. With the march of time its decline is bound to ensue. Besides, it does no good to retain a particular quality for all time, since with the change of time the usefulness of even good qualities will change. There comes the demand for qualities suitable to the age. Purity, i.e., continuance of the type, fixity for its own sake, leads to stagnation and disintegration. According to the nature and capacity of persons and groups, different systems of education and culture can and should be admitted in a society. Aptitude and inclination of men should decide groupings. There is no need for arbitrary or notion-made laws. But in the present-day society we find high and solid walls of division raised everywhere even amongst the sub-castes. So the social relationship has considerably narrowed down, and from generation to generation the social intercourse has been confined within groupings of a few families. Virility and the life-energy fail under such circumstances to retain their original vigour.
3.12 - Of the Bloody Sacrifice, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
authorship (all the other canonical epistles attributed to Paul do). Paul was traditionally held to be the author but scholarship is by no means unanimous on the
question.]
32.07 - The God of the Scientist, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We have already mentioned that sense-perception is the basis of scientific research. The whole gamut of scientific knowledge is founded on it. And the scientist cannot violate or overpass the canons of science. Still there is one thing more and here we deal with the limits and limitations of human knowledge. But how can science or the scientific methodology assert that it has alone found the clue to the essence and nature of knowledge and truth? The question can be asked whether the theism of Einstein or Planck is the ultimate consequence of their scientific intellect or a reflection of some other non-scientific faculty. A class of continental scientists says that the religious sentiment and the puritanism of the scientists of the British Isles are so strong that they will not feel happy unless they can introduce a few Biblical expressions even into the table of logarithms.
However that may be, it must be admitted that the theism of the scientist may also be the natural and spontaneous out come of his scientific intellect. It is not necessary that it should originate from some primitive faculty apart from reason. The purely scientific intellect and the theistic spirit may belong to the same mode of human consciousness. The sense of infinity, the sense of magic and wonder are common to both; thus the two may be congruous and commensurate, although the purely religious spirit, the soul's seeking for the Divine and the type of theism proper to the scientific mind are different in nature and orientation and are independent of each other.
3.20 - Of the Eucharist, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
4. Study, in the Roman Missal, the canon of the Mass, and the chapter of defects.
5. The Word Chasity is used by initiates to signify a certain state of soul and of
3.7.1.12 - Karma and Justice, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
What are the lines of Karma? What is the intrinsic character and active law of this energy of the soul and its will and development of consequence? To ask that question is to ask what is the form taken here by the dynamic meaning of our existence and what the curves of guidance of its evolving self-creation and action. And such a question ought not to be answered in a narrow spirit or under the obsession of some single idea which does not take into account the many-sidedness and rich complexity of this subtle world of Nature. The law of Karma can be no rigid and mechanical canon or rough practical rule of thumb, but rather its guiding principle should be as supple a harmonist as the Spirit itself whose will of self-knowledge it embodies and should adapt itself to the need of self-development of the variable individual souls who are feeling their way along its lines towards the right balance, synthesis, harmonies of their action. The karmic idea cannot be for spirit and not mind is its causea cosmic reflection of our limited average human intelligence, but rather the law of a greater spiritual wisdom, a means which behind all its dumb occult appearances embodies an understanding lead and a subtle management towards our total perfection.
The ordinary current conception of law of Karma is dominantly ethical, but ethical in no very exalted kind. Its idea of karma is a mechanical and materialistic ethics, a crudely exact legal judgment and administration of reward and punishment, an external sanction to virtue and prohibition of sin, a code, a balance. The idea is that there must be a justice governing the award of happiness and misery on the earth, a humanly intelligible equity and that the law of Karma represents it and gives us its formula. I have done so much good, puya. It is my capital, my accumulation and balance. I must have it paid out to me in so much coin of prosperity, the legal currency of this sovereign and divine Themis, or why on earth should I at all do good? I have done so much evil. That too must come back to me in so much exact and accurate punishment and misfortune. There must be so much outward suffering or an inward suffering caused by outward event and pressure; for if there were not this physically sensible, visible, inevitable result, where would be any avenging justice and where could we find any deterrent sanction in Nature against evil? And this award is that of an exact judge, a precise administrator, a scrupulous merchant of good for good and evil for evil who has learned nothing and will never learn anything of the Christian or Buddhistic ideal rule, has no bowels of mercy or compassion, no forgiveness for sin, but holds austerely to an eternal Mosaic law, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, a full, slow or swift, but always calm and precisely merciless lex talionis.
3.7.2.02 - The Terrestial Law, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Now, that a conscious Infinite is there in physicalNature, we are assured by every sign, though it is a consciousness not made or limited like ours. All her constructions and motions are those of an illimitable intuitive wisdom too great and spontaneous and mysteriously self-effective to be described as an intelligence, of a Power and Will working for Time in eternity with an inevitable and forecasting movement in each of its steps, even in those steps that in their outward or superficial impetus seem to us inconscient. And as there is in her this greater consciousness and greater power, so too there is an illimitable spirit of harmony and beauty in her constructions that never fails her, though its works are not limited by our aesthetic canons. An infinite hedonism too is there, an illimitable spirit of delight, of which we become aware when we enter into impersonal unity with her; and even as that in her which is terrible is a part of her beauty, that in her which is dangerous, cruel, destructive is a part of her delight, her universal Ananda. If then all else in us, our intelligence, our dynamic and volitional, our aesthetic, our hedonistic being, when they regard the physical universe, feel intuitively the satisfaction in it of something great and illimitable but still mysteriously of their own kind, must not our moral sense, our sense of Right, find too there the satisfaction of something of which it is itself the reflection? An intuitive perception of this kind is at the root of our demand for a moral order in the universe. Yes, but here too our partial conceptions, our own moral canons are not sufficient; this is a greater and illimitable Right, not bound to the ethical formula, and its first principle is that each thing should observe the law of its own energy and each energy move in its own lines in the total scheme and fulfil its own function and make its own returns. The physical law is the right and justice, the duty, the ought of the physical world. The godhead of Fire in the Upanishad, questioned by the Spirit, What is the power in thee? makes answer This is my power that whatever is cast to me, I burn, and a similar answer is made by each physical thing to the question of the life and the mind. It observes the lines of its physical energy and is concerned with no other law or justice. No law of Karma, the moral law included, could exist, if there were not to begin with this principle as the first foundation of order.
What then is the relation of man to this physical Nature, man this soul intervening in and physically born of her in a body subjected to her law of action? what his function as something that is yet more than her, a life and a mind and a spirit? what his swabhava, his swadharma? First, he owes to her a mechanical obedience of which she herself working in his body takes care: but also, as a soul evolving the power of consciousness secret in her, his business is to know and to use her law and even in knowing and using it to transcend her more material limit, habit, purpose and formula. Observance of Nature but also transcendence of first nature is continually the purpose of the Spirit within him. A continuous series of transcendences is the most significant thing in the world action and evolution itself is only Natures constant impulse and effort of self-exceeding, of a greater self-becoming, her way of expressing more and more, getting out a greater form of birth and awakened power of presence of the self that is in her. Life brings in a whole range of these transcendences, mind another and greater range, and since mind is so evidently imperfect and incomplete, a thing of seeking in its very nature, there must surely be a range or many ranges of transcendence above mind. Man meets with the powers of his mind the rule of the physical action and the law of vital Karma, brings in a law of mental and moral Karma and lifts along the ladder of these scales to something more, to a potency of spiritual action which may even lead him to an exceeding of Karma itself, a freedom from or of birth and becoming, a perfecting transcendence.
3.7.2.03 - Mind Nature and Law of Karma, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The second movement of mind running on the lines of life comes into prominent action when man evolves out of his experience the idea of a mental rule, standard, ideal, a concretised abstraction which is suggested at first by life experience, but goes beyond, transcends the actual needs and demands of the vital energy and returns upon it to impose some ideal mental rule, some canon embodying a generalised conception of Right on the law of life. For its essence is the discovery or belief of the mind that in all things there is a right rule, a right standard, a right way of thought, will, feeling, perception, action other than that of the intuition of vital nature, other than that of the first dealings of mind seeking only to profit by the vital nature with a mainly vital motive,for it has discovered a way of the reason, a rule of the self-governing intelligence. This brings into the seeking of vital pleasure and profit, artha, kma, the power of the conception of a mental truth, justice, right, the conception of Dharma. The greater practical part of the Dharma is ethical, it is the idea of the moral law. The first mind movement is non-moral or not at all characteristically moral, has only, if at all, the conception of a standard of action justified by custom, the received rule of life and therefore right, or a morality indistinguishable from expediency, accepted and enforced because it was found necessary or helpful to efficiency, power, success, to victory, honour, approval, good fortune. The idea of Dharma is on the contrary predominantly moral in its essence. Dharma on its heights holds up the moral law in its own right and for its own sake to human acceptance and observance. The larger idea of Dharma is indeed a conception of the true law of all energies and includes a conscience, a rectitude in all things, a right law of thought and knowledge, of aesthesis, of all other human activities and not only of our ethical action. But yet in the notion of Dharma the ethical element has tended always to predominate and even to monopolise the concept of Right which man creates,because ethics is concerned with action of life and his dealing with his vital being and with his fellow-men and that is always his first preoccupation and his most tangible difficulty, and because here first and most pressingly the desires, interests, instincts of the vital being find themselves cast into a sharp and very successful conflict with the ideal of Right and the demand of the higher law. Right ethical action comes therefore to seem to man at this stage the one thing binding upon him among the many standards raised by the mind, the moral claim the one categorical imperative, the moral law the whole of his Dharma.
At first however the moral conceptions of man and the direction and output and the demand of return of the ethical energy in him get themselves inextricably mixed with his vital conceptions and demands and even afterwards lean on them very commonly and very considerably for a support and incentive. Human morality first takes up an enormous mass of customary rules of action, a conventional and traditional practice much of which is of a very doubtful moral value, gives to it an imperative sanction of right and slips into the crude mass or superimposes on it, but still as a part of one common and equal code, the true things of the ethical ideal. It appeals to the vital being, his desires, hopes and fears, incites man to virtue by the hope of rewards and the dread of punishment, imitating in this device the method of his crude and fumbling social practice: for that, finding its law and rule which, good or bad, it wishes to make imperative as supposing it to be at least the best calculated for the order and efficiency of the community, opposed by mans vital being, bribes and terrifies as well as influences, educates and persuades him to acceptance. Morality tells man, accommodating itself to his imperfection, mostly through the mouth of religion, that the moral law is imperative in itself, but also that it is very expedient for him personally to follow it, righteousness in the end the safest policy, virtue the best paymaster in the long run,for this is a world of Law or a world ruled by a just and virtuous or at least virtue-loving God. He is assured that the righteous man shall prosper and the wicked perish and that the paths of virtue lie through pleasant places. Or, if this will not serve, since it is palpably false in experience and even man cannot always deceive himself, it offers him a security of vital rewards denied here but conceded in some hereafter. Heaven and hell, happiness and suffering in other lives are put before him as the bribe and the menace. He is told, the better to satisfy his easily satisfied intellect, that the world is governed by an ethical law which determines the measure of his earthly fortunes, that a justice reigns and this is justice, that every action has its exact rebound and his good shall bring him good and his evil evil. It is these notions, this idea of the moral law, of righteousness and justice as a thing in itself imperative, but still needing to be enforced by bribe and menace on our human nature,which would seem to show that at least for that nature they are not altogether imperative,this insistence on reward and punishment because morality struggling with our first unregenerate being has to figure very largely as a mass of restraints and prohibitions and these cannot be enforced without some fact or appearance of a compelling or inducing outward sanction, this diplomatic compromise or effort at equivalence between the impersonal ethical and the personal egoistic demand, this marriage of convenience between right and vital utility, virtue and desire,it is these accommodations that are embodied in the current notions of the law of Karma.
3 - Commentaries and Annotated Translations, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
latter case I follow certain fixed canons. First, if the word is one
of the standing terms of the Veda intimately bound up with its
4.04 - THE REGENERATION OF THE KING, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[369] Thus the author of the following parable, Sir George Ripley (141590), canon of Bridlington, was already revolving in his mind the problem of the sick king. I must leave to one side the question of how far this idea was influenced by the Grail Legend. It is conceivable that Ripley, as an Englishman, would have been acquainted with this tradition. Apart from the rather doubtful evidence of the lapis exillis (lapsit exiliis in Wolfram von Eschenbach), I have not been able to find any more likely traces of the Grail cycle in alchemical symbolism, unless one thinks of the mystic vessel of transformation, the tertium comparationis for which would be the chalice in the Mass.
The first five verses of the Cantilena67 are as follows:
--
This verse confirms the decrepit condition of the king, who apart from his original defect, or because of it, is also suffering from senile debility. It was a bold stroke for a canon to identify the king with the Ancient of Days from Daniel 7 : 9: I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of Days did sit, whose garments were white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. There can be no doubt that Ripley the alchemist was here speculating over the head of Ripley the cleric to hit upon an idea that in the Middle Ages must have seemed like blasphemy: the identification of the transformative substance with God. To our way of thinking this kind of allegory or symbolization is the height of absurdity and unintelligibility. It was even hard for the Middle Ages to swallow.79 But where it met with acceptance, as in philosophical alchemy, it does much to explain the hymnlike or at any rate highly emotional language of some of the treatises. We have here, in fact, a new religious declaration: God is not only in the unspotted body of Christ and continually present in the consecrated Host butand this is the novel and significant thinghe is also hidden in the cheap, despised, common-or-garden substance, even in the uncleanness of this world, in filth.80 He is to be found only through the art, indeed he is its true object and is capable of progressive transformationDeo adjuvante. This strange theologem did not, of course, mean that for the alchemists God was nothing but a substance that could be obtained by chemical transformationfar from it. Such an aberration was reserved rather for those moderns who put matter or energy in the place of God. The alchemists, so far as they were still pagans, had a more mystical conception of God dating from late antiquity, which, as in the case of Zosimos, could be described as Gnostic; or if they were Christians, their Christianity had a noticeable admixture of hea thenish magical ideas about demons and divine powers and an anima mundi inherent or imprisoned in physical nature. The anima mundi was conceived as that part of God which formed the quintessence and real substance of Physis, and which was to Godto use an apt expression of Isidore81as the accrescent soul (
, grown-on) was to the divine soul of man. This accrescent soul was a second soul that grew through the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms up to man, pervading the whole of nature, and to it the natural forms were attached like appendages (
--
[375] It will not have escaped the reader how primitive the idea of Gods ageing and need of renewal is. It does in fact derive from ancient Egypt, though one is at a loss to imagine from what sources, other than the Bible, a canon of Bridlington in the fifteenth century could have borrowed such a theology. His writings at any rate allow no conjectures in this respect. There is something of a clue, however, in the alchemical tradition itself, in the idea of a corrupt arcane substance whose corruption is due to original sin. A similar idea appears in the Grail tradition of the sick king, which has close connections with the transformation mystery of the Mass. The king is the forbear of Parsifal, whom one could describe as a redeemer figure, just as in alchemy the old king has a redeemer son or becomes a redeemer himself (the lapis is the same at the beginning and at the end). Further, we must consider certain medieval speculations concerning Gods need of improvement and the transformation of the wrathful God of the Old Testament into the God of Love in the New: for, like the unicorn, he was softened by love in the lap of a virgin. Ideas of this kind are found as early as Bonaventure, the Franciscan saint, who died in 1274.82 We should also remember that, in the figurative language of the Church, God the Father was represented as an old man and his birth as a rejuvenation in the Son. In a hymn to the Church as an analogy of the Mother of God Paulinus of Nola says:
Sister and wife at once; for without the use of the body
--
[435] We know that what hovered before the mind of the alchemist during this transformation was the almost daily miracle of transubstantiation at the Mass. This would very definitely have been the case with canon Ripley. We have already seen from a number of examples how much religious conceptions were mixed up with his alchemical interests. The queen in the Cantilena is neither a wife nor mother in the first place but a tutelary madonna who adopts the king as her sonan indication that she stands in the same relationship to the king as Mater Ecclesia to the believer. He dies and is buried as if in the Church or in consecrated ground, where he awaits resurrection in a glorified body.
[436] The elevation of the matrix, the chemical solution, from the state of materiality to Luna is the classic allegory of the Church, as Ripley doubtless knew. The goddess who suddenly intervenes in the opus is depicted in the Mutus liber, where she appears equally suddenly during the procedure, as a naked female figure crowned with the sign of the moon and bearing a child in her arms. The miracle is there described as an intervention of the gods,235 who, like god-parents, take the place of the earthly parents and arrange for the spiritual procreation of the foetus spagyricus. It is inevitable that Luna should stand for the Virgin and/or the Church in the Cantilena because the senex-puer is described by Ripley himself as the Ancient of Days. Since the mother at this moment has brought about the histolysis of the old king, so that only a single homogeneous solution remains, we must assume that Luna, appearing in the place of the mother, has become identical with the solution and now carries the king in her body as her adopted son. This gives the king immortality in a divine and incorruptible body. In the Mutus liber there then follows an adoption by Sol and after that a coniunctio Solis et Lunae, and the adoptive child, now consubstantial with Sol and Luna, is included in the ceremony.
[437] Something of this sort seems to occur in the Cantilena: Luna and her adoptive son are at first identical in one and the Same solution. When Luna takes over this condition she is presumably in her novilunium and hastens to her union with Sol. The new moon is associated with uncanniness and snakiness, as we saw earlier.236 I therefore interpret spirificans in splendorem Solis as winding like a snake into the radiance of the sun. Woman is morally suspect in alchemy and seems closely akin to the serpent of paradise, and for this and other reasons canon Ripley might easily think of the new moons approach to the sun as a spiram facere.237 It should not be forgotten that a learned alchemist of the fifteenth century would have a knowledge of symbols at least as great as our own in the present exposition (if you discount the psychology), and in some cases perhaps greater. (There are still numerous unpublished MSS. in existence to which I have had no access.)
[438] Verses 2627
4.07 - Purification-Intelligence and Will, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But this is still a very incomplete movement. We find that it progresses towards a greater completeness in proportion as we arrive at two kinds of perfection; first, a greater and greater detachment from the control of the lower suggestions; secondly, an increasing discovery of a self-existent Being, Light, Power and Ananda which surpasses and transforms the normal humanity. The ethical mind becomes perfect in proportion as it detaches itself from desire, sense suggestion, impulse, customary dictated action and discovers a self of Right, Love, Strength and Purity in which it can live accomplished and make it the foundation of all its actions. The aesthetic mind is perfected in proportion as it detaches itself from all its cruder pleasures and from outward conventional canons of the aesthetic reason and discovers a self-existent self and spirit of pure and infinite Beauty and Delight which gives its own light and joy to the material of the aesthesis. The mind of knowledge is perfected when it gets away from impression and dogma and opinion and discovers a light of self-knowledge and intuition which illumines all the workings of the sense and reason, all self-experience and world-experience. The will is perfected when it gets away from and behind its impulses and its customary ruts of effectuation and discovers an inner power of the Spirit which is the source of an intuitive and luminous action and an original harmonious creation. The movement of perfection is away from all domination by the lower nature and towards a pure and powerful reflection of the being, power, knowledge and delight of the Spirit and Self in the Buddhi.
The Yoga of self-perfection is to make this double movement as absolute as possible. All immiscence of desire in the Buddhi is an impurity. The intelligence coloured by desire is an impure intelligence and it distorts Truth; the will coloured by desire is an impure will and it puts a stamp of distortion, pain and imperfection upon the soul's activity. All immiscence of the emotions of the soul of desire is an impurity and similarly distorts both the knowledge and the action. All subjection of the Buddhi to the sensations and impulses is an impurity. The thought and will have to stand back detached from desire, troubling emotion, distracting or mastering impulse and to act in their own right until they can discover a greater guide, a Will, Tapas or divine shakti which will take the place of desire and mental will and impulse, an Ananda or pure delight of the spirit and an illumined spiritual knowledge which will express themselves in the action of that shakti. This complete detachment, impossible without an entire self-government, equality, calm, sama, samata, santi, is the surest step towards the purification of the Buddhi. A calm, equal and detached mind can alone reflect the peace or base the action of the liberated spirit.
The Buddhi itself is burdened with a mixed and impure action. When we reduce it to its own proper forms, we find that it has three stages or elevations of its functioning. First, its lowest basis is a habitual, customary action which is a link between the higher reason and the sense-mind, a kind of current understanding. This understanding is in itself dependent on the witness of the senses and the rule of action which the reason deduces from the sense-mind's perception of and attitude to life. It is not capable of itself forming pure thought and will, but it takes the workings of the higher reason and turns them into coin of opinion and customary standard of thought or canon of action. When we perform a sort of practical analysis of the thinking mind, cut away this element and hold back the higher reason free, observing and silent, we find that this current understanding begins to run about in a futile circle, repeating all its formed opinions and responses to the impressions of things, but incapable of any strong adaptation and initiation. As it feels more and more the refusal of sanction from the higher reason, it begins to fail, to lose confidence in itself and its forms and habits, to distrust the intellectual action and to fall into weakness and silence. The stilling of this current, running, circling, repeating thought-mind is the principal part of that silencing of the thought which is one of the most effective disciplines of Yoga.
But the higher reason itself has a first stage of dynamic, pragmatic intellectuality in which creation, action and will are the real motive and thought and knowledge are employed to form basic constructions and suggestions which are used principally for effectuation. To this pragmatic reason truth is only a formation of the intellect effective for the action of the inner and the outer life. When we cut it away from the still higher reason which seeks impersonally to reflect Truth rather than to create personally effective truth, we find then that this pragmatic reason can originate, progress, enlarge the experience by dynamic knowledge, but it has to depend on the current understanding as a pedestal and base and put its whole weight on life and becoming. It is in itself therefore a mind of the Will to life and action, much more a mind of Will than a mind of knowledge: it does not live in any assured and constant and eternal Truth, but in progressing and changing aspects of Truth which serve the shifting forms of our life and becoming or, at the highest, help life to grow and progress. By itself this pragmatic mind can give us no firm foundation and no fixed goal; it lives in the truth of the hour, not in any truth of eternity. But when purified of dependence on the customary understanding, it is a great creator and in association with the highest mental reason it becomes a strong channel and bold servant for the effectuation of Truth in life. The value of its work will depend on the value and the power of the highest truth-seeking reason. But by itself it is a sport of Time and a bond-slave of Life. The seeker of the Silence has to cast it away from him; the seeker of the integral Divinity has to pass beyond it, to replace and transform this thinking mind intent on Life by a greater effectuating spiritual Will, the Truth-Will of the spirit.
4.1.01 - The Intellect and Yoga, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Argument number three. The generalisations based on spiritual experience are irrational as well as unproven. Irrational in what way? Are they merely foolish and inconceivable - infrarational - or do they belong to a suprarational order of experience to which the ordinary intellectual canons do not apply because these are founded on phenomena as they appear to the external mind and sense and not to an inner realisation which surpasses these phenomena? That is the contention of the mystics and it cannot be dismissed by merely saying that as they do not agree with ordinary experience, therefore they are nonsense and false. I would not undertake to defend as unimpeachable all that Joad or Radhakrishnan may have written
- such as the formula that "the universe is good", - but for
5 - The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
were held "by distinguished canons"; the others present had to
"don suitably festive garments, as at Christmas." Since there
6.02 - STAGES OF THE CONJUNCTION, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[672] This preliminary step, in itself a clear blend of Stoic philosophy and Christian psychology, is indispensable for the differentiation of consciousness.63 Modern psycho therapy makes use of the same procedure when it objectifies the affects and instincts and confronts consciousness with them. But the separation of the spiritual and the vital spheres, and the subordination of the latter to the rational standpoint, is not satisfactory inasmuch as reason alone cannot do complete or even adequate justice to the irrational facts of the unconscious. In the long run it does not pay to cripple life by insisting on the primacy of the spirit, for which reason the pious man cannot prevent himself from sinning again and again and the rationalist must constantly trip up over his own irrationalities. Only the man who hides the other side in artificial unconsciousness can escape this intolerable conflict. Accordingly, the chronic duel between body and spirit seems a better though by no means ideal solution. The advantage, however, is that both sides remain conscious. Anything conscious can be corrected, but anything that slips away into the unconscious is beyond the reach of correction and, its rank growth undisturbed, is subject to increasing degeneration. Happily, nature sees to it that the unconscious contents will irrupt into consciousness sooner or later and create the necessary confusion. A permanent and uncomplicated state of spiritualization is therefore such a rarity that its possessors are canonized by the Church.
[673] Since the soul animates the body, just as the soul is animated by the spirit, she tends to favour the body and everything bodily, sensuous, and emotional. She lies caught in the chains of Physis, and she desires beyond physical necessity. She must be called back by the counsel of the spirit from her lostness in matter and the world. This is a relief to the body too, for it not only enjoys the advantage of being animated by the soul but suffers under the disadvantage of having to serve as the instrument of the souls appetites and desires. Her wish-fantasies impel it to deeds to which it would not rouse itself without this incentive, for the inertia of matter is inborn in it and probably forms its only interest except for the satisfaction of physiological instincts. Hence the separation means withdrawing the soul and her projections from the bodily sphere and from all environmental conditions relating to the body. In modern terms it would be a turning away from sensuous reality, a withdrawal of the fantasy-projections that give the ten thousand things their attractive and deceptive glamour. In other words, it means introversion, introspection, meditation, and the careful investigation of desires and their motives. Since, as Dorn says, the soul stands between good and evil, the disciple will have every opportunity to discover the dark side of his personality, his inferior wishes and motives, childish fantasies and resentments, etc.; in short, all those traits he habitually hides from himself. He will be confronted with his shadow, but more rarely with the good qualities, of which he is accustomed to make a show anyway. He will learn to know his soul, that is, his anima and Shakti who conjures up a delusory world for him. He attains this knowledge, Dorn supposes, with the help of the spirit, by which are meant all the higher mental faculties such as reason, insight, and moral discrimination. But, in so far as the spirit is also a window into eternity and, as the anima rationalis immortal, it conveys to the soul a certain divine influx and the knowledge of higher things, wherein consists precisely its supposed animation of the soul. This higher world has an impersonal character and consists on the one hand of all those traditional, intellectual, and moral values which educate and cultivate the individual, and, on the other, of the products of the unconscious, which present themselves to consciousness as archetypal ideas. Usually the former predominate. But when, weakened by age or by criticism, they lose their power of conviction, the archetypal ideas rush in to fill the gap. Freud, correctly recognizing this situation, called the traditional values the super-ego, but the archetypal ideas remained unknown to him, as the belief in reason and the positivism of the nineteenth century never relaxed their hold. A materialistic view of the world ill accords with the reality and autonomy of the psyche.
6.08 - THE CONTENT AND MEANING OF THE FIRST TWO STAGES, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[744] The demand that arises under such conditions is for a new interpretation, in accord with the spirit of the age, of the archetypes that compensate the altered situation of consciousness. Christianity, for instance, was a new and more suitable formulation of the archetypal myth, which in its turn gave the rite its vitality. The archetype is a living idea that constantly produces new interpretations through which that idea unfolds. This was correctly recognized by Cardinal Newman in regard to Christianity.218 Christian doctrine is a new interpretation and development of its earlier stages, as we can see very clearly from the ancient tradition of the God-man. This tradition is continued in the unfolding of ecclesiastical dogma, and it is naturally not only the archetypes mentioned in the canonical writings of the New Testament that develop, but also their near relatives, of which we previously knew only the pagan forerunners. An example of this is the newest dogma concerning the Virgin; it refers unquestionably to the mother goddess who was constantly associated with the young dying son. She is not even purely pagan, since she was very distinctly prefigured in the Sophia of the Old Testament. For this reason the definition of the new dogma does not really go beyond the depositum fidei, for the mother goddess is naturally implied in the archetype of the divine son and accordingly underwent a consistent development in the course of the centuries.219 The depositum fidei corresponds in empirical reality to the treasure-house of the archetypes, the gazophylacium of the alchemists, and the collective unconscious of modern psychology.
[745] The objection raised by theologians that the final state of the dogma in any such development would be necessarily more complete or perfect than in the apostolic era is untenable. Obviously the later interpretation and formulation of the archetype will be much more differentiated than in the beginning. A glance at the history of dogma is sufficient to confirm this. One has only to think of the Trinity, for which there is no direct evidence in the canonical writings. But it does not follow from this that the primitive Christians had a less complete knowledge of the fundamental truths. Such an assumption borders on pernicious intellectualism, for what counts in religious experience is not how explicitly an archetype can be formulated but how much I am gripped by it. The least important thing is what I think about it.220
[746] The living idea is always perfect and always numinous. Human formulation adds nothing and takes away nothing, for the archetype is autonomous and the only question is whether a man is gripped by it or not. If he can formulate it more or less, then he can more easily integrate it with consciousness, talk about it more reasonably and explain its meaning a bit more rationally. But he does not possess it more or in a more perfect way than the man who cannot formulate his possession. Intellectual formulation becomes important only when the memory of the original experience threatens to disappear, or when its irrationality seems inapprehensible by consciousness. It is an auxiliary only, not an essential.
6.0 - Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
a correct application of the methods described in the Pali canon
or in the Yoga-sutra induces a remarkable extension of con-
--
Pali canon:
His heart overflowing with lovingkindness . . . with compassion
APPENDIX I - Curriculum of A. A., #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The canon. ::: The best text-book of Applied Qabalah.
The Fourth Dimension, by H. Hinton. ::: The text-book on this subject.
BOOK I. - Augustine censures the pagans, who attributed the calamities of the world, and especially the sack of Rome by the Goths, to the Christian religion and its prohibition of the worship of the gods, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
It is not without significance, that in no passage of the holy canonical books there can be found either divine precept or permission to take away our own life, whether for the sake of entering on the enjoyment of immortality, or of shunning, or ridding ourselves of anything whatever. Nay, the law, rightly interpreted, even prohibits suicide, where it says, "Thou shalt not kill." This is proved specially by the[Pg 31] omission of the words "thy neighbour," which are inserted when false witness is forbidden: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour." Nor yet should any one on this account suppose he has not broken this commandment if he has borne false witness only against himself. For the love of our neighbour is regulated by the love of ourselves, as it is written, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." If, then, he who makes false statements about himself is not less guilty of bearing false witness than if he had made them to the injury of his neighbour; although in the commandment prohibiting false witness only his neighbour is mentioned, and persons taking no pains to understand it might suppose that a man was allowed to be a false witness to his own hurt; how much greater reason have we to understand that a man may not kill himself, since in the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," there is no limitation added nor any exception made in favour of any one, and least of all in favour of him on whom the comm and is laid! And so some attempt to extend this comm and even to beasts and cattle, as if it forbade us to take life from any creature. But if so, why not extend it also to the plants, and all that is rooted in and nourished by the earth? For though this class of creatures have no sensation, yet they also are said to live, and consequently they can die; and therefore, if violence be done them, can be killed. So, too, the apostle, when speaking of the seeds of such things as these, says, "That which thou sowest is not quickened except it die;" and in the Psalm it is said, "He killed their vines with hail." Must we therefore reckon it a breaking of this commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," to pull a flower? Are we thus insanely to countenance the foolish error of the Manichans? Putting aside, then, these ravings, if, when we say, Thou shalt not kill, we do not understand this of the plants, since they have no sensation, nor of the irrational animals that fly, swim, walk, or creep, since they are dissociated from us by their want of reason, and are therefore by the just appointment of the Creator subjected to us to kill or keep alive for our own uses; if so, then it remains that we understand that commandment simply of man. The commandment is, "Thou shalt not kill man;" therefore neither another nor[Pg 32] yourself, for he who kills himself still kills nothing else than man.
21. Of the cases in which we may put men to death without incurring the guilt of murder.
BOOK II. -- PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
Church, the rejection from the canon of even the Book of Jude, who, though an inspired apostle,
quotes from and thus sanctifies the Book of Enoch, which is alleged to be an apocryphal work.
--
nearest to that of the canonical works.
Verily, "where doctors disagree . . ."
--
her canon owing to its too great antiquity, ob nimiam antiquitatem.* There was no room for the events
noticed in it within the limit of the 4004 years B.C. assigned to the world from its "creation"!
--
and breakage into the new Christian canon. Being the weakest, the Judeans could not help the
desecration; but they kept the secret of the origin of their Adam Kadmon, or male-female Jehovah; and
--
write the revelation. It is genuine and ought to be as canonical as any other gospel. Unfortunately it
remains to this day untranslated.
--
sesquitertia" -- were of opinion that "the division of the canon of the monochord was made by the
tetraktis in the duad, triad, and tetrad; for it comprehends a sesquitertia, a sesquialtera, a double, a
BOOK I. -- PART I. COSMIC EVOLUTION, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
the sacred canon of the Southern Church is said to contain 29,368,000 letters in the Saddharma
alankara,* or, exclusive of treatises and commentaries, "five or six times the amount of the matter
--
South and of the North, the sacred Buddhist canon comprised originally 80,000 or 84,000 tracts, but
most of them were lost, so that there remained but 6,000," the professor tells his audiences. "Lost" as
--
known that the most important Buddhist tracts belonging to the sacred canon were stored away in
countries and places inaccessible to the European pundits, the late Swami Dayan and Sarasvati, the
--
Chaldea. The only reference to it in the Christian canon is found in Revelations xii., as quoted a few
pages back.
--
Greece with its now lost canon of proportion; as it is the Disciples of the Initiates of the 4th, the
Atlanteans, who handed it over to their Cyclopes, the "Sons of Cycles" or of the "Infinite," from whom
BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
control of the laws of thought. They either silently ignore, or openly repudiate, the simplest canons of
logic, including the laws of non-contradiction and . . . resent with the utmost vehemence, every
--
the Hebrew canon, certainly prior to Moses, and which speaks of the making "of Arcturus, Orion, and
Pleiades (Ash, Kesil, and
BOOK I. -- PART II. THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM IN ITS APPROXIMATE ORDER, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
Men," the "Judge," or the SUN. Though the Jewish canon and Christianism have made the sun become
the "Lord God" and Jehovah in the Bible, yet the latter is full of indiscreet traces of the androgyne
BOOK XI. - Augustine passes to the second part of the work, in which the origin, progress, and destinies of the earthly and heavenly cities are discussed.Speculations regarding the creation of the world, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
3. Of the authority of the canonical Scriptures composed by the Divine Spirit.
This Mediator, having spoken what He judged sufficient, first by the prophets, then by His own lips, and afterwards by the apostles, has besides produced the Scripture which is called canonical, which has paramount authority, and to which we yield assent in all matters of which we ought not to be ignorant, and yet cannot know of ourselves. For if we attain the knowledge of present objects by the testimony of our own senses,[446] whether internal or external, then, regarding objects remote from our own senses, we need others to bring their[Pg 439] testimony, since we cannot know them by our own, and we credit the persons to whom the objects have been or are sensibly present. Accordingly, as in the case of visible objects which we have not seen, we trust those who have, (and likewise with all sensible objects,) so in the case of things which are perceived[447] by the mind and spirit, i.e. which are remote from our own interior sense, it behoves us to trust those who have seen them set in that incorporeal light, or abidingly contemplate them.
4. That the world is neither without beginning, nor yet created by a new decree of God, by which He afterwards willed what He had not before willed.
BOOK XIX. - A review of the philosophical opinions regarding the Supreme Good, and a comparison of these opinions with the Christian belief regarding happiness, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
As regards the uncertainty about everything which Varro alleges to be the differentiating characteristic of the New Academy, the city of God thoroughly detests such doubt as madness. Regarding matters which it apprehends by the mind and reason it has most absolute certainty, although its knowledge is limited because of the corruptible body pressing down the mind, for, as the apostle says, "We know in part."[650] It believes also the evidence of the senses which the mind uses by aid of the body; for [if one who trusts his senses is sometimes deceived], he is more wretchedly deceived who fancies he should never trust them. It believes also the Holy Scriptures, old and new, which we call canonical, and which are the source of the faith by which the just lives,[651] and by which we walk without doubting whilst we are absent from the Lord.[652] So long as this faith remains inviolate and firm, we may without blame entertain doubts regarding some[Pg 329] things which we have neither perceived by sense nor by reason, and which have not been revealed to us by the canonical Scriptures, nor come to our knowledge through witnesses whom it is absurd to disbelieve.
19. Of the dress and habits of the Christian people.
BOOK XVIII. - A parallel history of the earthly and heavenly cities from the time of Abraham to the end of the world, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
At this time, Cyrus king of Persia, who also ruled the Chaldeans and Assyrians, having somewhat relaxed the captivity of the Jews, made fifty thousand of them return in order to rebuild the temple. They only began the first foundations and built the altar; but, owing to hostile invasions, they were unable to go on, and the work was put off to the time of Darius. During the same time also those things were done which are written in the book of Judith, which, indeed, the Jews are said not to have received into the canon of the Scriptures. Under Darius king of Persia, then, on the completion of the seventy years predicted by Jeremiah the prophet, the captivity of the Jews was brought to an end, and they were restored to liberty. Tarquin then reigned as the seventh king of the Romans. On his expulsion, they also began to be free from the rule of their kings. Down to this time the people of Israel had prophets; but, although they were numerous, the canonical writings of only a few of them have been preserved among the Jews and among us. In closing the previous book, I promised to set down something in this one about them, and I shall now do so.
27. Of the times of the prophets whose oracles are contained in books, and who sang many things about the call of the Gentiles at the time when the Roman kingdom began and the Assyrian came to an end.
--
The date of three of the minor prophets, Obadiah, Nahum, and Habakkuk, is neither mentioned by themselves nor given in the chronicles of Eusebius and Jerome. For although they put Obadiah with Micah, yet when Micah prophesied does not appear from that part of their writings in which the dates are noted. And this, I think, has happened through their error in negligently copying the works of others. But we could not find the two others now mentioned in the copies of the chronicles which we have; yet because they are contained in the canon, we ought not to pass them by.
Obadiah, so far as his writings are concerned, the briefest of all the prophets, speaks against Idumea, that is, the nation of Esau, that reprobate elder of the twin sons of Isaac and grandsons of Abraham. Now if, by that form of speech in which a part is put for the whole, we take Idumea as put for the nations, we may understand of Christ what he says among other things, "But upon Mount Sion shall be safety, and there shall be a Holy One."[529] And a little after, at the end of the same prophecy, he says, "And those who are saved again shall come up out of Mount Sion, that they may defend Mount Esau, and it shall be a kingdom to the Lord."[530] It is quite evident this was fulfilled when those saved again out of Mount Sion that is, the believers in Christ from Judea, of whom the apostles are chiefly to be acknowledgedwent up to defend Mount Esau. How could they defend it except by making safe, through the preaching of the gospel, those who believed that they might be "delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of God?"[531] This he expressed as an inference, adding, "And it shall be to the Lord a kingdom." For Mount Sion signifies Judea, where it is predicted there shall be safety, and a Holy One, that is,[Pg 252] Christ Jesus. But Mount Esau is Idumea, which signifies the Church of the Gentiles, which, as I have expounded, those saved again out of Sion have defended that it should be a kingdom to the Lord. This was obscure before it took place; but what believer does not find it out now that it is done?
--
After these three prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, during the same period of the liberation of the people from the Babylonian servitude Esdras also wrote, who is historical rather than prophetical, as is also the book called Esther, which is found to relate, for the praise of God, events not far from those times; unless, perhaps, Esdras is to be understood as prophesying of Christ in that passage where, on a question having arisen among certain young men as to what is the strongest thing, when one had said kings, another wine, the third women, who for the most part rule kings, yet that[Pg 263] same third youth demonstrated that the truth is victorious over all.[572] For by consulting the Gospel we learn that Christ is the Truth. From this time, when the temple was rebuilt, down to the time of Aristobulus, the Jews had not kings but princes; and the reckoning of their dates is found, not in the Holy Scriptures which are called canonical, but in others, among which are also the books of the Maccabees. These are held as canonical, not by the Jews, but by the Church, on account of the extreme and wonderful sufferings of certain martyrs, who, before Christ had come in the flesh, contended for the law of God even unto death, and endured most grievous and horrible evils.
37. That prophetic records are found which are more ancient than any fountain of the Gentile philosophy.
In the time of our prophets, then, whose writings had already come to the knowledge of almost all nations, the philosophers of the nations had not yet arisen,at least, not those who were called by that name, which originated with Pythagoras the Samian, who was becoming famous at the time when the Jewish captivity ended. Much more, then, are the other philosophers found to be later than the prophets. For even Socrates the Athenian, the master of all who were then most famous, holding the pre-eminence in that department that is called the moral or active, is found after Esdras in the chronicles. Plato also was born not much later, who far outwent the other disciples of Socrates. If, besides these, we take their predecessors, who had not yet been styled philosophers, to wit, the seven sages, and then the physicists, who succeeded Thales, and imitated his studious search into the nature of things, namely, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Anaxagoras, and some others, before Pythagoras first professed himself a philosopher, even these did not precede the whole of our prophets in antiquity of time, since Thales, whom the others succeeded, is said to have flourished in the reign of Romulus, when the stream of prophecy burst forth from the fountains of Israel in those writings which spread over the whole world. So that only those theological poets, Orpheus, Linus, and Musus, and, it may be, some others[Pg 264] among the Greeks, are found earlier in date than the Hebrew prophets whose writings we hold as authoritative. But not even these preceded in time our true divine, Moses, who au thentically preached the one true God, and whose writings are first in the authoritative canon; and therefore the Greeks, in whose tongue the literature of this age chiefly appears, have no ground for boasting of their wisdom, in which our religion, wherein is true wisdom, is not evidently more ancient at least, if not superior. Yet it must be confessed that before Moses there had already been, not indeed among the Greeks, but among barbarous nations, as in Egypt, some doctrine which might be called their wisdom, else it would not have been written in the holy books that Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,[573] as he was, when, being born there, and adopted and nursed by Pharaoh's daughter, he was also liberally educated. Yet not even the wisdom of the Egyptians could be antecedent in time to the wisdom of our prophets, because even Abraham was a prophet. And what wisdom could there be in Egypt before Isis had given them letters, whom they thought fit to worship as a goddess after her death? Now Isis is declared to have been the daughter of Inachus, who first began to reign in Argos when the grandsons of Abraham are known to have been already born.
38. That the ecclesiastical canon has not admitted certain writings on account of their too great antiquity, lest through them false things should be inserted instead of true.
If I may recall far more ancient times, our patriarch Noah was certainly even before that great deluge, and I might not undeservedly call him a prophet, forasmuch as the ark he made, in which he escaped with his family, was itself a prophecy of our times.[574] What of Enoch, the seventh from Adam? Does not the canonical epistle of the Apostle Jude declare that he prophesied?[575] But the writings of these men could not be held as authoritative either among the Jews or us, on account of their too great antiquity, which made it seem needful to regard them with suspicion, lest false things should be set forth instead of true. For some writings which are said to be theirs are quoted by those who, according to their own[Pg 265] humour, loosely believe what they please. But the purity of the canon has not admitted these writings, not because the authority of these men who pleased God is rejected, but because they are not believed to be theirs. Nor ought it to appear strange if writings for which so great antiquity is claimed are held in suspicion, seeing that in the very history of the kings of Judah and Israel containing their acts, which we believe to belong to the canonical Scripture, very many things are mentioned which are not explained there, but are said to be found in other books which the prophets wrote, the very names of these prophets being sometimes given, and yet they are not found in the canon which the people of God received. Now I confess the reason of this is hidden from me; only I think that even those men, to whom certainly the Holy Spirit revealed those things which ought to be held as of religious authority, might write some things as men by historical diligence, and others as prophets by divine inspiration; and these things were so distinct, that it was judged that the former should be ascribed to themselves, but the latter to God speaking through them: and so the one pertained to the abundance of knowledge, the other to the authority of religion. In that authority the canon is guarded. So that, if any writings outside of it are now brought forward under the name of the ancient prophets, they cannot serve even as an aid to knowledge, because it is uncertain whether they are genuine; and on this account they are not trusted, especially those of them in which some things are found that are even contrary to the truth of the canonical books, so that it is quite apparent they do not belong to them.
39. About the Hebrew written characters which that language always possessed.
--
41. About the discord of philosophic opinion, and the concord of the Scriptures that are held as canonical by the Church.
But let us omit further examination of history, and return to the philosophers from whom we digressed to these things. They seem to have laboured in their studies for no other end than to find out how to live in a way proper for laying hold of blessedness. Why, then, have the disciples dissented from their masters, and the fellow-disciples from one another, except because as men they have sought after these things by human sense and human reasonings? Now, although there might be among them a desire of glory, so that each wished to be thought wiser and more acute than another, and in no way addicted to the judgment of others, but the inventor of his own dogma and opinion, yet I may grant that there were some, or even very many of them, whose love of truth severed them from their teachers or fellow-disciples, that they might strive for what they thought was the truth, whether it was so or not. But what can human misery do, or how or where can it reach forth, so as to attain blessedness, if divine authority does not lead it? Finally, let our authors, among whom the canon of the sacred books is fixed and bounded, be far from disagreeing in any[Pg 268] respect. It is not without good reason, then, that not merely a few people prating in the schools and gymnasia in captious disputations, but so many and great people, both learned and unlearned, in countries and cities, have believed that God spoke to them or by them, i.e. the canonical writers, when they wrote these books. There ought, indeed, to be but few of them, lest on account of their multitude what ought to be religiously esteemed should grow cheap; and yet not so few that their agreement should not be wonderful. For among the multitude of philosophers, who in their works have left behind them the monuments of their dogmas, no one will easily find any who agree in all their opinions. But to show this is too long a task for this work.
But what author of any sect is so approved in this demon-worshipping city, that the rest who have differed from or opposed him in opinion have been disapproved? The Epicureans asserted that human affairs were not under the providence of the gods; and the Stoics, holding the opposite opinion, agreed that they were ruled and defended by favourable and tutelary gods. Yet were not both sects famous among the Athenians? I wonder, then, why Anaxagoras was accused of a crime for saying that the sun was a burning stone, and denying that it was a god at all; while in the same city Epicurus flourished gloriously and lived securely, although he not only did not believe that the sun or any star was a god, but contended that neither Jupiter nor any of the gods dwelt in the world at all, so that the prayers and supplications of men might reach them! Were not both Aristippus and Antis thenes there, two noble philosophers and both Socratic? yet they placed the chief end of life within bounds so diverse and contradictory, that the first made the delight of the body the chief good, while the other asserted that man was made happy mainly by the virtue of the mind. The one also said that the wise man should flee from the republic; the other, that he should administer its affairs. Yet did not each gather disciples to follow his own sect? Indeed, in the conspicuous and well-known porch, in gymnasia, in gardens, in places public and private, they openly strove in bands each for his own opinion, some asserting there was one world, others innumerable worlds;[Pg 269] some that this world had a beginning, others that it had not; some that it would perish, others that it would exist always; some that it was governed by the divine mind, others by chance and accident; some that souls are immortal, others that they are mortal, and of those who asserted their immortality, some said they transmigrated through beasts, others that it was by no means so, while of those who asserted their mortality, some said they perished immediately after the body, others that they survived either a little while or a longer time, but not always; some fixing supreme good in the body, some in the mind, some in both; others adding to the mind and body external good things; some thinking that the bodily senses ought to be trusted always, some not always, others never. Now what people, senate, power, or public dignity of the impious city has ever taken care to judge between all these and other well-nigh innumerable dissensions of the philosophers, approving and accepting some, and disapproving and rejecting others? Has it not held in its bosom at random, without any judgment, and confusedly, so many controversies of men at variance, not about fields, houses, or anything of a pecuniary nature, but about those things which make life either miserable or happy? Even if some true things were said in it, yet falsehoods were uttered with the same licence; so that such a city has not amiss received the title of the mystic Babylon. For Babylon means confusion, as we remember we have already explained. Nor does it matter to the devil, its king, how they wrangle among themselves in contradictory errors, since all alike deservedly belong to him on account of their great and varied impiety.
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Wherefore if we read of any foreigner that is, one neither born of Israel nor received by that people into the canon of the sacred bookshaving prophesied something about Christ, if it has come or shall come to our knowledge, we can refer to it over and above; not that this is necessary, even if wanting, but because it is not incongruous to believe that even in other nations there may have been men to whom this mystery was revealed, and who were also impelled to proclaim it, whether they were partakers of the same grace or had no experience of it, but were taught by bad angels, who, as we know, even confessed the present Christ, whom the Jews did not acknowledge. Nor do I think the Jews themselves dare contend that no one has belonged to God except the Israelites, since the increase of Israel began on the rejection of his elder brother. For in very deed there was no other people who were specially called the people of God; but they cannot deny that there have been certain men even of other nations who belonged, not by earthly but heavenly fellowship, to the true Israelites, the citizens of the country that is above. Because, if they deny this, they can be most easily confuted by the case of the holy and wonderful man Job, who was neither a native nor a proselyte, that is, a stranger joining the people of Israel, but, being bred of the Idumean race, arose there and died there too, and who is so praised by the divine oracle, that no man of his times is put on a level with him as regards justice and piety. And although we do not find his date in the chronicles, yet from his book, which for its merit the Israelites have received as of canonical authority, we gather that he was in the third generation after Israel. And I doubt not it was divinely provided, that from this one case we might know that among other nations also there might be[Pg 280] men pertaining to the spiritual Jerusalem who have lived according to God and have pleased Him. And it is not to be supposed that this was granted to any one, unless the one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus,[589] was divinely revealed to him; who was pre-announced to the saints of old as yet to come in the flesh, even as He is announced to us as having come, that the selfsame faith through Him may lead all to God who are predestinated to be the city of God, the house of God, and the temple of God. But whatever prophecies concerning the grace of God through Christ Jesus are quoted, they may be thought to have been forged by the Christians. So that there is nothing of more weight for confuting all sorts of aliens, if they contend about this matter, and for supporting our friends, if they are truly wise, than to quote those divine predictions about Christ which are written in the books of the Jews, who have been torn from their native abode and dispersed over the whole world in order to bear this testimony, so that the Church of Christ has everywhere increased.
48. That Haggai's prophecy, in which he said that the glory of the house of God would be greater than that of the first had been,[590] was really fulfilled, not in the rebuilding of the temple, but in the Church of Christ.
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Truly Jesus Himself shall extinguish by His presence that last persecution which is to be made by Antichrist. For so it is written, that "He shall slay him with the breath of His mouth, and empty him with the brightness of His presence."[613] It is customary to ask, When shall that be? But this is quite unreasonable. For had it been profitable for us to know this, by whom could it better have been told than by God Himself, the Master, when the disciples questioned Him? For they were not silent when with Him, but inquired of Him, saying, "Lord, wilt Thou at this time present the kingdom to Israel, or when?"[614] But He said, "It is not for you to know the times, which the Father hath put in His own power." When they got that answer, they had not at all questioned Him about the hour, or day, or year, but about the time. In vain, then, do we attempt to compute definitely the years that may remain to this world, when we may hear from the mouth of the Truth that it is not for us to know this. Yet some have said that four hundred, some five hundred, others a thousand years, may be completed from the ascension of the Lord up to His final coming. But to point out how each of them supports his own opinion would take too long, and is not necessary; for indeed they use human conjectures, and bring forward nothing certain from the authority of the canonical Scriptures. But on this subject He puts aside the figures of the calculators, and orders silence, who says, "It is not for you to know the times, which the Father hath put in His own power."
[Pg 289]
BOOK XVII. - The history of the city of God from the times of the prophets to Christ, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
Therefore prophetic utterances of three kinds are to be found; forasmuch as there are some relating to the earthly Jerusalem, some to the heavenly, and some to both. I think it proper to prove what I say by examples. The prophet Nathan was sent to convict king David of heinous sin, and predict to him what future evils should be consequent on it. Who can question that this and the like pertain to the terrestrial city, whether publicly, that is, for the safety or help of the people, or privately, when there are given forth for each one's private good divine utterances whereby something of the future may be known for the use of temporal life? But where we read, "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make for the house of Israel, and for the house of Judah, a new testament: not according to the testament that I settled for their fathers in the day when I laid hold of their hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my testament, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. For this is the testament that I will make for the house of Israel: after those days, saith the Lord, I will give my laws in their mind, and will write them upon their hearts, and I will see to them; and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people;"[347]without doubt this is prophesied to the Jerusalem above, whose reward is God Himself, and whose chief and entire good it is to have Him, and to be His. But this pertains to both, that the city of God is called Jerusalem, and that it is prophesied the house[Pg 169] of God shall be in it; and this prophecy seems to be fulfilled when king Solomon builds that most noble temple. For these things both happened in the earthly Jerusalem, as history shows, and were types of the heavenly Jerusalem. And this kind of prophecy, as it were compacted and commingled of both the others in the ancient canonical books, containing historical narratives, is of very great significance, and has exercised and exercises greatly the wits of those who search holy writ. For example, what we read of historically as predicted and fulfilled in the seed of Abraham according to the flesh, we must also inquire the allegorical meaning of, as it is to be fulfilled in the seed of Abraham according to faith. And so much is this the case, that some have thought there is nothing in these books either foretold and effected, or effected although not foretold, that does not insinuate something else which is to be referred by figurative signification to the city of God on high, and to her children who are pilgrims in this life. But if this be so, then the utterances of the prophets, or rather the whole of those Scriptures that are reckoned under the title of the Old Testament, will be not of three, but of two different kinds. For there will be nothing there which pertains to the terrestrial Jerusalem only, if whatever is there said and fulfilled of or concerning her signifies something which also refers by allegorical prefiguration to the celestial Jerusalem; but there will be only two kinds, one that pertains to the free Jerusalem, the other to both. But just as, I think, they err greatly who are of opinion that none of the records of affairs in that kind of writings mean anything more than that they so happened, so I think those very daring who contend that the whole gist of their contents lies in allegorical significations. Therefore I have said they are threefold, not twofold. Yet, in holding this opinion, I do not blame those who may be able to draw out of everything there a spiritual meaning, only saving, first of all, the historical truth. For the rest, what believer can doubt that those things are spoken vainly which are such that, whether said to have been done or to be yet to come, they do not beseem either human or divine affairs? Who would not recall these to spiritual understanding if he could, or confess that they should be recalled by him who is able?
[Pg 170]
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David therefore reigned in the earthly Jerusalem, a son of the heavenly Jerusalem, much praised by the divine testimony; for even his faults are overcome by great piety, through the most salutary humility of his repentance, that he is altogether one of those of whom he himself says, "Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered."[475] After him Solomon his son reigned over the same whole people, who, as was said before, began to reign while his father was still alive. This man, after good beginnings, made a bad end. For indeed "prosperity, which wears out the minds of the wise,"[476] hurt him more than that wisdom profited him, which even yet is and shall hereafter be renowned, and was then praised far and wide. He also is found to have prophesied in his books, of which three are received as of canonical authority, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. But it has been customary to ascribe to Solomon other two, of which one is called Wisdom, the other Ecclesiasticus, on account of some resemblance of style,but the more learned have no doubt that they are not his; yet of old the Church, especially the Western, received them into authority,in the one of which, called the Wisdom of Solomon, the passion of Christ is most openly prophesied. For indeed His impious murderers are quoted as saying, "Let us lie in wait for the righteous, for he is unpleasant to us, and contrary to our works; and he upbraideth us with our transgressions of the law, and objecteth to our disgrace the transgressions of our education. He professeth to have the knowledge of God, and he calleth himself the Son of God. He was made to reprove our thoughts. He is grievous for us even to behold; for his[Pg 210] life is unlike other men's, and his ways are different. We are esteemed of him as counterfeits; and he abstaineth from our ways as from filthiness. He extols the latter end of the righteous; and glorieth that he hath God for his Father. Let us see, therefore, if his words be true; and let us try what shall happen to him, and we shall know what shall be the end of him. For if the righteous be the Son of God, He will undertake for him, and deliver him out of the hand of those that are against him. Let us put him to the question with contumely and torture, that we may know his reverence, and prove his patience. Let us condemn him to the most shameful death; for by His own sayings He shall be respected. These things did they imagine, and were mistaken; for their own malice hath quite blinded them."[477] But in Ecclesiasticus the future faith of the nations is predicted in this manner: "Have mercy upon us, O God, Ruler of all, and send Thy fear upon all the nations: lift up Thine hand over the strange nations, and let them see Thy power. As Thou wast sanctified in us before them, so be Thou sanctified in them before us, and let them acknowledge Thee, according as we also have acknowledged Thee; for there is not a God beside Thee, O Lord."[478] We see this prophecy in the form of a wish and prayer fulfilled through Jesus Christ. But the things which are not written in the canon of the Jews cannot be quoted against their contradictions with so great validity.
But as regards those three books which it is evident are Solomon's, and held canonical by the Jews, to show what of this kind may be found in them pertaining to Christ and the Church demands a laborious discussion, which, if now entered on, would leng then this work unduly. Yet what we read in the Proverbs of impious men saying, "Let us unrighteously hide in the earth the righteous man; yea, let us swallow him up alive as hell, and let us take away his memory from the earth: let us seize his precious possession,"[479] is not so obscure that it may not be understood, without laborious exposition, of Christ and His possession the Church. Indeed, the gospel parable about the wicked husbandmen shows that our Lord Jesus Himself said something like it: "This is the heir; come,[Pg 211] let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours."[480] In like manner also that passage in this same book, on which we have already touched[481] when we were speaking of the barren woman who hath born seven, must soon after it was uttered have come to be understood of only Christ and the Church by those who knew that Christ was the Wisdom of God. "Wisdom hath builded her an house, and hath set up seven pillars; she hath sacrificed her victims, she hath mingled her wine in the bowl; she hath also furnished her table. She hath sent her servants summoning to the bowl with excellent proclamation, saying, Who is simple, let him turn aside to me. And to the void of sense she hath said, Come, eat of my bread, and drink of the wine which I have mingled for you."[482] Here certainly we perceive that the Wisdom of God, that is, the Word co-eternal with the Father, hath builded Him an house, even a human body in the virgin womb, and hath subjoined the Church to it as members to a head, hath slain the martyrs as victims, hath furnished a table with wine and bread, where appears also the priesthood after the order of Melchizedek, and hath called the simple and the void of sense, because, as saith the apostle, "He hath chosen the weak things of this world that He might confound the things which are mighty."[483] Yet to these weak ones she saith what follows, "Forsake simplicity, that ye may live; and seek prudence, that ye may have life."[484] But to be made partakers of this table is itself to begin to have life. For when he says in another book, which is called Ecclesiastes, "There is no good for a man, except that he should eat and drink,"[485] what can he be more credibly understood to say, than what belongs to the participation of this table which the Mediator of the New Testament Himself, the Priest after the order of Melchizedek, furnishes with His own body and blood? For that sacrifice has succeeded all the sacrifices of the Old Testament, which were slain as a shadow of that which was to come; wherefore also we recognise the voice in the 40th Psalm as that of the same Mediator speaking through prophesy, "Sacrifice and offering[Pg 212] Thou didst not desire; but a body hast Thou perfected for me."[486] Because, instead of all these sacrifices and oblations, His body is offered, and is served up to the partakers of it. For that this Ecclesiastes, in this sentence about eating and drinking, which he often repeats, and very much commends, does not savour the dainties of carnal pleasures, is made plain enough when he says, "It is better to go into the house of mourning than to go into the house of feasting."[487] And a little after He says, "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, and the heart of the simple in the house of feasting."[488] But I think that more worthy of quotation from this book which relates to both cities, the one of the devil, the other of Christ, and to their kings, the devil and Christ: "Woe to thee, O land," he says, "when thy king is a youth, and thy princes eat in the morning! Blessed art thou, O land, when thy king is the son of nobles, and thy princes eat in season, in fortitude, and not in confusion!"[489] He has called the devil a youth, because of the folly and pride, and rashness and unruliness, and other vices which are wont to abound at that age; but Christ is the Son of nobles, that is, of the holy patriarchs, of those belonging to the free city, of whom He was begotten in the flesh. The princes of that and other cities are eaters in the morning, that is, before the suitable hour, because they do not expect the seasonable felicity, which is the true, in the world to come, desiring to be speedily made happy with the renown of this world, but the princes of the city of Christ patiently wait for the time of a blessedness that is not fallacious. This is expressed by the words, "in fortitude, and not in confusion," because hope does not deceive them, of which the apostle says, "But hope maketh not ashamed."[490] A psalm also saith, "For they that hope in Thee shall not be put to shame."[491] But now the Song of Songs is a certain spiritual pleasure of holy minds, in the marriage of that King and Queen-city, that is, Christ and the Church. But this pleasure is wrapped up in allegorical veils, that the Bridegroom may be more ardently desired, and more joyfully unveiled, and may appear; to whom it is said in this same song, "Equity hath delighted Thee;"[Pg 213][492] and the bride who those hears, "Charity is in thy delights."[493] We pass over many things in silence, in our desire to finish this work.
21. Of the kings after Solomon, both in Judah and Israel.
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But in that whole time after they returned from Babylon, after Malachi, Haggai, and Zechariah, who then prophesied, and Ezra, they had no prophets down to the time of the Saviour's advent except another Zechariah, the father of John, and Elisabeth his wife, when the nativity of Christ was already close at hand; and when He was already born, Simeon the aged, and Anna a widow, and now very old; and, last of all, John himself, who, being a young man, did not predict that Christ, now a young man, was to come, but by prophetic knowledge pointed Him out although unknown; for which reason the Lord Himself says, "The law and the prophets were until John."[496] But the prophesying of these five is made known to us in the gospel, where the virgin mother of our Lord herself is also found to have prophesied before John. But this prophecy of theirs the wicked Jews do not receive; but those[Pg 216] innumerable persons received it who from them believed the gospel. For then truly Israel was divided in two, by that division which was foretold by Samuel the prophet to king Saul as immutable. But even the reprobate Jews hold Malachi, Haggai, Zechariah, and Ezra as the last received into canonical authority. For there are also writings of these, as of others, who being but a very few in the great multitude of prophets, have written those books which have obtained canonical authority, of whose predictions it seems good to me to put in this work some which pertain to Christ and His Church; and this, by the Lord's help, shall be done more conveniently in the following book, that we may not further burden this one, which is already too long.
[Pg 217]
BOOK XVI. - The history of the city of God from Noah to the time of the kings of Israel, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
It is difficult to discover from Scripture, whether, after the deluge, traces of the holy city are continuous, or are so interrupted by intervening seasons of godlessness, that not a single worshipper of the one true God was found among men; because from Noah, who, with his wife, three sons, and as many daughters-in-law, achieved deliverance in the ark from the destruction of the deluge, down to Abraham, we do not find in the canonical books that the piety of any one is celebrated by express divine testimony, unless it be in the case of Noah, who commends with a prophetic benediction his two sons Shem and Japheth, while he beheld and foresaw what was long afterwards to happen. It was also by this prophetic spirit that, when his middle son that is, the son who was younger than the first and older than the last bornhad sinned against him, he cursed him not in his own person, but in his son's (his own grandson's), in the words, "Cursed be the lad Canaan; a servant shall he be unto his brethren."[221] Now Canaan was born of Ham, who, so far from covering his sleeping father's nakedness, had divulged it. For the same reason also he subjoins the blessing on his two other sons, the oldest and youngest, saying, "Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall gladden Japheth, and he shall dwell in the houses of Shem."[222] And[Pg 105] so, too, the planting of the vine by Noah, and his intoxication by its fruit, and his nakedness while he slept, and the other things done at that time, and recorded, are all of them pregnant with prophetic meanings, and veiled in mysteries.[223]
2. What was prophetically prefigured in the sons of Noah.
BOOK XV. - The progress of the earthly and heavenly cities traced by the sacred history, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
But some are moved by the fact that we have read that the fruit of the connection between those who are called angels of God and the women they loved were not men like our own breed, but giants; just as if there were not born even in our own time (as I have mentioned above) men of much greater size than the ordinary stature. Was there not at Rome a few years ago, when the destruction of the city now accomplished by the Goths was drawing near, a woman, with her father and mother, who by her gigantic size overtopped all others? Surprising crowds from all quarters came to see her, and that which struck them most was the circumstance that neither of her parents were quite up to the tallest ordinary stature. Giants therefore might well be born, even before the sons of God, who are also called angels of God, formed a connection[Pg 94] with the daughters of men, or of those living according to men, that is to say, before the sons of Seth formed a connection with the daughters of Cain. For thus speaks even the canonical Scripture itself in the book in which we read of this; its words are: "And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair [good]; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the Lord God said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became the giants, men of renown."[211] These words of the divine book sufficiently indicate that already there were giants in the earth in those days, in which the sons of God took wives of the children of men, when they loved them because they were good, that is, fair. For it is the custom of this Scripture to call those who are beautiful in appearance "good." But after this connection had been formed, then too were giants born. For the words are: "There were giants in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men." Therefore there were giants both before, "in those days," and "also after that." And the words, "they bare children to them," show plainly enough that before the sons of God fell in this fashion they begat children to God, not to themselves,that is to say, not moved by the lust of sexual intercourse, but discharging the duty of propagation, intending to produce not a family to gratify their own pride, but citizens to people the city of God; and to these they as God's angels would bear the message, that they should place their hope in God, like him who was born of Seth the son of resurrection, and who hoped to call on the name of the Lord God, in which hope they and their offspring would be co-heirs of eternal blessings, and brethren in the family of which God is the Father.
[Pg 95]
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Let us omit, then, the fables of those scriptures which are called apocryphal, because their obscure origin was unknown to the fathers from whom the authority of the true Scriptures has been transmitted to us by a most certain and well-ascertained[Pg 96] succession. For though there is some truth in these apocryphal writings, yet they contain so many false statements, that they have no canonical authority. We cannot deny that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, left some divine writings, for this is asserted by the Apostle Jude in his canonical epistle. But it is not without reason that these writings have no place in that canon of Scripture which was preserved in the temple of the Hebrew people by the diligence of successive priests; for their antiquity brought them under suspicion, and it was impossible to ascertain whether these were his genuine writings, and they were not brought forward as genuine by the persons who were found to have carefully preserved the canonical books by a successive transmission. So that the writings which are produced under his name, and which contain these fables about the giants, saying that their fathers were not men, are properly judged by prudent men to be not genuine; just as many writings are produced by heretics under the names both of other prophets, and, more recently, under the names of the apostles, all of which, after careful examination, have been set apart from canonical authority under the title of Apocrypha. There is therefore no doubt that, according to the Hebrew and Christian canonical Scriptures, there were many giants before the deluge, and that these were citizens of the earthly society of men, and that the sons of God, who were according to the flesh the sons of Seth, sunk into this community when they forsook righteousness. Nor need we wonder that giants should be born even from these. For all of their children were not giants; but there were more then than in the remaining periods since the deluge. And it pleased the Creator to produce them, that it might thus be demonstrated that neither beauty, nor yet size and strength, are of much moment to the wise man, whose blessedness lies in spiritual and immortal blessings, in far better and more enduring gifts, in the good things that are the peculiar property of the good, and are not shared by good and bad alike. It is this which another prophet confirms when he says, "These were the giants, famous from the beginning, that were of so great stature, and so expert in war. Those did not the Lord choose, neither gave He the way of knowledge[Pg 97] unto them; but they were destroyed because they had no wisdom, and perished through their own foolishness."[214]
24. How we are to understand this which the Lord said to those who were to perish in the flood: "Their days shall be 120 years."
BOOK XXII. - Of the eternal happiness of the saints, the resurrection of the body, and the miracles of the early Church, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
Why, they say, are those miracles, which you affirm were wrought formerly, wrought no longer? I might, indeed, reply that miracles were necessary before the world believed, in order that it might believe. And whoever now-a-days demands to see prodigies that he may believe, is himself a great prodigy, because he does not believe, though the whole world does. But they make these objections for the sole purpose of insinuating that even those former miracles were never wrought. How, then, is it that everywhere Christ is celebrated with such firm belief in His resurrection and ascension? How is it that in enlightened times, in which every impossibility is rejected, the world has, without any miracles, believed things marvellously incredible? Or will they say that these things were credible, and therefore were credited? Why then do they themselves not believe? Our argument, therefore, is a summary oneeither incredible things which were not witnessed have caused the world to believe other incredible things which both occurred and were witnessed, or this matter was so credible that it needed no miracles in proof of it, and therefore convicts these unbelievers of unpardonable scepticism. This I might say for the sake of refuting these most frivolous objectors. But we cannot deny that many miracles were wrought to confirm that one grand and health-giving miracle of Christ's ascension to heaven with the flesh in which He rose. For these most trustworthy books of ours contain in one narrative both the miracles that were wrought and the creed which they were wrought to confirm. The miracles were published that they might produce faith, and the faith which they produced brought them into greater prominence. For they are read in congregations that they may be believed, and yet they would not be so read unless they were believed. For even now miracles are wrought in the name of Christ, whether by His sacraments or by the prayers or relics of His saints; but they are not so brilliant and conspicuous as to cause them to be published with such glory as accompanied the former miracles. For the canon of the sacred writings,[Pg 485] which behoved to be closed,[972] causes those to be everywhere recited, and to sink into the memory of all the congregations; but these modern miracles are scarcely known even to the whole population in the midst of which they are wrought, and at the best are confined to one spot. For frequently they are known only to a very few persons, while all the rest are ignorant of them, especially if the state is a large one; and when they are reported to other persons in other localities, there is no sufficient authority to give them prompt and unwavering credence, although they are reported to the faithful by the faithful.
The miracle which was wrought at Milan when I was there, and by which a blind man was restored to sight, could come to the knowledge of many; for not only is the city a large one, but also the emperor was there at the time, and the occurrence was witnessed by an immense concourse of people that had gathered to the bodies of the martyrs Protasius and Gervasius, which had long lain concealed and unknown, but were now made known to the bishop Ambrose in a dream, and discovered by him. By virtue of these remains the darkness of that blind man was scattered, and he saw the light of day.[973]
BOOK XXI. - Of the eternal punishment of the wicked in hell, and of the various objections urged against it, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
From the book of Marcus Varro, entitled, Of the Race Of the Roman People, I cite word for word the following instance: "There occurred a remarkable celestial portent; for Castor records that, in the brilliant star Venus, called Vesperugo by Plautus, and the lovely Hesperus by Homer, there occurred so strange a prodigy, that it changed its colour, size, form, course, which never happened before nor since. Adrastus of Cyzicus, and Dion of Naples, famous mathematicians, said that this occurred in the reign of Ogyges." So great an author as Varro would certainly not have called this a portent had it not seemed to be contrary to nature. For we say that all portents are contrary to nature; but they are not so. For how is that contrary to nature which happens by the will of God, since the will of so mighty a Creator is certainly the nature of each created thing? A portent, therefore, happens not contrary to nature, but contrary to what we know as nature. But who can number the multitude of portents recorded in profane histories? Let us then at present fix our attention on this one only which concerns the matter in hand. What is there so arranged by the Author of the nature of heaven and earth as the exactly ordered course of the stars? What is there established by laws so sure and inflexible? And yet, when it pleased Him who with sovereignty and supreme power regulates all He has created, a star conspicuous among the rest by its size and splendour changed its colour, size, form, and, most wonderful of all, the order and law of its course! Certainly that phenomenon disturbed the canons of the astronomers, if there were any then, by which they tabulate, as by unerring computation, the past and future movements of the stars, so as to take upon them to affirm that this which happened to the morning star (Venus) never happened before nor since. But we read in the divine books that even the sun itself stood still when a holy man, Joshua the son of Nun, had begged this from God[Pg 430] until victory should finish the battle he had begun; and that it even went back, that the promise of fifteen years added to the life of king Hezekiah might be sealed by this additional prodigy. But these miracles, which were vouchsafed to the merits of holy men, even when our adversaries believe them, they attribute to magical arts; so Virgil, in the lines I quoted above, ascribes to magic the power to
"Turn rivers backward to their source, And make the stars forget their course."
BOOK XX. - Of the last judgment, and the declarations regarding it in the Old and New Testaments, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
Solomon, the wisest king of Israel, who reigned in Jerusalem, thus commences the book called Ecclesiastes, which the Jews number among their canonical Scriptures: "Vanity of vanities, said Ecclesiastes, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he hath taken under the sun?"[677] And after going on to enumerate, with this as his text, the calamities and delusions of this life, and the shifting nature of the present time, in which there is nothing substantial, nothing lasting, he bewails, among the other vanities that are under the sun, this also, that though wisdom excelleth folly as light excelleth darkness, and though the eyes of the wise man are in his head, while the fool walketh in darkness,[678] yet one event happeneth to them all, that is to say, in this life under the sun, unquestionably alluding to those evils which we see befall good and bad men alike. He says, further, that the good suffer the ills of life as if they were evil-doers, and the bad enjoy the good[Pg 349] of life as if they were good. "There is a vanity which is done upon the earth; that there be just men unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked: again, there be wicked men, to whom it happeneth according to the work of the righteous. I said, that this also is vanity."[679] This wisest man devoted this whole book to a full exposure of this vanity, evidently with no other object than that we might long for that life in which there is no vanity under the sun, but verity under Him who made the sun. In this vanity, then, was it not by the just and righteous judgment of God that man, made like to vanity, was destined to pass away? But in these days of vanity it makes an important difference whether he resists or yields to the truth, and whether he is destitute of true piety or a partaker of it,important not so far as regards the acquirement of the blessings or the evasion of the calamities of this transitory and vain life, but in connection with the future judgment which shall make over to good men good things, and to bad men bad things, in permanent, inalienable possession. In fine, this wise man concludes this book of his by saying, "Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is every man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every despised person, whether it be good, or whether it be evil."[680] What truer, terser, more salutary enouncement could be made? "Fear God," he says, "and keep His commandments: for this is every man." For whosoever has real existence, is this, is a keeper of God's commandments; and he who is not this, is nothing. For so long as he remains in the likeness of vanity, he is not renewed in the image of the truth. "For God shall bring into judgment every work,"that is, whatever man does in this life,"whether it be good or whether it be evil, with every despised person,"that is, with every man who here seems despicable, and is therefore not considered; for God sees even him, and does not despise him nor pass him over in His judgment.
4. That proofs of the last judgment will be adduced, first from the New Testament, and then from the Old.
--
The prophet Malachi or Malachias, who is also called Angel, and is by some (for Jerome[815] tells us that this is the opinion of the Hebrews) identified with Ezra the priest,[816] others of whose writings have been received into the canon, predicts the last judgment, saying, "Behold, He cometh, saith the Lord Almighty; and who shall abide the day of His entrance? ... for I am the Lord your God, and I change not."[817] From these words it more evidently appears that some shall in the last judgment suffer some kind of purgatorial punishments; for what else can be understood by the word, "Who shall abide the day of His entrance, or who shall be able to look upon Him? for He enters as a moulder's fire, and as the herb of fullers: and He shall sit fusing and purifying as if[Pg 400] over gold and silver: and He shall purify the sons of Levi, and pour them out like gold and silver?" Similarly Isaiah says, "The Lord shall wash the filthiness of the sons and daughters of Zion, and shall cleanse away the blood from their midst, by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning."[818] Unless perhaps we should say that they are cleansed from filthiness and in a manner clarified, when the wicked are separated from them by penal judgment, so that the elimination and damnation of the one party is the purgation of the others, because they shall henceforth live free from the contamination of such men. But when he says, "And he shall purify the sons of Levi, and pour them out like gold and silver, and they shall offer to the Lord sacrifices in righteousness; and the sacrifices of Judah and Jerusalem shall be pleasing to the Lord," he declares that those who shall be purified shall then please the Lord with sacrifices of righteousness, and consequently they themselves shall be purified from their own unrighteousness which made them displeasing to God. Now they themselves, when they have been purified, shall be sacrifices of complete and perfect righteousness; for what more acceptable offering can such persons make to God than themselves? But this question of purgatorial punishments we must defer to another time, to give it a more adequate treatment. By the sons of Levi and Judah and Jerusalem we ought to understand the Church herself, gathered not from the Hebrews only, but from other nations as well; nor such a Church as she now is, when "if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us,"[819] but as she shall then be, purged by the last judgment as a threshing-floor by a winnowing wind, and those of her members who need it being cleansed by fire, so that there remains absolutely not one who offers sacrifice for his sins. For all who make such offerings are assuredly in their sins, for the remission of which they make offerings, that having made to God an acceptable offering, they may then be absolved.
26. Of the sacrifices offered to God by the saints, which are to be pleasing to Him, as in the primitive days and former years.
BS 1 - Introduction to the Idea of God, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
The question still remains: where does the information in dreams come from? I think where it comes from is that we watch the patterns that everyone acts out. We watch that forever, and weve got some representations of those patterns thats part of our cultural history. Thats whats embedded in fictional accounts of stories between good and evil, the bad guy and the good guy, and the romance. These are canonical patterns of Being, for people, and they deeply affect us, because they represent what it is that we will act out in the world. We flesh that out with the individual information we have about ourselves and other people. Theres waves of behavioural patterns that manifest themselves in the crowd, across time. Great dramas are played on the crowd, across time. The artists watch that, and they get intimations of what that is. They write it down, tell us, and were a little clearer about what were up to.
A great dramatist, like Shakespearewe know that what he wrote is fiction. Then we say, fiction isnt true. But then you think, well, wait a minute. Maybe its true like numbers are true. Numbers are an abstraction from the underlying reality, but no one in their right mind would really think that numbers arent true. You could even make a case that the numbers are more real than the things that they represent, because the abstraction is so insanely powerful.
--
Thats another issue that seems to make the postmodernist critique even more correct: how in the world are you going to extract out a canonical interpretation of something like that? Its like, its not possible. But here is the issue, as far as I can tell: the postmodernists extended that critique to the world. They said look, text is complicated enoughyou can't extract out a canonical interpretation. What about the world? The worlds way more complicated than a text, and theres an infinite number of ways that you can look at the world. How do we know that any one way is better than any other way?
Thats a good question. The postmodern answer was, we cant. Thats not a good answer, because you drown in chaos under those circumstances. You can't make sense of anything, and thats not good, because its not neutral to not make sense of things. Its very anxiety-provoking and depressing. If things are so chaotic that you cant get a handle on them, your body defaults into emergency preparation mode. Your heart rate goes up, and your immune system stops working. You burn yourself out; you age rapidly because youre surrounded by nothing you can control. Thats an existential crisis. Its anxiety-provoking and depressingvery hard on people. Even more than that, it turns out that the way were constructed neurophysiologically is that we dont experience any positive emotion unless we have an aim and we can see ourselves progressing towards that aim.
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And then, finally, its phenomenological. Modern people think of reality as objective, and thats very powerful, but that isnt how we experience reality. We have our domain of experience and this is a hard thing to get a grip on, even though it should be the most obvious thing. For the phenomenologists, everything that you experience is real. Theyre interested in the structure of your subjective experience. You have subjective experience, and you have subjective experience, and so do you, and theres commonalities across all of those. For example, youre likely to experience the same set of emotions. We've been able to identify canonical emotions, and, without canonical motivations, we couldnt even communicate, because you wouldnt know what the other person was like; youd have to explain infinitely. Theres nothing you could take for granted, but you can.
Phenomenology is the fact that at the center of my vision my hands are clear, and out in the periphery they disappear. Phenomenology is the way things smell and the way things taste, and the fact that they matter. You could say, in some sense, that phenomenology is the study of what matters, rather than matter. Its a given, from the phenomenological perspective, that things have meaning. Even if youre a rationalist, a cynic, and a nihilist, and say nothing has any meaning, you still run into the problem of pain. Pain undercuts your arguments and has a meaning. Theres no escaping from the meaning. You can pretty much demolish all the positive parts of it, but trying to think your way out of the negative parts...Good luck with that, because that just doesnt work. The Bible storiesand I think this is true of fiction in generalis phenomenological. It concentrates on trying to elucidate the nature of human experience. That is not the same as the objective world. Its also a form of truth, because it is true that you have a field of experience and that it is has qualities. The question is, what are the qualities?
Liber 111 - The Book of Wisdom - LIBER ALEPH VEL CXI, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
How shall the measure our Statue and our Success by that canon of
Relation and Illusion, and their ignorance of our Nature? Time is but
--
individually, each as it pleadeth; for there is no canon or Code, since
every Star hath its own Law diverse from every other. Now there is the
Liber 46 - The Key of the Mysteries, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
of Rabelais. Verville was a canon of St. Gatien, Tours, and is
associated with Tours and Touraine. Balzacs "Contes Drolatiques" were
Liber 71 - The Voice of the Silence - The Two Paths - The Seven Portals, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Buddhist canon. The Buddha is referred to, again and again, as having
"passed away by that kind of passing away which heaves nothing whatever
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and I know of no canonical Buddhist authority for this statement. (A
Srotapatti becomes an Arahat in seven more incarnations.
--
lamp. canonical Buddhism is certainly the only thing upon which we can
rely as a guide to the teachings of the Buddha, if there ever was a
--
Buddhism from canonical Cingalese-Burmese-Siamese Buddhism.-Ed.]
2. 'Tis well, Srvaka. I Prepare thyself, for thou wilt have to travel
Talks With Sri Aurobindo 1, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
etc. Hearing this, Sri Aurobindo exclaimed, "Good Lord!", burst into laughter and remarked, "He ought to be canonisedSaint X! Such is public life!
When Y died, all his life-long political enemies did the same thing."
The Act of Creation text, #The Act of Creation, #Arthur Koestler, #Psychology
universe. Now canon Copernicus's book, On the Revolutions of the
Heavenly Spheres, had been published in the year of his death, 1543;
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meaning in which I have used that term: a canon of rules for making
an organism, represented in a 'coded', compressed language. The way
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anthropomorphic element. Even Lloyd Morgan's canon acknowledged
this; it merely said that one should not be more anthropomorphic than
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Lloyd Morgan's canon that the behaviour of animals should not
be explained in terms of human attri butes if it can be explained on a
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moving, Lloyd Morgan's canon has been subtly inverted. Many
present-day psychologists are loath to attri bute to humans any
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moted to canonical status. Habit is heir to originality; without the
hierarchies of organized habits life would be chaos; creativity means
--
seems to have been a pale, insignificant figure, a timid canon in the
God-forsaken Prussian province of Varmia; his main ambition, as far
--
the timid canon s only refuge from a life of frustrations. It was his
version of the harmony of the spheres.
The Anapanasati Sutta A Practical Guide to Mindfullness of Breathing and Tranquil Wisdom Meditation, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
have survived in the suttas, the discourses in the Pali canon
that were taught by the Buddha to his followers. It
--
repeated several times throughout the Pali canon using the
same identical words. Their importance warrants the
The Divine Names Text (Dionysis), #The Divine Names, #unset, #Zen
Further also, the Theologians do not honour alone the Names of God which are given from universal or particular Providences, or objects of His forethought; but also from certain occasional Divine Visions, in the sacred temples or elsewhere, which enlightened the initiated or the Prophets, they name the surpassing bright Goodness which is above Name, after one or other causes and powers, and clothe It in forms and shapes of man, or fire, or electron, and celebrate Its eyes and ears, and locks of hair, and countenance, and hands, and back, and wings, and arms, and hinder parts and feet. Also they assign to It crowns 5 and seats, and drinking vessels and bowls, and certain other things mystical, concerning which, in our Symbolic Theology, we will speak as best we can. But |12 now, collecting from the Oracles so much as serves the purpose of our present treatise, and using the things aforesaid, as a kind of canon, and keeping our eyes upon them, let us advance to the unfolding of the Names of God, which fall within the range of our understanding, and, what the hierarchical rule always teaches us throughout every phase of theology, let us become initiated (to speak authoritatively) in the godlike contemplations with a god-enlightened conception. And let us bring religious ears to the unfoldings of the Holy Names of God, implanting the Holy in the Holy, according to the Divine tradition, and removing it from the laughter and jeers of the uninitiated; yea, rather, if certain men really are such, purifying them from their fighting against God in this matter. Be it thine, then, to guard these things, O excellent Timothy, according to the most holy leading, and to make the things Divine neither spoken nor known to the uninitiated. For myself, may Almighty God give me to celebrate, in a manner worthy of God, the numerous beneficent Names of the uncalled and unnamed Deity; and may He not take away a word of truth from my mouth.
CAPUT II.
--
But if any one should say that we introduce in so doing a confusion, in disparagement of the distinction which befits God, we do not think that such a statement as this is itself sufficient to convince that it is true. For, if there is any one who has placed himself entirely in opposition to the Oracles, he will be also entirely apart from our. philosophy; and, if he has no care for the divine Wisdom of the Oracles, how shall we care for his guidance to the theological science? But, if he regards the truth of the Oracles, we also, using this canon and illumination, will advance unwaveringly to the answer, as best we can, by affirming that theology transmits some things as common, but others as distinctive; and neither is it meet to divide the common, nor to confuse the distinctive; but that following It according to our ability, we ought to rise to the Divine splendours; for, by taking thence the Divine revelations, as a most excellent canon of truth, we strive to guard the things lying there, in their native simplicity and integrity and identity----being ourselves guarded in our guard of |16 the Oracles, and from these receiving strength to guard those who guard them.
SECTION III.
The Dwellings of the Philosophers, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
(5) On September 5, 1550, Philibert de lOrme received a canonicate at Notre-Dame de Paris, around the same
time as Rabelais. Our architect canceled it in 1559, but his name is frequently mentioned in the capitularies of
--
measure. The canon of the Gnostics applies this measure to the human body (16) ; and Jesus
Christ, spirit incarnate, St Andrew, and St Peter, personify its glorious and painful image.
--
treat it as a lie or to canonize it as a miracle to avoid explaining it". These are useless regrets.
Time, which destroys everything, has made a clean sweep of ancient civilization. What
--
path and operated on the proper materials, canonically prepared. To them are addressed the
words of Jesus, walking on the waters, to Peter, and which St Matthew recounts (Matt. 14:31):
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sages will take this ancient work to be that of an insane person. And just as a canon wrongly
aimed only surprises by its noise, our philosopher thinks with reason that if he cannot be
--
constitute the best criterion of the secret product and bear witness to a canonical separation
conforming to natural laws. The woven hurdle, serving as an enclosure for the ermine and
--
(3) The canon of Durville, from whose book we borrow these details, was kind enough to send us a picture
about this curious piece, which is unfortunately empty of its contents, and now a part of the collections at the
--
Theophrastus Paracelsus in the 5 th canon of Saturn says:
"Saturn speaks thus of its nature: the six (metals) were joined to me and infused their spirit
the Eternal Wisdom, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
5) True knowledge does not grow old, so have declared the sages of all times. ~ Buddhist canons in Pali
6) May the partisans of all doctrines in all countries unite and live in a common fellowship. For all alike profess mastery to be attained over oneself and purity of the heart. ~ Inscriptions of Asoka
--
Buddhist canon in Pali
19) He whose mind is utterly purified from soil, as heaven is pure from stain and the moon from dust, him indeed I call a man of religion. ~ Buddhist Text
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9) Desire is the profoundest root of all evil; it is from desire that there has arisen the world of life and sorrow. ~ Pali canon
10)Like burning coals are our desires; they are full of suffering, full of torment and a yet heavier distressfulness. ~ Buddhist Texts
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15) That is the supreme felicity of those who have won their victory, it is the perfect and immutable peace, the defeat of Impermanence, a pure and luminous condition, the victory over death. ~ canon in Pali
16) So long as we do not die to ourselves and are not indifferent to creatures, the soul will not be free. ~ Farid-ud-din- attar
The Garden of Forking Paths 1, #Selected Fictions, #unset, #Zen
"A strange destiny," said Stephen Albert, "that of Ts'ui Pen - Governor of his native province, learned in astronomy, in astrology and tireless in the interpretation of the canonical books, a chess player, a famous poet and a calligrapher. Yet he abandoned all to make a book and a labyrinth. He gave up all the pleasures of oppression, justice, of a well-stocked bed, of banquets, and even of erudition, and shut himself up in the Pavilion of the Limpid Sun for thirteen years. At his death, his heirs found only a mess of manuscripts. The family, as you doubtless know, wished to consign them to the fire, but the executor of the estate - a Taoist or a Buddhist monk - insisted on their publication."
"Those of the blood of Ts'ui Pen," I replied, "still curse the memory of that monk.
The Garden of Forking Paths 2, #Selected Fictions, #unset, #Zen
"An astounding fate, that of Ts'ui Pen," Stephen Albert said. "Governor of his native province, learned in astronomy, in astrology and in the tireless interpretation of the canonical books, chess player, famous poet and calligrapher-he abandoned all this in order to compose a book and a maze. He renounced the pleasures of both tyranny and justice, of his populous couch, of his banquets and even of erudition-all to close himself up for thirteen years in the Pavilion of the Limpid Solitude. When he died, his heirs found nothing save chaotic manuscripts. His family, as you may be aware, wished to condemn them to the fire; but his executor-a Taoist or Buddhist monk-insisted on their publication."
"We descendants of Ts'ui Pen," I replied, "continue to curse that monk. Their publication was senseless. The book is an indeterminate heap of contradictory drafts. I examined it once: in the third chapter the hero dies, in the fourth he is alive. As for the other undertaking of Ts'ui Pen, his labyrinth. . ."
The Gospel of Thomas, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
"Doubting Thomas" of the canonical Gospels, and according to many early traditions, the twin brother of Jesus ("didymos" means
"twin" in Greek).
--
Thomas to the canonical Gospels. Many Sayings in Thomas have parallels with the New Testament Sayings, especially those found in the synoptic Gospels. This leads many to believe that Thomas was also based on the so-called "Q" Document, along with Matthew,
Luke, and Mark. Indeed, some have speculated that Thomas may in fact be "Q". Unlike the synoptic Gospels, and like "Q", the
--
IV: canonical Comparisons of Thomas Sayings
I have grouped the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas into 5 categories. Sayings that are variants of or close parallels to canonical passages (22 of these), sayings that appear more remotely parallel or similar in some way (28), sayings which contain parts parallel to several unconnected passages (13), sayings parallel to non- canonical traditions of Jesus (only 1 of these), and those with no apparent parallels (50!!).
Due to space limitations, I have decided only to cite passages, and you can go through and compare them using any
The Library Of Babel 2, #Labyrinths, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
and symbols until those canonical books, through some improbable stroke
of chance, had been constructed. The authorities were forced to issue strict
The Library of Babel, #Labyrinths, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
chance, these canonical books. The authorities were obliged to issue severe
orders. The sect disappeared, but in my childhood I have seen old men who, for
The Monadology, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
34. It is thus that in Mathematics speculative Theorems and practical canons are reduced by analysis to Definitions, Axioms and
Postulates.
The Wall and the BOoks, #Labyrinths, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
perhaps, wanted to obliterate the canonical books because they accused him;
Shih Huang Ti, perhaps, tried to abolish the entire past in order to abolish
--- Overview of noun canon
The noun canon has 6 senses (first 1 from tagged texts)
1. (5) canon ::: (a rule or especially body of rules or principles generally established as valid and fundamental in a field or art or philosophy; "the neoclassical canon"; "canons of polite society")
2. canon ::: (a priest who is a member of a cathedral chapter)
3. canyon, canon ::: (a ravine formed by a river in an area with little rainfall)
4. canon ::: (a contrapuntal piece of music in which a melody in one part is imitated exactly in other parts)
5. canon ::: (a complete list of saints that have been recognized by the Roman Catholic Church)
6. canon ::: (a collection of books accepted as holy scripture especially the books of the Bible recognized by any Christian church as genuine and inspired)
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun canon
6 senses of canon
Sense 1
canon
=> rule, prescript
=> direction, instruction
=> message, content, subject matter, substance
=> communication
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 2
canon
=> priest
=> clergyman, reverend, man of the cloth
=> spiritual leader
=> leader
=> person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, soul
=> organism, being
=> living thing, animate thing
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
=> causal agent, cause, causal agency
=> physical entity
=> entity
=> Holy Order, Order
=> status, position
=> state
=> attribute
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 3
canyon, canon
=> ravine
=> valley, vale
=> natural depression, depression
=> geological formation, formation
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 4
canon
=> musical composition, opus, composition, piece, piece of music
=> music
=> auditory communication
=> communication
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 5
canon
=> list, listing
=> database
=> information, info
=> message, content, subject matter, substance
=> communication
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 6
canon
=> scripture, sacred scripture
=> sacred text, sacred writing, religious writing, religious text
=> writing, written material, piece of writing
=> written communication, written language, black and white
=> communication
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun canon
2 of 6 senses of canon
Sense 2
canon
=> prebendary
Sense 4
canon
=> enigma canon, enigmatic canon, enigmatical canon, riddle canon
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun canon
6 senses of canon
Sense 1
canon
=> rule, prescript
Sense 2
canon
=> priest
Sense 3
canyon, canon
=> ravine
Sense 4
canon
=> musical composition, opus, composition, piece, piece of music
Sense 5
canon
=> list, listing
Sense 6
canon
=> scripture, sacred scripture
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun canon
6 senses of canon
Sense 1
canon
-> rule, prescript
=> bylaw
=> rubric
=> order, rules of order, parliamentary law, parliamentary procedure
=> rule of evidence
=> Miranda rule
=> principle, precept
=> golden rule
=> GIGO
=> dictate
=> regulation, ordinance
=> canon
=> etiquette
=> protocol, communications protocol
Sense 2
canon
-> priest
=> archpriest, hierarch, high priest, prelate, primate
=> bishop
=> canon
=> celebrant
=> confessor
=> domestic prelate
=> Father, Padre
=> Monsignor
=> pontifex
=> priestess
=> vicar
HAS INSTANCE=> Aaron
HAS INSTANCE=> Dominic, Saint Dominic, St. Dominic, Domingo de Guzman
Sense 3
canyon, canon
-> ravine
=> canyon, canon
=> gorge
Sense 4
canon
-> musical composition, opus, composition, piece, piece of music
=> morceau
=> sheet music
=> musical arrangement, arrangement
=> realization, realisation
=> intermezzo
=> allegro
=> allegretto
=> andante
=> introit
=> solo
=> duet, duette, duo
=> trio
=> quartet, quartette
=> quintet, quintette
=> sextet, sextette, sestet
=> septet, septette
=> octet, octette
=> bagatelle
=> divertimento, serenade
=> canon
=> etude
=> pastorale, pastoral, idyll, idyl
=> toccata
=> fantasia
=> passage, musical passage
=> movement
=> largo
=> larghetto
=> suite
=> symphonic poem, tone poem
=> medley, potpourri, pastiche
=> nocturne, notturno
=> adagio
=> song, vocal
=> study
=> capriccio
=> motet
=> program music, programme music
=> incidental music
Sense 5
canon
-> list, listing
=> agenda, agendum, order of business
=> A-list
=> bibliography
=> bill
=> blacklist, black book, shitlist
=> calendar
=> calorie chart
=> canon
=> catalog, catalogue
=> character set
=> checklist
=> class list, honours list
=> codex
=> contents, table of contents
=> corrigenda
=> credits
=> criminal record, record
=> directory
=> distribution list
=> enumeration, numbering
=> FAQ
=> free list
=> grocery list, shopping list
=> hit list
=> hit parade
=> index
=> key
=> key
=> inventory, stock list
=> mailing list
=> masthead, flag
=> menu, computer menu
=> necrology
=> playlist, play list
=> portfolio
=> posting
=> price list
=> push-down list, push-down stack, stack
=> queue
=> roll, roster
=> schedule
=> shopping list
=> short list, shortlist
=> sick list
=> slate, ticket
=> standing
=> wish list
Sense 6
canon
-> scripture, sacred scripture
=> canon
--- Grep of noun canon
canon
canon law
canonical hour
canonisation
canonist
canonization
enigma canon
enigmatic canon
enigmatical canon
riddle canon
Wikipedia - 1917 Code of Canon Law
Wikipedia - 1983 Code of Canon Law
Wikipedia - 2017 Canon Media Awards -- New Zealand media awards
Wikipedia - 2 Maccabees -- Deuterocanonical book which focuses on the Maccabean Revolt
Wikipedia - Act of Canonical Communion with the Moscow Patriarchate
Wikipedia - Additions to Daniel -- Three chapters of the Book of Daniel, found in the Septuagint but not in the Hebrew and Aramaic; regarded as canonical in several Christian traditions, incl. Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, but not in Judaism or most forms of Protestantism
Wikipedia - Affinity (Catholic canon law)
Wikipedia - Age of reason (canon law)
Wikipedia - Albert Schonhofer -- German catholic priest and canon
Wikipedia - Anastasius Germonius -- 17th-century Roman Catholic bishop and canon lawyer
Wikipedia - Andrew of Wyntoun -- Scottish poet, prior of Loch Leven, and a canon
Wikipedia - Anne Catherine Emmerich -- German Augustinian canoness, mystic, Marian visionary, ecstatic and stigmatist (1774-1824)
Wikipedia - Apostolic Canons
Wikipedia - Approbation (Catholic canon law)
Wikipedia - Arthur Stafford Crawley -- Canon of Windsor
Wikipedia - Asmodeus -- King of demons from the deuterocanonical Book of Tobit
Wikipedia - Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of North and Central America
Wikipedia - Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America
Wikipedia - Augustinian Canons
Wikipedia - Aurelio Canonici -- Italian conductor and composer
Wikipedia - Austin canon
Wikipedia - Ballinskelligs Abbey -- House of Augustinian canons, County Kerry, Ireland
Wikipedia - Bayreuth canon
Wikipedia - Beatification and canonisation of Pope John Paul II
Wikipedia - Beatification and canonization process in 1914
Wikipedia - Benedictine Vulgate -- Critical edition of the Vulgate version of the Old Testament, Catholic deuterocanonicals included, mainly done by the Benedictine monks of the pontifical Abbey of St Jerome-in-the-City and published progressively from 1926 to 1995 in 18 volumes
Wikipedia - Biblical canon -- Set of texts which a particular religious community regards as authoritative scripture
Wikipedia - Book of Baruch -- Baruch is a deuterocanonical book of the Bible in some Christian traditions.
Wikipedia - Book of Judith -- Deuterocanonical (apocryphal) book
Wikipedia - Book of Moses -- Part of the scriptural canon of the LDS movement
Wikipedia - Book of Wisdom -- Deuterocanonical sapiential book of the Bible
Wikipedia - Boolean algebras canonically defined
Wikipedia - Canon 1324
Wikipedia - Canon 1398
Wikipedia - Canon 844
Wikipedia - Canon 915
Wikipedia - Canon AE-1 -- 35 mm film single-lens reflex camera
Wikipedia - Canon Alexander Galloway -- 16th-century cleric
Wikipedia - Canonarch
Wikipedia - Canon arithmeticus -- Book by Carl Jacobi
Wikipedia - Canon (basic principle)
Wikipedia - Canonbury railway station -- Railway station in the London Borough of Islington
Wikipedia - Canonbury Tower -- Historic building in Islington, London
Wikipedia - Canonbury
Wikipedia - Canon (canon law)
Wikipedia - Canon Cat
Wikipedia - Canon (company)
Wikipedia - Canon de 155mm GPF -- French-designed 155 mm cannon
Wikipedia - Canon de 32 modele 1870/93 -- Railway gun used by the French Army
Wikipedia - Canon de 75 mm modele 1908 -- French naval gun
Wikipedia - Canon de 75 mm modele 1924 -- French naval anti-aircraft gun
Wikipedia - Canon Digital IXUS -- Digital camera product line
Wikipedia - Canon EF 14mm lens -- Ultra wide angle lens
Wikipedia - Canon EF 28-300mm lens -- 35 mm camera lens
Wikipedia - Canon EF 300mm lens -- 35 mm camera lens
Wikipedia - Canon EF 35-350mm lens -- 35 mm camera lens
Wikipedia - Canon EF 55-200mm lens -- Telephoto zoom lenses produced by Canon
Wikipedia - Canon EF 75-300mm lens -- Series of camera lenses manufactured by Canon
Wikipedia - Canon EF lens mount -- Standard lens mount on the Canon EOS family
Wikipedia - Canone inverso -- 2000 Italian drama film
Wikipedia - Canon EOS-1D C -- DSLR camera
Wikipedia - Canon EOS-1D Mark III -- Digital camera model
Wikipedia - Canon EOS-1D Mark II -- Digital camera model
Wikipedia - Canon EOS-1D Mark IV -- DSLR camera
Wikipedia - Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III -- DSLR camera
Wikipedia - Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II -- DSLR camera
Wikipedia - Canon EOS-1D -- DSLR camera
Wikipedia - Canon EOS-1D X Mark III -- DSLR camera
Wikipedia - Canon EOS-1D X Mark II -- DSLR camera
Wikipedia - Canon EOS-1D X -- DSLR camera
Wikipedia - Canon EOS-1V -- 35mm film camera
Wikipedia - Canon EOS 200D -- Digital single-lens reflex camera
Wikipedia - Canon EOS 20D -- DSLR camera
Wikipedia - Canon EOS 30D -- DSLR camera
Wikipedia - Canon EOS 40D -- DSLR camera
Wikipedia - Canon EOS 50D -- DSLR camera
Wikipedia - Canon EOS 50 -- 35mm film camera
Wikipedia - Canon EOS 5D Mark III -- Digital camera model
Wikipedia - Canon EOS 5D Mark II -- Digital single-lens reflex camera from Canon
Wikipedia - Canon EOS 600D -- DSLR camera
Wikipedia - Canon EOS 60D -- DSLR camera
Wikipedia - Canon EOS 6D -- DSLR camera
Wikipedia - Canon EOS 70D -- Digital single-lens reflex camera made by Canon
Wikipedia - Canon EOS 80D -- Digital camera model
Wikipedia - Canon EOS 90D -- Digital camera model
Wikipedia - Canon EOS flash system -- 35 mm camera flash system
Wikipedia - Canon EOS R6 -- Digital mirrorless camera
Wikipedia - Canon EOS RP -- Mirrorless interchangeable lens camera
Wikipedia - Canon EOS R -- Digital mirrorless camera
Wikipedia - Canon EOS -- Camera product line by Canon
Wikipedia - Canon Episcopi
Wikipedia - Canonesses Regular of the Holy Sepulchre -- Catholic female religious order
Wikipedia - Canonesses
Wikipedia - Canoness regular
Wikipedia - Canoness -- Member of a religious community of women
Wikipedia - Canon F-1 -- 35mm single-lens reflex camera model
Wikipedia - Canon FD lens mount -- Standard lens mount on the Canon
Wikipedia - Canon (fiction) -- Concept of continuity between different fictional works
Wikipedia - Canon (film) -- 1964 film
Wikipedia - Canon FL lens mount -- Lens mount
Wikipedia - Canon FT QL -- 35mm single-lens reflex camera model
Wikipedia - Canon (hymnography)
Wikipedia - Canonical admonitions
Wikipedia - Canonical commutation relation
Wikipedia - Canonical (company) -- UK-based software company that maintains the Ubuntu OS
Wikipedia - Canonical coordinates -- sets of coordinates on phase space which can be used to describe a physical system
Wikipedia - Canonical coronation -- Catholic ceremonial crowning of an image of Mary or Jesus
Wikipedia - Canonical correlation
Wikipedia - Canonical criticism
Wikipedia - Canonical election
Wikipedia - Canonical erection of a house of religious
Wikipedia - Canonical faculties
Wikipedia - Canonical form
Wikipedia - Canonical gospels
Wikipedia - Canonical Hours
Wikipedia - Canonical hours
Wikipedia - Canonical Huffman code
Wikipedia - Canonical link element -- Type of hyperlink
Wikipedia - Canonical Ltd.
Wikipedia - Canonically crowned
Wikipedia - Canonical map
Wikipedia - Canonical provision
Wikipedia - Canonical quantization
Wikipedia - Canonical quantum gravity
Wikipedia - Canonical visitation
Wikipedia - Canonical XML
Wikipedia - Canon Inc. -- Japanese multinational corporation specialized in the manufacture of imaging and optical products
Wikipedia - Canonisation of John Henry Newman
Wikipedia - Canonisation
Wikipedia - Canonised
Wikipedia - canonised
Wikipedia - Canonise
Wikipedia - Canonists
Wikipedia - Canonist
Wikipedia - Canonization (disambiguation)
Wikipedia - Canonization of Joan of Arc -- Mass of granting sainthood to Joan of Arc
Wikipedia - Canonization of Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II
Wikipedia - Canonization of the Romanovs -- Elevation to sainthood of the last Imperial Family of Russia
Wikipedia - Canonization -- Act by which churches declare that a person who has died is a saint
Wikipedia - Canonized
Wikipedia - Canonize
Wikipedia - Canonizing
Wikipedia - Canon law (Catholic Church)
Wikipedia - Canon law of the Anglican Communion
Wikipedia - Canon law of the Catholic Church -- Canon law of the Catholic Church
Wikipedia - Canon Law Society of America
Wikipedia - Canon Law
Wikipedia - Canon law -- Set of ordinances and regulations made by ecclesiastical authority
Wikipedia - Canon lawyers
Wikipedia - Canon lawyer
Wikipedia - Canon (music) -- Musical technique
Wikipedia - Canon New F-1 -- FD-mount 35mm single-lens reflex camera
Wikipedia - Canon obusier de 12 -- French field gun of 1853
Wikipedia - Canon of Dutch History -- Canon of Dutch history
Wikipedia - Canon of Eclipses -- Book by Theodor von Oppolzer
Wikipedia - Canon of Kings
Wikipedia - Canon of Laws
Wikipedia - Canon of Scripture
Wikipedia - Canon of scripture
Wikipedia - Canon of Sherlock Holmes
Wikipedia - Canon of the Mass
Wikipedia - Canon of Trent -- List of books officially considered canonical at the Council of Trent
Wikipedia - Canon penitentiary
Wikipedia - Canon PowerShot A -- Series of digital cameras
Wikipedia - Canon PowerShot -- Digital camera product line
Wikipedia - Canon (priest) -- Ecclesiastical position
Wikipedia - Canon regular
Wikipedia - Canon residentiary
Wikipedia - Canonry
Wikipedia - Canons of Dort -- Judgment of the National Synod held in Dordrecht (Dort) in 1618-19 against Arminianism
Wikipedia - Canons of Edgar
Wikipedia - Canons of the Apostles
Wikipedia - Canons of the Holy Sepulchre
Wikipedia - Canons Park tube station -- London Underground station
Wikipedia - Canons Regular of Saint John Cantius
Wikipedia - Canons Regular of San Giorgio in Alga
Wikipedia - Canons Regular of St. Augustine
Wikipedia - Canons Regular of the Holy Cross of Coimbra
Wikipedia - Canons Regular of the Holy Sepulchre -- Catholic religious order
Wikipedia - Canons Regular of the Immaculate Conception
Wikipedia - Canons Regular of the Lateran
Wikipedia - Canons Regular of the Order of the Holy Cross
Wikipedia - Canons Regular
Wikipedia - Canons regular -- Roman Catholic priests living in community under a religious rule
Wikipedia - Canon T50 -- 35mm film camera
Wikipedia - Canon TS-E 24mm lens -- Tilt-shift, wide-angle prime lens made by Canon
Wikipedia - Canon TX -- Still camera
Wikipedia - Canon X-07 -- Early personal computer made by Canon
Wikipedia - Cassiel -- Angel in extracanonical Jewish, Christian, and Islamic texts
Wikipedia - Category:Augustinian canons
Wikipedia - Category:Canonical Augustinian abbots and priors
Wikipedia - Category:Canonical Augustinian bishops
Wikipedia - Category:Canonical Augustinian popes
Wikipedia - Category:Canonical Augustinian saints
Wikipedia - Category:Canonizations by Pope Alexander VIII
Wikipedia - Category:Canonizations by Pope Alexander VII
Wikipedia - Category:Canonizations by Pope Benedict XVI
Wikipedia - Category:Canonizations by Pope Benedict XV
Wikipedia - Category:Canonizations by Pope Francis
Wikipedia - Category:Canonizations by Pope Gregory VII
Wikipedia - Category:Canonizations by Pope Gregory XV
Wikipedia - Category:Canonizations by Pope John Paul II
Wikipedia - Category:Canonizations by Pope John XXIII
Wikipedia - Category:Canonizations by Pope Leo XIII
Wikipedia - Category:Canonizations by Pope Paul VI
Wikipedia - Category:Canonizations by Pope Pius IX
Wikipedia - Category:Canonizations by Pope Pius VII
Wikipedia - Category:Canonizations by Pope Pius XII
Wikipedia - Category:Canonizations by Pope Pius XI
Wikipedia - Category:Canonizations by Pope Pius X
Wikipedia - Category:Canonizations by pope
Wikipedia - Category:Canonization
Wikipedia - Category:Canonized Roman Catholic religious brothers
Wikipedia - Category:Canon law history
Wikipedia - Category:Canon law jurists
Wikipedia - Category:Canon law of the Catholic Church
Wikipedia - Category:Canon law
Wikipedia - Category:Canons regular
Wikipedia - Category:People in the canonical gospels
Wikipedia - Category:Sacred places and times in Catholic canon law
Wikipedia - Catholic Bible -- Bible canon recognized by the Catholic Church
Wikipedia - Cenon Gallicanon -- Town in ancient Bithynia
Wikipedia - Censure (Catholic canon law)
Wikipedia - Chinese Buddhist canon
Wikipedia - Christian biblical canons
Wikipedia - Clandestinity (canon law) -- Diriment impediment in the canon law of the Roman Catholic Church
Wikipedia - Clandestinity (Catholic canon law)
Wikipedia - Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches
Wikipedia - Collectio canonum Hibernensis
Wikipedia - Collectio canonum quadripartita
Wikipedia - Collectio canonum Quesnelliana
Wikipedia - Collectio canonum Wigorniensis
Wikipedia - Collectiones canonum Dionysianae
Wikipedia - Collections of ancient canons
Wikipedia - Commentary on Anatomy in Avicenna's Canon
Wikipedia - Computation of time (Catholic canon law)
Wikipedia - Confucian canon
Wikipedia - Congregation for the Causes of Saints -- Catholic Church dicastery overseeing the process of canonization of saints
Wikipedia - Contract (Catholic canon law)
Wikipedia - Conus canonicus -- Species of sea snail
Wikipedia - Core fonts for the Web -- Fonts supplied at one time by Microsoft for canonical web use
Wikipedia - Corpus Juris Canonici -- Medieval collection of significant sources of the canon law of the Catholic Church, valid until 1917
Wikipedia - Custom (Catholic canon law)
Wikipedia - Dating the Bible -- Commonly accepted dates or ranges of dates for composition of the Hebrew Bible, the Deuterocanonical books and the New Testament
Wikipedia - Dean (Christianity) -- Head of a chapter of canons of a collegiate church or cathedral church
Wikipedia - Decree (canon law)
Wikipedia - Decree (Catholic canon law)
Wikipedia - Decretum Gratiani -- Collection of Roman Catholic canon law compiled and written by Gratian in the 12th century
Wikipedia - Demonic (film) -- 2015 film directed by Will Canon
Wikipedia - Deuterocanonical Books
Wikipedia - Deuterocanonical books -- Books that Catholics and Orthodox accept as part of the canon, but which Protestants do not accept
Wikipedia - Deuterocanonical
Wikipedia - Development of the Christian biblical canon
Wikipedia - Development of the Hebrew Bible canon -- 24 books of the Masoretic Text
Wikipedia - Development of the New Testament canon -- Set of books regarded by Christians as divinely inspired
Wikipedia - Development of the Old Testament canon -- Development of the Old Testament canon
Wikipedia - Disparity of cult -- Diriment impediment in Roman Catholic canon law:
Wikipedia - Dispensation (canon law)
Wikipedia - Dispensation (Catholic canon law)
Wikipedia - Doctor of Canon Law
Wikipedia - Eastern canonical reforms of Pius XII
Wikipedia - Eastern Catholic canon law
Wikipedia - Edward N. Peters -- American Roman Catholic canonist
Wikipedia - Emanuele Canonica -- Italian professional golfer
Wikipedia - Eupithecia canonica -- Species of moth
Wikipedia - Exclaustration -- Catholic canon law procedure for the release from vows
Wikipedia - Exemption (Catholic canon law)
Wikipedia - Fernando Canon -- Filipino revolutionary general, inventor
Wikipedia - Francis Xavier Schmalzgrueber -- German Canon law jurist
Wikipedia - Game canon
Wikipedia - Georg Braun -- German cleric, canon, dean and topographer
Wikipedia - Gerard Canonico -- American actor and singer
Wikipedia - Giorgio Walter Canonica -- Italian medical scientist
Wikipedia - Gospel harmony -- Compilation of the canonical gospels of the Christian New Testament into a single account
Wikipedia - Gospel of Thomas -- Coptic-language early Christian non-canonical gospel, part of the Nag Hammadi library
Wikipedia - Guillaume Durand -- French canonist and bishop
Wikipedia - H. A. Douglas-Hamilton -- Rector and Honorary Canon
Wikipedia - Hebrew Bible -- Canonical collection of Hebrew scriptures
Wikipedia - Hebrew Gospel hypothesis -- Group of theories for the synoptic problem, stating that a lost Hebrew or Aramaic gospel lies behind the canonical gospels; based upon a 2nd-century tradition from Papias of Hierapolis, that the apostle Matthew composed such a gospel
Wikipedia - Historical background of the New Testament -- Historical and cultural context of the canonical gospels and the life of Jesus
Wikipedia - Historical process of beatification and canonization
Wikipedia - Historicity of the Homeric epics -- Debate on the factuality of the Homeric canon
Wikipedia - History of the Roman Canon
Wikipedia - Holofernes -- Figure in the deuterocanonical Book of Judith
Wikipedia - Impediment (canon law) -- Legal obstacle within Catholic Church canon law
Wikipedia - Impediment (Catholic canon law)
Wikipedia - Institutio canonicorum Aquisgranensis
Wikipedia - Interdict (Catholic canon law)
Wikipedia - Internal and external forum (Catholic canon law)
Wikipedia - Interpretation (Catholic canon law)
Wikipedia - Jade Books in Heaven -- Books in Daoist canon
Wikipedia - Jean-Baptist David -- Dutch canon and professor
Wikipedia - Jean Le Noir (theologian) -- French theologian and canon lawyer
Wikipedia - Jinakalamali -- A post-canonical Buddhist chronicle used in Theravadin countries
Wikipedia - John of Tynemouth (canon lawyer) -- 13th-century English priest and canon lawyer
Wikipedia - Jurisprudence of Catholic canon law
Wikipedia - Kazuki Yazawa -- Japanese canoneist
Wikipedia - KRLN -- Radio station in Canon City, Colorado
Wikipedia - KSTY -- Radio station in Canon City, Colorado
Wikipedia - Landscape (software) -- Systems management tool developed by Canonical
Wikipedia - Legendre form -- Canonical set of three elliptic integrals
Wikipedia - Lemma (morphology) -- Canonical representation of a lexeme
Wikipedia - Licentiate of Canon Law
Wikipedia - List of canonically crowned images -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of canonised popes -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of canonizations
Wikipedia - List of canon law legal abbreviations (Catholic canon law)
Wikipedia - List of canon law legal abbreviations -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Canon products -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of concert arias, songs and canons by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of saints canonized by Pope Benedict XVI
Wikipedia - List of saints canonized by Pope Francis
Wikipedia - List of saints canonized by Pope John Paul II
Wikipedia - List of saints canonized by Pope John XXIII
Wikipedia - List of saints canonized by Pope Leo XIII
Wikipedia - List of saints canonized by Pope Paul VI
Wikipedia - List of saints canonized by Pope Pius XII
Wikipedia - List of saints canonized by Pope Pius XI
Wikipedia - List of The Canon episodes -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - Literary canon
Wikipedia - Luca Canonici -- Italian opera singer
Wikipedia - Luke the Evangelist -- One of the four traditionally ascribed authors of the canonical gospels
Wikipedia - Luther's canon -- Biblical canon attributed to Martin Luther
Wikipedia - Martyr Saints of China -- Catholic martyrs from several centuries canonized by John Paul II in 2000
Wikipedia - Minor canon
Wikipedia - Mohist canon
Wikipedia - Montenegrin Orthodox Church -- Canonically unrecognized Orthodox Christian church in Montenegro
Wikipedia - Morgan's Canon
Wikipedia - New Testament apocrypha -- Writings by early Christians, separate from the Biblical Canon
Wikipedia - New Testament -- Second division of the Christian biblical canon
Wikipedia - Nomocanon
Wikipedia - Non-canonical books referenced in the Bible -- Non-canonical books referenced in the Bible
Wikipedia - Notary (canon law)
Wikipedia - Notary (Catholic canon law)
Wikipedia - Oblatio vitae -- Category under which a person may be declared Blessed in Catholic canonization
Wikipedia - Obreption and subreption (Catholic canon law)
Wikipedia - Oriental canon law -- Canon law for the Eastern Catholic churches
Wikipedia - Orthodox Tewahedo biblical canon -- biblical canon used by Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church
Wikipedia - Pachelbel's Canon -- Musical composition by Pachelbel
Wikipedia - Pali Canon
Wikipedia - Pali canon
Wikipedia - Paracanonical texts (Theravada Buddhism)
Wikipedia - Pastoral epistles -- Three books of the canonical New Testament
Wikipedia - Pearl of Great Price (Mormonism) -- Part of the canonical standard works of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Wikipedia - Penitential canons
Wikipedia - Person (Catholic canon law)
Wikipedia - Philosophy, theology, and fundamental theory of canon law
Wikipedia - Philosophy, theology, and fundamental theory of Catholic canon law
Wikipedia - Pali Canon -- Buddhistibrahims ipad253554364465ipad 6th grne uaf557465280852967 14.2 kwufw52962mr6w7h87264753725 5981152
Wikipedia - Post-canonical Buddhist texts
Wikipedia - Post canonical system
Wikipedia - PowerShot G9 X Mark II -- Canon camera
Wikipedia - Prasthanatrayi -- Three canonical texts of Vedanta theology
Wikipedia - Presumption (Catholic canon law)
Wikipedia - Prima scriptura -- Christian doctrine that canonized scripture is "first" or "above all" other sources of divine revelation
Wikipedia - Prisoner's dilemma -- Canonical example of a game analyzed in game theory
Wikipedia - Privilege (canon law)
Wikipedia - Procurator (Catholic canon law)
Wikipedia - Promulgation (canon law)
Wikipedia - Promulgation (Catholic canon law)
Wikipedia - Protocanonical books
Wikipedia - Regular canons
Wikipedia - RegulM-CM-& Juris -- Term for general rules of the interpretation of canon laws of the Catholic Church
Wikipedia - Relative canonical model -- Complex manifolds in mathematics
Wikipedia - Rev. Augustine Mulliner -- Fictional character in P.G. Wodehouse canon
Wikipedia - Richard Bowyer (priest) -- Canon of Windsor
Wikipedia - Rigveda -- First of the four sacredM-BM- canonicalM-BM- texts (M-EM-^[ruti) ofM-BM- Hinduism
Wikipedia - Robert of Cricklade -- 12th century English writer and Augustinian canon
Wikipedia - Robertus de Lacu -- Professor of canon law
Wikipedia - Roman Canon
Wikipedia - School of Canon Law
Wikipedia - Secular canons
Wikipedia - Secular canon
Wikipedia - Sede vacante -- Expression in Catholic and Anglican canon law referring to an episcopal vacancy
Wikipedia - Sepulchrine Canonesses
Wikipedia - Shakespeare attribution studies -- scholarly discipline that attempts to determine the authorial boundaries of the William Shakespeare canon
Wikipedia - Sherlockiana -- Non-canonical works involving Sherlock Holmes
Wikipedia - Sibylle Canonica -- Swiss actress
Wikipedia - Silvano Canonico -- Italian sport shooter
Wikipedia - Simon of Southwell -- 13th-century English priest and canon lawyer
Wikipedia - Sirach -- One of the Deuterocanonical books
Wikipedia - Snap (package manager) -- Software deployment system for Linux by Canonical
Wikipedia - Spiritual successor -- Successor to a work which does not directly continue the canon of its predecessor, but is produced by the same creator or features similar themes.
Wikipedia - Standing Conference of the Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas
Wikipedia - Sutta Nipata -- Buddhist scripture, sutta collection in the Khuddaka Nikaya of the Pali Canon
Wikipedia - Taixuanjing -- Confucian text, "Canon of Supreme Mystery"
Wikipedia - Taoist canon
Wikipedia - Template talk:Beaumont and Fletcher canon
Wikipedia - Template talk:Catholic canon law
Wikipedia - Text and rubrics of the Roman Canon
Wikipedia - The Canon of Judo -- Book by Kyuzo Mifune
Wikipedia - The Canon of Medicine
Wikipedia - The Canon of Scripture
Wikipedia - The sixteen dreams of King Pasenadi -- Story in post-canonical Buddhist texts
Wikipedia - The Western Canon -- 1994 book by Harold Bloom
Wikipedia - Thomas a Kempis -- German canon regular
Wikipedia - Tibetan Buddhist canon -- A loosely defined list of sacred texts recognized by various schools of Tibetan Buddhism
Wikipedia - Times New Roman -- Canonical serif font
Wikipedia - Trichocanonura -- Genus of beetles
Wikipedia - Ubuntu One -- Cloud service operated by Canonical Ltd.
Wikipedia - Ubuntu Touch -- Mobile interface for Ubuntu developed by Canonical Ltd.
Wikipedia - Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church Canonical
Wikipedia - USS Ajax (1864) -- Union Canonicus class monitor
Wikipedia - Vacarius -- 12th-century Italian canon lawyer in England
Wikipedia - VibhaM-aM-9M-^Ega -- Buddhist scripture, part of the Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhism
Wikipedia - Vimanavatthu -- A part of Khuddaka Nikaya in the Pali Canon
Wikipedia - Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele -- panel painting {{circa|1434
Wikipedia - Walter Bower -- 15th-century Scottish canon and chronicler
Wikipedia - Western Canon
Wikipedia - Western canon -- Books, music and art traditionally accepted by Western scholars as the most important in shaping Western culture
Wikipedia - William Burchett -- Canon of Windsor
Elizabeth Ann Seton ::: Born: August 28, 1774; Died: January 4, 1821; Occupation: Canonized;
Josemaria Escriva ::: Born: January 9, 1902; Died: June 26, 1975; Occupation: Canonized;
Maximilian Kolbe ::: Born: January 8, 1894; Died: August 14, 1941; Occupation: Canonized;
Rose Philippine Duchesne ::: Born: August 29, 1769; Died: November 18, 1852; Occupation: Canonized;
Gene Robinson ::: Born: May 29, 1947; Occupation: Canon;
Thomas a Kempis ::: Born: 1380; Died: July 25, 1471; Occupation: Canon;
Ambrose of Optina ::: Born: December 5, 1812; Died: October 23, 1891; Occupation: Canon;
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http://it.religion.wikia.com/wiki/Prima_(ora_canonica)
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Autocanone_75
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Canon_de_75_CA_mod
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Canon_de_75_mod
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/1-10_early_to_recent_Chronology_of_Pali_Canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Affinity_(canon_law)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Age_of_reason_(canon_law)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_Canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon_(wikipedia)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Buddhist_chant#Non-canonical_uses_of_Buddhist_chanting
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canon_Episcopi
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_criticism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Aggregates
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Anglican_usage
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Armenian_Usage
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Coptic_Usage
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Current_practice
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Development_of_the_offices
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Eastern_Orthodox_and_Greek-Catholic_usage
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#East_Syrian
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Further_revision_before_the_Second_Vatican_Council
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Historical_development
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Judaism_and_the_Early_Church
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Latin_typical_editions
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Liturgical_books
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Liturgical_cycles
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Liturgical_variation
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Middle_Ages
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Notes
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Official_English_translations
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Oriental_Orthodox_Usage
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Reformed_and_Lutheran_usage
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Revision_by_Pope_Pius_V
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Revision_following_the_Second_Vatican_Council
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Roman_Rite_since_the_Council_of_Trent
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Syrian_Usage
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Texts
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#The_Daily_Cycle_of_Services
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#The_major_hours
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#The_minor_hours
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#West_Syrian
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonization
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonization#Anglican
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonization#Eastern_Orthodox_Glorification
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonization#Eastern_Orthodox_Practice.E2.80.94Glorification
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonization#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonization#Historical_development_of_the_process
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonization#Notes
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonization#Other_Christian_traditions
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonization#Protestant
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonization#References
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonization#Roman_Catholic_procedure_since_1983
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canonization#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canon_law
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canon_law_(Catholic_Church)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canon_law_(Catholic_Church)#Codification
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canon_of_the_Mass
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canon_(priest)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canons_of_the_Orthodox_Church
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Canons_Regular
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Canon_Law
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Canon_law
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Canon_law_(Catholic_Church)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christian_Biblical_canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Christian_Biblical_canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Chinese_Buddhist_canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christian_biblical_canons
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Old_Testament_canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Heresies_and_the_Biblical_canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christian_mythology#Atonement_in_canonical_scripture
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christian_mythology#Atonement_in_non-canonical_literature
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christian_mythology#In_canonical_scripture
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christian_mythology#In_non-canonical_tradition
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Code_of_Canon_Law
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Consecrated_life_(Catholic_Church)#Canonical_recognition_attained_in_modern_times
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Deuterocanonical
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Deuterocanonical_Books
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Deuterocanonical_books
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_Christian_Biblical_canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_Jewish_Bible_canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#A_consensus_emerges
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Amphilochius_of_Iconium
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Apostolic_Canon_.2385
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Armenian_canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Athanasius
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Augustine_and_the_North_African_canons
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Cassiodorus
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Catholic_Developments_.28from_c._1546.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Cheltenham.2FMommsen_Canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Claromontanus_Canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Clement_of_Alexandria
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Clement_of_Rome
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Constantine_the_Great
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Council_of_Trent
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Cyril_of_Jerusalem
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Early_Christianity_.28c.30-325.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Early_Proto-Orthodox_Attempts_to_Define_the_Canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#East_African_canons
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Eastern_canons
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Epiphanius
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Eusebius
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Evangelical_canons
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Gregory_of_Nazianzus
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Irenaeus
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Jerome
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Justin_Martyr
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Later_Developments
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Marcion_of_Sinope
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Martin_Luther
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Muratorian_Canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Origen
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Orthodox_Developments_.28from_c._1672.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Outside_the_Empire
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Period_of_the_Seven_Ecumenical_Councils_.28325-787.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Pope_Damasus_I
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Pope_Innocent_I
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Protestant_confessions
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Protestant_Developments_.28from_c._1517.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#References
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Synod_of_Jerusalem
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Synod_of_Laodicea.3F
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Syriac_Canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Tatian
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#The_Alogi
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Valentinus
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_Old_Testament_canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Fasting_and_abstinence_of_the_Coptic_Orthodox_Church_of_Alexandria#Canonical_observance
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/God_in_Buddhism#Brahma_in_the_Pali_Canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/God_in_Buddhism#Other_common_gods_referred_to_in_the_Canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Gospel#Canonical_Gospels
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Gospels#Canonical_Gospels
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Hermit#Under_the_direction_of_the_diocesan_bishop_.28canon_603.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Historical_process_of_beatification_and_canonization
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Biblical_canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Eastern_Orthodox_Church#The_Patristic_Age_and_Biblical_Canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Roman_Canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Householder_(Buddhism)#Prominent_householders_in_the_Pali_canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity#Biblical_canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity#Current_canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/List_of_canonizations
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Luther's_view_on_the_canon_of_scripture_(J.S.)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Mahayana#Mahayana_and_the_Canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Marcionism#Marcionite_canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Nirvana#Paths_to_nirvana_in_the_Pali_canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Non-canonical_books_referenced_in_the_Bible
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Non-canonical_books_referenced_in_the_Bible#New_Testament_references
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Non-canonical_books_referenced_in_the_Bible#Notes
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Non-canonical_books_referenced_in_the_Bible#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Non-canonical_books_referenced_in_the_Bible#Tanakh_references
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Pali_Canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Protocanonical_books
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Puja_(Buddhism)#Canonical_references
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Standing_Conference_of_Canonical_Orthodox_Churches_in_Australia
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Standing_Conference_of_the_Canonical_Orthodox_Bishops_in_the_Americas
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Canonical_hours
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Canonization
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Non-canonical_books_referenced_in_the_Bible
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Template:PaliCanon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Template:Peoplepalicanon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Text_and_rubrics_of_the_Roman_Canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Tibetan_Buddhist_canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Tibetan_Buddhist_canon#Mother_Tantra
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Two_truths_doctrine#Canonical_use
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Yana_(Buddhism)#Y.C4.81na_in_the_P.C4.81li_Canon
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - mohist-canons
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https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/It/ListaCanonicaDelleSottiliDistinzioniTraTropi
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/It/RicercaNonSvolta
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Laconic/ArmedWithCanon
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https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Laconic/CanonDiscontinuity
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Laconic/CanonForeigner
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Laconic/CanonicalListOfSubtleTropeDistinctions
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Laconic/CanonImmigrant
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Laconic/CanonWelding
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/DragonsCanOnlyRust
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheGriffinAndTheMinorCanon
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AcceptableBreaksFromCanon
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArmedWithCanon
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BetterThanCanon
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Canon
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CanonCharacterAllAlong
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CanonDefilement
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CanonDisContinuity
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CanonDiscontinuity
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CanonFodder
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CanonForeigner
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CanonicalListOfSubtleTropeDistinctions
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CanonIdentifier
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CanonIllustrations
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CanonImmigrant
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CanonInvasion
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CanOnlyMoveTheEyes
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CanonMarchesOn
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CanonName
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CanonSue
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CanonUniverse
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CanonWelding
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DoomedByCanon
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GodCreatedCanonForeigner
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IfICanOnlyMove
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LooseCanon
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OutdatedByCanon
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PachelbelsCanonProgression
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PseudocanonicalFic
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RecursiveCanon
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RetCanon
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SavedByCanon
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SchrodingersCanon
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StationsOfTheCanon
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThereCanOnlyBeOne
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheStationsOfTheCanon
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnreliableCanon
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WriterConflictsWithCanon
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ZeerustCanon
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/CanonBlue
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/PachelbelsCanon
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/DisneyAnimatedCanon
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/PlayingWith/CanonForeigner
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Quotes/ArmedWithCanon
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Quotes/CanonDiscontinuity
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Quotes/CanonForeigner
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Quotes/CanonImmigrant
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Quotes/CanonWelding
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/DisneyAnimatedCanon
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/RetCanon/ComicBooks
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/RetCanon/DCUniverse
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/RetCanon/MarvelUniverse
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/RetCanon/TheDCU
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TearJerker/DisneyAnimatedCanon
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoExamples/CanonForeigner
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoSource/DisneyAnimatedCanon
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WebVideo/TheKingDragonCanon
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/AirshipCanon
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/Canondorf
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/Canonier
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/CanonRap
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/MyHeadcanon
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Canon
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Canonization_2014-The_Canonization_of_Saint_John_XXIII_and_Saint_John_Paul_II_(14036966125).jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Canon_ray%C3%A9_premi%C3%A8re_guerre_mondiale_img_1967.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Canon_ray_premire_guerre_mondiale_img_1967.jpg
https://myanimelist.net/manga/622/Canon
Brotherhood (2010) ::: 6.4/10 -- R | 1h 16min | Crime, Drama, Thriller | 18 November 2010 (South Korea) -- A college fraternity initiation rite goes awfully wrong. A bullet wounded frat boy and a kidnapped convenience store clerk end up at the frat house. Panic continues. Director: Will Canon Writers:
https://allthetropes.fandom.com/wiki/Canon_Discontinuity
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https://andromeda.fandom.com/wiki/Guidelines_for_Canon_Material
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https://bleachfanfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Character_Encyclopedia_(Fanon_Canon)
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https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Yavin_13/Canon
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Yavin_8/Canon
https://starwarsfans.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Wars_canon
https://stexpanded.fandom.com/wiki/Canon
https://surrealmemes.fandom.com/wiki/Canon_or_nont_canon
https://sw1mush.fandom.com/wiki/Canon
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https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/T:CANON
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https://tes-sandbox.fandom.com/wiki/Ulfric_Stormcloak_(Burned-Mane_Canon)
https://thelionkingfanon.fandom.com/wiki/Canon_Characters
https://theshield.fandom.com/wiki/The_Shield_Wiki:Canon
https://thomasfanon.fandom.com/wiki/Canon_Articles
https://trolls.fandom.com/wiki/Trolls_(film)_Wikia:Policy/Canon_Policy
https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Canon
https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Warhammer_40k_Wiki:Canon
https://we-bare-bears-fanon.fandom.com/wiki/Charlie_(Canon)
https://we-bare-bears-fanon.fandom.com/wiki/Chloe_Park_(Canon)
https://we-bare-bears-fanon.fandom.com/wiki/Grizzly_Bear_(Canon)
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https://we-bare-bears-fanon.fandom.com/wiki/Panda_Bear_(Canon)
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https://www.tumblr.com/widgets/share/tool/preview?shareSource=legacy&canonicalUrl&url=https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/fandom-acquires-screen-junkies-defy-media-1202863221/&posttype=link&title=Fandom%20Acquires%20Screen%20Junkies%20From%20Defy%20Media
Appleseed Alpha -- -- Sola Digital Arts -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Adventure Police Mecha Military Sci-Fi Seinen -- Appleseed Alpha Appleseed Alpha -- Set in a different series of events, this story does not follow the previous Appleseed movie canon (despite being directed by the same director of the previous movies); it is an alternate story to their beginnings. Briareos is already a cyborg and did not become separated from Deunan to be later reunited in Olympus to join ESWAT. -- -- Appleseed Alpha depicts the early days of Deunan Knute and Briareos in the 22nd century, as they embark on a journey throughout dystopic ruins of New York in search of the city of Olympus. They are hired by Two Horns, the warlord of the ruined city, to eliminate bipedal combat machines. During the fight, they encounter Iris and Olson, both on a mission. Deunan and Briareos befriend them and decide to join their mission. -- -- Iris is tasked with preventing the malevolent cyborg Talos from capturing a secret weapon humans were building. Talos uses Iris to activate the gigantic war machine. -- -- (Source: Wikipedia) -- Movie - Jan 17, 2015 -- 15,823 7.03
Gundam Evolve -- -- Sunrise -- 15 eps -- Original -- Action Military Space Mecha -- Gundam Evolve Gundam Evolve -- A series of short films packaged with certain model kits and aired at conventions, the Gundam Evolve series chronicles a number of side-stories, alternative scenes, and even bonus omake from all around the Gundam canon. Featuring a mix of animation media—from traditional cels to 3-D CG rendering to even cel-shaded 2-D animation—these often 3-5 minute shorts cover such events as Domon Kasshu's training (and a bit of a romantic tift with Rain Mikamura) from G Gundam, Amuro Ray battling Quess Paraya from Char's Counterattack, Kamille Bidan training in the Gundam Mk.II from Zeta Gundam, and Canard Pars dueling Prayer Reverie from the Gundam SEED X Astray manga. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Nozomi Entertainment -- OVA - ??? ??, 2001 -- 9,319 6.61
Halo Legends -- -- Bones, Production I.G, Studio 4°C, Toei Animation -- 9 eps -- Game -- Action Drama Military Sci-Fi -- Halo Legends Halo Legends -- Halo Legends features seven different stories set in the Halo universe, each made by a different studio. -- -- The Babysitter follows the Helljumpers, Orbital Drop Shock Troopers who are sent behind enemy lines to perform an assassination. -- -- The Duel features the tale of an ancient Arbiter who refused to bow down to the Covenant religion. Branded a heretic, he must now face the consequences of his actions. -- -- The Package depicts a group of Spartans, including the Master Chief, who are deployed to infiltrate a Covenant flagship and retrieve a “package” in a secret operation. -- -- Origins shows Master Chief and Cortana stranded following the events of Halo 3, with Cortana summarizing the fall of the Forerunners, the defeat of the Flood, and the rise of humanity as well as the events of the Human-Covenant War. -- -- Homecoming centers on the Spartan Daisy, who reminisces on her past, and the SPARTAN-II project while evacuating UNSC soldiers pinned down by Covenant forces. -- -- Prototype is viewed from the perspective of Marine Sergeant Ghost, who is determined to fight for all he is worth in order to make up for past grievances. -- -- Odd One Out is a non-canon parody of Halo featuring Spartan 1337, who suffers from extremely bad luck. -- -- Licensor: -- Warner Bros. Japan -- ONA - Nov 7, 2009 -- 34,711 7.02
Yu☆Gi☆Oh! 5D's: Shinkasuru Kettou! Stardust vs. Red Demon's -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Fantasy Game Sci-Fi -- Yu☆Gi☆Oh! 5D's: Shinkasuru Kettou! Stardust vs. Red Demon's Yu☆Gi☆Oh! 5D's: Shinkasuru Kettou! Stardust vs. Red Demon's -- A non-canon Yu☆Gi☆Oh! 5D's special from the 2008 Super Jump Anime Tour. Yuusei Fudou and Jack Atlas face off in a Riding Duel for the title of Duel King, with Aki and the twins watching. The ace dragons, Stardust Dragon and Red Daemon's Dragon, clash once again, and this time gain the power to 'evolve' using the Buster Mode trap card, becoming "Stardust Dragon/Buster" and "Red Demon's Dragon/Buster." -- Special - Sep 21, 2008 -- 8,769 6.95
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Canon_CAPT
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Category:Canonical
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Canonesses
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Canonical_coronation
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Canon_law
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Canon_law_(Lutheran)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Canon_law_(Roman_Catholic_Church)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Canons_Regular_of_the_Holy_Sepulchre
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Photos_by_Mike_Peel_using_a_Canon_EOS_60D
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Canon_
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Canon_de_37mm_SA_18.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Canonical_Jurisdiction_of_SE-SHP.jpg
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https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:AngMoKio#Canon_40D_hardware_problem
1917 Code of Canon Law
1983 Code of Canon Law
2015 Canon Media Awards
2-Undecanone
Act of Canonical Communion with the Moscow Patriarchate
Affinity (canon law)
Andr Canonne
Artistic canons of body proportions
Aurelio Canonici
Beatification and canonization process prior to 1983
Benedict (canon of St. Peter's)
Biblical canon
Blake canonical form
Boolean algebras canonically defined
Brachodes canonitis
Buffyverse canon
Canoneret de Ripoll
Canoner Gil
Canoner Vega-Aguil
Canons i danses
Canon
Canon's Town
Canon 1324
Canon 915
Canon AE-1
Canon AE-1 Program
Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book
Canon AV-1
Canonba
Canon (basic principle)
Canon BG-ED3
Canonbie
Canonbury
Canonbury Square
Canonbury Tower
Canonchet
Canonchet (YTB-823)
Canon Cinema EOS
Canon Court de 105 M(montagne) modele 1909 Schneider
Canon Court de 105 M(montagne) modle 1919 Schneider
Canon D'Assaut Lorraine
Canon d'Infanterie de 37 modle 1916 TRP
Canon de 105 mle 1913 Schneider
Canon de 105 modle 1930 Schneider
Canon de 120mm L mle 1931
Canon de 12 de Vallire
Canon de 138 mm Modle 1893 naval gun
Canon de 138 mm Modle 1910 naval gun
Canon de 138 mm Modle 1927
Canon de 138 mm Modle 1929
Canon de 155 C modle 1915 St. Chamond
Canon de 155 C modle 1917 Schneider
Canon de 155mm GPF
Canon de 164 mm Modle 1893
Canon de 194 GPF
Canon de 19 C modle 1875
Canon de 24 de Vallire
Canon de 305 mm Modle 1893/96 gun
Canon de 4 de Vallire
Canon de 65 M (montagne) modele 1906
Canon de 6 systme An XI
Canon de 75 CA modle 1940 Schneider
Canon de 75 mle GP1
Canon de 75 mle GP II
Canon de 75 mle GP III
Canon de 75 mm modle 1924
Canon de 75 M(montagne) modele 1919 Schneider
Canon de 75 modle 1897
Canon de 75 modle 1905 Schneider
Canon de 75 modle 1912 Schneider
Canon de 75 modle 1914 Schneider
Canon de 75 modle 1922 Schneider
Canon de 85 modle 1927 Schneider
Canon Digital IXUS
Canon EF 100200mm lens
Canon EF 100-300mm lens
Canon EF 100-400mm lens
Canon EF 100mm lens
Canon EF 1124mm lens
Canon EF 1200mm lens
Canon EF 135mm lens
Canon EF 16-35mm lens
Canon EF 17-35mm lens
Canon EF 17-40mm lens
Canon EF 200-400mm lens
Canon EF 20-35mm lens
Canon EF 22-55mm lens
Canon EF 24-105mm lens
Canon EF 2470mm lens
Canon EF 24-85mm lens
Canon EF 28-105mm lens
Canon EF 28-135mm lens
Canon EF 28-200mm lens
Canon EF 28-300mm lens
Canon EF 28-70mm lens
Canon EF 28-80mm lens
Canon EF 28-90mm lens
Canon EF 28mm lens
Canon EF 300mm lens
Canon EF 35105mm lens
Canon EF 35350mm lens
Canon EF 3580mm lens
Canon EF 35mm lens
Canon EF 50mm lens
Canon EF 55200mm lens
Canon EF 70200mm lens
Canon EF 70210mm lens
Canon EF 70-300mm lens
Canon EF 75300mm lens
Canon EF 800mm lens
Canon EF 80-200mm lens
Canon EF 8-15mm lens
Canon EF 85mm lens
Canon EF 90300mm lens
Canon EF camera
Canon EF lens mount
Canon EF-M
Canon EF-M 1122mm lens
Canon EF-M 1545mm lens
Canon EF-M 18150mm lens
Canon EF-M 1855mm lens
Canon EF-M lens mount
Canon EF portrait lenses
Canon EF-S 1018mm lens
Canon EF-S 1022mm lens
Canon EF-S 1585mm lens
Canon EF-S 1755mm lens
Canon EF-S 1785mm lens
Canon EF-S 18135mm lens
Canon EF-S 18200mm lens
Canon EF-S 1855mm lens
Canon EF-S 55250mm lens
Canon EF-S lens mount
Canone inverso
Canon ELPH
Canon ELPH 10 AF
Canon ELPH 490Z
Canon ELPH (series)
Canon EOS
Canon EOS-1
Canon EOS 100
Canon EOS 1000D
Canon EOS 100D
Canon EOS 10D
Canon EOS 1100D
Canon EOS 1200D
Canon EOS 1300D
Canon EOS-1 (camera series)
Canon EOS-1D
Canon EOS-1D C
Canon EOS-1D Mark II
Canon EOS-1D Mark III
Canon EOS-1D Mark IV
Canon EOS-1Ds
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III
Canon EOS-1D X
Canon EOS-1D X Mark II
Canon EOS-1N
Canon EOS-1V
Canon EOS 2000D
Canon EOS 200D
Canon EOS 20D
Canon EOS 250D
Canon EOS-3
Canon EOS 30
Canon EOS 300
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