User talk:Munge

I left the response on my talk page, for continuity's sake. -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 17:07, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Are you still going to do something with Talk:Hinayana/Article Sandbox? It looks promising... Greetings, Sacca 02:05, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Hallo Munge. Good to hear from you. I'm a bit short of time at present - but I tend to agree with you that the main usage of the term "Hinayana" in the Mahayana sutras is rather belittling (although in some sutras it is indicated that Hinayana is a kind of preliminary stage - after which Mahayana can be followed). The sutras tend to talk more of "sravakas" and "pratyekabuddhas", rather than "Hinayana". And definitely the sravakas and pratyekabuddhas are not without merit or worthy of respect (according to the Mahayana sutras). The only really "hopeless" cases are the "icchantikas" (well - even they have some hope - but they are deemed to be the worst of all bad human beings!). I think you are right to suggest that the idea of "Hinayana" is that those who set out in the Hinayana ("inferior vehicle") can still reach Nirvana - but not the highest Nirvana/ Awakening which is the domain of a samyaksambuddha. It seems that according to the Mahayana, one needs to have the aspiration to liberate all beings from samsara if one wants to attain full Buddhahood (and therewith the highest level of Nirvana - as in the Mahayana there are different levels of Nirvana).

I appreciate your message to me, and I'm sorry that I can't get too much involved with this issue at present, as I'm tied up with other things. But thanks again for writing. All the best to you. From Tony. TonyMPNS 12:48, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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I thought I would let you know that there is rather startling new research from Seishi Karashima, the leading Japanese authority on the philology of the early Lotus Sutra. I do not have time myself to include these findings in the artcle, but he has demonstrated fairly convincingly that the whole Hīnayāna / Mahāyāna / Buddhayāna etc terminology is based on a scribal misunderstanding. As you may know, it is now believed that the very earliest Mahāyāna sutras were written in some form of Prakrit where sound-clusters are simplified. Thus, he shows that these terms were actually written as hīnajāna / mahājāna / buddhajāna. Later as sutras were Sanskritized, the ambiguity of the Parakrit led to the intended meaning being misunderstood and wrongly converted into Hīnayāna / Mahāyāna / Buddhayāna, possibly due to conceptual contamination from the parable of the burning house. What they should actually be in Sanskrit is hīnajñāna / mahājñāna / buddhajñāna ! A number of the very early Central Asian mss do actually have these forms and not the -yāna versions. Try reading the early Mahayana texts with this substitution -- the first quote from the 8000 PP becomes much more meaningful -- it's all about insight and knowledge.--Stephen Hodge 23:08, 10 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

An article that you have been involved in editing, Buddhist polemics, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Buddhist polemics. Thank you. linca^linca 15:33, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't delete the page. It was moved by User:Gurch to Talk:Hinayana/Sandbox, and is still there. All I deleted was a redirect that had only ever been a redirect. Hut 8.5 08:40, 23 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please, do go for it. The article could use an expert eye, and some sourcing from scholarly texts. I'd love to see it worked up into an