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Updated: July 2, 2025
Viññâṇa sometimes corresponds to thought and sometimes is hardly distinguished from perception, for it means awareness of what is pleasant or painful, sweet or sour and so on. But the Pitakas continually insist that it is not a unity and that its varieties come into being only when they receive proper nourishment or, as we should say, an adequate stimulus.
In style they offer some resemblance to the Pitakas: there is the same inordinate love of repetition and in the more emotional passages great similarity of tone and metaphor . Besides the two canons, the Jains have a considerable literature consisting both of commentaries and secular works.
The passages in the Pitakas which seem to be the oldest and the most historical suggest that the success of the Buddha was due to the fact that he substituted for the chilly ideal of the Indian Munis something more inspiring and more visibly fruitful, something akin to what Christ called the Kingdom of Heaven.
Seven Pillar Edicts dating from the 27th and 28th years, and found in six recensions. The fourteen Rock Edicts are mostly sermons. Their style often recalls the Pitakas verbally, particularly in the application of secular words to religious matters.
If we examine the Pali Pitakas, including the heresies mentioned in the Kathâvatthu, we find that they contain the germs of many Mahayanist ideas.
The later Buddhist writings are perhaps not less extravagant than the Puranas, but the Pitakas are relatively sober, though not quite consistent in their account of the Buddha's attitude to the miraculous. Those who know India will easily call up a picture of how the Bhikkhus strove to impress the crowd by exhibitions not unlike a modern juggler's tricks and how the master stopped them.
He mentions the Vinaya and Abhidharma without further particulars, whereas in describing the Hinayanist versions of these two Pitakas he gives many details. The importance of this list lies in the fact that it is Indian rather than in its date, for the earliest catalogue of the Chinese Tripitaka compiled about 510 is perhaps older and certainly ampler.
And though the Pitakas insist on the universality of causation, they have no notion of the uniformity of nature in our sense . The Buddhist doctrine of causation states that we cannot obtain emancipation and happiness unless we understand and remove the cause of our distress, but it does not discuss cosmic forces like karma and Mâyâ.
This question did not fail to arouse interest during the Buddha's lifetime yet in the Pitakas the discussion, though it could not be stifled, is relegated to the background and brought forward only to be put aside as unpractical. The greatest teachers of religion—Christ as well as Buddha—have shown little disposition to speak of what follows on death.
Just as the atmosphere of the Pitakas is not that of the Brâhmanas or Sûtras, so are their ideas about Jhâna and Samâdhi somewhat different. Though hypnotic and even cataleptic phases are not wanting, the journey of the religious life, as described in the Pitakas, is a progress of increasing peace, but also of increasing intellectual power and activity.
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