Here are two more criticisms of the Introduction to The Guide. The first is about style, and is a minor point. I note that you use the word "then" quite frequently as a conjunction to introduce fresh subject matter (e.g. p. i—"Then the work has a commentary..."): used in this way the word has a rather colloquial flavour—it is rather as if what follows is really an afterthought, having no particular connexion with what has gone before, and when you have series of them (pp. xx-xxi there are three in four sentences) the result reads rather like an auctioneer's catalogue and gives the general impression that what you have written has just been thrown together haphazard and not carefully thought out. This may be all very well in a serious talk on the Home Service, where it is necessary to conceal the fact (discreditable to the average Home Service Englishman) that you have been thinking; but on the Third Programme you are expected to think, and your translation is Third Programme or nothing. The second point concerns pages xxiv and xxv. You say (on p. xxv) that the fact that the mistakes in the Petakopadesa appear in all editions "clamours for comment". You then offer the simple explanation that all the present editions no doubt have a common ancestor containing all the mistakes. This is far too dramatic. If you build up keen expectation of a really astounding solution ("I think I am the first...etc. etc.") with the word "clamours for comment" (which, anyway, are unpleasantly reminiscent of Muddled Man's "Everyone is crying out of the Dhamma"), then you have no business at all to disappoint your audience with a solution that will already have occured to the least of them (everyone who reads the translation will be perfectly familiar with the phenomenon of reduplication of errors in ancient scriptures that have been handed down by copying—Europeans, because they will be only scholars who will read it, and Orientals because they are acquainted with ola leaves). I suggest you cut out the words "a fact that clamours for comment", and continue, "The explanation is no doubt simple. It may be assumed that...", and omit "This is indeed not at all improbable" (since it is obvious). On the other hand, you much too modestly pass over (on p. xxiv) a fact that really does "clamour for comment" (though I prefer some other expression), namely the intrusion of the section of Sumangalavilāsinī without anyone's noticing it hitherto. I suggest that perhaps a sub-acid comment would be entirely in place, rather on these lines. That such an intrusion should have passed unnoticed is an extraordinary piece of professional incompetence on the part of the European scholar who edited the work (who did?), and a miserable failure of the much vaunted "critical approach" of European scholarship. It is perhaps understandable, however, inasmuch as the European Scholar is not "infinitely interested" in the contents of the work (he is not a Buddhist) but is merely concerned to produce as accurate a transcription of the text as possible. The Burmese editors, insofar as they are scholars, come in for the same criticism, but it might also have been expected that they (presumably being Buddhists) should have been familiar with the text of the Sumangalavilāsinī, or at least able to recognize a slice of commentary when they saw it (the European scholar has more excuses). But the really dumbfounding and numbing thing is that a Commentator should have succeeded in expounding the meaning of the work in detail without noticing that the text contained a well-defined lump of extraneous matter. (Perhaps he simply applied the Netti method without bothering to think—a purely automatic application of a rule-of-thumb. The Ven. Nārada Thera had, I believe, a reputation for some degree of attainment, if I am thinking of the same person; but if the Pe. commentary is as inadequate as you suggest—I suppose you did check that he failed to spot the intruder—he can hardly be allowed an equal reputation as an expounder of texts.) Scholastic ability is not an indispensable requirement in a Venerable Thera, but a capacity to discern what is nonsense in a Buddhist text most certainly is, particularly if he sets out to be a Commentator (I suppose that the intruding passage from the S'vilāsinī does not happen, by some freak of chance, to make good sense when read together with the surrounding Pe. text?)
Many thanks for yours of the 3rd, just received, with stamps. Actually you did not miscommunicate. I asked for the Netti because I was curious to know what was in it, and not at all because you had given me to understand (which you had not) that it was a marvelous new short-cut to wisdom. My curiosity is now satisfied, and I enjoyed both reading your translation and bludgeoning it—even if you had inadvertently omitted your invitation to comment on it, I should hardly have denied myself the pleasure. But I did not set out to review the translation (you didn't ask me to), or even to say what I approved in it: I bludgeoned because it is a pleasure to do so, and also in case you wanted to make use of any of my bludgeoning to alter anything before it is printed (if it is printed). It is I who have been guilty of miscommunication, if anything—you are not the bystander who offers to help me in my chess problem (by sending me your translation); the Netti is the bystander and the Suttas are the chess problem (I have never at any time really suspected anything else, and I asked for the Netti—amongst other reasons—just to make sure). Your apology "sorry you've been troubled", is quite out of place: if you have taken my bludgeoning as an expression of displeasure and disappointment, then it is for me to apologize—I experienced neither displeasure nor disappointment, on the contrary I had the profound satisfaction of proving myself right and the pleasure of being a little didactic about it in my comments. Thank you for sending it—I shall not say no to a complimentary copy if ever it sees the light of day in print (not so much to be instructed by it as to be reminded of what I am now beginning to suspect, namely, that the Buddha deliberately taught the Dhamma in such a way that it is impossible to apply any method to it, thereby turning it into a System—a System can be accepted or rejected at will, but not the Dhamma).
The Mahābodhi extracts are most pleasing. If you were to raise the rear wheel clear of the ground would not a bicycle almost answer Mahinda's purpose?
I have to admit that a more lengthy acquaintance (by exchange of letters) with Mr. M. forces me to admit I was wrong. Mr. M. is not intelligent—he is an emotional nuisance. He has now left for England and does not expect ever to return. We must be grateful for small mercies. You must, however, make allowances for me: the only person I usually get to talk to here is Mr. P., and anyone who succeeds in completing his sentences in conversation with me necessarily appears, by comparison, to be above the average in intelligence.
Scientists insist upon objectivity, and they identify this with no-point-of-view. To have a point of view is, for a scientist, to be subjective, to take himself as the reference point. This, I now see, is a mistake. When you have entirely got rid of asmimāna you have not got rid of a point of view. The arahat "has" (or "is") a point of view since there still remain the five indriyas (eye, etc.). I have for long been confusing attā with "point of view". Attā, certainly, is the point of view from which the world (loka) is seen; but removal of this duality does not entail removal of things, at least not all at once.
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