Category: Pali Canon

Translations and paraphrases of specific suttas of the Pali Canon, as well as articles on Pali language, history, and scholarship. NOTE: These are works in progress, and not finished works. Some blogs may contain factual inaccuracies or errors of interpretation. Blog material is reviewed and corrected continuously for publication. For the current versions, please buy my books. This is an essential part of my income.

The Two Paths and Ten Principles of Dharma

On By Alexander DuncanIn Pali Canon

The Way of the Householder

  1. Life is inherently unsatisfactory. Therefore, a spiritual problem demands resolution.
  2. Indefinite numbers of buddhas have resolved the problem of human life each in their own time through the continuous rediscovery of the primordial tradition. Siddartha Gautama is the Buddha of our time.
  3. The problem of the human condition is resolved by understanding “the way things are” (the dharma). Wisdom.
  4. One attains happiness in ordinary life through the practice of virtue. Ethics.
  5. A fortunate rebirth may be obtained through the utilization of the law of karma by the practice of virtue and meditation. Therefore, one can ”intend” one’s future rebirth.

The Way of the Seeker

  1. Experience is infinitely intervolved, ephemeral, energetic, sentient, transdual, transrational, translinquistic, and essentially empty. Ontology.
  2. Liberation is experienced by the cultivation of wisdom and the practice of meditation and virtue. Soteriology.
  3. Meditation is the reflexive concentration of attention that results in tranquility, insight, and transcendence. Praxis.
  4. Wisdom is the immediate, direct, instantaneous, ultimate, and intuitive realization of “what is.” Metaphysics.
  5. The world is a quaternary characterized by horizontal and vertical polarities that are binary, hierarchical, and simultaneously ontological and psychological (psychoid). This quaterary is characterized by the progressive refinement of levels of sentience and inferior and superior degrees of suffering, which permeates the whole system. All these interact based on the law of karma, which creates the phenomenological conditions, and individual intention, which creates new karma, in a continuous temporal process. This entire system is nebulous, indefinite, constantly changing, indeterminate, and essentially cyclical. The entire world is populated by innumerable sentient beings of every imaginable kind, both visible and invisible, since infinitely differentiated reflexive sentience is an inherent potentiality of matter and reality. Cosmology.
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