[Buddha-l] Re: New trans. of petry of the Sixth DL

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Fri, 2005-06-24 at 22:08 -0600, jkirk wrote:

> Who was or is Steve Collins and what did he publish in this field?
> His style sounds appealing......

To start at the beginning, he was born in 1951. After a childhood and
adolescence, he trained in Pali studies at Oxford. He has been teaching
at University of Chicago for some time. He wrote a fine book on no-self
theory called <cite>Selfless Persons</cite> and another called <Nirvana
and other Buddhist felicities.</cite> He has also written a number of
interesting articles, including one called "The very idea of the Pali
canon," which challenges some of the myths about the earliness of the
Pali canon. It has been a long time since I read it, but as I recall his
argument, it is that the Pali canon was formed largely in reaction to
Mahayana Buddhism as an act of sectarian self-definition. Somebody who
has read it more recently can probably offer a more accurate summary; my
summaries of almost everything I have ever read are notoriously
unreliable. 

-- 
Richard Hayes
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes